+ 40kology +

Return of the Necrones de Guerra

2011-11-20T21:40:00.003-06:00

A while back I bought my buddy Mack's Necron army. They've lain dormant waiting for the new codex and I'm excited to get them back on the battlefield. I took them out for a trial run the other day against Robert's Tzeentch demon army and ended up squeaking out a win, but more importantly, got to really experience how different they feel from other armies, including the Necrons of the previous codex. I had just enough models to put together a classic 2k list, with a modern general:

Imotekh Stormlord
Cryptek - harbinger of despair with nightmare shroud and veil of darkness
Destroyer Lord - warscythe, resurrection orb, semipternal weave
C'tan Shard - worldscape, dust
4 x 10 warriors
4 Wraiths - 4 lash whips
5 Destroyers
8 Scarab Swarms
Tomb Spyder - gloom prism, fabricator claw
Monolith

Robert was running a Lord of Change, 2 Tzeentch heralds on chariots, 3 squads of flamers, 4 squads of horrors including the Changeling, and 2 Tzeentch demon princes. We were playing for 4 objectives with Dawn of War Deployment and I went first. Things looked bleak when the Stormlord's gimmick stopped on the second turn before he had even dropped anything in, and then when he did, he wiped out Imotekh, the cryptek, and the attached warrior squad right away. I had nothing left to do except buckle down and go after the horrors and be prepared to fight for a draw. The destroyers, c'tan, and wraiths were able to take care of that fairly quickly. The warriors went down pretty easily, with the reanimation not having much of a positive effect. Because he didn't have much in the way of heavy strength guns, the monolith survived for quite a while but didn't do all that much damage. I did manage to suck up a few flamers with the door, which was probably the high point of the game. The scarab swarms didn't have any vehicles to eat, but they surprised a unit of flamers that would have otherwise wiped out my last troops unit. One of his chariots was mishapped to a far corner of the board late in the game, while the other one and the Lord of Change raced to push me off my last objective. The surviving wraiths and scarabs and the tomb spyder successfully held them at bay and I won 1-0.

After further consideration, I want to try playing with Nemesor Zandrekh for a while. At 185 points, he is a steal. He has great equipment choices, and for only 5 points above a similarly equipped lord, you're getting his master strategist buff/nerf powers (along with the dubious phased reinforcement ability). I think the nerf part of that ability is the more useful one, though stealth and tank hunters for my own guys will be nice, too. I want to try pairing him with a troop squad and a cryptek with a chronometron and try to keep him and his buds alive for a while. I picked up an annihilation barge that I'm pretty stoked on using. I had to repose and rebase all the models and fix a few broken ones, and since I'm already missing a few arms and legs here and there, I thought I'd go for a complete broke-down, emerging-from-the-swamp look. I'm going to take advantage of their already rusty-looking paint job, somehow incorporate water effects into the bases, and judiciously apply some hanging seaweed-looking goop from their limbs. I eventually want to paint the neon gun tubes, too, since none of the newer models use them and I always thought they looked a little off when light is generally painted on any other 40k miniature, rather than using some kind of effect that depends on the actual physical properties of the miniature.

Lately I'm generally over the competitive approach to 40k. I still prefer 1500-2000 point games with standard missions, but since I barely have enough time as it is to build, paint, and play for fun, I'm not inclined to spend that precious time messing with any kind of spam. If a unit is halfway decent, has a neat effect, and/or just looks cool, I'll include one in my collection; otherwise, I probably won't be motivated enough to paint it.

Wargamescon 2011 GT 7/9/11-7/10/11

2011-07-14T21:07:00.013-06:00

After this weekend’s 7-game GT at WarGamesCon, I figured I’d be pretty tired of playing 40k, but I actually feel somewhat invigorated and looking forward to more games. And that’s even after I had a pretty shitty record of 3-4 with 3 donuts. After seeing some of the top table shenanigans, I'm glad I was nowhere near it. To be so supposedly good at the game and then not be able to finish five turns, for shame! The bums lost, Lebowski! The bums lost!

Before I get into it, here’s a slideshow of some cool armies I saw:

I was playing with a slight variation on the list I had won with the week before at Dragon’s Lair. I changed the infernus pistols in my assault squads to meltaguns and used the spare points to give infernus pistols to two of my sanguinary guard.

The Sanguinor
Dante
5 Sanguinary Guard – 2 infernus pistols, 1 powerfist, chapter banner
2 Sanguinary Priests – 2 power weapons, 1 bike, 1 jump pack
Furioso Dreadnought – blood talons
10 Assault Marines – 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist, Rhino
10 Assault Marines – 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist, jump packs
7 Space Marine Bikes – 2 flamers, sergeant with powerfist
Storm Raven – TL lascannon, TL multimelta, extra armor

Game 1 – Imperial Guard
Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary: Seize Ground (5 objectives)
Secondary: Annihilation
Tertiary: Table Quarters

My first opponent Chris was a real nice guy playing with Creed, a couple of melta veteran squads in chimeras, and a couple of 20-man infantry blobs, a lord commissar, normal commissar, priest, and a couple of sergeants with power weapons, and something like 8 autocannon heavy weapon squads. I went first and set up the Sanguinor and my rhino squad halfway up the side of the table with the most objectives. He set up Creed and the infantry squads in rings castled up in the opposite corner. The Stormraven, Furioso, and bike squads charged up one side of the board while my jump pack marines moved up to hang out on objectives behind the rhino marines and Sanguinor. My right side was destroyed pretty early on by a combination of shooting and blob-squad counterassault after a classic front-line sacrifice. I could have played that better and broke left with my bikes and storm raven after the initial push. Also I made the mistake of landing Dante and the Sanguinary Guard in the piece of terrain in front of the left melta vet chimera and the damned priest died to a dangerous terrain test, which reduced their survivability substantially. They destroyed the melta vets but got chewed up pretty badly in return. Dante and the Sanguinor survived to kill plenty of autocannon squads and distract the blob squad towards the backfield. But the key moment happened when he drove up his melta vets on my right side towards the center objective on the next to last turn. They were just in range of my jump pack marines, who destroyed the chimera and survived to stretch over two objectives, while my foot marines stretched out over two objectives and I won 23-7.

Game 2 – Grey Knights
Deployment: Spearhead
Primary: Capture and Control
Secondary: Seize Ground (3 Objectives)
Tertiary: Kill opponent’s least expensive unit

Mike had a Grey Knights army with a grandmaster, a librarian, a big terminator squad, two strike squads with rhinos, three psiflemen, and a stormraven. I set up my rhino marines, jump pack marines, and bikes in my home quarter and moved up to hover behind cover around my C&C objective and a couple of nearby seize ground objectives. I drove my stormraven straight up the middle with the Sanguinor and furioso, and dante deepstruck with a priest and the sanguinary guard on the far right side. I don’t remember exactly everything played out but I do remember rolling very badly the entire game. The bikes and marines on my left took the brunt of his shooting the entire game, and the S8 autocannons negating my FNP but not as badly as I expected. His strike squad rhinos pulled up next to my piece of cover. I pounced with my surviving bikes and jump pack squads but could not break through either rhino with meltaguns or powerfists. My stormraven was brought down by the very first dread to shoot at it, and the furioso was immobilized immediately by his stormraven. The Sanguinor jumped forward and distracted the Grandmaster’s squad, while Dante and the guard took out the small strike squad on the right side fairly easily. If the game had ended on turn 5, I was in place to get the win. As it was, the strike squads jumped out of their rhinos and shredded my left side, while his terminators fought off my right side attack and grabbed a bunch of objectives. We both destroyed each others’ cheapest units, and the game ended with Mike up 30-7.

Game 3: Blood Angels
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary: Annihilation
Secondary: Seize Ground (3 Objectives)
Tertiary: Control the highest number of terrain features

Sean was playing a dark angels-marked mephiston/razorspam list with a second librarian, six small assault squads in las/plas razorbacks, two assault cannon/heavy bolter baal predators, and three autocannon/lascannon predators. This game was really just a pain in the ass. For whatever reason, I didn’t get along that well with the guy, and what a boring army to play against. I hung in there for a while and kept the KP even, but eventually Mephiston and all the mech shooting caught up with me and finished off most of my stuff. I lost 30-0.

Game 4: Grey Knights
Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary: Capture and Control
Secondary: Annihilation
Tertiary: Kill the most expensive enemy HQ

For the fourth round of the day, Jon and I were paired up for almost exactly the same matchup we played the week before at the top table at our monthly FLGS tournament. He was playing with Draigo, Coteaz, DCAs and special weapons troopers in a chimera, 2 squads of loadout paladins, 1 nemesis dreadknight, 1 dreadnought, and 2 stormravens. His dreadknight came in early and I was able to melta it to death with Dante’s squad and my jump marines. We zoomed around playing out the dance of the stormravens until I surrounded Draigo’s whip with the Sanguinor, dante, the sanguinary guard, my jump marines, and the bikes, esploded it, and assaulted the passengers with the whole mess. Once again Draigo and his buds went down in the face of all that skull fever. The furioso and foot marines headed for Coteaz’s posse and eventually took them all down. I don’t remember exactly what happened with his second stormraven, paladin squad, and the dreadnought but they either died or were too far from an objective to matter, and I won 30-0.

Game 5: Space Marines
Deployment: Spearhead
Primary: Seize Ground
Secondary: Capture and Control
Tertiary: Have more total units in enemy deployment zone

Will was playing a cool Lysander/Tigurius list (they should make a buddy cop movie… Tigurius would be the uptight one. Lysander would call him “Tiggy,” drive a convertible, and maybe have a drooling great pyrenees) that also had five SS/TH assault terminators, an ironclad in a drop pod, a drop pod of sternguard with flamers and combimeltas, a tac squad in a drop pod, a tac squad in a rhino, a MM/HF landspeeder, and a land raider redeemer. I reserved everything but my rhino assault marines. He dropped down with the ironclad near my rhino and immobilized it, put his other drop pod tac marines on top of a distant objective, and charged full forward with his land raider full of terminators. Second turn Dante dropped in, and the rhino marines ran out to surround him and give them a cover/assault save. I managed to immobilize the ironclad and keep him from assaulting me. Then the sternguard and land speeder dropped in right next to that group and dropped four flamer templates on the sanguinary guard plus a bunch of S6 bolter fire. With feel no pain, I resisted most of the wounds. The landraider pulled up and disgorged the terminators and Lysander. Lysander charged into the surviving berzerkers, but the terminators rolled poorly for difficult terrain and got hung up. Lysander killed all of the foot marines except for the super-sergeant (upgraded by the Sanguinor). On my following turn, the bikes, jump marines, and stormraven came in. The bikes zoomed up on my left, while the jump marines, sanguinary guard, and Dante charged into the assault terminators. The Sanguinor charged Lysander, and the furioso charged the sternguard. It was a perfect storm, highlighted by Dante wiping out the terminators single-handedly in one fell swoop. Lysander hung on for one more assault phase, while the furioso chopped through almost all of the sternguard with no problem. Tigurius and the one surviving melta gated right behind the furioso for a last ditch attempt to hurt him, which failed utterly, and he turned around and chopped them down. The Sanguinor, bikes, and jump marines advanced towards his midfield rhino, popped it, and killed the survivorshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. The game ended with me up two or three objectives to his one, including the capture and control objective. He seemed to think we could tie the tertiary, and who was I to argue, so the final tally was 26-3. Will was a really good sport about the extreme change of fortunes in the match, hope to play him again.

Bonus spectacle: I looked over at the Dude's game next to me, he had some serious Eldar sneakiness going on... and you should see the jetbike/falcon mating dance he had going later on.

Game 6 – Orks
Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary Objective: Annihilation
Secondary Objective: Capture and Control
Tertiary Objective: Highest number of surviving troop units

Winning big my first game of day two sent me up near the top of the B-bracket to play against Richard from Wyoming, who was playing with Ghazgull, a big mek, 5 or 6 megaarmor nobz in a battlewagon, 2 17-18 boy squads in battlewagons, a burna mob in a battlewagon, a deff dred with megablasta, and 12 or so lootas. Thas a lotta battlewagons! And true to form, they came right at me. Dawn of War gave me a bit of a break against the lootas, and I dropped Dante and his buddies into his backfield take care of them. They also distracted the deff dread and the burna’s battlewagon. I waited with everyone else in the corner near my home objective, waiting to break hard left when I got the chance and spread his mobs out a bit. Naturally he called the waaagh when he was close enough and did plenty of damage against the rhino marines and jump marines. The furioso counterattacked against the mob on my right and wiped them out in no time. I had immobilized Ghaz’s battlewagon, so he spent most of the game midfield trying to bring down the stormraven in assault, which I believe he finally did near the end of the game. The megaarmor nobz were his real rock stars though, making something like 237 5+ invulnerable saves and holding out against the bikes, the sanguinor, and the furioso for like four turns of assault. If I had managed to wipe them out in the initial assault (like they damn well should have!), I might have been able to regroup, kill ghaz, and possibly recover my deployment zone from the green tide. Instead the nobz wiped out pretty much everyone. Bastards. The deff dread finished off Dante and friends in his backfield after they had wiped out the lootas and burnas. A brutal game, but basically Richard rolled better, bouncing me back to the bottom of the B-bracket.

Game 7: Dark Angels

Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary Objective: Seize Ground
Secondary Objective: Don't Remember
Tertiary Objective: Destroy most expensive unit

Unfortunately I don't remember my third opponent's name, he was a nice guy from Corpus and I enjoyed talking with him about all the craptastic landmarks in that fair city. His army was tailor made to take mine apart, unfortunately, as all that super-mobile krak missile fire just tore through feel no pain, and I was making shit for cover saves. Also I overextended to the left with the Sanguinor and furioso, and just got played out. Meanwhile, his bikes zipped around and shot me up with plasma guns until there was very little left. I lost 30-0.

A fairly crappy end to a fun weekend. Definitely will go back next year, providing congress raises the debt ceiling and the four horsemen are kept at bay for just a little bit longer. I'll just be waiting out the real age of strife in my bomb shelter...

More skulltakin'

2011-05-21T11:56:00.008-06:00

I've played a few more games with the Blood Angels, against my friend Mack's necrons, Brandon's Vulkan marines a couple more times, and then Brandon's tyranids once as well. The necrons went down pretty easily, as they were deployed a little too close and just don't have the firepower to slow the advance of Kharnte's inferno. I won the second matchup against Brandon's marines, and also the subsequent 2500 tie-breaker match. But then against the tyranids I made a couple of key mistakes (using the wrong units to engage genestealers and letting the trygon easily chew his way through the bike squad as well as the sanguinary guard)and lost a 5-objective seize ground game 2-1.

On the modelling front, I made a Sanguinor using the Skulltaker and some old bloodthirster wings, and converted jump packs with old-style tyranid gargoyle wings and a single turbine (to emulate the angel wing jump packs) for my characters and the sanguinary guard.

I was messing around today with the idea of death company and figured out that my entire collection of World Eater models makes a pretty cool 2500 point army exactly, when I use my Sephiro... I mean Astorath... model as a normal jump pack chaplain:

The Sanguinor
Dante
2 Sanguinary Priests - 2 power weapons, 1 with bike, 1 with jump pack
Chaplain - jump pack
Chaplain
Sanguinary Guard - chapter banner, 1 powerfist
9 Death Company - 1 thunder hammer, 2 power weapons
Death Company Dreadnought - blood talons
5 Assault Marines - 1 infernus pistol, sergeant with powerfist, Rhino
5 Assault Marines - 1 infernus pistol, sergeant with powerfist, Rhino
10 Assault Marines - 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist, jump packs
7 Bikes - 2 flamers, sergeant with powerfist
Stormraven - TL multimelta, TL lascannon

Pretty much a direct assault force, either straight up or focused on a particular flank. Ideally either the bike or assault squad sergeant gets the Sanguinor's blessing. The foot chaplain hangs out with the DC contingent in the Deathmobile, which I can imagine leading the charge with the Sanguinor. I'm very curious as to how the DC dread performs - seems like it could be quite a beast with fleet. Dante and the jump chaplain and priest move up with the sanguinary guard, taking cover behind the advancing assault squad and providing them with furious charge and FNP. The rhino marines are the back of the line, sitting on objectives. It's not a hard boyz army, and is definitely vulnerable to psychic attack, but could still be a lot of fun.

Action Report: Berzerkers vs. Space Marines

2011-04-28T06:33:00.005-06:00

The Guillotine had their battlefield debut last night against my buddy Brandon's Void Dragon (vanilla) space marines. We rolled for a spearhead killpoints matchup, and I won the roll to go first. I decided to use the list I've described, but to drop a few marines from one assault squad and add in a jump pack chaplain. I joined Dante, the chaplain, and the jump priest to the jump assault squad, and threw the large foot assault squad, foot priest, and furioso in the storm raven. I had decided that I'd deep strike more if I got second turn, but when I got first, I just decided to group everybody together at the front line and go for the throat:

Here was Brandon's list:

Vulkan
5 th/ss terminators
Ironclad dreadnought with 2 missiles
10 sternguard with 3 combiplasmas, 3 combimeltas, fist sergeant, and rhino with hunterkiller
Tactical squad with flamer, multimelta, and TL assault cannon razorback
2 squads of 5 scouts with sniper rifles and missile launchers
Land raider crusader
2 multimelta heavy flamer land speeders
1 heavy bolter assault cannon land speeder
Thunderfire cannon

I moved forward first turn, shot the storm raven at one of the land speeders and stunned and immobilized it. In return, he exploded the storm raven and put a bunch of wounds on the assault squad with the thunderfire. Feel no pain helped, but not all that much. The jump priest died in the initial barrage, too. If I'd have deep struck the assault squad, they would have only had to weather one turn of shooting before getting to assault. As it was, the terminators jumped into them the next turn and wiped out the whole bunch with no trouble at all. Dante needs to stay away from thunder hammers!

We traded punches for the rest of the game. The furioso dropped a second land speeder and a scout squad before getting rended by a land speeder assault cannon. My foot assault squad and the sanguinary guard wiped the terminators with shooting and furious charge, dropped the ironclad with infernus pistols, but were then blown out of the woods by combined shooting from Brandon's whole army. The bikes chopped through one scout squad, then took off across the battlefield to run down one of the combat squaded tac units. The game ended on the 5th turn with Brandon up 9-8. A very bloody game! My MVP was probably the foot priest who enabled his squad and the sanguinary guard to kill the terminators.

Any advice on using the storm raven or deep striking with blood angels in general?

Pre-Primered Guillotine

2011-04-26T17:20:00.007-06:00

Pictures as promised of the new gang!

Group shot:

From left: Drahzhad (Astoroth), Lord Grozan and the Skull Brethren (Dante and Sanguinary Guard), and Togg, the Bringer of the Red Mist (Chaplain)

Gragh's Reavers (Bikers):

The 3 Throne Champions (sanguinary priests), with Mortrek the Slaughterer (furioso dreadnought) bringing up the rear:

Turgan's Rain of Blood (jump pack assault marines):

And finally, Raptor One:

Top view of Raptor One:

Bottom view of Raptor One, showing the magnagrapple:

Decollage

2011-04-24T17:13:00.003-06:00

I've got nearly all of my counts-as blood angels army together, or at least the first incarnation of it. Once I get my jump packs and last throne axe in the mail, I'll put some pictures up. After further consideration I've decided to use them to represent a specific berzerker warband which I will call The Guillotine. I'm also thinking now the chainfists on the Dreadnought could represent blood talons, with their ability to cut right through several foes with each swing.

The updated counts-as list:

Dante (or Astorath)

Sanguinary Guard - 1 powerfist

3 Sanguinary Priests - 3 power weapons, 1 bike, 1 jump pack

Furioso Dreadnought - heavy flamer, blood talons

10 Assault Marines - 2 inferno pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

10 Assault Marines - 2 inferno pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

10 Assault Marines - 2 inferno pistols, sergeant with powerfist

7 Marine Bikes - 2 flamers, sergeant with powerfist

Storm Raven - TL lascannon, TL multimelta

Led by Lord Grozan, the Guillotine has served with distinction, if not sophistication, in many of Abaddon's Black Crusades. Living only to spill blood for the blood god, they represent a loose coalition of former World Eater legionnaires, the only membership requirement being the ability to keep up with the rest of the band. Over centuries of raids and invasions, the Guillotine has amassed an impressive armory of fast assault tech, ancient and otherwise, that allows them to come to grips with their enemy as quickly as possible.

Lord Grozan was once Captain Keer, a senior World Eater who was among the host sent to hunt down the surviving loyalists on Istvaan V. His archaic bronzed armor, and that of his chosen retinue, can always be seen at the spearhead of any assault, absorbing withering enemy fire as he surges towards the front line. His peerless reputation for tracking and butchering the most senior enemy commander in every engagement sends even the most stalwart heroes skittering for an off-world shuttle.

His only rival in such feats is Mortrek the Slaughterer, who was entombed in his brazen sarcophagus after being very nearly immolated to death at the Battle of Skalathrax. Mortrek is known for his aerial assaults, his bladed limbs hewing a path through the most dense enemy infantry before his massive bulk has even hit the ground.

The most skilled Guillotine champions carry the sinister Axes of the Throne. These wretched fusions of demonic steel and bone from Khorne's skull throne were forcefully pried from the clutches of bloodcrusher champions on the demon world Gora, and their mere presence drives all those nearby into an unstoppable frenzy. The largest and most powerful Throne Axe is Deathsfall, carried into battle by Drazhad the Sunderer, a psychopath of matchless malificence, whose personal tally of skulls inspires all those around him to feats of martial greatness and monumental carnage.

Battle Report:: Imperial Guard vs. Eldar 4/8/11

2011-04-09T07:52:00.010-06:00

The ambush elements of the Catachan XIV were dug in along their front line, each man scanning the horizon for any indication of the enemy. It was still dark and despite their sharp, battle-hardened eyes, there had been no contact as of yet. Still, details were hard to pick out in the distance, and the guardsmen could not shake the feeling that they were being watched. When a private from bravo squad's head suddenly exploded without warning, a different feeling entirely surged through the men of the Fighting Fourteenth. Bravo squad hit the dirt while the other units squinted into the darkness, still unable to find a target. An orange glow slowly suffused the skyline and the air in the valley grew palpably warmer, as if heated by the fires of some hellish forge. A horrible alien battlecry pulsed over them - through them - and each man felt the rise of terror in their guts. The Eldar had returned to Tra-El in force and with sinister purpose. Would reinforcements arrive in time to save the failed ambush?

Shaun and I played a 2000 point dawn of war annihilation matchup that turned out to be a blast. I was playing with a command HQ in a chimera with 2 plasma guns and a lascannon, a lord commissar leading 5 ogryns in a chimera, Harker veterans with 3 grenade launchers and an autocannon, an infantry platoon consisting of a command squad with 4 flamers and three grenade launcher/autocannon infantry squads, a missile launcher squad, a mortar squad, a vendetta, 3 scout sentinels, a hellhound, a manticore, a medusa with camo netting, and a leman russ with heavy bolter sponsons and a pintle heavy stubber. Shaun's Eldar consisted of Radeld Ranulth (Eldrad), 5 warlocks including 3 with destructor and 3 with spears and embolden, the Avatar, 6 wraithguard, 2 squads of 8 pathfinders, a squad of 5 dire avengers, 10 warp spiders including an exarch with twin power blades and withdraw, a falcon with a scatter laser, and 3 war walkers with scatter lasers and rocket launchers. I rolled to go first, but Shaun seized the initiative and just like that, the hunters became the hunted!

Turn 1

Shaun moved up the rest of his forces to support the seer council and pathfinders that had started on the board. The pathfinders picked out a guardsman dug in around the bunker and sent the squad to ground. The warp spiders teleport up and form the eldar front line. I also moved up my firing line and tried to put some heat on the warp spiders. A blast from the leman russ drops a single warp spider.

Despite being pinned, sergeant Taylor of bravo squad picks out movement behind the forested hill in the distance and manages to direct ordnance fire. Unfortunately, thick cover reduces the effectiveness of the barrage and only one of the loathsome aliens is brought down.

Turn 2

Radeld and his buddies fortune up the warp spiders and guide the pathfinders. The warp spiders teleport forward and combine fire with the two pathfinder squads, reducing the guard infantry squad to two pinned guardsmen who continue to survive all kinds of fire for another turn. The Avatar and wraithguard kill a couple from the other guard squad. In return, my command HQ lights up the avatar with plas and las fire but inflict only 3 wounds, just short of killing the ancient demon. My missile launchers join them on high ground. The hellhound covers the warp spiders in burning fuel and the manticore drops a single rocket blast on them, but the prescience of their thrice damned farseer allows them to survive relatively unscathed and only one dies. Harker and his squad come wading up the river on my right and pour fire into the spiders as well, but the alien magicks are strong and no further casualties can be inflicted.

Turn 3

The mighty avatar storms the bunker and wipes out the infantry squad there, while Radeld and the seer council approach behind him. My right flank is threatened when war walkers sneak onto the field and tear into the back of the hellhound with rockets and laser fire, causing a catastrophic explosion. Thankfully, noone is near enough to be hurt by the blast. The warp spiders react to the veterans on their own flank and wipe them out in assault after some softening up. I had a big turn as well: the Avatar was finally brought down in a hail of krak missiles, and the command HQ combined with my ordnance to kill more than half of the wraithguard. My sentinels came in on my right and attacked the warwalkers, bringing two down with their multilasers and emu-kicking the last one down in assault. I also finished off the warp spiders with manticore, mortar, and chimera fire, and killed one of the warlocks hanging out with Radeld. In the haste to join the fray, the ogryn's chimera threw a track and got stuck at the base of the hill.

After days of hunting the eldar walkers through the thick forests of Tan-El, the scout sentinels made their way to the front line, stepping gingerly through the smoking wreckage of their prey. Unfortunately, the attack came too late to save their brothers manning the hellhound.

Turn 4

The wraithguard destroy the ogryn chimera, wounding one of the big lugs in the explosion. Radeld and his crew have a big turn and wipe out the command HQ and one missile launcher team with destructor fire and the bale energies of an eldritch storm. The sentinels, chimera, and ogryns return fire and reduce the wraithguard to a single alien ghost zombie. Marbo emerges from his hiding spot atop the wrecked bunker and hurls a demolition charge into the eldar seer council, killing two more of the pointy-eared bastards. Finally, the vendetta emerges on my left flank and hurries towards the eldar firing line, missing a lascannon shot at the falcon on the way.

Marbo lay flat and completely still on the roof of the burned out bunker. Hidden amongst the blackened corpses of his fallen brothers, he watched and waited as the enemy approached. The alien witch was only 6 paces away now. Slowly engaging the primer on his detpack, Marbo flexed his muscles and prepared himself once again to make what was likely to be his last living act.

Turn 5 and 6

As is wont to happen in the late stages of a game, I rushed from the 5th turn into the 6th and forgot to take a picture. Radeld joined the wraithguard in shooting at the ogryns, to little effect, while the destructor warlocks had themselves a little Mar-b-que. The falcon zoomed forward and the dire avengers disembarked on the next turn, lighting up the mortar squad and killing 2 of the 3 teams. Pulse laser fire from the falcon destroyed the leman russ' battlecannon. The lord commissar and ogryns charged into Radeld and the last wraithguard, but the combat was largely a draw over two turns before the game ended. The vendetta brought the platoon command over next to one of the pathfinder squads, and they promptly immolated them on the spot with combined fire from their flamers. Unfortunately, the lascannons on the vendetta could not find their mark on the eldar skimmer across the table. The medusa was of little help as well, only managing to destroy the tank's pulse laser. Having exhausted its missile supply, the manticore rushed forward and flamed the dire avengers to death. Shaun wins the epic match by 3 killpoints!

As the enemy drew near, Commissar Lenck bellowed the signal to attack and his ogryn kill team roared in answer, the lot of them charging forward out of the wreckage of their former transport. Despite outnumbering them two to one (and probably moreso considering the substantial girth of the ogryns), the assault seemed to falter immediately. Lenck himself struggled to engage the enemy witch, but his sword and powerfist could find no mark as the alien always danced sideways or backwards in time to avoid his attacks. Similarly, the punishing blows from the ogryn bashers seemed to have no effect on the eldar wraith construct, their oversized fists glancing harmlessly from the loathsome creature's thick armor. Then, in a flash, the aliens were gone from the battlefield, leaving only the sounds of groaning men and the smell of burning wreckage. The Catachan ambush had failed, and the Fourteenth had suffered significant losses. Could they recover in time to defend the colonies on Tan-El from what would in all likelihood be a future of unending, uncomfortable, and embarrassing eldar butt probes?

DUN DUN DUN

Kharnte Guisada

2011-04-07T18:30:00.006-06:00

Khorne Rhino

After some deliberation, I've decided that my champion model would better represent Dante than the Sanguinor, and I'd love to make my Skull Brethren a scoring unit anyway. I'm going to try to find a better model to represent the Exsanguinator. As a side note, I think the marine Khorne Lord would make a good Astorath once you put a jump pack on him.

On a related note, I've ordered a bunch of the MaxMini jumppack bits for all my jump units, as I think they would look cool and I was too lazy to try the pen method, as awesome as those are.

And I've decided that instead of icon bearers, I'm gonna represent my Sanguinary Guard with Berzerker champions bearing those molded skull axes that look so awesome - surely bone carved from the skull throne itself would drive any nearby khorne devotees so mad with bloodthirst as to provoke them into crushing assaults and ignore bodily injury. And even though it adds points and reduces effective range, I've also decided to only use inferno pistols in my assault squads rather than meltaguns, as no self-respecting berzerker would use BOTH hands to shoot at something.

So all that feeds into my new 2k list, which I think would be effective and fun. I'm going to try my damndest to get it done for BOLS... er, Wargamescon:

Kharnte (yuk yuk) - Dante

Skull Brethren - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 2 infernus pistols, 1 powerfist

The Decapitators - 3 Sanguinary Priests, one bike, one jumppack

Mortrek the Slaughterer - Furioso Dreadnought with bloodfists, a heavy flamer, and extra armor

Laghk and the Lacerators - 10 assault marines, 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Nephiragh and the Gorechildren - 10 assault marines, 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Turgan's Rain of Blood - 10 assault marines, 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist

Gragh's Reavers - 7 bikers, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist

Raptor One - Stormraven with extra armor and twin-linked lascannons and multimeltas

Dante and his buddies are screened by the jump pack assault squad. The bikers, 1 assault squad, and the furioso charge forward in the storm reaver, and the last assault squad can split up between the two rhinos if they want for more ~~scoring~~ skulltaking options.

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 4/2/11

2011-04-03T07:39:00.008-06:00

(picture by frank)

Using a 1500 point mech guard army, I pulled off a 1st place win at the Dragon's Lair tournament yesterday and took home a Storm Raven. My list:

Company Commander
4 flamers
Officer of the Fleet
Chimera (heavy flamer)

Veteran Squad
3 meltaguns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Veteran Squad
3 meltaguns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Veteran Squad
3 plasma guns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Veteran Squad
3 plasma guns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Vendetta

Manticore (heavy flamer)

Manticore (heavy flamer)

Medusa (camo netting)

First game was seize ground/pitched battle against Jon C's space wolves, consisting of a wolfrider wolf lord, 4 or 5 mixed loadout wolfriders, another wolfrider wolf lord with 15 fenrisian wolves, 3 small squads of grey hunters with 2 rhinos, and 1 squad of missile launcher long fangs. From the beginning it would be wolves coming across the table and me just trying to shoot the hell out of them before it was too late. My own saturation of fire and Jon's terrible luck with 3+ saves combined to get me a big win.

Second game I played a kill points/dawn of war mission against an unpainted guard army, who seemed much more well versed with the previous codex and rules edition. It seemed like he had a pretty small guard army that he had inflated into 1500 points using veterans and carapace armor: Yarrick, two small ratling squads, four or five veteran squads on foot, a couple heavy weapon squads, 2 basilisks, and a standard leman russ. Now that I write this out I'm not sure how he pulled off the heavy weapons teams - he also insisted he had given the army improved comms and asked if my vets were light infantry, so... Maybe not a big deal for a friendly game but surely a tournament is something just a little bit more than a friendly game? I noticed he was playing a completely different army for the third game, so who knows what was going on. In any case, after losing a couple chimeras early on, I took him apart piece by piece with heavy ordnance and the command HQ outflanking in the vendetta and got full points.

Third game was against Frank at the top table, with probably the most boring combination of competing armies, deployment, and mission: foot marine gunline, mech guard, spearhead, and capture and control. I zoomed around with the vendetta for a few turns, making ridiculous cover saves, before I realized that I'd never be able to contest his objective with it (not being a tank). After the manticores failed to make a dent into the marines holding his home objective, I saw a draw coming and just castled up, fending off outflanking scouts and shooting a couple squads that were within range. The game ended on the 5th turn, just as his librarian was drawing in to contest my objective with a last-minute gate of infinity. Big draw, but my other two wins were good enough to secure first place.

Feel Like Takin' Skulls

2011-03-25T15:11:00.010-06:00

I reallllly want to have a pure post-heresy World Eaters warband army using the blood angels codex... I just can't figure out if it would be worth the investment (and whether I need any more damn armies). It would avoid any psykers and pre-heresy weapons like assault cannons and such, and just focus on quick resilient assault - just straight up coming to take your fucking skull. Sanguinary priests would be represented by khorne icon bearers. Really, the main impetus is to do something fun with my old school berzerker jetpack guys. They just remind me so much of an 'evil' sanguinary guard. And it would give me an excuse to get one of those dope world eater dreads. But is it enough to warrant spending a bunch more on getting the rest of this force? I did notice today that it is somewhat similar to a Lamenters list the Dude has posted on his blog, though a bit lighter on troops. And I will just mention that his Lamenters just get more and more badass as time goes on.

2000 Points

Madrigor the Exsanguinor - the Sanguinor

The Skull Brethren - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 1 powerfist, death masks

Bringers of the Red Mist - 2 Sanguinary Priests

Mortrek the Slaughterer - Furioso dreadnought with heavy flamer, meltagun, blood fists

Khamar the Gatherer - Furioso dreadnought with heavy flamer, meltagun, blood talons

Larkh and the Lacerators - 10 assault marines, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Nephiraghh and the Gorechildren - 10 assault marines, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Gragh's Reavers - 8 Space Marine Bikers, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with power weapon

Raptor One - typhoon missile launcher, twin-linked plasma cannons

Raptor Two - twin-linked lascannons, twin-linked multimeltas

Everyone would just stick together and go chop heads or die trying. Everyone would (usually) have furious charge, feel no pain, extra attacks from being near the Exsanguinator, and sometimes even fearless - plus one random sergeant would be blessed by the Blood God every game - seems pretty Khorney to me! It would really count on feel no pain and speed to get to grips - any kind of leafblower list could shoot it down pretty easy. Very low on troops, but a warp-riven band of skull-taking madmen probably probably would be. I could either combat squad into the Rhinos or just go full on into the stormravens. Not so competitive - the only goal would be to take the biggest skulls on the board before the game ended.

Where'd they get the stormravens, you might ask? Maybe the question should be, where'd the imperials get theirs?

Dude, where's your stormraven?

Possible BOLS WH

2011-02-27T13:00:00.006-06:00

I have upgraded my Sisters of Battle collection recently. I've played this list a couple of times; so far it has done well and is always pretty fun.

Living Saint

Canoness - inferno pistol, eviscerator, mantle of ophelia, cloak of st. aspira, book of st. lucius
5 Celestians - 2 meltaguns
Immolator - twin-linked multimelta

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 storm bolters, veteran sister superior with bolter, power weapon, and book of st. lucius

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 storm bolters, veteran sister superior with bolter, power weapon, and book of st. lucius

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 meltaguns, veteran sister superior with bolt pistol, eviscerator, and book of st. lucius
Rhino - extra armor, smoke launchers

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 meltaguns, veteran sister superior with bolt pistol, eviscerator, and book of st. lucius
Rhino - extra armor, smoke launchers

9 Seraphim - 2 twin flame pistols, veteran sister superior with bolt pistol, eviscerator

Exorcist - extra armor, smoke launchers

Exorcist - extra armor, smoke launchers

10 Retributors - 4 heavy bolters, veteran sister superior with bolter, power weapon, and book of st. lucius

Naturally, the Living Saint hangs with the Seraphim. Eight is the ideal squad size for that unit, but I find that it gets shot up a couple of times before you can reasonably expect to activate shield of the emperor anyway, so the extra two sisters are just ablative wounds until they really get stuck in. The Living Saint has to watch out for hoss characters and assault smart so as not to get taken down immediately by a power fist, but as long as she's alive that squad is a fearless flying Kenny Rogers Roasters, spitting hot fire with the three flame templates and divine guidance. Together with the other Canoness' squad in the immolator, they can also serve as a probe or distraction while the rest of the army groups together. The melta rhino squads are decent mid-range skirmishers, as long as they stay in range of the other sisters for fire support. Everyone else generally stays in cover in the center of deployment, providing overlapping fields of fire and screening exorcists from assault and drop pod baddies.

Possible BOLS CSM

2011-02-26T20:26:00.003-06:00

Short and sweet.

Abaddon

8 Berzerkers - Skull Champion with powerfist
Rhino

8 Berzerkers - Skull Champion with powerfist
Rhino

8 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, Plague Champion with powerfist, combimelta
Rhino - dozer blade

8 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, Plague Champion with powerfist, combimelta
Rhino - dozer blade

Land Raider - demonic possession, dozer blade

3 Obliterators

3 Obliterators

Saim Hann Krait

2010-11-05T16:47:00.005-06:00

The Saim Hann Krait is a more heavily armored version of the Vyper. Boasting two primary armaments, both controlled by the pilot, the Krait sacrifices some of the Vyper’s speed and agility for additional firepower. The Krait’s guns are mounted on twin vertical engines that allow the vehicle to hover and pivot in place while unloading salvoes of withering heavy weapon fire into fixed enemy positions. Shock poles extend from either side of the front fuselage, creating a coruscating arc of energy that prevents the Krait from becoming easy prey to short range enemy assaults.

I always wanted War Walkers for my Saim Hann warhost, but for some reason those big ass legs just seemed off mixed in with all my cool jets. So after staring at a spare War Walker and Vyper for a few years, I mashed up the two and made a more appropriate gunship for a decent counts-as. Of course it's not exactly convenient to have to get two models just to make one.

And yeah, I just picked a random poisonous snake name. Fiction, it's just that easy.

Here's a possible 1850 list with kraits:

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, guide, fortune, spirit stones, runes of warding

5 Warlocks - jetbikes, singing spears, 3 destructor, 2 emboldens

6 Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, spirit stones

6 x 3 Jetbikes - shuriken cannons

3 Vypers - scatter lasers, shuriken cannons

2 x Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

3 Kraits (War Walkers) - scatter lasers

Saim Hann with Display Board

2010-06-06T17:50:00.004-06:00

aaaalmost there... aaaalmost there

2010-05-20T08:59:00.001-06:00

No Uniques 2k Wolves List

2009-11-15T22:58:00.004-06:00

**EDIT: Removed illegal MoW from blood claws and changed one rune priest to a wolf priest**

I left a tournament early this Saturday, something I hadn't done in quite a while, after getting a mudhole stomped in my mechguard ass in the first game. Really I had stayed up too late the night before and shouldn't have showed up in the first place. I was also less worried about staying since there was an odd number of players, but regardless, I do need to stop worrying about winning and losing as much and just try to get more games in overall. I figure this list might hang in there a bit and give me more experience with various units. And I have all the models. I'm curious how good the rune priests actually are, not that I will know what I'm doing with them for a while.

Rune Priest - jaws of the world wolf, living lightning

Wolf Priest - plasma pistol

5 Wolf Scouts - meltagun, 2 power weapons
Wolf Guard - powerfist, combimelta

Venerable Dreadnought - multimelta, heavy flamer
Drop Pod

8 Blood Claws - powerfist, flamer
Wolf Guard - powerfist
Rhino

9 Grey Hunters - power weapon, mark of the wulfen, meltagun
Wolf Guard - powerfist, combimelta
Drop Pod

9 Grey Hunters - power weapon, mark of the wulfen, meltagun
Wolf Guard - powerfist, combimelta
Rhino

8 Grey Hunters - power weapon, mark of the wulfen, meltagun
Wolf Guard - powerfist, combimelta
Rhino

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

5 Long Fangs - 2 rocket launchers, 2 lascannons
Wolf Guard - terminator armor, cyclone missile launcher

6 Long Fangs - 5 heavy bolters

Totally Bland Wolves List That I Still Might Use Cause I'm Kinda Pissed

2009-11-03T14:46:00.007-06:00

HQ

Ragnar Blackmane

Wolf Priest - combimelta

TROOPS

9 Grey Hunters - meltagun, power weapon, mark of the wulfen
Wolf Guard - powerfist

9 Grey Hunters - meltagun, power weapon, mark of the wulfen
Wolf Guard - powerfist
Rhino

9 Grey Hunters - meltagun, power weapon, mark of the wulfen
Wolf Guard - powerfist
Rhino

9 Grey Hunters - meltagun, power weapon, mark of the wulfen
Wolf Guard - powerfist
Rhino

FAST ATTACK

Landspeeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Landspeeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

HEAVY SUPPORT

Land Raider Redeemer - multimelta

6 Long Fangs - 5 heavy bolters

5 Long Fangs - 2 lascannons, 2 missile launchers
Wolf Guard - terminator armor, cyclone missile launcher, combiplasma

Obviously not a very sophisticated strategy to go with this one. Just repetition + full speed ahead. I would definitely not use this for a hobby-style tournament, but for a heavy it might be fun. 54 Space Marines take a while to kill, generally speaking, and Ragnar's howl might make for some epic sweeps if timed right. Fuck a rune priest, anyways.

Space Wolves Lists

2009-10-19T19:06:00.004-06:00

I'm currently gearing up to play with 2 different 2k space wolves lists, using the same core of troops and heavy support with different HQ and Fast Attack options.

The core:

5 Wolf Scouts - meltagun, 2 power weapons
Wolf Guard - combimelta, powerfist

9 Grey Hunters - mark of the wulfen, meltagun
Wolf Guard - combimelta, powerfist
Drop Pod

9 Grey Hunters - mark of the wulfen, plasma pistol, plasma gun
Wolf Guard - powerfist
Rhino

9 Grey Hunters - mark of the wulfen, flamer
Wolf Guard - powerfist
Rhino

2 Land Speeders - multimeltas, heavy flamers

5 Long Fangs - 2 lascannons, 2 missile launchers
Wolf Guard - terminator armor, cyclone missile launcher

2 Predators - heavy bolter sponsons

LOOK TO THE SKEES VARIANT:

Wolf Priest - jump pack, plasma pistol
9 Sky Claws - flamer, power fist
Wolf Guard - jump pack, power fist
Venerable Dreadnought - multimelta, heavy flamer
Drop Pod

For this one I'm going to magnetize a bunch of jump packs for my blood claws and satisfy the assault marine envy I've suffered since the last codex. The wolf priest's fearless and preferred enemy bonuses will make the sky claws a pretty big threat, even if they're not scoring anymore.

YOU CAN CALL ME BETTY VARIANT:

Logan Grimnar
Arjac Rockfist
3 Wolf Guard - terminator armor, 3 combiweapons
Drop Pod

I am really stoked about converting a model and playing with Arjac. Very expensive, but they are a pointy, tough, troops choice - this is a must-kill scoring unit. At the very least Arjac and Logan are going to wreck shop on TMCs.

Tournament: BOLSCon

2009-09-03T22:29:00.004-06:00

Here's some pictures from BOLSCON a whiles back. I'll try to come back and add text later.

My Chaos list:

Abaddon
Sorceror - mark of slaanesh, lash of submission
8 Berzerkers
8 Plague Marines - 2 meltaguns, champion with powerfist, Rhino
10 Thousand Sons - sorceror with doombolt, Rhino
10 Lesser Demons
3 Obliterators
Defiler
Land Raider - possession

Dearth

2009-09-01T22:45:00.002-06:00

It's been a long time since my last 40k missive; hopefully I'll have more regular posts pretty soon. BOLSCon was rad, I pity the fool who didn't attend. Met lots of good people and played a bunch of fun games. While I bide my time waiting for the new Space Wolves book to come out, I'll be finishing my Eldar and playing with them in a local Planetary Empires campaign. More to come, mostly after I get interwebs set up in my new place.

Tournament: Battleforge ('Ard Boyz Round 1) 7-11-08

2009-07-30T20:41:00.004-06:00

I'm a few weeks late in writing this up, but here's a run-down of my first round 'Ard Boyz games at Battleforge Games. I went 2-0-1 and earned second place. Here's my 2500 point guard list:

Company Command Squad
Company Commander - plasma pistol, powerfist
2 Bodyguards
Astropath
Officer of the Fleet
Medic
Chimera - heavy bolter

Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor Lord - psycannon, psychic hood
3 Heavy Bolter Servitors
1 Acolyte
2 Mystics

Psychic Battle Squad - 9 Psykers
Chimera - heavy bolter

Veteran Squad - 3 plasma guns, demolitions

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - heavy flamer

Infantry Platoon
Infantry Command Squad - 4 flamers
Chimera - heavy flamer
4 Infantry Squads - grenade launcher, autocannon

Hellhound

Hellhound

Valkyrie - rocket pods

Leman Russ Demolisher - plasma cannons, lascannon

Leman Russ Demolisher - plasma cannons, lascannon

Manticore - camo netting

One of the best things about the list is the number of infantry squads which, along with the astropath, allowed me to stymie outflanking units and control where deep-strikers might land (i.e. more than 6" from my tanks). Manticores are just fun as hell and noone ever shot at mine; it survived the whole tournament and fired its whole rack every game. As far as effectiveness, I'm still not 100% convinced, but those turns where you get 3 bang on-target S10 ordnance hits are definitely exhilirating. Loved the plasma command squad, but I'll probably drop the commander's powerfist. Psykers did well against necrons, less so against dark eldar, and didn't have much effect at all against guard. The Hellhounds were nice but I'll probably switch to banewolves for the extra AP3 saturation.

Here's a few pics from other tables:

Game 1 - Necrons

Mission: 3 Objectives + Annihilation
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Bonus Points: Control all objectives at game end, opponent has no units in your deployment zone, all of your HQs are alive, you destroyed all enemy troop units

My first opponent was playing with the nightbringer, destroyer lord with resorb, 1 squad of 20 warriors, 1 squad of 19 warriors, 2 squads of 10 warriors, 2 squads of 3 destroyers, and 2 squads of 2 heavy destroyers. After I kept the nightbringer busy in the left corner, I just shot the hell out of everything until he phased out in the fourth turn. I earned full points.

Game 2 - Dark Eldar

Mission: Weighted Kill Points
Deployment: Dawn of War
Bonus Points: all your HQ choices are alive at the end, destroy all enemy HQ choices, destroy all enemy troop choices, have more scoring units in the enemy deployment zone than they have in yours

I lucked out and went first in this game, which allowed me to spread out a couple of infantry squads along the 50-yard line. John decided to start everything off the board. I really put a beatdown on him but he had plenty left at the end of the game to earn a draw. I was able to keep both of my HQs alive, so I ended up one point ahead of him. Great game.

Game 3 - Imperial Guard

Mission: Capture and Control + Annihilation
Deployment: Spearhead
Bonus Points: control both objectives at end of game, have a different scoring unit in at least three table quarters at end of game, destroy all enemy troop units, have one HQ alive and enemy has none at end of game

Chris was playing with 2 primaris psykers and a squad of plasma veterans in a valkyrie, 1 squad of melta vets, 1 small squad of ratlings, 2 squadrons of 2 banewolves, 1 squadrons of 2 demolishers with heavy flamers, 1 squadron of 2 demolishers with multimeltas, and 1 squadron of 2 leman russes with heavy bolters, With my closest objective fairly near my home edge, I held both melta vet squads and hellhounds in reserve. We shot each other up across the middle, his demolishers and banewolves inflicting good ordnance damage before my melta vets took out one squadron of each. The command HQ and psykers assaulted his home objective while a couple of infantry squads run up behind to try and make a late-game grab. On my home objective, our valkyrie plasma vets dueled it out until my guys were the only ones left standing. Once again I immobilized his flat-out moving valkyrie and destroyed it at the last second, preventing it from contesting an objective. He was ahead in killpoints so I earned a major victory.

Tournament: Battleforge Games 6-06-09

2009-06-07T07:28:00.006-06:00

Over the week leading up to Saturday, the first BFG hobby tournament since the new guard book came out, the local forum was host to several heated discussions on where certain builds fell on the heavy/hobby spectrum. I don't care to rehash those generally alarmist arguments here. I came up with what I thought was a pretty mixed and fair catachan theme list using the three "special" characters. No specific unit was a gamebreaker in any of the three games I played, but each performed pretty well and allowed each of the games to get interesting in their own ways. I played some fun, tight games against friendly opponents but didn't end up actually placing.

Company HQ - Col. Ironhand Straken, 2 meltaguns, regimental standard, medic, astropath, officer of the fleet
Chimera - hull heavy bolter

Sly Marbo

Veteran Squad - Sgt. Harker, 3 grenade launchers, demolitions

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - hull heavy flamer

Infantry Platoon
Command Squad - flamer, missile launcher
Infantry Squad - flamer, missile launcher
Infantry Squad - flamer, missile launcher
Heavy Weapons Squad - 3 heavy bolters
Heavy Weapons Squad - 3 lascannons

Hellhound - hull heavy flamer

Hellhound - hull heavy flamer

3 Sentinels - autocannons

Leman Russ Demolisher - lascannon, sponson plasma cannons

Leman Russ - heavy bolters, heavy stubber

Basilisk

Game 1 - Tau

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Victory Points (win by 201)
Secondary Objective: Randomly moving objective
Tertiary Objective: Destroy all opponent's heavy support choices

I drew the bye the first round and played against Brandon, aka Minus67, one of the owners of BFG. He was playing an all-mech tau with two suit commanders with a flamer and fusion gun, four devilfish full of 12 fire warriors, two devilfish with four pathfinders, and three hammerheads. I tried to pin him up in the corner by bringing down some of his skimmers in key traffic jam positions, and it worked if only for a while. His commanders dropped in and popped a couple tanks, and I had to take them out with Straken, one with meltagun shots and one in hand-to-hand. The hellhounds ran all over the place, taking up space and burning up pathfinders, gun drones, and eventually fire warriors. Marbo dropped in behind one of the fire warrior devilfish and merely stunned the tank with his explosive charge, and he was killed quickly thereafter by gun drones. Harker came in and blew up a flanking hammerhead with their assorted demolitions. In the end I won the primary objective (you get it automatically for playing the bye game), as well as the secondary by grabbing the floating gas tanks at the last moment.

Game 2 - Imperial Guard

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Capture and Control
Secondary Objective: Have a non-scoring unit in opponent's deployment zone at end of game
Tertiary Objective: Destroy two of your opponent's scoring units
Bonus Points: All your HQ are alive, all enemy HQ are dead
This was probably the third tournament in a row where me and Kingsley were paired up against one another in a guard-vs-guard smackdown. This one was pretty much like the rest, each of us inflicting moderate damage each turn and trying to grab or contest objectives at the last second. I flanked with the hellhounds and took out the two infantry squads in his corners, and tried to contest his home objective by hammering the nearby enemy troops with ordnance and missile fire. He took out my heavy weapon squads fairly early on. He charged up with his infantry command squad, led by the commissar lord, but their assault on my front rank fell flat since they all got counter-attack and furious charge from ole Ironhand hanging out nearby. For his part, Straken defended my home objective from a storm trooper deep-strike attack, but was eventually killed by veteran and manticore tank shooting. It was a bloody and fun game and we ended up drawing on all three objectives.

Game 3 - Chaos

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Seize Ground (5 objectives)
Secondary Objective: Have a scoring unit completely within 6" of the center of the table
Tertiary Objective: Secretly pick an enemy unit at the beginning of the game. If that unit is alive at the end of the game you achieve this objective.
Bonus Points: Chosen unit is in your deployment zone, chosen unit is within 6" of the center of the table, chosen unit is within 6" of your table edge

Jon (JWolf) brought his Huron chaos list, which aside from the main event included a lash sorceror with wings, a squad of eight possessed in a rhino, five raptors with two meltaguns, five terminators with assorted combi-goodies and power accoutrements, two squads of eight berzerkers in rhinos, a large squad of chaos marines with a lascannon, a multimelta dreadnought (my chosen special unit of his), and a defiler. The picture was actually taken on the bottom of the third turn. Jon had started his whole army in reserve, and I took my first two turns to spread out along my long table edge and away from my right short edge. First the raptors and possessed hit on my left edge, blowing up the melta vet chimera. Then Harker's vets and the sentinels came in behind the possessed rhino, shooting up the squad after I popped their transport with the Leman Russ. The defiler and berzerker rhinos arrived from his table edge, and I either blew up or immobilized them in the backfield. I just slowed them down in the end, and when we rolled to end the game after the fifth turn, he was holding two objectives to my one. I might have held out if I'd had another turn of shooting, alas we'll never know!

Catachans

2009-05-25T22:50:00.006-06:00

I'm refitting my Tiefwalder army to serve as the Catachan 14th Regiment. I'm making an army with all three of the Catachan characters that will be something like this:

Company Command
Col. Ironhand Straken
2 Bodyguards
Regimental Standard
Officer of the Fleet
Astropath
Chimera - heavy flamer

Sly Marbo

Veteran Squad - Harker, 3 grenade launchers, autocannon

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns

Infantry Platoon
Platoon Command - 3 meltaguns, heavy flamer
Chimera - heavy flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer, autocannon
Infantry Squad - flamer, autocannon
Heavy Weapons Squad - 3 missile launchers
Heavy Weapons Squad - 3 missile launchers

2 Hellhounds - smoke launchers

Devildog - smoke launchers

Valkyrie - rocket pods

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma cannon sponsons

Leman Russ - heavy bolters, heavy stubber

In order to put this together, I had to take a knife to a couple of my old metal catachan models. There's a few touchups left to do but they're essentially complete.

Straken

Harker

Marbo

Tournament: Battleforge Games 5-16-09

2009-05-17T14:28:00.004-06:00

Last Saturday I played in another 'eavy Battleforge tournament. It was their usual semi-monthly 2000-point anything goes 3-game brawler, the twist being the new codex in play and plenty of folks in town with solid guard armies and experience. I couldn't resist playing guard myself either:

Company Command - lascannon, regimental standard
Chimera - hull heavy bolter

Sly Marbo

9 Battle Psykers w/ Overseer
Chimera - hull heavy bolter

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns, lascannon
Chimera - hull heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns, lascannon
Chimera - hull heavy flamer

Infantry Squad
Infantry Command - flamer, autocannon
Chimera - hull heavy flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer, lascannon
Infantry Squad - flamer, lascannon

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Devildog - smoke launchers

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma sponsons

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma sponsons

Basilisk

Game 1 - Chaos Space Marines

Deployment: Spearhead
Primary Objective: Take and hold (most kill points in the center)
Secondary Objective: Don't remember
Tertiary Objective: Don't remember

I don't remember what the other two objectives was because this game got cut short. Nick was playing his slaanesh chaos army, with two flying lash princes, three squads of eight noisemarines with sonic blasters, blastmasters, and one rhino, and three squads of two obliterators. I deployed everything but Marbo and the two veteran squads in their transports. I really need more practice with spearhead, the layout just fucks with my brain and my vehicle-heavy army usually gets in something of a traffic jam as a result. Nick went first, moving forward with everyone but three of the noisemarine squads, lashed one of my transport-less infantry squads forward and pinned them. He also managed to immobilize one of my demolishers with the obliterators. I returned fire and killed one of the lash princes and popped the noisemarine rhino. He was continuing his forward assault, destroying one demolisher and mauling both infantry squads, but was suddenly called away on an emergency and the game ended. He probably would have done pretty well in my backfield with those noisemarines and 2nd demon prince, and I would have had to pour shots into them rather than those annoying obliterators who would all the while be cracking transports and light tanks all over the place. Still, it is a bit harder to kill vehicles nowadays, and if I could have stopped the immediate assault I might have been able to pour enough killpoints into the center for a win or draw. In any case I very likely ended up with more battle points than I would have had we played it out.

Game 2 - Imperial Guard

Deployment: Pitched battle
Primary Objective: Seize ground (5 objectives that scattered randomly every game turn)
Secondary Objective: Victory points (win by 100 VPs)
Tertiary Objective: Hold the line (have more scoring units in your own deployment zone than your enemy)
Bonus Points: kill an enemy HQ, have no scoring units in your own deployment zone

Chris was playing his black/orange penal legion guard, with two primaris psykers, Sly Marbo, three penal legion squads, one veteran squad with a lascannon, one with grenade launchers and an autocannon, a demolition veteran squad with plasmas led by Bastonne, a valkyrie with rocket pods, two squadrons of two banewolfs, one demolisher with plasma sponsons and one with melta sponsons. He outflanked with the valkyrie (transporting both psykers and the bastonne veterans) and one penal squad. I got first turn and set up in a line, and he responded by splitting most of his forces in either opposite corner, with the banewolfs coming up right center. I pushed the hellhounds far forward and popped smoke while the rest of my army took potshots. I shut down the two penal squads and one of the banewolf squadrons early on, and our tanks mostly bounced shells off of each other. He got the other banewolf squadron in range and burned the shit out of one of my infantry squads. The chem tanks also killed my Marbo after he popped out and demo-charged the flanking penal legion squad to oblivion. His valkyrie dropped off the plasma vets and they quickly took out the basilisk. They got back in and flew towards my lines in combination with Marbo and the surviving banewolf squadron. It took all the surviving elements of my army to fend off the attack and claim just one objective to his zero at the end. A last-minute melta attack wrecked the valkyrie and pinned the vets inside, keeping him from grabbing or contesting an objective. Neither of us scored the secondary or tertiary objectives.

Game 3 - Imperial Guard

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Table Quarters
Secondary Objective: Victory Points (win by 300 VPs)
Tertiary Objective: Crazy Hero (would take too long to explain)
Kingsley was playing his bug-hunter guard, including a company command in a chimera, a battle psyker squad in a chimera, a veteran squad with Harker, an infantry platoon with a few infantry squads and a lascannon/missile launcher heavy weapons squad, a devildog, two squads of two sentinels with autocannons and lascannons, a demolisher with a hull lascannon and multimelta sponsons, a demolisher with three heavy flamers, and two leman russes with heavy bolters. I moved forward with ease on my left side, wiping the devildog and two infantry squads in cover there with demolisher, devildog, and hellhound fire. I shut down his heavy weapons squad with the psyker squad and burned them with a veteran squad's chimera heavy flamer later on when they managed to regroup. His heavy tanks took a heavy toll on my infantry and psyker squads. I flanked right with my other hellhound and burned one of his squads on the right but it was destroyed quickly in return. In the end it came down to a big tank mashup in the center, with a lot of destruction and all quarters contested. We drew the primary and noone got the secondary or tertiary.

Jon won first with his Tallarn guard, and was the only guard player (out of 5) not to play another guard army. Vince got second with his chaos marine army, and Frank won third with his Ultramarines. Guard is pretty tough as it turns out, and when two guard armies go head to head, it gets pretty brutal. I definitely like the mechanized chimerathon army, and I will probably just ditch the infantry platoon for more mech veterans. One unit I really want to try now is the plasma vets with Bastonne in a valkyrie. I think that just might be my solution to those pesky capture and control missions. I also liked the double russ squadron Kingsley was fielding; it put out a shitload of firepower and was too daunting to even try and bring down when I was already using all my shooting to stop his scoring capability. Marbo was 1 for 2 as far as getting his points back; the third game he actually bounced his demo charge off the back of Kingsley's psyker chimera and killed himself without doing any damage at all. My psykers also did well, peeling off enemy units here and there and generally being a distraction/target. They might not be spectacular in every game, but getting off their power in the first one or two turns can be disastrous for a vulnerable enemy. And the blast is nothing to shrug at, either. Anyway, lots of fun still to be had playtesting this bad boy out.

Witch Chain Gang

2009-05-13T15:19:00.006-06:00

Here's some pics of my bound witches. Obviously they're repentia, minus the big ball-busting eviscerators, with a little extra carving and painting to redo the hands. I figured I've played enough games with repentia to know I'll never use them again, and they'll be be much more useful as guard battle psykers anyway. Since the uniform and general theme of the model matches, for the Overseer I decided to use the same redemptionist model I've used before as an inquisitor and mystic.

The basic concept is that they're a bunch of accused witches who have been round up by this old puritan (Confessor Mather), chained and bound, and led into battle where the noise and chaos draw out any powers they might possess to devastating effect on the enemy. If one of the girls gets out of line or shows signs of deeper possession, the puritan burns them up with his hand flamer, along with one or two others who might be standing too close.

Mechatachan

2009-05-08T14:20:00.005-06:00

I've been having so much fun with Chimeras lately that I think I'm going to try to round up just 2 more and play with a full mech list. Ratlings are awesome, but I'm going to play without them for a bit. I could change up a few things and bring Marbo into this list but I'd just be losing firepower elsewhere. Mass chimeras are just awesome. They don't have armor for shit, really, but now that 5 things can shoot out of them without making them open-topped, and they're cheap as hell, why not put every last squad in one? I've decided to try hellhounds for a while instead of banewolfs. The chemcannon is great, especially since it's a defensive weapon and you can combo with the heavy flamer, but you do have to get them right up in the enemy's situation, leaving them wide open beaver for a usually explosive counter-assault (though that can be useful in certain situations). Plus against Guard and Orks I'll be up against a bunch of stuff that can shut down AV12 pretty easily (autocannons/lootas), so I want to be able to put the unescapable tongue of flame down on them at least once from a distance. Anyways, S6 AP4 does the job just as well against guard and orks as S1 AP3. I converted up a Devildog using the multimeltas from Demolisher sponsons and played my first game with it last night, but it was against tyranids so it didn't have that much fun other than burning an occasional wound off a monstrous creature. I will be keeping track of all the vehicles it destroys by painting kill symbols on it.

So here's that list I'm working on:

Company Command - officer of the fleet, flamer, lascannon, regimental standard
Chimera

Psyker Battle Squad - 9 psykers, 1 overseer
Chimera

Infantry Platoon
Platoon Command Squad - flamer, autocannon
Chimera - hull heavy flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer, autocannon
Chimera - hull heavy flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer, autocannon
Chimera - hull heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns, lascannon
Chimera

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns, lascannon
Chimera

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Devildog - smoke launchers

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma cannon sponsons

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma cannon sponsons

Basilisk

More Guard Testing

2009-04-26T17:40:00.005-06:00

Hey! The site's 2 years old. Huzzah!

I got in a couple 2000 point guard test games this weekend, first a rematch against tyranids and then a couple games against Jay's Necrons. Against the nids I played with the following:

Company Command - astropath, officer of the flight, lascannon, regimental standard
Chimera

10 Ratlings

10 Veterans - 3 plasma guns, lascannon
Chimera

10 Veterans - 3 melta guns, lascannon
Chimera

Infantry Platoon
Infantry Command - Al Raheem, heavy flamer, 2 flamers
Chimera - heavy flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer

Hellhound

Hellhound

3 Sentinels

Demolisher - lascannon, plasma cannons

Demolisher - lascannon, plasma cannons

Leman Russ - heavy bolters

I dropped the vendetta for a number of reasons. First off, I obviously don't have one of those unreleased flying bases, and the thing takes up so much room on the battlefield I'm willing to wait. Second, I'm just not that impressed with their capabilities yet. I think fielding more than one would be better, but I just don't know where the points would come from or what would be the best way to use them.

Brandon was playing with a flyrant, a dakkarant with 2 guards, a lictor, 3 warriors with deathspitters, a dakkafex, 2 squads of stealers with carapace, 1 squad of scuttling stealers with feeder tendrils and scything talons, 15 gaunts without number, 8 leaping ripper bases, 2 sniper fexes, and 1 beefed up fex with talons and a barbed strangler. The flyrant made it across most of the table, wrecked the leman russ and right-most demolisher, and was eventually finished off by sly marbo, who emerged from the woods to put a ripper shell through its giant alien crown. The demolishers, ratlings, and veteran squads took pot shots at the guarded tyrant and sniper fex on the left side. Raheem's command squad outflanked on my left, flamed out the genestealers hanging back there. The sniperfex turned around and wrecked his chimera, but another chimera containing the melta veterans pulled up and helped Raheem kill the fex and guarded tyrant, leaving them in command of the nearby objective... temporarily. The lictor jumped out of the abandoned gun turret and scythed Raheem down. In response, I charged in with 10 veterans. The slippery bug easily evaded their clumsy attacks, ripped just one of their number in half, and the rest of the vets lost their nerve and were cut down as they fled. I pulled their transport back and consolidated my position on my home objective. On the right side, the two infantry squads outflanked just behind his own outflanking genestealers and flamed them to death as well. They lost a few men to deathspitters, but enough survived to capture the nearest objective on my right side. The sentinels came in on that side as well but their shooting went wide and they were wrecked quickly. Between the demolishers and the lascannons, I destroyed two more carnifexes, and killed his third and last stealer squad with chimera dakka just in time to seal the win: 2-0.

Here's Marbo making one more attack run against his surviving sniperfex on the last turn:

I really liked the feel of this army, especially Al-Raheem, but the sentinels just seemed really weak with the multilasers, and I am not willing to pay much more to make them effective. For my next game, I wanted to try the psyker battle choir. I'm thinking about converting up my repentia for that purpose, clipping their swords and making them into some sort of witch chain gang. Instead of the whippy matron, I'll use a retributionist model for their handler. I also switched out the flamers in the infantry squads for meltaguns (to possibly combo with bring it down) and changed the hellhounds to banewolfs to give chem-cannons a try.

This was the first of 2 games against Jay's triple monolith list, which also included a destroyer res-orb lord, 4 squads of 10 warriors, and 2 squads of 4 destroyers. The first game, playing for victory points, he went first and moved up in a big line. The psykers targetted the destroyers on the left, made them poop their robot pants, the ratlings dropped two, and they failed leadership and 2 fell back off the table edge. After that stunning demonstration of ULTIMATE POWER IN THE UNIVERSE, IE THE FORCE he brought the rest of the destroyers and the lord through the monolith on my right and unloaded into the psykers, easily wiping them out. I counterattacked with a banewolf and the veteran's plasma guns, destroying them. With his lord and main anti-tank guns silenced, Jay conceded and we started a second game.

Here's his lord and destroyers going after those blasted psykers:

For the redux, we played capture and control with spearhead deployment. I passed first turn to him and we both placed our objectives in our respective corners. He started with only a single squad of warriors in the tower, while I made an arc of tanks 12" from the table center. The psykers jumped in the company command chimera and wheeled off towards the tower while those in range took pot shots. On his second turn, only the two monoliths came in, dropping right in the midst of my armor. He had a good run with 6's and the gauss arcs shook most of my tanks and destroyed both a leman russ and a demolisher turret. Al Raheem came in on my left with one of the infantry squads, while the other infantry squad and Sly Marbo attacked the beleagured squad in the tower. Marbo somehow only drew combat, and when his third monolith deep struck nearby in his next turn, they teleported out of combat and stopped the battle choir's chimera cold, sending them running into nearby cover. A fourth warrior squad teleported through that same monolith in the next turn and he cleansed his home objective for good. Back in my corner, I fought off two different incoming necron warrior squads with plasma and flame attacks from banewolfs and veterans, and an immobilized demolisher took down one of the monoliths with a direct ordnance hit. In the last turn, I circled my wagons to prevent the other lith from contesting my objective. It ended in a draw.

I liked the psykers more than the sentinels, but I wish they had a chimera of their very own to give them a little more protection and mobility. The banewolfs were effing sweet. Their speed and double template death make for a hell of a counterattack. Relative to my first game with the new rules, I didn't really miss Creed since most of my stuff is mobilized, and the heavy weapons in the vets and company command squad are BS4. I didn't use Al Raheem's special order, but his "bring it down" and "first rank, second rank" came in real handy for his flank attacks. Good times. T-minus 6 days and counting!

Guard Experiments

2009-04-21T18:31:00.008-06:00

I took on Brandon's tyranids in a 2500 point Capture and Control battle last Sunday using the new guard, based on the summary sheet and what I remembered from the demo book. Here's a few thoughts from that game:

Orders are pretty sweet, and if you like them a lot, you can't not use Creed. Holy crap. If double the (command) bubble is wrong, 4 orders a turn is just plain hellish. In my game Sunday Creed was working overtime from the safety of his command tank and just had loads of fun. I used him to give stealth to a double-hellhound squadron and they came on just in time to burninate a big expensive squad of genestealers. And yes, I will probably also try the triple-demolisher outflank at some point in the future. You got to.

Infantry platoons are somewhat tied together by their new organization rules. You can't start some on the table and hold some back in reserve like you usedta could. Countering assaults with flamer squads after an enemy unit gets left out after winning assault is still effective, even more so with the bladestorm-esque order. And they're cheap enough to not feel bad about sending a whole squad of them to their doom just to stall stampeding beasts headed towards your army's core. I didn't try combining them into bigger squads in that first game, but I'm sure there'll be instances where it will work great, like KP or VP games.

The new heavy weapon team rules are a blessing and a curse. They're cheaper, they score objectives, they simplify wound removal, and they combo well with orders like "bring it down," "fire on my target," and "get back in the fight" for some annoying wack-a-mole type shit, but without the old command rule they are more prone to break and obviously die very quickly to dakka stronger than S6. The missile launcher teams in my infantry units were more survivable. It's a little weird when you first realize you only have 9 models in a squad with that setup now!

Lumbering behemoth and demolisher cannons + plasma cannons = awesome but it seems like the LRDs are just too expensive for what they do. They can put out some ridiculous firepower, but rear armor 11 is just not that big of a deal and the longer range of the standard battle cannon russ is calling my name. With three of those bastards I can hopefully shut down annoying dakka squads like lootas quickly. My AP1 and AP2 shooty squads (melta and plasma veterans, heavy weapon teams, vendettas) can still intercept and handle big threats.

Marbo was fun but died a little too quickly. The best use of him would be to place him in cover when he comes in, close enough to the edge to deny an enemy a cover save from the demo charge but still eligible for his own 3+ cover save from stealth. He's just one more thing the enemy will need to shoot at while the tanks continue their shelling and the hellhounds move up to bathe light infantry in burny goodness.

Based on some of the lessons learned in this game and conversations with other folks, I made a new list, one that probably falls on the heavy side. As it turns out, I will likely use those old chimeras as-is for at least few games.

Company Command - astropath, officer of the fleet, regimental standard
Chimera

10 Ratlings

Guardsman Marbo

Full Pysker Battle Squad
Chimera

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - heavy flamer

Platoon Command Squad - 2 flamers, heavy flamer
Chimera - heavy flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer
Infantry Squad - flamer
Heavy Weapon Squad - 3 lascannons
Heavy Weapon Squad - 3 lascannons

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Vendetta

Leman Russ - heavy bolter sponsons

Leman Russ - heavy bolter sponsons

Leman Russ - heavy bolter sponsons

That's a lot of ordnance, templates, dakka, and AP2 shooting right there, with enough scoring units and transports to hold my own in an objective mission. I haven't tried playing with them yet, but I'm convinced those leman russes would really put the hurt on shit with the battle cannon and heavy bolter salvo all going at once. I got myself talked into using a psyker battle squad by that master of all things evil, Minus67. When they're not assisting the ratlings in pinning folks or sending nobs running for the hills, they can pour out their own large high strength blasts, all from the safety of their chimera. Even when they inevitably get chased out, they can just trade for one of the other ones likely to be sitting around nearby. The Vendetta might just be there as a placeholder really, as I'm already thinking about building me a Devil Dog to zip around dropping melta blasts on approaching land raiders. Can't wait for May 2!

Choices Choices Choices

2009-04-13T20:17:00.010-06:00

So I picked up 2 chimeras in a trade a while back, and I've decided to Forgeworld them up into a pair of the new artillery tanks. For my initial list with the new codex, I'm going to try to squeeze in a company command with an officer of the fleet, ratlings, stormtroopers or grenadier veterans in a valkyrie, vendetta, or chimera, an infantry platoon with a couple lascannon squads, a demolition vet unit, a recon sentinel squad, a couple hellhounds, and as many demolishers I can get. With that in mind, here's a few options for 2 more tanks (pics from the FW online store):

Medusa

The Medusa would make a great anti-vehicle tank, firing indirectly with the bunker buster shells, but with the lascannons, melta guns, and demolishers, I'm probably good on stopping armor already. Still, the model is pretty cool and relatively cheap and only a bit more than the basilisk points-wise. I could even get a third conversion kit and change up my existing basilisk to make a trio of these guys.

Manticore

The Manticore is a really neat model and several large strength 10 blasts a turn sounds like a good time, but they're fairly pricey on points and dollar bills. I'm not ruling it out but probably a long shot.

Hydra

I think I've saved the best for last. Together with the hellhounds and ordnance they could peel the numbers off horde armies and put the hurt on skimmers and nob bikers, too. I'm really leaning towards a couple hydras as a third heavy support slot. At 75 points base they're a steal. Unfortunately, like the manticore, 2 kits would run me about $85, which stings a bit.

Tournament: Battleforge Games 4-11-09

2009-04-11T17:09:00.006-06:00

Great example of how you can be up one week and totally suck it hardcore the next. For the hobby tournament at BFG I decided to roll with a mixed chaos force led by Abaddon. I thought including a lash sorceror might be pushing it a bit, but shit, I could have rolled double lash and still gotten my ass handed to me in these games. It seems to me now that small elite forces are just getting shittier and shittier with each new codex. And I was initially thinking about taking space wolves! Ha!

Here was my list:

Abaddon

Sorceror - mark of slaanesh, lash of submission

8 Berzerkers - skull champion w/ power fist

8 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, plague champion w/ power fist & personal icon
Rhino - extra armor

10 Thousand Sons - Sorceror w/ bolt of change & personal icon
Rhino - extra armor

10 Lesser Demons

Defiler - 2 CCW

3 Obliterators

Land Raider - possession

Game 1 - Orks

Primary Objective: Victory Points (win by 300)
Secondary Objective: Have a scoring unit in your opponent's deployment zone
Tertiary Objective: Have a scoring unit and no enemy scoring units in your own deployment zone.
Bonus Points:

My game against Daniel started innocently enough. He had a varied mix of orks including a warboss on a bike, 7 or 8 standard ork bikers, several big boyz squads, a couple boyz squads in trukks, a battlewagon with a bunch of nobz, 12 lootas, and 2 looted wagons with boomguns. He rolled for first turn and table edge and spread everything out pretty evenly. Given the victory conditions and the disparate sizes of our respective armies (I mean, look at the fucking picture, are orks broken or what??), I tried to concentrate my forces on one side and hoped to break through with Abaddon as my primary bowling ball. On his first turn he easily destroyed the defiler with max shots from the lootas. Of course my first turn when I pulled forward to meet the bikers Abaddon charged into the warboss and rolled a '1' for Drach'nyen, suffered a wound, and died to the return powerklaw attacks. That was pretty much the end, it just went crazily downhill from there, including the sorceror and plaguemarines getting pinned and wiped when their rhino died and 2-3 failed psychic tests. He ended up with full points. Just a ridiculous, spirit-crushing first game. My only consolation is the severe, severe pain I hope to inflict on fucking orks when the new guard book comes out.

Game 2 - Witch Hunters

Deployment: Spearhead (w/ nightfight)
Primary Objective: Seize Ground (5 objectives)
Secondary Objectives: Choose and destroy one enemy non-scoring unit; this unit must also start in reserve (or -1 to reserve rolls if it normally does already)
Tertiary Objective: Destroy an enemy HQ unit

John had a cool witch hunter/grey knights army including Karamazov, three sister squads with flamers and heavy flamers in rhinos, a big squad of grey knights with a couple psycannons, 8 seraphim with 2 twin-hand flamers, a dominion squad with 4 meltaguns in an immolator, a celestian squad in an immolator, and 2 exorcists. This game was pretty close starting out, as we traded tank-busting melta assaults at the frontline while his sister squads circled around on my flanks. His mechanized troops evaded lash for the most part and I wasn't able to really zero in on anything. Mostly I just tried to keep Karamazov at a distance until I could make a decisive attack with Abaddon. On my left two sister squads emerged from their rhinos to lay down some flamer hate on the berzerkers, who had been evicted when the dominions destroyed their land raider. The 3 survivors, along with Abaddon and the defiler, counter-attacked and wiped them out. I got caught up in the violence and could have been a little closer to the objectives when time ran out. As it was I was only up by 1 and so we got a draw on the primary objective, he earned the secondary, and noone got the tertiary.

Game 3 - Space Marines

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Capture and Control
Secondary Objective:
Tertiary Objective:

I was just saying I hadn't played against Frank in a while and of course we got paired up in the third round. He had a librarian with gate and smite, an assault cannon/heavy flamer dreadnought, a bunch of Grey Knight Terminators, a small squad of marine terminators, three bikes with 2 flamers, a squad of sternguard in a land raider, a big combat-squadded, outflanking scout unit, and a vindicator. The thousand sons and defiler tried to hold down my home obective in my far left corner, while everyone else attacked on my right towards the grey knights sitting on his objective. The defiler lost its battle cannon to a single first-turn lascannon shot from his land raider and so I charged him forward to intercept the approaching terminators and librarian. The walker killed the psyker but the return powerfist attacks from the terminators easily destroyed him. They consolidated 6" closer to the thousand sons and charged in on the next turn with one of the outflanking scout squads. He was then firmly in control of my home objective. It was up to my forces on the other side of the board. Unfortunately, Abaddon charged in for his first combat of the game and rolled a 1 once again for the demon weapon and went down to the return S6 power weapon attacks. Cue Price Is Right letdown sound effect. I was done! The end! Bah!

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 4-04-09

2009-04-06T20:26:00.009-06:00

Dragon's Lair hosted the first of 2 tournaments in the A-town this month, a 3-round 1850 matchup using the standard missions and deployment types. There were 10 people playing, mostly familiar faces (though a bunch of folks were out of town for Adepticon). I went 3-0 against some nice folks and everything came up Bully. I took a guard/demonhunters list:

Doctrines - drop troops, iron discipline, ratlings, grenadiers, close order drill

Command HQ - J.O. w/ bolter, iron discipline, veteran w/ company standard
Anti-Tank Squad - 3 lascannons
Anti-Tank Squad - 3 lascannons

Demonhunters Inquisitor Lord - psycannon, psychic hood, seer, 2 mystics, 3 warrior henchmen w/ heavy bolters

5 Veterans - 3 meltaguns

10 Ratlings

Infantry Platoon
Command Squad - J.O., 2 flamers
2 Infantry Squads - flamer

10 Stormtroopers - 2 meltaguns
Chimera - hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke launchers

Hellhound - extra armor, smoke launchers

Hellhound - extra armor, smoke launchers

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, sponson plasma cannons, extra armor

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, sponson plasma cannons, extra armor

Leman Russ - hull heavy bolter, sponson heavy bolters, extra armor

All in all it worked pretty well, with the dakka, lascannons, and ordnance blasting vehicles and tough infantry while my own troops held back in reserve to make late-game objective grabs, intercept assaulters, and/or prevent easy kill points. With some practice using reserves, guard is pretty awesome already - if the new book is as good as folks are saying it is... prepare for the new green tide of cheese.

Game 1 - Imperial Guard

Mission: Seize Ground (5 Objectives)
Deployment: Pitched Battle

Greg had drop troops and carapace armor guard, with a 4-meltagun HQ, 3-meltagun veteran squad, 3 infantry platoons, including 1 with lascannons and 2 with various special weapon loadouts, and 2 standard russes. I won first turn and commenced firing. Even though his deep-strikers never landed within mystic bubble range, I still pretty much shot the hell out of everything he had on the board over the 6-turn game. Hellhounds were his utter doom until he destroyed one and broke the other one's gun. My troops came on from my table edge to counter-attack one area where he dropped most of his guys, pouring it on with flamers and hellguns before moving up to retain objectives. I won with a major victory.

Game 2 - Eldar

Mission: Capture and Control
Deployment: Dawn of War

Bryan was playing with his usual Eldrad/Yriel flying circus, including a serpent full of fire dragons, a few pathfinders, three squads of dire avengers in wave serpents, and 2 fire prisms. I deployed the Command HQ, 2 lascannon squads, and the stormtroopers in their chimera, deep-struck with the meltagun vets, held the infantry platoon in reserve, and brought everything else on in the first turn. He shredded my forward lascannons with Eldrad's dire avengers, but I disabled their transport, pinned them with ratlings, and whittled them down for the rest of the game. Eldrad did survive to pester me with eldridtch storms and such until one of the hellhounds roasted him alive. I also sunk the fire dragon serpent and left them stuck in the middle of the board, wide open beaver for my inquisitor heavy bolters to wipe them out quick. After I broke one of the Fire Prism's cannons, he rammed the back of one of my hellhounds, immobilizing it. He attacked my objective with two of the dire avenger wave serpents, including the one carrying Yriel. I shredded the dire avengers but Yriel survived to charge into my infantry squads right on top of my home objective, killing one and tying up the second until the end of the game. The stormtroopers advanced along my left flank and assaulted the pathfinders who had come from off the board to take his home objective. After dispatching the eldar snipers, they survived a fire prism drive-by and managed to meltagun it to death with double 4's on the damage roll. They held tight till the 6th turn. I won 1-0, which gave me a minor victory.

Game 3 - Eldar

Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Spearhead

Chris had a pretty bad-ass walking eldar army, including a farseer with doom and fortune, an avatar, 2 squads of 9 fire dragons in wave serpents, a big squad of harlequins, 3 squads of dire avengers, and 2 wraithlords. I basically castled up in my home corner while he started his gunline up close in a 12" ring from the center. Things started off really well when I managed to demolish one of the fire dragon wave serpents to my right and the other immobilized itself to my left on some terrain while trying to tank shock my ratlings. Other than a few bright lance shots my armor was safe for the remainder of the game. I targetted the avatar and fire dragons first while he moved up en masse. My chimera's heavy flamer killed most of the fire dragons on my right and one of the infantry squads came on from my table edge to finish them off. Their primary mission accomplished, they held off a wraithlord for several turns before a lone dire avenger joined in to put them under. My hellhounds and infantry command came on my table edge right behind my tank nest just in time to burninate the farseer and harlequins, who had just swept a lascannon squad in close combat. At the last second I managed to pound a wraithlord with ultra-accurate lascannon and plasma fire from the demolishers. I won 8-4 and got a victory. The margins of victory had not been set up before the match so things got a little confusing at the end, but I finished in the lead, Chris got 2nd, and (a third guy - somebody remind me what his name was) got third. I picked up a third demolisher and 20 more catachans to help me flesh out a killer army with the new book in May.

Latest Wolves List

2009-03-21T21:23:00.007-06:00

Here's a 2000 point Space Wolves list I was considering taking to the next bfg hobby tournament:

Wolf Guard Battle Leader - frost blade, storm shield, wolf tooth necklace, wolf pelt, frag grenades

Wolf Guard Battle Leader - frost blade, storm shield, wolf tooth necklace, wolf pelt, frag grenades

Rune Priest - frost blade, storm shield, wolf pelt, frag grenades, chooser of the slain, wolf tooth necklace

Venerable Dreadnought - multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke launchers
Drop Pod

9 Grey Hunters - meltagun, 2 power fists
Rhino - extra armor

9 Grey Hunters - meltagun, 2 power fists
Rhino - extra armor

11 Blood Claws - flamer, 3 power fists

3 Attack Bikes

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

Land Raider - multimelta, extra armor

I still need to paint a drop pod, add the storm shields to the characters, and switch out the grey hunters' bolters for pistols and CCWs, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Check out BushidoRedPanda's blog for a battle report on our recent eldar faceoff. I'm continuing to make slow but steady progress with the saim hann painting, and experimenting with a few different builds once or twice a week. Recently I switched out one fire dragon and some jetbikes for a fusion gun/power weapon autarch to ride with the dragons and help out with the full reserve deployment.

Tournament: Battleforge Games 3-14-09

2009-03-14T20:57:00.017-06:00

The third BFG tournament of 2009 was another 'eavy tournament, so I thought I would try out something redundant and hopefully hard hitting. Here was the list I used:

Abaddon

Sorceror - mark of slaanesh, lash of submission

4 Terminators - 4 combimeltas, icon of chaos glory
Land Raider - extra armor

9 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, plague champion w/ powerfist and personal icon
Rhino - extra armor

9 Thousand Sons - sorceror w/ doombolt and personal icon
Rhino - extra armor

10 Lesser Demons

3 Defilers - 2 CCWs

With a bit more practice this army would be pretty devastating. As it was I had a couple decent games and then a total bomber against nob orks. I don't know as I'm going to shill out for 2 more defilers anytime soon, even though it was very fun to play.

Game 1 - Chaos

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Victory Points
Secondary Objective: Seize Ground
Tertiary Objective: Head Shot (kill the enemies highest point unit)
Bonus points: Kill all enemy HQs, kill all enemy elites, have no heavy support survive the game

Mike was counting on some borrowed models to make the army he wanted, but when the models were left at home he had to make do with a much less heavy army. As it was, he had 2 flying nurgle princes, 3 terminators in a land raider, 2 big squads of plaguemarines in rhinos, a small squad of chosen with plasma guns and a lascannon, a defiler, a vindicator, and 3 obliterators. It was a bloody game but he had pretty bad dice rolls and Abaddon and the defilers really made a mess out of all his toys. I won with a massacre.

Game 2 - Eldar

Deployment: Pitched battle
Primary objective: Victory points
Secondary objective: Most kill points within 6" of the center marker
Tertiary objective: Hold the line
Bonus points: Kill all enemy troops, have the tallest/highest altitude model on the battlefield at the end of the game, have no scoring units of your own left at the end of the game.

Eldar was 2nd only to orks in the "armies I didn't want to be paired against" category, but naturally for the second round I ran right into Amar's aspect-heavy force. He had Eldrad, a second farseer, a squad of howling banshees, a squad of harlequins, a large squad of striking scorpions, a small squad of warp spiders, a vyper with a bright lance, 2 small squads of jetbikes, 2 small squads of pathfinders, 2 lance/sword wraithlords, and a small squad of dark reapers. Not a lot of mech though outside of a lance vyper that was immobilized early on but lived for another couple of turns. I started everything in the middle, well aware that he would use eldrad to re-deploy and avoid a direct attack. He actually managed to roll high for the number of units he could move and split the army evenly in half in opposite corners. I pushed most of my stuff towards the left, taking potshots at everything moving with the battle cannons and sending the thousand sons out wide to bait the wraithlord out into the open. He moved the wraithlord forward as if to charge, but just at that moment the scorpions arrived as well, outflanking right into the thousand sons. After Abaddon and company ate the wraithlord and the nearby pathfinders, I sent him after Eldrad and the surviving howling banshees, who also fell. The harlequins danced out of range for the entire game until they found opportunity to wipe out Abaddon and the last of the terminators. I didn't get much done to the right side of his force, and in the end he won the primary and I won primary and tertiary.

Game 3 - Orks

Deployment: Spearhead
Primary: Seize ground (5 randomly scattering objectives)
Secondary: Table quarters
Tertiary: Have your hero die in the game
Bonus: Hero kills 1 enemy HQ, kill all enemy fast attack units, have no HQ left at the end of the game.

Thomas brought his uber nob biker army to the tournament, lost his first game against Kingsley (who is inarguably the best player in town) and so we ended up paired together for the third round. He had 2 klaw bike bosses, 2 fully kitted squads of nob orks with 3 klaws each, 2 squads of 15 lootas, and a big squad of shootaboys with rokkits. I played this one wrong in many ways, but I'm still not convinced it would have made much of a difference. First turn he turboboosted both nob squads around center to my left and took the first defiler out with the lootas. I managed to lash the closest nob unit and pushed it back a bit and into a ball before bouncing two ordnance blasts off them from the surviving defilers, but I don't think I even caused 1 wound. I charged forward with the land raider towards the mass of orks on foot. Second turn he charged and killed one defiler and destroyed the third with the lootas. I pulled back a bit with the sorceror and thousand sons in the rhino, and pulled way back with the nurgle marines towards the objective bouncing around in my home corner. I was intending to get abaddon and the terminators out to charge one squad of lootas but the shoota boys were blocking the way so Abby waded into them instead. I killed maybe 3-4 boys at a time while the squad's nob klawed through the other terminators slowly but surely. With Abaddon tangled up in the shoota boys for the rest of the game, the biker nobz and loota shooting easily wiped out all my infantry. We called it around the fourth turn or so. I should have just held defilers in reserve until they could charge into the oncoming bikes, charged in with Abaddon too, and maybe pestered the walking orks with the sorceror, land raider, and troops if they lived that long. Good game, what are you gonna do.

Tournament: Battlefield Games 2-14-09

2009-02-21T22:28:00.009-06:00

A few Saturdays ago now, Kingsley and I drove out to Killeen to play in Battlefield Games' "Valentine's Day Massacre" tournament. Neither of us had been to the store before but we were happy to find out it was fairly open with plenty of space, tables, and terrain to play. The owner was a real nice guy. The scoring system really emphasized the soft scores; in each game you could earn 20 battle points, 10 appearance points, and 10 sportsmanship points. Kingsley ended up winning the whole thing, with the first, second, third, and fourth (me) places all one point apart. I put off writing up this tournament for a while so please forgive if I keep the game descriptions brief. All the missions were based on victory points with additional bonuses for the round's specific mission. I borrowed a defiler and took chaos:

Abaddon
Greater Demon
8 Berzerkers
9 Thousand Sons + 1 Sorceror w/ doombolt in a rhino
10 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, aspiring champion w/ power fist in a rhino
10 Lesser Demons
3 Obliterators
1 Defiler
1 Land Raider

Game 1 - Space Marines

First game was against a friendly younger dude, hadn't played for very long but still knew most of the rules. He had a very generalized ultramarine army, with a commander and honor guard, a couple tac squads, a land raider, 2 lascannon predators, some terminators, and a small assault squad. I belive the mission was something like recon, where you got points back for your scoring units in the enemy deployment at the end of the game. I held back with the defiler and obliterators and charged forward with everything else. The thousand sons started off on my far right opposite a dev squad and some terminators but I moved them more towards the middle to bunch up with everyone else. He didn't much try to get any recon points so I won with a massacre.

Game 2 - Tau

My second opponent was overly jocular and familiar before the game started but it only took a minor rules argument to send him into the pout zone. He only emerged when he started winning the game. Not sure what his problem was, although it did seem to be frustrating him that he had to babysit while playing in a warhammer tournament. He had a generalized tau army, with a battlesuit commander, a small squad of battlesuits, a stealth team, three or four fire warrior squads, a piranha, a squad of kroot, a gun drone squad, a broadside squad, a hammerhead, and an ionhead. We had a couple messenger models we had to escort to the enemy table edge to get the extra points for this round. He popped the land raider and the thousand sons rhino in his first turn, which slowed down my advance some, and my defiler rolled a 1 for fleeting towards the stealth team, so he got nuked with a fusion gun. Abaddon and the plaguemarines did the most damage, clearing a hole for my messengers to escape, but the rest of my army was slowly shot to pieces and he ended up winning with a massacre. Possibly my least favorite game of 40k in the last couple of years.

Game 3 - Dark Eldar

Third opponent was a nice guy with a mostly foot-bound dark eldar force. It consisted of an archon with incubi on foot, 2 squads of wyches in a raider plus one on foot, a small squad of scourges, 4-5 squads of warriors on foot, and maybe a few other things. We had objectives that troops could pick up and take with them, the goal being to hold the most at the end of the game. It was a escalation-style deployment, with just an HQ and some troops able to start the game on the table. While the defiler, thousand sons, lesser demons, and obliterators nested on my objectives, the plaguemarines went right and abaddon and the berzerkers went left. He did have some tragic bad luck, especially with leadership tests, but overall dark eldar on foot can't stand up to the shooty elements in my army and I ended up blowing him off his objectives and winning with a massacre. Even when the random game length ended the game in the 5th, we kept playing it out until I had wiped out everything he had.

Weird mech list

2009-02-21T09:59:00.003-06:00

Would this be viable at all in a tournament?

Command HQ - JO w/ plasma pistol, 3 meltaguns, 1 flamer
Chimera w/ multilaser, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke launchers

Sentinel - lascannon

Hardened Vets - vet sgt w/ plasma pistol, 3 meltaguns
Chimera w/ multilaser, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke launchers

6 Storm Troopers - 2 meltaguns
Chimera w/ multilaser, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke launchers

6 Storm Troopers - 2 plasma guns
Chimera w/ multilaser, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke launchers

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 meltaguns
Rhino w/ extra armor, smoke launchers

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 meltaguns
Rhino w/ extra armor, smoke launchers

Sentinel - lascannon

Hellhound - extra armor

Hellhound - extra armor

Leman Russ Demolisher - sponson plasma cannons, hull lascannon, extra armor

Leman Russ Demolisher - sponson plasma cannons, hull lascannon, extra armor

Leman Russ - sponson heavy bolters, hull heavy bolter, extra armor

More of the Saim

2009-02-16T19:13:00.003-06:00

I've stalled out a bit on the jetbike army but hope to get back at it in the next few weeks. I played one game with them against Kingsley's Mantis Warriors a few weeks ago. It was fun even though I lost in the end. We were playing capture and control with spearhead deployment, if I remember correctly. I didn't play the eldar command unit well and also let one or two jetbike squads get assaulted, which never should have happened. I think the army might perform better after I get more experience with the art of evasion. And bah to the eldar codex for not giving me a way to use the last 4 points I have left over!

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, spirit stones, runes of warding, doom, fortune

Autarch - jetbike, laser lance, mandiblasters

4 Warlocks - jetbikes, 4 singing spears, 3 destructors, 1 embolden

6 Fire Dragons

3 x 6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

10 Dire Avengers - exarch with power weapon, shimmershield, defend, bladestorm
Wave Serpent - twin-linked bright lances, spirit stones, star engines

Vyper - bright lance

2 Fire Prisms - spirit stones, holofield

Falcon - scatter laser, spirit stones, holofield

Tournament: Battleforge Games 2-07-09

2009-02-15T19:05:00.007-06:00

Saturday was the first “hobby” tournament of the year at Battleforge Games. I painted up a few more ratlings and played a doctrines Imperial Guard list:

Command HQ - Junior officer w/ powerfist, bolt pistol, and honorifica imperialis, veteran standard bearer
2 Anti-tank squads – 3 missile launchers
Fire support squad – 3 heavy bolters, sharpshooters
Fire support squad – 3 autocannons, sharpshooters

Demonhunter Inquisitor Lord – thunder hammer, artificer armor, 2 mystics, 3 heavy bolter servitors

4 Hardened Veterans – veteran sergeant with plasma pistol, 3 meltaguns

10 Ratlings

Eversor assassin

Infantry platoon
Command squad – Junior officer w/ bolter, 2 meltaguns, 2 flamers
Chimera – multilaser, hull heavy bolter, pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke launchers
2 Infantry squads – plasma guns

Armored fist squad – flamer
Chimera – multilaser, hull heavy bolter, pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke launchers

2 Leman Russ Demolishers – hull lascannon, plasma cannon sponsons, extra armor

Leman Russ – hull heavy bolter, heavy bolter sponsons, pintle heavy stubber, extra armor

My general plan was to hold my chimeras in reserve and deep strike the other two infantry squads for late-game objective grabs while the gunline blasted away at everything and the eversor played either offense or defense depending on the opponent. My first two opponents were playing generally assault-oriented armies and this tactic worked well at defense but I couldn’t fully grab a win. The third game was against another shooting army, but in that situation guard usually wins over tau so I didn’t learn too many lessons there. It was a fun tournament with 3 friendly opponents, but I didn’t end up placing.

Here's a couple of other games:

Chaos Space Marines vs. Chaos Daemons

Tyranids vs. Ultramarines

Game 1 – Demons

Deployment: pitched battle
Primary objective: capture and control
Secondary objective:
Tertiary objective: destroy an enemy HQ or monstrous creature
Bonus points: none

Adam took a mixed tzeentch/nurgle army with fateweaver, a great unclean one, 2 squads of plaguebearers, 2 big squads of horrors, 2 squads of 3 screamers, 2 squads of 3 flamers, 3 beasts of nurgle, and 2 soulgrinders. He had pretty bad luck with his deep-striking, which resulted in the GUO and 1 of the soulgrinders not playing much part in the game since I was able to place them in a far corner. We placed our objectives in opposite corners and he won the first roll and chose to go second. I castled up in my objective corner with everything but the 2 chimera squads, which I sent towards his home corner. First turn brought Fateweaver, a soulgrinder, 1 squad of flamers, 1 squad of horrors, and 1 squad of plaguebearers. His flamers eradicated my ratlings right off the bat with no problem, but his horrors were shot up pretty good by the mystic-assisted inquisitor squad. The initial plaguebearers held down on his home objective and went to ground every time I shot at him, meaning I would have to try to contest. The units in chimeras threatening his objective worked well as a distraction for Fateweaver and one of the soulgrinders while he straight up attacked with everything else. I tried my damnedest to kill fateweaver but he survived the game with 1 wound left. With the mystics and the rest of my gunline I fended off a second unit of screamers that deep-struck right on top of my home objective in the fifth turn, and fateweaver and a soulgrinder destroyed my chimera that was the last hope to contest his objective for the win. The game ended in a draw. The eversor didn’t accomplish much more than killing a unit of screamers that had just destroyed one of my demolishers. A fun and even game. If I had to play it over again, I might space the gunline out a bit more to make close-up deep-striking harder and play more aggressively with the demolishers to keep them in killing range of the soulgrinders. MVP was definitely the inquisitor and mystics, so damned good, but I really need to equip him with a psycannon (I left it off cause I don’t have a wysiwyg model yet) to kill fateweaver and other big demons.

Game 2 – Dark Eldar

Deployment: pitched battle
Primary objective: seize ground (5 objectives)
Secondary objective: have a scoring unit in your enemy’s deployment zone at the end of the game
Tertiary objective: have a non-scoring unit within 3” of the center of the table at the end of the game
Bonus points:

Robert took his usual dark eldar force, which I’ve played against several times now. He had an archon on a bike with 5 more bikers, a dracon with a bunch of incubi in a raider, 3 squads of warriors with 2 dark lances each, 2 raiders with 10 wyches, a beastmaster and 5 warp beasts, a talos, and 2 ravagers with destructors. The objectives ended up spaced out along the deployment zone edges, 3 on one side and 2 on the other. I spread out the gunline in what little cover I had, held the chimera units in reserve, deep struck with the other 2 infantry squads, and outflanked with the veterans and the eversor. He got first turn and took the side with 3 objectives and zoomed up with the raiders on my left side and the bikes, talos, and warp beasts on my right. I killed a couple of bikes and destroyed one of the wych raiders, killing half of the wyches inside and pinning the rest. It was a small victory, since the survivors of his attack wave plowed right into my lines killing all my infantry save one fire support squad. Robert took plenty of slaves for the pits. The JO managed to kill the rest of the bikes with his powerfist minus the archon before he was run down. Next turn all my reserves except for the veterans arrived. I deep struck the infantry squads on my right side closer to his deployment zone, and the eversor sprinted into a squad of warriors, wiping them out easily and moving on to the next one. My chimeras came on my table edge. The command squad with their flamers burned up one whole squad of wyches before being squished by destructor templates. The other chimera was immobilized near one of the objective markers, and he spent the next three turns beating it up with the incubi, warp beasts, and a few surviving wyches. The talos destroyed the standard leman russ, just after I killed 3 warriors in his last squad with an ordnance template, causing them to fall back, and the eversor was close enough to prevent them from regrouping, sending them off the table. Thus we were both left without any scoring units. We both rushed vehicles towards the center to accomplish the tertiary objective but neither won the primary or secondary. A very close and bloody game. I probably should have put the demolishers on the far left side farther from my infantry line, which would still have been his primary target for all his fast assault units. If they had lived a bit longer I could have possibly worn their numbers down with templates, allowing my reserves to actually survive and take objectives rather than get tangled up with the nasties. MVP was obviously the eversor, who changed the game from a sweep for him to a draw. I actually used the lasguns in the armored fist squad's chimera, that was probably the first time I ever used those. They even managed to kill a couple of wyches that were circling around the transport.

Game 3 – Tau

Deployment: spearhead
Primary objective: victory points
Secondary objective: randomly moving objective
Tertiary objective: kill points
Bonus points:

Amy is a new player in town. Saturday she was playing with a couple of crisis teams including an HQ, 3 squads of fire warriors, 1 devilfish, a kroot squad, a small unit of pathfinders and devilfish, a stealth team, 2 hammerheads, and a broadside team. I won the roll to go first and it really helped me out big time. I camped out most of the gunline in some trees in my corner, flanked my edges with the battle tanks, and held everything else in reserve. In my first turn, I was able to break the broadsides off the table just by killing their shield drones (sad face). I also downed one of the hammerheads, wiped out the pathfinders and stunned their devilfish that was standing by to transport a squad of fire warriors deployed behind it. For the next couple of turns I blew apart her fire warriors, finished off the devilfish, and generally chased the moving objective around. She finally destroyed two of the russes with the hammerhead and some deep-striking battlesuits that came in on my right side. Also on the right she advanced a devilfish with warriors from reserve and outflanked with the kroot. I shot up the kroot easily enough and the eversor jumped out and wiped out the fire warriors. I was far ahead in VPs and KPs at the end of the game but the moving objective ran away at the last second and neither of us claimed it. Good game but I felt bad for Amy who was having craptastic luck with the dice. Those deep-striking suits were clutch and could have seriously set me back if I wasn't already so far ahead by that time.

Latest Guard List

2009-02-01T12:45:00.004-06:00

I decided to trade most of my tyranids away for a bunch of random guard stuff, including a forgeworld Valkyrie, 14 storm troopers, 5 ogyrns, 6 more ratlings, and 2 chimeras. The ratlings were the easiest things to get painted and on the field, so I made a new guard list to include them that I'll probably use at this weekend's hobby tournament:

Command HQ - JO w/ iron discipline and bolter, veteran standard bearer
Anti-tank squad - 3 missile launchers
Anti-tank squad - 3 missile launchers
Fire support squad - 3 autocannons, sharpshooters
Fire support squad - 3 heavy bolters, sharpshooters
Mortar squad
2 Sentinels - autocannons

Demonhunter Inquisitor Lord - psychic hood, psycannon
2 Mystics
3 Gun servitors - heavy bolters

4 Hardened veterans - 3 meltaguns, vet sgt w/ plasma pistol

10 Ratlings

Infantry platoon
Command squad - JO w/ iron discipline, 4 flamers
2 Infantry squads - plasma guns

Armored fist squad - plasma gun
Chimera - hull heavy bolter, pintle stubber, extra armor, smoke launchers

Hellhound - hull heavy bolter, pintle stubber, extra armor, smoke launchers

Leman Russ demolisher - plasma cannons, lascannon, extra armor

Leman Russ - 3 heavy bolters, pintle heavy stubber, extra armor

Basilisk - indirect fire

I mainly wanted to bring in a bunch of different units I didn't use much anymore. The idea is to castle up with the demonhunter, command HQ, weapons teams, and tanks while the troops stay off-table in reserve as long as possible before running on to grab objectives. I have to acknowledge Jwolf's tactics on Bell for inspiring this direction. There's probably a lot of excessive upgrades I could ditch but I tried to go with what I already had modeled. I played one game with it against chaos and did pretty well but I still need a lot more practice.

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 1-24-09

2009-01-28T19:53:00.010-06:00

Went to the second 40k tournament of the year last weekend at Dragon's Lair. Good to see Larry back in the store. We played using the standard missions and deployment schemes. At first I was going to run a double land raider variant of my chaos list, but decided to take the imperial agents out of the barn for a spin. The main reason was that I wanted an excuse to try out Celestine. I've had the model painted up for some time but always played her as a humble canoness. She never actually died in any of my games, but never quite lived up to the legend either. The inquisitor and mystics worked extremely well on several occasions - with all the different forms of deep strike available and general resiliency of the troops that use it they are getting to be a must-have now for any imperial force. Assassins... not so much. The Callidus made no real difference in any of my games. I want to build a full-on mech sisters army later this year, because I think more sisters would be better than mixing in the guard infantry.

Here's the list:

Celestine

Canoness - blessed weapon, fusion pistol, mantle of ophelia, book of st. lucius

Ordo Malleus Inquisitor - psycannon, 3 warriors with heavy bolters, 2 mystics

Callidus Assassin

2 x 10 Sisters of Battle - meltagun, flamer, veteran sister superior with book of st. lucius

Guard infantry platoon
Command squad - JO with plasma pistol, power weapon, 4 meltaguns
4 Infantry squads - plasma gun, lascannon

6 Seraphim - 2 twin flame pistols, veteran sister superior with book of st. lucius

2 Exorcists - extra armor

10 Retributors - 4 heavy bolters, veteran sister superior with book of st. lucius

Game 1 - Orks

Nathaniel W. was my first opponent of the day for the first round, using the seize ground scenario with pitched battle deployment. He had a pretty mixed force of orks, which I came to discover was much more effective than it used to be before the newest codex. He had a warboss and nobs in a trukk, a big mek with KFF, 3 deff dreds, 5 koptas, 6 lootas, 10 'ard boyz in a trukk, 20 shoota boys, 2 mobs of 20 slugga boys, and 5 regular warbikes. I grounded the boss and nobs early on, so they just sat on an objective near his deployment zone while the rest of the force headed straight for me. It took a couple turns to wipe out the fastest attackers (bikes and koptas), and I killed two of the deff dreads, but the rest of the force survived to roll my gunline pretty bad. The 'ard boyz drove over and took out my retributors and inquisitor squad before I killed them off. I had a few good rounds of screening and shooting with the guard and sisters squads but my luck was terrible overall and Nathaniel seemed pretty experienced with orks. By the end of the game he was up 3 objectives to my 0, giving him a massacre win.

Game 2 - Tau

I've forgotten my opponents name for the second round, sorry. We were playing the capture and control mission with spearhead deployment. He only had 1860 points of tau on the table and he hadn't been playing for very long, so it played out a little one-sided. His list included a ethereal, a battlesuit hq, two squads of two battlesuits, two squads of stealth suits, a squad of kroot, a squad of gun drones, a fire warrior squad, an honor guard squad, a sniper team, a hammerhead, and a pathfinder team. I flanked on the right with celestine leading the seraphim and sisters squads following up behind. While the exorcists and heavy bolters tore apart his vehicles and line infantry, the flankers rolled through the kroot, fire warriors, and ethereal with little trouble and captured his home objective, giving me a massacre win.

Game 3 - Chaos

I drew the other Nathaniel (M.) for the third round. We played annihilation, using a weighted kill points system, and dawn of war deployment. He had a tzeentch demon prince, a lash sorceror with wings, five terminators, three squads of plaguemarines in rhinos, three obliterators, a defiler, and a vindicator. I took second turn and spread out my forces in a long line in my deployment zone with my initial infantry and reserves. Probably the best moment in this game was when his terminators scattered in just the right place and the inquisitor activated the seraphim with his mystics to divine flame the hell out of them. His demon prince didn't come on until the fourth or fifth turn and I managed to shoot him up before he could do any real damage. The plaguemarines were tougher but I mostly ignored them to shoot everything else. His defiler and vindicator took a long time but they finally went down to my weak ass exorcists. This was a fun game because I could just concentrate on shooting and maneuvering with the gunline rather than try and gamble for objectives. I ended up winning with a massacre.

Don't Fight It

2009-01-17T17:23:00.007-06:00

I can't help it. As soon as I made that last list, my conscience rebelled and convinced me to stick with Space Wolves rather than go bland and colorless. So I made this list incorporating the double land raider SS/TH terminator concept.

Rune Priest - frost blade, storm shield, chooser of the slain, frag grenades

Wolf Guard Battle Leader - frost blade, storm shield, frag grenades

Wolf Guard Battle Leader - frost blade, storm shield, frag grenades
5 Wolf Guard Bodyguards - terminator armor, thunder hammers, storm shields, 1 wolf pelt
Land Raider Godhammer - multimelta, extra armor

6 Grey Hunters - 2 powerfists, 1 meltagun
Razorback

6 Grey Hunters - 2 powerfists, 1 meltagun
Razorback

15 Blood Claws - 3 powerfists

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Land Raider Crusader - multimelta, extra armor

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

The 3+ invuln on all the ICs from the storm shield is definitely worth losing an attack for, since wolves characters start out with so many attacks base anyway (not to mention the +2 attacks when counter-attacking). The terminators ride with the two battle leaders, serving as a retinue for one of them (thus preventing him from being singled out), while the rune priest watches over the blood claws, keeping their land raider obscured with storm caller. The gang in the Godhammer are the Sea Wolf kraken hunters, ideally going after the enemy's hardest unit and wiping it out or keeping it busy. The trouble will be keeping the grey hunters alive. I'd just as soon drop one of the squads to beef up the other, but that would only leave 2 troop units...

Assault Terminators

2009-01-16T23:01:00.009-06:00

What do you guys think of this 2k list for a heavy tournament? It's very light on troops but the terminators are definitely mobile and stompy. Plus a ton of melta.

Vulkan

8 Assault Terminators
Land Raider Crusader - multimelta, extra armor

5 Assault Terminators

8 Scouts - sniper rifles, heavy bolter, camo cloaks

Tactical Squad - meltagun, multimelta, sgt with powerfist and combi-melta
Rhino - extra armor

2 Land Speeders - multimeltas, heavy flamers

Land Raider Redeemer - multimelta, extra armor

Predator - autocannon, heavy bolter sponsons, extra armor

Predator - autocannon, heavy bolter sponsons, extra armor

Tournament: Battleforge Games 1-10-09

2009-01-11T09:11:00.003-06:00

The 2009 Battleforge 40k tournament series kicked off last Saturday with a 2000 point ‘eavy tournament. Everyone brought mean cranky lists to try and beat the hell out of one another. There was about 15 or so people there, familiar faces all, with all kinds of different ridiculous armies. Abaddon and the rest of my black legion chaos force stole my space wolves’ land raider from their shelf in my display cabinet and took it for a ride:

Abaddon
Demon Prince – wings, mark of slaanesh, lash of submission
4 Chaos Terminators – 4 champions, 3 combimeltas, 1 pair lightning claws, icon of slaanesh
Land Raider – extra armor
10 Plaguemarines – plague champion with power fist, 2 meltaguns, rhino with extra armor
10 Berzerkers – skull champion with power weapon, rhino with extra armor
10 Thousand Sons – sorceror with doombolt
Obliterator
Obliterator
Obliterator

It was a pretty small army but I hoped the land raider would give Abaddon a better launching platform and make him more of a game-breaker. And it actually might have if it hadn’t been destroyed in the first turn in both my second and third games. I’m still going to keep using the big tank though, now just I need to pick up a bonafide chaos land raider. I also brought back the lash prince instead of the greater demon, exchanging the points for the thousand sons’ rhino. Definitely the better choice where mobility is concerned and he combos with the obliterators’ plasma for some really good killy on terminators and the like, but I still haven’t mastered using him without getting him waxed after only the first lash or so. The thousand sons are great even without a rhino, and can make a stand anywhere since they don’t need cover to get the invulnerable save. They can also serve as pretty tough bait for enemy assault units, who I can then counter-assault with berzerkers or abaddon ftw. The best part about this tournament was beating Black Templars not once, but twice! Rerolling to hit doesn’t mean much when Abaddon wipes entire squads out in one round of combat. Your zeal, it is not so righteous after all! Muahaha! Die bitches!

Game 1 - Black Templars

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary objective: Seize Ground (5 objectives)
Secondary Objective: Destroy the highest point enemy unit
Tertiary Objective: Contest an objective with a non-troop unit
Bonus Points: +1 have a unit in your opponent's deployment zone, +1 have a unit in your own deployment zone

For like the third tournament in a row now, I was paired up against Jay’s xmas black templars in the first round. I was pretty used to his list at this point: thunder hammer marshall, emperor’s champion, 1 small squad of lightning claw/thunder hammer terminators, 1 small squad of powerfist/assault cannon terminators, 2 land raider crusaders, and 4 squads of crusaders with powerfists and meltaguns. The objectives were spread out pretty evenly, and I rolled to go first. I didn’t do much but lash one of his crusader squads and push it back a little bit. Out of 5 lascannon shots I only managed to destroy the multimelta on one of his LRCs. As usual, jay charged forward with his land raiders and crusader squads, popping smoke. The shooty terminators jumped out of the LRC on my left and popped the berserker rhino, killing a couple of the passengers. I lashed the terminators into a ball and opened up on them with 2 obliterator plasma shots and a ton of thousand son inferno bolts, killing most of them and sending the sole survivor running. My plaguemarines drove forward on my right side and popped smoke. On his next turn he jumped the emperor’s champion and his punchy terminators out of the LRC in my center right and assaulted the surviving berzerkers, easily slaughtering the entire squad with furious charge before any had a chance to strike back. He also brought down the demon prince with the other LRC’s hurricane bolter and assault cannon fire. Finally I jumped Abaddon out of his raider and fired a few combi-meltas into his assault terminators, but the little pansies broke and run before I could assault them. As they continued to fall back, I assaulted a nearby crusader squad with my plaguemarines and kept terminators running by being within 6”. His marshall jumped out of the LRC on my left and charged into the thousand sons. They fought it out for three combat turns until my sorceror’s force weapon finally found its mark and brought the bastard down – first force weapon kill ever for him! The 2 obliterators on my left finally wrecked one of his LRCs with twin-linked melta and the obliterator on my right exploded the other. With the templars in full rout I earned a full point victory.

Game 2 - Eldar

Deployment: Spearhead
Primary Objective: Capture and Control
Secondary Objective: Capture a third objective placed exactly between the first two
Tertiary Objective: Destroy 1 enemy heavy support unit
Bonus Points: +1 have an HQ alive at the end of the game, +1 have a troop alive at the end of the game

I played against Kingsley in the second round. He had borrowed a friend’s eldar army and used it to great effect to get up to the first table: farseer with doom and fortune, an avatar, three squads of dire avengers, a small pathfinder squad, two squads of 9 fire dragons in wave serpents, a stock vyper, and two wraithlords, one with a bright lance and rocket launcher, the other with a bright lance and wraithsword. I knew this one would be tough, since my army was designed more for fighting marines than slippery pointy ears. I got first turn again, and advanced my rhinos and land raiders towards the center, popping smoke. The berzerkers went slightly left while the plague marines went towards dead center. I started the thousand sons fairly far forward, and used lash and their inferno bolts to kill a few avengers in one of his nearby squads. The obliterators inflicted a single wound on one of the wraithlords. On his first turn he shot the land raider with his first wraithlord bright lance and got an ‘explodes’ result, killing one of the terminators inside and pinning the squad right off the bat. I think he also killed the demon prince in the first turn, too. I charged into the surviving dire avengers with my plague marines and they fought off harlequins and wraithlords for like 4 turns before finally dying. The berzerkers killed off a second squad but were easily massacred by the avatar. Abaddon wiped out an entire fire dragon squad by himself and almost survived to fuck up the pathfinders holding Kings’ home objective, but was brought down in the open by heavy fire in the fifth turn. Kingsley earned full points to my zero.

Game 3 - Black Templars

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Victory Points
Secondary Objective: Self-destructing center objective
Tertiary Objective: Kill Points

For the third round I was paired up against another black templars army, this time fielded by Jim. He had an emperor’s champion, 2 castellans in terminator armor, 5 squads of double assault cannon tank hunter terminators, 4 squads of crusaders with rocket launchers and plasma guns. Once again I rolled to go first and plowed forward with the land raiders and rhinos. I lashed the squad of terminators with the champion and pounded on it a bit with plasma cannons, killing a few. The thousand sons also moved up and took out a few marines with their inferno bolts. Jim responded by wrecking my obscured land raider with his tank-hunting assault cannons, but at least Abaddon and his buddies weren’t pinned this time. The berzerkers got busted out of their transport, too, and just managed to wipe out a crusader squad on the right side before getting shredded by the terminators. Between Abaddon (who in grand tradition lost his last wound to his own demon weapon), the plague marines, the thousand sons, and the demon prince, I managed to wipe out everything he had by the fifth turn and earned full points.

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 1-03-08

2009-01-05T22:22:00.007-06:00

Awww hell. Another tournament come and gone, this one a 1750 pointer up at the lair. In an effort to encourage myself to get back on the painting wagon, I decided to start the year off with my eldar:

Farseer - jetbike, runes of warding, singing spear, spirit stones, fortune, guide
6 Guardian jetbikes, 2 shuriken cannons, bike warlock w/ singing spear, embolden
6 Guardian jetbikes, 2 shuriken cannons, bike warlock w/ singing spear, embolden
10 Dire Avengers - exarch w/ power weapon, shimmershield, defend, bladestorm
Wave Serpent - bright lances, spirit stones, star engines
6 Fire Dragons - exarch w/ firepike, crackshot
3 Vypers - scatter lasers, shuriken cannons
Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones
Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones
Falcon - scatter laser, holofields, spirit stones

The fire dragons did ok, they're essentially a cheap suicide unit but they can take out vehicles fairly reliably.
I liked the mass dakka that the vypers can put out but even a light breeze can knock them out of the sky. I went 1-2 for the day and had fun zipping around with the Saim Hann.

Game 1 - Black Templars

I drew Jay for my first game. He was playing his epically cheap Holiday Templars, complete with a marshall, emperors champion, venerable dreadnought, 3 squads of 10 crusaders with meltaguns and powerfists, a terminator squad, and 2 LRCs. This was played with dragon lairs communication breakdown mission, essentially the command and control mission with weighted killpoints to determine margine of victory. The other twist is that each player must put an hq unit in the center of the table to represent a meeting of minds gone bad. Well last week I got to kill Eldrad with Abaddon thanks to this stupid rule, so karma paid me back in full with jay rolling to go first and his emperors champion easily slaughtered my bike Farseer. After that his whole army essentially moved towards me for the kill. I left my tanks and transported troops on my left side and zoomed around to the right with the jetbikes. I was able to destroy one of the land raiders but most of my other shooting was ineffective. I held my vypers in reserve for some reason, which was pointless but I still did it in both of my other games Saturday. I contested my own objective and forced him down to a minor victory.

Game 2 - Space Marines

The 2nd round was played using another custom mission called Evacuation. Basically at the beginning of each person's turn after the 1st, they rolled a reserve roll to see if any of their foot troops within 6" of the center would be taken off the board. If so each unit earned 1 kp. Otherwise weighted kill points were in effect, added to your evac points to determine a winner. Josiah had Vulkan, a canoness, a priest, and some celestians in a land raider, an ironclad dred in a droppod, a small marine squad, a small outflanking scout squad, and a couple of sisters of battle squads. I was already at a disadvantage because only foot troops could be evacuated by the shuttles, so that meant I would only be able to get 2 killpoints from that. I was doing ok flying around shooting things when he somehow managed to charge my Farseer's squad with the land raider gang and it essentially ended the game. He evacuated most of his units, but I had evacuated both of my squads that I could and killed just enough things to hold him to a minor victory.

Game 3 - Space Marines

More marines. This time I was paired against a kid that had played 5th edition maybe 3 times total, and actually brought the 2nd edition marine codex to play with, so it turned out a little one-sided. The mission was seize ground with 5 objectives, and I held 3 objectives to his 0 for a massacre.

Saim Ting

2008-12-29T18:39:00.004-06:00

A new SH Eldar list I'm going to try out for a while:

Farseer - bike, stones, doom, fortune, runes of warding
6 Fire Dragons
6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 cannons, warlock with singing spear and embolden
6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 cannons, warlock with singing spear and embolden
6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 cannons, warlock with singing spear and embolden
10 Dire Avengers - exarch w/ bladestorm, power weapon, shimmershield, and defend
Wave Serpent - twin linked bright lances, spirit stones, star engines
2 Vypers - scatter lasers, shuriken cannons
2 Vypers - scatter lasers, shuriken cannons
2 Fire Prisms - holofield, spirit stones
Falcon - scatter laser, holofield, spirit stones

The missing elements are already inbound. Obviously I wince at losing my third fire prism but those dragons are so multipurpose and bitey I can't help trying them out for at least a few games.

Black Legion observed

2008-12-28T16:57:00.004-06:00

So I've been playing a number of different builds using Abaddon and all the cults recently, usually fully mechanized in Rhinos with some terminators, obliterators, and demons in the mix. After a couple tournaments and various friendly games, I'm still moving things around. These are some observations of the different units in the army, by themselves and in the context of the rest of the force:

Abaddon and Slaanesh Terminators - After two games in a tournament yesterday where Abby was barely able to kill half a squad before dying (even with a full bodyguard), I'm putting the brakes on how I use the big guy. Here's what typically happens when I deep strike him with my slaanesh terminators into battle: my opponent fires everything they have at his unit, using heavy weapons as well as disembarked special weapons (plas/melta), wipes out the terminators, wounds Abaddon once or twice, and charges in with assault troops or I charge him in the next turn. Abaddon kills maybe half a squad with Drachnyen, they break, he can't sweeping advance, and he's left out in the open all over again, squish. That's if he doesn't kill himself with his own demon weapon. And it hasn't happened yet, but it's quite possible that the terminators break from all the shooting wounds in some game and Abaddon has to go with them. I contemplated putting them all in a land raider, and I still might try that, but I'd be taking away points from somewhere else. Not being able to do a sweeping advance means a lot more these days, when the loser breaks so often due to the negative Ld modifiers. I think I'm going to ditch them for a while.

Thousand Sons - These guys seem to work just fine without their own rhino, and do best in the largest squad possible (9 + sorceror). I gave up on bolt of change and gave my sorceror doombolt to streamline their usage and add more dakka. Despite the sorceror's force weapon, they can't stand up to much assault and so I'm thinking of pairing them with Abaddon and using them to protect home objectives.

Berzerkers - As long as the enemy doesn't get too many shots into this squad, these guys can fuck shit up pretty bad. I decided against giving them plasma pistols, since furious charge and the champion's power fist is usually good enough anti-tank for them, and I don't want any more pointless wounds on the unit than is absolutely necessary. These guys would also probably do better in a land raider than a rhino.

Noisemarines - I'm going to try dropping their rhino and using these guys as a solid anti-infantry firebase, just like I'm starting to do with the thousand sons. They're better in assault than the thousand sons, but could probably use an anchor like Abaddon or another character. So now I need like 7 or 8 sonic blasters. Haven't decided whether to give them a blastmaster or not or whether to keep the champion's doom siren.

Plaguemarines - If they can get on an objective in cover, they can usually hold out against a lot of shooting and assault. I want to try increasing their squad size from 8 to 10 just to make them that much more annoying. A rhino would still be useful for them to get their meltaguns into proper range of land raiders and such.

Obliterators - Having these guys in 3 separate units of 1, and therefore able to target 3 different units, is nice but a little bit of a liability in kill points missions (especially in custom missions when non-troop units are worth more KP). I'm still getting the hang of when I should deep strike them and when they should start on the board. They do well when they get to come in at close range and blast land raiders or other vehicles with melta.

Flying Lash Prince/Greater Demon - T5 and a 3+/5+ save means the demon prince never lasts very long. He's not so special in assault, either, compared to some other monsters out there. I'm starting to like the cheaper greater demon better with T6 and a 4+ invulnerable.

Lesser Demons - I think I'm over these dudes for a while. They are annoying for an enemy but always seem to lose combat and then suffer even more wounds from being fearless.

So here's a possible future list, with all these things in mind:

Abaddon
Greater Demon
Sorceror - mark of slaanesh, lash of submission, bike
10 Berzerkers - champion with power weapon, rhino with extra armor
10 Plaguemarines - champion with power fist, rhino with extra armor
10 Thousand Sons - sorceror with doombolt
10 Noisemarines - champion with doom siren, power weapon, 8 sonic blasters, blastmaster
3 Obliterators

Alternatively I could swap out the sorceror for a defiler.

Abaddon's Classic Cult Car Expo

2008-12-26T14:32:00.004-06:00

Some pictures in its latest incarnation:

Abaddon and Terminator Bodyguard

Plaguemarines and Noisemarines

Berzerkers and Thousand Sons

Demons, Greater Demon, and Obliterators

And the list:

Abaddon
Greater Demon
5 Chaos Terminator Champions - 3 combi-plasmas, 2 -meltas, icon of slaanesh
8 Berzerkers - skull champion with power weapon and personal icon, Rhino with extra armor
8 Thousand Sons - sorceror with doombolt, personal icon, and meltabomb, Rhino with extra armor
8 Noisemarines - noise champion with doom siren, power weapon, and personal icon, Rhino with extra armor
8 Plaguemarines - plague champion with power fist and personal icon, 2 meltaguns, Rhino with extra armor
10 Lesser Demons
2 Obliterators

Action Report: Chaos vs. Black Templars 12-21-08

2008-12-21T17:28:00.006-06:00

Jay came over today with his Christmas Black Templar army, which will apparently be featured on BOLS pretty soon. He had a marshall with a thunder hammer, emperor's champion, one assault and one shooty squad of terminators, four squads of ten marines in power armor with a meltagun and powerfist sergeant each, and two land raider crusaders. It sounds silly when you write it out but this is a very cool looking army with the xmas lights, wreaths, snow basing, and holiday-themed squad markings all combining to create a very unique look. Unfortunately for me, it is also a bitch and a half to play against. I fielded a familiar chaos list:

Abaddon's Classic Cult Car Expo

Abaddon
5 Terminators - icon of slaanesh, 1 chainfist, 2 combiplasmas, 2 combimeltas, 1 combiflamer
8 Noisemarines - 7 sonic blasters, champion with power weapon, doom siren, and personal icon, rhino with extra armor
8 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, champion with power fist and personal icon, rhino with extra armor
8 Berzerkers - 2 plasma pistols, champion with power weapon and personal icon, rhino with extra armor
8 Thousand Sons - sorceror with doombolt and personal icon, rhino with extra armor
10 Lesser Demons
3 Obliterators

The mission was annihilation with spearhead deployment. Jay won the roll to go first and chose his corner. During deployment I decided to put Abaddon in reserve separately from the terminators, since I was going to try a general divide and conquer strategy and I wasn't sure where the need would be greatest. I deployed the plague marines and noise marines on my right side, with the berzerkers and thousand sons on the left. I failed to seize the initiative and the game was on.

The crusader on my left moved the full distance while the other moved up to shoot its multimelta and assault cannon at my noisemarine rhino. The noisemarine rhino survived a volley of fire, only getting shaken. I flanked out long on my left at first and pulled back a bit on the right. The noisemarines jumped out and laid a crappy volley into the closest crusader squad, killing nothing. On Jay's second turn, the assault terminators charged forth in their LRC into the thousand sons, wiping them out in one round of assault. The plaguemarine rhino was charged by the shooty squad of terminators and the marshall and it exploded, killing one terminator and one plaguemarine in the process. The noisemarines ran over to assist the plaguemarines, while the berzerkers sought to avenge the thousand sons. Abaddon, an obliterator, and the demons joined the fight on the left, and the khorne marines charged in with the demons after some concentrated fire. They were successful, but the chaos survivors were charged the next turn by the closest squad of crusaders. The obliterator was quickly popped by a LRC multimelta. On the right, the plaguemarines and noisemarines killed only one or two more terminators and were both wiped out when a crusader squad joined the fight.

The terminators came in on my third turn, and I tried to deep-strike them in behind the crusader on the right, but they scattered out of effective range. Another obliterator came in on the left and only stunned the LRC with his multimelta. Abaddon charged in to the big fray on the left but rolled a bastard "1" on his first foray of CC for the day; thankfully he saved the wound though. The demons and berzerkers tied combat with the 7 or so crusaders left. Abaddon had much better luck in the next turn, wiping out the survivors singlehandedly! On the right Jay turned around with the other LRC after the marshall and last two terminators jumped in for the ride. He shot at my terminators in cover with several meltaguns and the LRC assault cannon to no avail. They jumped out of cover and tried to chainfist the LRC, penetrating the big tank but only stunning it. Back on the left, the berzerkers moved up with their massacre roll, and I used their icon to bring my last obliterator down inside 6" of one of his LRCs. I made all the right rolls and exploded it. Abaddon and the obliterator moved up through cover, the berzerkers jumped inside the thousand sons rhino, and the demons hid in the back for the rest of the game along with the berzerker rhino. My terminators were wiped out by the marshall and his buddies, though I would have finished off the buddies if it weren't for my shitty chainfist trooper. In my last turn, I shot up a crusader squad on the left with obliterator plasma, and the ensuing leadership brought it within charge range for Abaddon. He killed seven off the bat, bringing it down to just the sergeant, while the berzerkers charged another squad and brought it down to two. And the buzzer signaled the end of the game, with Jay up 8 KP to my 4. Any game with 2 fully painted armies is already great game, but this one was also a lot of fun (even though I got creamed).

Abaddon

2008-12-18T22:28:00.003-06:00

I had so much fun playing with Abaddon in the last tourney I decided to tackle his actual model (before I was just proxying my own termie lord). I actually painted him once in the past, but ended up stripping and looting the miniature to make two different conversions. Jay very generously hooked me up with a clean slate and I started in, with the main goal being consistency with my existing terminators, who would be serving as his bodyguard most of the time. This was also my first model using the new GW inks, specifically badab black ink for the shading of the boltgun metal. All the other washes and inks are old bottles. He came out ok I think.

Action Report: Saim Hann vs. Necrons 12-11-08

2008-12-18T22:04:00.002-06:00

I had an epically silly game against Jay last night up at BFG. I wanted to get a game in with the Saim Hann now that they have a bit of color on them. Jay brought his awesome necron army, including the Nightbringer, 3 squads of 10 warriors, 1 squad of 10 immortals, 2 squads of 4 destroyers, and 2 monoliths. Here was my list:

Farseer – spirit stones, jetbike, runes of warding, guide, doom, mind war, fortune
3 x 7 Jetbike Guardians – 2 shuriken cannons, warlock with embolden and singing spears
10 Dire Avengers – exarch w/ bladestorm, defend, power weapon, and shimmershield
Wave Serpent – twin-linked bright lances, spirit stones
2 Vypers – scatter lasers, shuriken cannons
2 Vypers – starcannons, shuriken cannons
3 Fire Prisms – holofields, spirit stones

Yes, I gave the farseer 4 psychic powers, which does indeed seem pretty ridiculous, but I wanted to see which powers I really used and which ones I could live without. As it turns out, fortune and doom were the most useful and I’ll probably stick with them for the future. Guide is pretty useless for this force since most of the dakka is twin-linked, but I want to give mind war a little more time to see if it can earn its value. Instead of guide I’ll add star engines to the dire avengers’ serpent to help it get across the table faster.

After winning the MIR (most important roll), I decided to go second. I thought about putting everything in reserve, but I got a little paranoid at the last second and started the whole army on the board. I failed to seize the initiative, and he moved his forces up and unleashed a ton of strong gauss from his destroyers and immortals. One squad of jetbikes was wiped out right off the bat. My farseer fortuned his own unit, and I tried to light up the Nightbringer with all my prisms, vypers, and bike shuriken cannons to no avail. On his next turn, both monoliths deep struck in right in front of me, teleporting immortals and warriors up to my front line. He opened up with nearly his entire army on the farseer’s squad, but only one jetbike was killed thanks to fortune. My starcannon vypers were brought down by a monolith gauss array. I turbo-boosted to the left with the farseer’s unit and retreated to my objective with the remaining jetbike squad. The wave serpent continued its flank approach along with the scatter laser vyper squad. I spent a turn trying to prism one of the monoliths with no effect. Of course when Jay moved one of them himself into a piece of terrain on the next turn, it was immobilized. He still used it to move the immortals forward a bit and they fired and charged into the nearby farseer/bike squad. It was a drawn combat with few if any casualties on either side. Destroyers and warrior shooting took the third jetbike squad camping on my home objective down by half. Still in range, I doomed the closest squad of warriors and nearly destroyed them with fire prism and shuriken fire, but one survived and naturally most of them got back up with the help of the monolith. Together with the destroyers they wiped out the third jetbike squad. The Nightbringer finally made it into combat with the farseer’s squad and finished it off fairly quickly. All I had left on that side were two fire prisms, one of them without a main gun. On the other side of the table, the dire avengers got out of their transport and combined fire with my scatter laser vypers and third fire prism to destroy one of the warrior squads. Reloading their weapons after the bladestorm, the avengers got back in their transport and headed towards Jay’s remaining warrior squad sitting squarely on his home objective. On the fifth turn, I contested both objectives by moving my skimmers flat out, two fire prisms for mine and a wave serpent for his. We rolled to go to the sixth turn, and he spent it shooting everything he had at the fire prisms. The holofields and cover saves held up and they somehow survived the turn. He also hauled ass with one squad of destroyers back to his corner to try and prevent my taking it. I jumped my dire avengers out and finished off the last warriors on his objective with the help of the vyper scatter lasers and seven (7!) failed armor saves. It was time for another game length roll, and jay rolled a 4: one more turn! His destroyers arrived at his home objective, opened fire on the dire avenger squad and killed half of them, sending them running back a bit. Without the aid of cover saves, my fire prisms took substantial damage this turn, but when the smoke cleared I was still left with one immobilized, weaponless tank contesting my home objective. The dire avengers regrouped and used the three inch consolidation and a six inch fleet move to grab his objective after my vyper and last fire prism had finished off the destroyers. A ridiculously cheesy win for the eldar!

Main lessons learned in this encounter:
- Spearhead is a bitch for deploying all those jetbikes and tanks. Next time I’m just going to keep them all in reserve.
- Never give up! Stick and move! It looked pretty bad in the beginning, but my flank attack with the dire avengers paid off and they survived to win the game for me.
- Holofielded vehicles are still ridiculously survivable.
- I was right to take spirit stones off of the vyper squadrons. Stunned results become shaken anyway when they’re in a squadron and I want them to be as cheap as possible (I’m still keeping the shuriken cannons!).
- Doom is pretty spectacular for taking down MEQ. Keeping that.

Tournament: Battleforge Games 40k Tournament of Champions 12-7-08

2008-12-10T22:37:00.006-06:00

Seems like it’s been forever since I went to a regular tourney, but I guess it’s only been a couple months. This Saturday was the "tournament of champions" at Battleforge, and the top 9 players (2 people tied for 8th place) from the 2008 monthly tournaments were invited to throw down one last time to win some megadeluxe prizes (or at least a bunch of cool stuff that don’t sell too good). I finished in fourth place for the year, mostly by attending every tournament and collecting painting points the whole time; I think I placed in maybe two or three of the tourneys, but never first. Unsurprisingly, everyone knew each other and had a pretty good time. Most of the folks playing conspired to bring mostly hobbyish armies, even though the ‘eavy tourney rules would be in place. Here’s the list I played:

Abaddon’s Used Cult Car Emporium

Abaddon

4 Terminators – MoCU, 3 combi-plasmas, 1 combi-flamer, 1 chainfist

10 Berzerkers – 2 plasma pistols, champion with power fist and personal icon, rhino with extra armor

10 Thousand Sons – sorcerer with doombolt and personal icon, rhino with extra armor

8 Plaguemarines – 2 meltaguns, champion with power fist and personal icon, rhino with extra armor

8 Noisemarines – champion with power weapon, doom siren, and meltabomb, rhino with extra armor

8 Lesser Demons

3 Obliterators

This was a really fun list to play, as even when I lost I still got to kick some major ass. I replaced my usual lash sorcerer/demon prince with Abaddon the Despoiler (en español: Abaddon El Exterminador) because I’ve noticed that a) a single lash is unpredictable and rarely makes much of a difference in the fight as a whole, and b) since 5th edition came out, many successful armies seem to focus on badass units that put the beatdown on your opponent rather than obsessing about troops and scoring the most objectives (for more on what I’m talking about, read Goatboy’s recent post on Bell of Lost Souls). One thing I might change with this list for next time is to drop the berzerkers and thousand sons squads down to 8 each to add 2 two terminators and 2 lesser demons. Ten berzerkers/1k sons are not that much more effective than 8, and I want to try beefing up Abaddon’s unit to make it even more devastating. It’s really too bad he doesn’t make his own unit fearless; for 275 points he damn well should grant some sort of extra tactical advantage like the marine characters. I only rolled a 1 for his demon weapon once, and of course it took away his last wound. I did forget that he gets to re-roll unsuccessful wounds, which might have actually turned the tide a couple of times, but oh well. I had 3 fun games and a great wrap-up to the 2008 tourney season at BFG. Here's some more pics:

Nick's Emperor's Children vs. Jay's Deathwing

Colby's Orks vs. Robert's Thousand Sons

Frank's Ultramarines vs. Chris' Khorne Demons

Game 1 – Space Marines (Iron Hands)

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary Objective: Seize Ground (5 objectives)
Secondary Objective: Destroy your opponent’s highest point unit
Tertiary Objective: Destroy more HQs than your opponent

Josiah was fielding a master of the forge, librarian, 9 sternguard in a rhino, 25 tactical marines with 1 lascannon and 2 heavy bolter razorbacks, 2 venerable dreadnoughts, 1 ironclad dreadnought in a drop pod, and a thunderfire cannon. This game started off really well for me. On my left, the noisemarines wiped out one combat squad and fought off a second squad and a librarian with the help of the lesser demons. Even though I forgot that drop pods can come in on the first turn and the ironclad was all up in my business, an obliterator came in on time and blew it up. On my right, the plague marines drove up to claim an objective near his deployment zone. I got a little greedy though and jumped them out to melta one of the venerable dreads that was heading towards my relatively defenseless thousand sons. I should have either stayed put on the objective or used the rhino fire point to melta him instead. As it was, I only blew off his close combat arm and the plaguemarines ended up tangled in close combat with the dread and a marine combat squad for the next two or three turns until an obliterator could come over and help. By then it was too late and I wasn’t able to get the right side objective after all. In the middle, the berzerkers drove up and brought down Abaddon. My main goal was to keep his remaining forces away from the center objective that my berzerkers would try and hold. Abaddon and his bodyguard were swarmed by the master of the forge and the sternguard and the big baddie eventually died after failing to save a wound from the demon weapon. The sternguard moved up and contested the middle objective. He also contested the Thousand Sons’ objective with one of his surviving rhinos. We ended up getting a draw on the primary, and he earned the secondary and tertiary.

Game 2 – Dark Angels (Deathwing)

Deployment: Spearhead
Primary Objective: Victory Points
Secondary Objective: Destroy an HQ, elite, fast attack, or heavy support unit
Tertiary Objective: Don’t remember

Jay had Belial, 4 5-man terminator squads, 1 of them kitted out for heavy assault, a multi-melta dreadnought in a drop pod, a predator annihilator with heavy bolter sponsons, a land raider, and a land raider crusader. Holding Abaddon and my oblits in reserve, I veered left with the rhinos and set up a squeeze point between two wooded areas, blocking the space off at first with my rhinos. He charged in with the two Land Raiders, assaulting the thousand sons rhino barricade on the right with Belial's awesome CC unit, and the plaguemarines in the forest on my left with another squad of terminators. A third squad deep struck in further on my right. The plaguemarines were brought down to the 2 meltagunners but the champion survived long enough to wipe his opponents out. I opened the blockade and poured fire into belial's squad with the thousand sons, noisemarines, berzerkers, and one obliterator, then charging them with the lesser demons, berzerkers, and noisemarines. The combined chaos horde wiped out the rest of his terminators. The nurgle marines circled around and melta'd the godhammer land raider, and an obliterator destroyed the crusader. To cap the day off, Abaddon had an epic dreadnought kill . I destroyed everything but the predator and the drop pod, and won the primary and secondary and a bonus point.

Game 3 - Orks

Deployment: Spearhead
Primary Objective: Seize Ground (3 objectives)
Secondary Objective: Have a unit in your opponent's deployment zone with no enemy units in yours
Tertiary Objective: Have a scoring unit within 3 inches of the table center and no enemy units within the 3 inches

Colby was running far fewer orks than the last game we played, but there were still plenty to go around. He had a warboss biker with 4 nob bikers, a big squad of shoota boyz, a squad of tankbustas in a battlewagon, 2 squads of trukk boyz, a squad of 'ard boyz in a trukk, a small squad of deffkoptas, and a shokk attack gun big mek hanging out with a squad of lootas. I decided not to deep strike anyone for this game, putting abaddon in the center to draw fire and reacting to his movements with the cult troops in their rhinos. I went right with my noise marines and left with the thousand sons and berzerkers, trashing the two trukk boyz' transports with obliterator lascannon fire. The thousand sons took up position on one objective, losing their rhino to rokkit fire from the bustas in the battlewagon. I had to send the nurgle marines over to finish off his battlewagon with their meltas, but I eventually ran them back to help out in the center. The noisemarines jumped from their rhino to attack the biker nobz which had just turbo-boosted into charge range. They inflicted a few wounds with the doom siren and pistols, and wiped them out in the subsequent assault. They were counter-attacked by the ard boyz and a squad of the trukk boyz and finished off before the demons could come in and reinforce them. Instead the demons jumped in front of Abaddon's line to try and fend off the trukk boyz that were moving towards the objective I was sitting on in my DZ. Again Abaddon was brought down, but not before fighting off 2 squads of trukk boyz nearly singlehandedly. The berzerkers did eventually have to jump in and finish off the stragglers. The big mek rolled a double 1 for his shokk attack gun and vaporized himself and a few of his buddies nearby. The survivors broke and ran (with a little steady prodding from my noisemarine rhino). The 'ard boyz had jumped back in their trukk, moving to reinforce his assault on my "home" objective. Unfortunately we ran out of time on the 5th turn and I was left holding 2 of the objectives, giving me the primary and him the tertiary.

Random Witch Hunters Army

2008-11-30T14:37:00.003-06:00

Just screwing around with a new DH/WH arrangement. Probably couldn't compete at the heavy level but otherwise it might be pretty decent. Tough armor would be challenging for this one.

Canoness - blessed weapon, inferno pistol, cloak of st. aspira, mantle of ophelia, jump pack, frag grenades, book of st. lucius

Ordo Malleus Inquisitor - psycannon, emperor's tarot, psychic hood, 3 gun servitors with heavy bolters

Eversor Assassin

3 Death Cult Assassins

12 Sisters of Battle - meltagun, heavy flamer, vet SS with book of st. lucius

12 Sisters of Battle - meltagun, heavy flamer, vet SS with book of st. lucius

10 Storm Troopers - 2 flamers
Chimera - smoke launchers, extra armor, hull heavy bolter, pintle heavy stubber

10 Storm Troopers - 2 flamers
Chimera - smoke launchers, extra armor, hull heavy bolter, pintle heavy stubber

8 Seraphim - 2 hand flamers, vet SS with eviscerator, book of st. lucius

Exorcist - extra armor, smoke launchers

Exorcist - extra armor, smoke launchers

6 Retributors - 4 heavy bolters, vet SS with book of st. lucius

More of the Saim

2008-11-29T12:21:00.004-06:00

More progress on the Hann host. The initial coats of mechrite red foundation are done on everything. I put the lighter coat of 50:50 mechrite/blood red on all the bikes, added the racing stripes (pain in the ass!) and started highlighting some of them today. I realized that the last list I posted for the Saim Hann is outdated - I changed it up a bit to add more bikes, a 4th vyper, and bright lances to the dire avenger wave serpent.

Farseer - singing spear, jetbike, runes of warding, guide, fortune, spirit stones

7 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
Warlock - singing spear, jetbike, embolden

7 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
Warlock - singing spear, jetbike, embolden

7 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
Warlock - singing spear, jetbike, embolden

10 Dire Avengers - exarch with defend, bladestorm, shimmershield, power weapon
Wave Serpent - twin-linked bright lances, spirit stones

2 Vypers - star cannons, shuriken cannons, spirit stones

2 Vypers - scatter lasers, shuriken cannons, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Tournament: Baltimore 'Ard Boyz Finals 11-14-08

2008-11-21T16:36:00.018-06:00

I flew up to Baltimore for the 'Ard Boyz finals last Friday with Abe, Thomas, and Nick. Brandon joined us Friday night and they all went on to play 40k and fantasy in the GT over the weekend. I would have stayed to play in the much more appealing 40k GT, but I had to get out to Midland on Sunday for work so I returned to Austin on Saturday afternoon.

The trucks with the tables and terrain arrived 5 hours late on Friday and we started the series about an hour and a half late, playing through till around 10:30. After that we headed over to The Nest by the Days Inn and closed that bitch out with a bit of food and a lot of beer.

Big love to the owner and bartender who showed us a damn good time.

There was a decent amount of terrain on every table I saw, and the scenarios were pretty similar to the first two qualifiers. With 2 minor losses and a major victory, I came in 24th of 46 players, just under the 50th percentile. The two guys that beat me went on to win 10th and 11th place.

At the awards ceremony. The guy that won 1st (chaos demons I believe) wore sunglasses all the time like a world series poker personality. I figured that was how he had won until the netz apparently exploded all over him. Eh, whathaveyou. I'm not going to fight him for the choppa trophy.

Game 1 - Chaos Space Marines

I drew Doc as my first opponent at table 9. Fun game, nice guy. He had a flying nurgle demon prince with warptime, 50 plaguemarines in rhinos, 3 obliterators, and a bunch of nurgle terminators. He was probably in control of the game for the most part, though I did kill a ton more plaguemarines than I thought I would. Barbed stranglers were key in this endeavor. He ended up with a minor victory, only because my without number gaunts arrived just in time to contest my closest objective marker. I outflanked with 4 of my 5 stealer squads, probably 4 too many, although it did allow me to easily eat his big terminator squad which deep struck to close to the table edge.

Game 2 - Chaos Space Marines

My loss took me down to table 15 or so, pairing me up against a necron player that went on to get the last place prize (a WFB boxed set). However there was some issue with the two guys at the table next to us, either they knew each other or had just played each other...? In any case the ref swapped our opponents and I ended up playing Greg and his chaos army. He had Abaddon, a lash bike sorceror, a small squad of chosen in a rhino, 30 noisemarines with sonic blasters, berzerkers in a land raider, 3 obliterators, 10 mok marines in a rhino, and a bunch of lesser demons. Our exchanges were terse at first but things loosened up as he started to kick my ass. One and a half stealer squads made it to charge the noisemarines on my first turn, but when the initial assault only took out half of their number, the mok marines and lesser demons reinforced the fight on my left side and Abaddon wiped the stealers out on the right. His 5-man chosen came in on my right and flamed the hell out of a third stealer squad, and it took me like 2 more turns to finish them off. By this time I was in survival mode to keep my home objective. He was really good about bouncing his ICs around between squads in order to give support to the right units at the right time. One stealer squad outflanked on my left and started towards his objective in the center, but were intercepted by the mok marines and finished off. The land raider and berzerkers made it just short of my objective thanks to some big trees that immobilized the big tank. There was some more fighting in the middle but I held on the last turn and he won a minor victory by having scored more kill points. The noisemarines were awesome, and with the rise of orks lately in the meta, I'm going to have to ditch my own squad's rhino at some point and kit them all out with sonic blasters. They can really lay down some awesome shooting, even on the move.

Game 3 - Orks

I drew up against John for my third game. I felt really bad for him, as he was a good sport even when ridiculous bad luck made his decent ork assault force almost completely ineffective. He had Ghazgull and a squad of nobz in a battlewagon, a warboss and biker nobz, two battlewagons full of burna boyz and slugga boyz, and two squads of trukk boyz. The mission rules left all troops choices off board, which was great for me and bad for him, especially when most of his troops didn't come on until the 4th turn. I took out one of the battlewagons first turn and immobilized the other. On the second turn, concentrated fire took out enough just enough bike nobz to force a leadership, which they failed, cue bosspole, ah shit failed the re-roll, 3d6 back to the table edge, adios to like 6 bike nobz and a warboss. Devourer and venom cannon dakka shredded the two trukk boyz vehicles and did the same to the occupants on the following turn.

Ghazgull and company made it up to the front for the fifth and last turn, slamming their wagon through trukk wrekkage and charging into a hive tyrant, tyrant guard, and a zoanthrope. They wrecked shop pretty hard, leaving only the hive tyrant standing with 1 wound left. I responded by charging in with 36 genestealers. It took a lil bit to roll (re-rolling misses) 108 rending attacks, and I killed all the nobz but ghazgull remained with 2 wounds. The kill points spread gave me a major victory.

Grey Knights:

Salamanders:

Drop-pod Space Wolves:

Genestealer cult (ork rules):

LED-enabled, Egyptian-themed Tzeentch chaos force:

An excellent Black Templars, complete with chanting monastery:

Valhallans and awesome bear Rough Riders:

Fritz' awesome Saim Hann:

Nick:

Thomas:

Brandon:

Abe:

Macharian Crusade Week 4

2008-11-10T17:43:00.003-06:00

Following the pacification of Narn at the hands of the Methalor Penal Legion, the 6th Army proceeded to their next objective: Palus Olidus. Dense fog and vegetation covering the planet’s surface prevented long range reconnaissance scans and necessitated the deployment of small survey teams. When more than half of them failed to report back, and survivors reported close range fighting against highly aggressive native organisms, a detachment of Catachans from the 6th Army was dispatched to secure landing zones and gather further intelligence. Several different categories of insectoid xenoforms were identified at the cost of entire platoons of jungle fighters.

Scout elements came under attack almost immediately upon landfall. Multiple squads were surrounded and wiped out in short order by large groups of agile man-sized creatures that burst from clandestine tunnels and attacked viciously with tooth and claw. Counter-attacks by flamethrower units and heavy armor were successful in repelling the vanguard creatures, but the catachan lines were once again overrun by larger creatures that swept man and tank aside like children’s toys. After Kariyapa’s cadre of veterans downed one of the gargantuan leader beasts with plasma and melta weapons, the carcass was retrieved and transported to the command frigate holding orbit above Palus Olidus. Although xeno-biologists working with the 6th Army have identified several anatomical weaknesses that could potentially be exploited in future fighting, the lack of reproductive organs suggests a eusocial community structure such as that observed in hymenopterons. When the scientists posited the existence of what they called a “grub-mother,” Commandant General Arrian astutely observed, “It must be something we haven’t seen yet.”

Game result: Draw

Warhost Progress

2008-11-09T20:30:00.004-06:00

Making some progress on the Saim Hann warhost. I decided to use the new guardian heads and torsos for all the bikers, and they're still coming in the mail, so I got started on the bikes. I've finished the base colors for each, using mechrite red, boltgun metal, chaos black, regal blue, and shining gold.

Here's a nearly-complete prototype. He still lacks the Saim Hann decal and flag, the gems need a varnish, and I haven't decided exactly how to differentiate squads on their helmets(probably with stripes and solid colors).

Macharian Crusade Week 3

2008-10-24T19:15:00.008-06:00

Another epic battle this week, as the Catachans did their part to push the 6th army through the Christos battlezone. The rogue band of world eaters who had fled to Elinia following the Horus Heresy were once more baited into a ferocious charge, but this time the imperial line held and the traitor marines were contained and effectively defeated. After being delayed by bad intelligence and poor planning on several key occasions in the fight for control of the system, Kariyapa requisitioned himself a Chimera and accompanied a squad of his finest veterans straight into the heart of the enemy. He ordered his remaining on-world forces to assemble into the forested highlands to the south of the enemy bastion for a final assault. Fighting in their element, the veterans and elite jungle fighters took up ambush positions amidst the thick underbrush while the armor and heavy weapons held back and zeroed in on the treeline where the enemy would emerge. At the spearhead of the initial attack, a land raider full of traitor terminators burst from cover heading directly towards the forward guns. Kariyapa and his bodyguard surged forward in their chimera to intercept. The veterans disembarked in the path of the heavy tank, leveled their meltaguns and inflicted a direct hit, triggering a huge explosion that killed one terminator inside and left the survivors entangled in wreckage.

Demolisher tanks and heavy weapon teams vaporized the enemy leaders as they emerged on the left side of the Catachan line. After the most direct threats had been eliminated, the imperials focused their shots on the scattered infantry, eventually wiping them out to a man. Devastating assaults from enemy walkers prevented any early victory celebrations, however, and even danger-close ordnance fire could not slow their implacable advance on the Catachan command elements. Reports of these khorne demon engines continuing to wreak havoc on imperial positions are, in all probability, highly exaggerated, as nothing (previously encountered) could have survived the final orbital bombardment of the area surrounding the traitor stronghold.

The Christos warzone has been substantially pacified and the majority of the 6th army continues on towards the Palus Olidus system. Early intelligence reports hint at paranoid human technocracies, highly dangerous native fauna, and isolated pockets of cultist enclaves. The Catachans have taken heavy casualties but the survivors are now grittier and more battle-hardened than ever before.

Game result: Draw

Photos 1 and 3 taken by Frank and 2 taken by Jim

Tournament: Battleforge Games 10-18-08

2008-10-21T12:58:00.011-06:00

Saturday was another hobby tournament at Battleforge. I decided to take Wolves this time. Here's the list:

Wolf Priest – plasma pistol, wolf pelt, frag grenades, 2 fenrisian wolves

Wolf Guard Battle Leader – frost blade, bolt pistol, wolf pelt, frag grenades

Wolf Guard Battle Leader – frost blade, bolt pistol, wolf pelt, frag grenades

5 Wolf Scouts – 2 plasma pistols, 2 power weapons, meltagun, frag grenades
Wolf Guard Leader – power fist, bolt pistol, wolf tooth necklace

9 Grey Hunters – 2 plasma pistol/ccws, 2 bolt pistols/power fists, 1 meltagun, 4 bolters
Rhino – extra armor

9 Grey Hunters – 2 plasma pistol/ccws, 2 bolt pistols/power fists, 1 meltagun, 4 bolters
Rhino – extra armor

9 Blood Claws – 2 power fists, flamer

Land Speeder – multimelta, heavy flamer

Land Speeder – multimelta, heavy flamer

3 Attack Bikes

Predator – twin-linked lascannon, heavy bolter sponsons, extra armor

Vindicator – siege shield, extra armor

Land Raider – extra armor

When I pulled up there was quite a gaggle of geeks gathered round the front door, most of them there to play in a D&D tournament. It appeared we might not have enough folks for a tourney, but eventually more 40kers showed up to make 8 players total. There was maybe 2 fully painted armies other than my own, including J Wolf's Tallarn and Jay's Eldar. In a break from tradition, I was never paired up with Jay, and in the end I went 1-2 and came away with best painted.

Game 1 – Orks

Deployment: Pitched battle
Primary objective: Capture and control
Secondary objective: Destroy most expensive enemy unit
Tertiary objective: Table quarters

Colby had over 140 orks, consisting of a couple big meks, one with a force field in a battlewagon with a bunch of burna boyz and the other with a shokk attack gun leading a squad of lootas, tankbustas, hard boyz, a couple big slugga boyz squads, a big squad of shoota boyz, 3 or 4 koptas, and a battery of lobbas. We only got through 3 turns before time was called, but it didn’t matter much as most of my forces, including the land raider, had already been destroyed by then. My smaller army just couldn’t deal with that many greenskins at once, and it didn’t help that he was rolling very well while I had almost zero luck. My plan was to hold back with the transports until he got close enough to charge with the blood claws in the land raider. This went down the toilet pretty fast when he destroyed one rhino of hunters with the lootas in the first turn and then wrecked the land raider with his shokk attack gun in the second. The koptas outflanked on the second turn, first immobilizing then destroying the vindicator. The best thing I did in the entire game was to kill enough tankbustas to make them fall back; of course they regrouped in the following turn and were back in the game like nothing happened. The game ended with him earning full points to my zero.

Game 2 – Chaos

Deployment: Spearhead
Primary objective: Seize Ground
Secondary objective: Kill points
Tertiary objective: Don’t remember

For my second match I drew Adam and his mixed chaos force. He had a jump lord with lightning claws, a flying khorne demon prince, a greater demon, a small squad of chosen with mixed special weapons, a squad of plague marines in a rhino, a squad of MoN marines with a heavy bolter, another squad of MoN marines with a rhino, a squad of khorne raptors, and two defilers. We rolled for 3 objectives and he won first turn, taking the quarter closest to 2 of the objectives. His veterans infiltrated to my right behind a building, popped out in the first turn and immobilized one of my rhinos. The plaguemarines drove forward and disembarked, followed by the demon prince. One squad of hunters and battle leader charged into the plaguemarines, the other into the veterans, both wolves squads decimating their opponents. The plague champion was left standing, however, and was possessed by the greater demon in the next turn. The demon prince charged the other squad. Both battle leaders were killed, but eventually the hunters' powerfists prevailed and the big bastards were brought down. The defilers immobilized the land raider early on, leaving the wolf priest and blood claws stranded once again. They came out to help out the grey hunters, but after the hunters finished off the demons by themselves, the squad returned to the safety of the raider. They disembarked once more and charged the raptors who deep struck just behind my front line, wiped them out, and claimed my home quarter objective. The two half-strength grey hunter squads ran forward to grab a second objective. The squad of chaos marines driving over in their rhino to attack them was disabled by a wolf scout ambush. The marines disembarked and wiped the scouts out with shooting in the next turn, but they had accomplished their objective by stalling his last troop unit. The defilers eventually fell to lascannon and demolisher fire, and I wiped out the chaos marines holding the third objective, putting me up 2-0.

Game 3 - Chaos

Deployment: Pitched battle
Primary objective: Victory points
Secondary objective: Finish the game with a troops unit inside the enemy deployment zone
Tertiary objective: Finish the game with a troops unit within 3 inches of the table center

I played my third match against the other Adam, who brought his pre-heresy World Eaters. He had a chaos lord with demon weapon and a squad of berzerkers in a land raider, several squads of MoK marines in rhinos with a lash sorceror riding along in one of them, an obliterator, some khorne raptors, and a squad of lesser demons. It was a very entertaining game with plenty of momentum swings in both directions. He drove forward with the sorceror's rhino, and our land raiders exchanged lascannon fire. His was a better aim and managed to quickly immobilize mine (I really have to switch out the apparently worthless treads on my broke-ass raider). I kept the wolf priest and blood claws inside for a last second dash to the center. The attack bikes and land speeders went right to engage one rhino full of chaos marines coming my way. The marines jumped out a couple times, first destroying one of the speeders, and then driving further to wipe out my bikes. I sent the other speeder to pop his land raider, but even at close range the multimelta couldn't manage to pierce the armor (only rolled a 13). His sorceror and accompanying squad of MoK marines drove straight at me, jumped out, and popped one of my grey hunter rhinos. The sorceror lashed them and the chaos lord and berzerkers jumped out of their land raider and finished them off before heading over to krak attack my predator. I decimated his raptors with shooting, but the meltagun raptor survived to eventually hunt down my vindicator, which had been fleeing to my table edge after its main gun was destroyed. The other grey hunters drove straight towards his table edge before circling around to block the sorceror's escape and pop his transport with a melta hit from the back of their own rhino. As he stumbled out of the wreckage, the land raider finished him off with a single lascannon shot. The scouts attacked from his table edge and tried to melta the land raider, but again I got a 13 and failed to penetrate. Somehow the brave old bastards weathered a turn of shooting from one of the nearby marine squads and a full charge from a deep-striking demon squad, broke free and got another melta shot off at the raider, this time hitting the fuel tanks and sending it sky high. A bad ass turn of events, alas it just wasn't enough to put me over in points. One interesting thing to note - the fenrisian wolves have special rules that allow them to be removed as casualties before the character they're bought for, which (very briefly) came in handy in the wolf priest's last stand against Adam's chaos lord. He ran out of my immobilized land raider as I planned, leaving the blood claws squad who themselves ran for the center. The priest and wolves leapt headlong into the chaos lord and berzerkers. It was all for nought, however, when the priest totally whiffed and died to subsequent powerfist attacks. In the last turn, the chaos lord and marines charged into the blood claws holding the center, and although the lord was squished by powerfist attacks, the rest of the chaos marines finished the blood claws off and claimed the third objective. He won the primary, secondary, and tertiary, and I got just the secondary.

Macharian Crusade Week 2

2008-10-19T19:01:00.004-06:00

This week the Catachans met defeat once again, this time at the hands of heretical zealots on the planet Christos. Josiah was fielding a canoness with celestians in a land raider, a priest, an inquisitor with 3 multimelta servitors, two squads of sisters in rhinos, dominions in a immolator with twin-linked heavy bolters and blessed ammo, a small squad of seraphim with 1 or 2 inferno pistols, an exorcist, retributors with 4 heavy bolters, and a penitent engine. We played with pitched battle deployment and the seize ground objective with 3 objectives. I had first turn but shooting was totally ineffective given the intervening terrain. Aside from the retributors in the middle and the penitent engine on the right, he attacked my left flank with his entire army, leading off with the land raider. One squad of my veterans outflanked in the third turn, and though they destroyed the land raider with their meltaguns, it was already too late. The canoness and celestians had already disembarked and wrecked shop on an entire infantry platoon, a hellhound, and one of my demolishers. It was a similar story with the penitent engine. Kariyapa and my second squad of vets outflanked on that side and it down with their meltaguns, but not before the walker had wrecked my other demolisher that had immobilized itself in difficult terrain. After the exorcist destroyed my other hellhound and command squad chimera, it was essentially over and I conceded.

Game result: Loss

The 6th army is one victory away from progressing beyond Christos, but given that we'll be fighting hell on tyranids in Palus Olidus next, things will probably only get worse. I want to shift some things around and bring in a win before we clear our first warzone.

Shoehorn Wolves

2008-10-13T21:18:00.004-06:00

I picked up a box of tactical marines with my third place win at ‘Ard Boyz with the intent to have enough models to field a standard space marine army using their shiny new codex. Mainly I needed to be able to replace all my plasma pistol and powerfist grey hunters with more boringly equipped marines. However, after comparing my potential list with my standard wolves list, I’m not so sure that the army would be much better. Wolves will retain all their old benefits and get many auxiliary units (e.g. land speeders and attack bikes) at cheaper prices.

Here’s the vanilla marine list I wanted to try:

Sicarius
Chaplain – plasma pistol
Venerable Dreadnought – plasma cannon, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod
5 Scouts – close combat blades and bolt pistols, camo cloaks, sergeant with powerfist
10 Tactical Marines – meltagun, lascannon, sergeant with powerfist, rhino with extra armor
10 Tactical Marines – meltagun, lascannon, sergeant with powerfist, rhino with extra armor
8 Assault Marines –free rhino with extra armor (replaces jump packs), flamer
3 Land Speeders – multimeltas and heavy flamers
3 Attack Bikes
2 Predators – twin-linked lascannon, heavy bolter sponsons, extra armor

Not saying it’s the best construction possible from the new codex, but it’s the closest thing to my latest wolves list. Here’s that:

Rune Priest – frost blade, runic staff, chooser of the slain, belt of russ, wolf pelt, frag grenades
Wolf Guard Battle Leader – 2 lightning claws, wolf pelt, frag grenades
Venerable Dreadnought – plasma cannon, heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke launchers, drop pod
5 Wolf Scouts – 2 plasma pistols, 1 meltagun, 2 power weapons
9 Grey Hunters – 2 plasma pistols/ccws, 2 powerfists/pistols, 1 meltagun, 4 bolters, wolf guard leader with powerfist, bolt pistol, wolf pelt, wolf tooth necklace, rhino with extra armor
9 Grey Hunters – 2 plasma pistols/ccws, 2 powerfists/pistols, 1 meltagun, 4 bolters, wolf guard leader with powerfist, bolt pistol, wolf pelt, wolf tooth necklace, rhino with extra armor
8 Blood Claws – 2 powerfists, rhino with extra armor
2 Land Speeders – multimeltas and heavy flamers
3 Attack Bikes
2 Predators – twin-linked lascannon, heavy bolter sponsons, extra armor

The real advantage of the vanilla is Sicarius and his surprise attack, battle-forged heroes, and rites of battle special rules. But the wolves list can fairly approximate two of these with their own rules anyway and leadership has never really been a problem for space wolves, even after they lost the against all odds benefit. Since they're usually up in the enemy's face and don't take heavy weapons in the squads, being forced to fall back isn't that big of a deal. Being able to re-roll seize the initiative might be marginally helpful, but the wolves venerable dreadnought gives you a similar effect anyway, plus he’s got 3 base attacks and comes cheaper than the vanilla version. Sicarius can grant scout, infiltrate, tank hunters, or counter-attack to a single tac squad, but everyone in the wolves army has counter-attack already (not to mention additional attacks for those wearing wolf pelts). Wolf scouts are slightly more expensive than their vanilla counterparts but are still the better with their rear-guard attack and more special weapon options. My blood claws won’t get to re-roll misses in the first round of combat like assault marines led by a chaplain, but a) they get one more attack on the charge, b) they can have more powerfists, and, most importantly, c) they are a scoring unit!

This is by no means an exhaustive comparison of the two armies, but it probably puts to rest my plans for watering down my wolves just to use the new hotness. I should be ashamed of myself anyway - Russ would have rolled in his... well, rolled wherever the fuck he is. I'll keep the spare tac marines handy just in case the next wolves update leaves me no choice.

Tournament: Battleforge ('Ard Boyz Semifinals) 10-11-08

2008-10-12T15:18:00.010-06:00

I changed my 'ard boyz list a tad between the first round last month and the second held this past Saturday. The zoanthropes and lictors had never made much of a difference, so I decided to scoot them out, make all my stealer squads scuttlers, and bring in a third sniperfex. Here's the whole shebang:

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, extended carapace, enhanced senses, toxin sacs, shadow in the warp
3 Tyrant Guard - 1 with lash whips

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, extended carapace, enhanced senses, toxin sacs, warp blast
3 Tyrant Guard - 1 with lash whips

5 x 12 Genestealers - feeder tendrils, scuttlers

16 Gaunts - fleshborers, without number

3 x Carnifex - barbed strangler, venom cannon, extended carapace, enhanced senses, reinforced chitin

The warp blast on the one tyrant was an afterthought really, I just couldn't find a better place to spend the points. I didn't need scuttlers much for this tourney, and when I did outflank with a squad or two, it was only marginally helpful at best. They could have just as well started on the board. Most of the really hard armies I come across just don't have the stacks and stacks of heavy bolters that would take this list to pieces, and as such I've been able to effectively play the waiting/counter-assault game with my stealers while my tyrant and fex bio-guns blow shit apart for several turns. Once I've destroyed the worst enemy dakka and disabled their transports, the stealers swarm in and wipe out survivors. There were over 20 people playing in the semi-finals at Battleforge, with only six of us from Austin. I had three fun rounds against congenial opponents. Strangely (or maybe not so strange), the standings came out exactly like the first round - Nick in first place, Josiah in second, and me bringing up third - go Austin! I still don't know if I'll be attending the finals in Baltimore, but I need to decide here pretty quick if I want to have enough time to make plans.

Game 1 - Dark Eldar

Jeremy had an archon with bodyguard in a raider, dracon with bodyguard in a raider, 10 wyches in a raider (always strike first combat drug), drazhar, 4 jetbikes (reroll to hit combat drug), 4 squads of 10 warriors with 2 dark lances each, 2 raider squads, and 3 ravagers with dark lances. I wasn't 100% confident about my chances at first, having lost my last game against the sadistic pinheads, but after a couple of excellent turns of shooting I felt like I had it back in the bag. I concentrated fire on the ravagers, which I knew could devastate my own long range guns, and the venom cannons brought each of the heavy skimmers down in the first two turns easy as pie. The two massive HQ units as well as the wyches were threatening me on the right in their transports, so I brought them down next. Mass devourer shots and a couple of genestealer charges finished the grounded survivors off and it put me far enough ahead in killpoints to earn a massacre. It was a cool army played by a skillful opponent, but just not as effective given how badly DE skimmers were hosed by 5th edition vehicle rules. With a holofield equivalent in their next codex revision, they'd likely be back in business.

Game 2 - Eldar

My second opponent had received full points for a bye in the first round and so found himself at table 2 for his first game of the day. He had Eldrad, a squad of 10 warlocks, 10 banshees in a wave serpent, 8 harlequins, 10 striking scorpions, 2 squads of dire avengers in wave serpents, 2 squads of 5 pathfinders, 2 squads of 5 dark reapers including exarchs with tempest launchers, crack and fast shot. We both set up 2 objectives near our own deployment zones with the 5th in the center. He used Eldrad's divining douche or whatever to move him and the warlock squad along with the harlequins over directly in front of me. Not real sure what the strategy was there, but it brought them closer to my tyrant devourer fire and scuttling stealers, which was fine by me. His own outflanking scorpions came on from the right and charged into a carnifex, who only shrugged his shoulders, stomped one or two, and waited for one of my flaking stealer squads to dispense with the annoying little greenies. Eldrad and company went down after several turns of combat with another stealer squad. My fexes downed the dire avenger wave serpents and the tyrants wiped them out with mass devourer fire. In the end, I only lost two stealer squads and a few tyrant guard, and captured four objectives to his zero, earning me another massacre. Unfortunately, it sent me right into hell's maw, a.k.a. Nick's annoyingly successful Black Templars.

Game 3 - Black Templars

I'd seen mighty Bulwark go down in flames against Nick's templars at Table 1 in the third round of the 'ard boyz qualifier last month (keeping him from placing), so I wasn't too keen on facing off against them myself. I eventually decided to hang back and try to whittle down his infantry with shooting until I could counter-assault to prevent him from owning both objectives and earning a massacre. He had something like 5 big mixed squads of templars, 2 squads of 5 assault terminators, 3 melta/flamer land speeders, and 2 crusaders. Marshall Helbrecht and the Emperor's Champion were somewhere in all that mess, too. My shooting had little effect and he eventually made it over to my lines, destroying everything in his way, but the game ended on turn 5 and I was still controlling (or at least contesting) my home objective. Genestealers have little chance against power armored marines with preferred enemy, especially when you're not rolling too hot for rending, and given any other scenario it would have gone much worse. He was far ahead in kill points but without both objectives he only earned a minor victory.

Macharian Crusade Week 1

2008-10-09T21:57:00.008-06:00

The 6th army, led by Commandant-General Arrian and including Catachan jungle fighters, Methalor penal legionnaires, and the mechanized Terrax Guard, stumbled out of the gate in their first battles against the ravening traitor hordes of Elinia. Arrian showed his hand particularly in my game, first by carelessly deploying my catachans in the chilly northern wastes, and then by pulling my very nearly victorious forces back after a long and devastating fight. I faced off against Frank's khorne devotees, which included a lord on a juggernaut, a flying demon prince, 5 terminators with combi-weapons and a reaper, a dreadnought, 4 squads of 8 berzerkers, a land raider, and a vindicator. I used the list from my last post. We had the annihilation mission with spearhead deployment. He went first and killed a few guardsmen with a demolisher blast. The catachans responded with their own ordnance and exploded the land raider, killing 3 of the berzerkers inside right off the bat. The demon prince flanked around and destroyed 2 tanks and disabled the other for the dreadnought to eventually finish off. Two squads of berzerkers and the juggernaut lord wiped out my front-line jungle fighters, but I was eventually able to wipe them out with tons of flamer templates. My sentinels and one of the veteran squads came in on my left table edge and managed to do a little damage, but Sariyapa and his veterans came in on my right and were stranded without a job for the rest of the game. In my phase of turn 7 Frank was well ahead in kill points, but I had wiped out everything of his but 3 chaos terminators. My hellhound killed one and the chimera levelled its weapons at the survivors and inflicted 4 saves. The first termimator died, but the second passed both saves for the win.

Game result: Loss

It was a great first week, though the inherent weaknesses of the guard were on full display at many of the tables. Still, there's few more satisfying moments in 40k than a successful demolisher cannon hit. The 6th army lost all of its battles, but I had an epic game (probably my most enjoyable since 5th edition came out) and can't wait for week 2.

Macharian Crusade Preview 2

2008-10-08T21:16:00.007-06:00

Here's Kariyapa, finished for the most part, with a couple heavy flamer troopers I was painting up at the same time. They had been in my guard bitz bag for years and I always liked the models so I was glad to have a reason to finally paint them (because who actually uses jungle fighters?). I changed up Kariyapa's knife a bit to give it a sick hook tip; I think I will call it the catachan land shark.

Also, here's an alternate 2k catachan list I put together, dropping jungle fighters for everyone but the 2 heavy flamer skirmisher squads:

Kariyapa

Command HQ - Junior officer with bolter, grenade launcher, missile launcher, veteran with standard, hardened fighters

4 Hardened Veterans - Veteran sergeant with plasma pistol, 3 meltaguns, hardened fighters

4 Hardened Veterans - Veteran sergeant with plasma pistol, 3 meltaguns, hardened fighters

Infantry Platoon A
Command Squad - Junior officer with bolter, 4 flamers, hardened fighters
Chimera - pintle heavy stubber, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke
Infantry Squad 1 - plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad 2 - plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Infantry Platoon B
Command Squad - Junior officer with bolter, grenade launcher, plasma gun, missile launcher, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad 1 - plasma gun, missile launcher, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad 2 - plasma gun, missile launcher, hardened fighters

Hellhound - pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke

Hellhound - pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke

3 Sentinels - heavy flamers, hardened fighters

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, extra armor

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, extra armor

Leman Russ - hull heavy bolter, sponson heavy bolters, pintle heavy stubber, extra armor

Macharian Crusade Preview 1

2008-10-06T11:26:00.002-06:00

I put a little work into my Macharian Crusade campaign army this weekend. After some hemming and hawing, I decided to go with the Catachans in the 6th army led by Lt. General Kariyapa. I’ll be fighting alongside the Methalor Penal Legion and Terrax Guard Armored Company. I don’t own any ogryns and I didn’t have enough extra models to make any special weapon squads, but I was able to use most of the Catachan doctrines with my guard collection to round out three different sized armies. I also converted a model for Lt. General Kariyapa, complete with autopistol, power weapon, and bionic eye attachment (damn you Thomas for drawing him with that thing on his face). He’ll most likely infiltrate or outflank along with my veterans for a little extra punch from his poison pistol and close combat attacks. Here’s Kariyapa at the moment, converted and primed, ready for painting:

I made him using legs from a Vindicare assassin, autopistol from an old necromunda sorceror, tank commander torso, catachan head, arms, legs, and backpack. His bionic eye was made from carving up a little laspistol barrel and green-stuffing it to his face. He’s not perfect, but after painting he should come out ok.

Finally, here are my three army lists for small, medium, and large games, using (most of) the standard Catachan doctrines as described in the guard codex:

Small (1500)

Kariyapa

Command HQ – Junior officer with bolter, veteran with standard, grenade launcher, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Fire Support Squad – heavy bolters, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

4 Hardened Veterans – Vet sergeant with plasma pistol, 2 meltaguns, 1 plasma gun, hardened fighters

Infantry Platoon
Command Squad – Junior officer with bolter, 2 grenade launchers, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Armored Fist Squad – plasma gun, missile launcher, hardened fighters
Chimera – turret multilaser, pintle heavy stubber, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke

Hellhound – pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke

2 Sentinels – heavy flamers, hardened fighters

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, smoke

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, smoke

Medium (2000)

Kariyapa

Command HQ – Junior officer with bolter, veteran with standard, grenade launcher, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Fire Support Squad – heavy bolters, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

4 Hardened Veterans – Vet sergeant with plasma pistol, 2 meltaguns, 1 plasma gun, hardened fighters

4 Hardened Veterans – Vet sergeant with plasma pistol, 2 meltaguns, 1 plasma gun, hardened fighters

Infantry Platoon
Command Squad – Junior officer with bolter, 2 grenade launchers, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Armored Fist Squad – plasma gun, missile launcher, hardened fighters
Chimera – turret multilaser, pintle heavy stubber, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke

Hellhound – pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke

Hellhound – pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke

2 Sentinels – heavy flamers, hardened fighters

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, smoke

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, smoke

Leman Russ – hull heavy bolter, sponson heavy bolters, pintle heavy stubber, extra armor

Large (2500)

Kariyapa

Command HQ – Junior officer with bolter, veteran with standard, grenade launcher, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Chimera – turret multilaser, pintle heavy stubber, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke

Fire Support Squad – heavy bolters, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Fire Support Squad – autocannons, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Anti-Tank Squad – missile launchers, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Mortar Squad - jungle fighters, hardened fighters

4 Hardened Veterans – Vet sergeant with plasma pistol, 2 meltaguns, 1 plasma gun, hardened fighters

4 Hardened Veterans – Vet sergeant with plasma pistol, 2 meltaguns, 1 plasma gun, hardened fighters

Infantry Platoon
Command Squad – Junior officer with bolter, 2 grenade launchers, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, heavy flamer, jungle fighters, hardened fighters
Infantry Squad – plasma gun, missile launcher, jungle fighters, hardened fighters

Armored Fist Squad – plasma gun, missile launcher, hardened fighters
Chimera – turret multilaser, pintle heavy stubber, hull heavy flamer, extra armor, smoke

Hellhound – pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke

Hellhound – pintle heavy stubber, extra armor, smoke

3 Sentinels – heavy flamers, hardened fighters

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, smoke

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, smoke

Leman Russ – hull heavy bolter, sponson heavy bolters, pintle heavy stubber, extra armor

Jetbike Aces

2008-09-26T00:11:00.003-06:00

Since I wanted to play my jetbikes in slightly larger squad sizes instead of using a bunch of little units, I needed a couple more bikers and a couple less warlocks. I took the two warlocks I wasn't going to use and gave them guardian heads. I need to make one more of these guys and then each of my three jetbike squads will have team leaders. They don't represent anything rules-wise, but it will be nice to have an additional model stand out in each unit besides the warlocks.

I also switched out my dire avenger exarch's twin cats with a power weapon and shimmershield. I am somewhat dubious as to the shield's real worth, but it does make for a cool swordsman pose in any case.

Oye O'Shovah

2008-09-21T17:17:00.003-06:00

Did I mention I was making a tau farsight army? This list is about 25 points shy of 2000. Probably not too 'eavy, but after I won the battlesuit megabox or whathaveyou, I only need to get the devilfish and fire warriors now to complete the collection.

farsight
4 shasvre bodyguard
CiB/plasma rifle/mt
plasma rifle/missile pod/mt
plasma rifle/burst cannon/mt
plasma rifle/missile pod/drone controller/mt
marker drone

3 crisis suits
plasma rifle/missile pod/mt
plasma rifle/burst cannon/mt
team leader
plasma rifle/missile pod/mt
drone controller
marker drone

3 crisis suits
fusion blaster/burst cannon/mt
fusion blaster/flamer/mt
team leader
fusion blaster/flamer/mt
drone controller
marker drone

6 stealth suits
2 fusion guns
team leader
drone controller
marker drone

12 fire warriors
shasui
markerlight
devilfish
disruption pod

12 fire warriors
shasui
markerlight
devilfish
disruption pod

12 fire warriors
shasui
markerlight
devilfish
disruption pod

2 broadsides
2 targetting arrays
team leader
hardwired target lock
hardwired drone controller
2 shield drones

Saim Hann Private Reserve

2008-09-17T22:18:00.006-06:00

So, I was going over my last 2k Saim Hann list (not intended to be especially 'eavy but 3 fire prisms is pretty mean), which currently looks something like this:

Farseer - jetbike, spirit stones, mind war, fortune, guide, runes of warding, singing spear

6 Guardian jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
Warlock - jetbike, embolden, singing spear

6 Guardian jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
Warlock - jetbike, embolden, singing spear

6 Guardian jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
Warlock - jetbike, embolden, singing spear

10 Dire avengers
Exarch - diresword/pistol, bladestorm, defend
Wave serpent - twin-linked scatter laser, shuriken cannon, spirit stones, star engines

Vyper - scatter laser, spirit stones, shuriken cannon, holofields

Vyper - scatter laser, spirit stones, shuriken cannon, holofields

Vyper - scatter laser, spirit stones, shuriken cannon, holofields

Fire Prism - spirit stones, holofields, star engines

Fire Prism - spirit stones, holofields, star engines

Fire Prism - spirit stones, holofields, star engines

Anyway, I was thinking this army might do well to take advantage of the 5th edition reserve rules. Holding everything back could be beneficial for several reasons:

The main strength of the army is being able to engage the enemy on your own terms. This tactic might be the most drastic expression of that, essentially a drop pod army with a little less reach but the ability to redeploy surviving forces (by hauling ass and regrouping) if the enemy comes on too strong.

Given that the bikes all have to ride flying bases, absolute cover is pretty impossible with any bike squad size over 4 or 5. If I didn't get first turn, any decent gunline could make mincemeat of many key units before I could budge (or cast fortune). But not if I didn't have anything on the board yet! And since deployment zone choice would be pretty moot, I could always choose to go second and deny my opponent even more time to shoot up my guys.

Moving on from my own table edge is not that big of a deal given the ridiculous movement capabilities of every single unit. In spearhead deployment, I could attack and defend both quarters along my table edge and potentially have access to a very wide flank on the enemy. It could prevent scuttling nids and other fast assault units from engaging 1st turn in the dawn of war scenario, and a surprise group of bikes and tanks coming in from the table edge in a later turn could pick the weakest point in their line, blow through it, and disrupt the whole attack.

I still haven't played against chaos demons, but trickling my army out more slowly might mitigate the surprise deep-strike shooting attacks that demons are capable of.

The less time my enemy has to immobilize or destroy my skimmers, the better. The vypers, fire prisms, and wave serpents all have key secondary roles to play as objective contesters.

A few more thoughts. The biggest cons to using this strategy would probably be the sheer unpredictability (somewhat overcome by redundant units) and the drastic reduction in killing power by trickling my guns onto the table a bit at a time. The army thrives on concentrating as much firepower as possible on one or two key enemy units at a time, and without backup, units might not survive long enough to make any kind of dent into the crucial targets (big guns, troops holding objectives). I know there's a few fellow wild riders out there, so drop a line. I still haven't even put my warhost up on those bedamned flying bases yet, but they're all based. I'm still going to try and finish the nid paint jobs before moving on to the eldar.

Tournament: Battleforge ('Ard Boyz) 9-15-08

2008-09-15T19:52:00.012-06:00

The first round of the 2008 'Ard Boyz competition was held at 2 different stores in Austin last Saturday. This year I picked Battleforge because they were awarding double tournament points and they run a kick ass store besides. After hemming and hawing for a month or so, I decided to take tyranids (see the last entry for my list).

I played a test game using 6 stealer squads and a third sniperfex, which worked fairly well, but after the ruling came out about needing to destroy all elements of a force org slot in order to get kill points (and a few nightmares about endless swarms of land raiders), I decided to include 3 warp blast/synapse zoanthropes for better anti-armor and a smallish swarm of endless number fleshborer gaunts for objective control. I also decided to give scuttlers to only two of the 12-man stealer squads. I wanted to have more models on the table to begin with so that my big bugs would stick around longer and have some assault defense besides. I still kept the two since dawn of war would be used for two of the missions and I wanted to try to get first turn assaults (or at least threaten with them). I had three fun games against always congenial opponents and ended up with third place. First place went to Nick's Black Templar horde and Josiah's land raider extravaganza got second.

Here's the missions for the tournament.

Game 1 - Chaos

For my first pairing, I drew Bigred and his mighty armored chaos firebase. He was playing Typhus, 14 chaos glory terminators in 3 squads, 3 land raider transports, 2 squads of 5 chaos glory marines in rhinos, and 3 defilers with 2 extra close combat weapons. Larry is a great general and competitor and I knew it would be an uphill battle. Even with the zoanthropes, the land raiders were pretty frightening, and if it hadn't been for a clutch barbed strangler immobilized result on the one carrying Typhus, things would have probably gone much worse than they did. I scuttled both scuttlers. One came in on my left side to attack a rhino flanking me on that side to grab an objective. Unfortunately they were only able to destroy the transport's combi-bolter, so the marines got out the next turn (with their flamer) and killed 9 in one round of fire. I removed just enough models to keep the demon pack that had just arrived nearby from assaulting, and then charged in myself in my next turn. The three of them wiped out the demons after two more rounds but the marines eventually finished off the sole survivor. The other came in on my right side to join the swarm I'd spread out to grab objectives. Two land raiders and gradually disgorged two terminator squads into the mix. Along with the marine squad, they wiped out the zoanthropes, gaunts, hive tyrant, and 1 stealer squad. One defiler charged into a carnifex, took it down to one wound, and the carnifex struck back and exploded the maniacal demon engine. The remaining stealers were fairly successful in fighting off the terminators and consolidating my objectives, and I was ahead by one objective until the 6th and final turn. I lost one too many of the back-from-the-dead gaunts to defiler ordnance (I had only managed to immobilize a couple of them), and without any synapse left on the table they abandoned their objective and ran off the board. It was a minor win for Chaos and we both had earned two bonus points. Very tough game, a lot of fun!

Game 2 - Tyranids

Adam was one of two other tyranid players at the first round of 'ard boyz, using a list with more upgrades and a greater variety of units than mine. He had an assaulty tyrant with a venom cannon and 2 guard, a broodlord with 8 or so genestealers, a squad of warriors with deathspitters and a venom cannon, a single lictor, 20 or so genestealers, 2 small squads of fleshborer gaunts, a big squad of hormagaunts, a big gun fex, a dakka fex, and 3 zoanthropes. I went first, setting up all my stealers along the center line, and he set up his battle line 18" back from me and the broodlord's unit behind me on the left. First I had to deal with the broodlord. I brought my heavy support onto my table edge in turn 1 and unloaded into them, killing 5 or 6, and then charged my nearest stealer squad in and finished them off. One hive tyrant and two stealer squads attacked on the right side, while the other tyrant and two more stealer squads attacked on the left. My lictors were fairly ineffectual, and starting at my table edge kept my fexes and zopes pretty much out of the game after their initial attack on the broodlord. On the right, my stealers worked their way through his dakkafex and gaunts while my tyrant wiped out his stealers and zoanthropes. I finished off his stealers in the middle and left and charged into his hive tyrant with stealers and one of my own tyrants. It was an epic battle, and his tyrant's close-combat biomorphs kept the big guy swinging and killing until a few surviving stealers finished him off. The game ended with me ahead by 8 kill points, enough for a massacre result.

Game 3 - Eldar

As has happened many times before, I was paired up against Jay in the third round. He was running Eldrad, Maugan Ra, 3 squads of 10 dire avengers with dakka wave serpents, a squad of pathfinders, 2 squads of 10 fire dragons, 2 fire prisms, and a squad of dark reapers. He rolled to go first, and set up his objective, three dire avenger wave serpents, pathfinders, and HQ-reaper megasquad in cover on my left side. I set up my HQ and troops right on the center line again. I decided that the more units I could swarm on his objective the better, and use the sure-to-die-and-return gaunts to hold my own with anti-skimmer and synapse support from the zoanthropes. He used Eldrad's special rule to move one of the wave serpents and the HQ-reaper megasquad over to the opposite side of the board, which was great from my perspective. They were still in range to shoot up gaunts and genestealers in range, but I didn't care much so long as it bought me time to disable as many skimmers as possible and prevent any last-minute land grabs. Very luckily, I seized the initiative and the scuttling stealers brought down both of the avenger serpents Eldrad had apparently abandoned to fate. The rest of the army moved up. The 20 avengers emerged from the wreckage unscathed and unleashed shuriken hell, wiping out the offending squads to two stealers each. One unit broke and retreated to the closest hive tyrant, while the other was charged and wiped out by one of the avenger squads. The aspect warriors tried to make a final charge into the gaunts leading the swarm, but with feeder tendrils nearby, they didn't last long. I took losses here and there from reaper rockets and fire prism blasts, but still had plenty of models left by the time I earned the bonus point for controlling both objectives. The carnifexes and tyrants slowly brought down the rest of the skimmers as they tried to flank far around and contest my objective. One wave serpent made it within 18" or so inches but a barbed strangler destroyed it in the fourth turn. In the fifth and final turn (random turn length), he darted one last skimmer over to contest my control of his own objective but came up just short of the needed distance. I controlled both objectives and was ahead in kill points, giving me a massacre. One more tense and highly enjoyable game!

'Ard Boyz 2008 List

2008-09-14T13:46:00.003-06:00

Tyranids - 2500 points

HQ

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, enhanced senses, toxin sacs, shadow in the warp
3 Tyrant Guard - 1 with lash whips

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, enhanced senses, toxin sacs, shadow in the warp
3 Tyrant Guard - 1 with lash whips

ELITES

2 Lictors

TROOPS

12 Genestealers - feeder tendrils, scuttlers

12 Genestealers - feeder tendrils, scuttlers

12 Genestealers - feeder tendrils

12 Genestealers - feeder tendrils

12 Genestealers - feeder tendrils

16 Gaunts - fleshborers, without number

HEAVY SUPPORT

Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, extended carapace, reinforced chitin, enhanced senses

Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, extended carapace, reinforced chitin, enhanced senses

3 Zoanthropes - warp blast, synapse creature

Revised Bugs

2008-09-01T23:27:00.007-06:00

~~I got that Dragon's Lair tournament report coming, in the meantime:~~

The dragon's lair tournament is up, back a few entries. Here's a revised nid list I want to try soon:

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, toxin sacs, enhanced senses, warp field, wings, flesh hooks

Broodlord - feeder tendrils, flesh hooks
10 genestealers - flesh hooks

Lictor

2 x 10 Genestealers - scuttlers, feeder tendrils

2 x 10 Genestealers - feeder tendrils

2 x 25 Gaunts - fleshborers

3 Zoanthropes - synapse creature, warp blast

Carnifex - carapace, exoskeleton, chitin, regenerate, venom cannon, barbed strangler, enhanced senses, flesh hooks

50 genestealers, 50 gaunts. Going down to just one gunfex is regrettable, but with 30 genestealers and a broodlord outflanking (plus the lictor attack), hopefully the one big guy will keep heavy weapons in place long enough for the infiltrators to get into combat. The zoanthropes are my primary line of defense against AV14, except for maybe a few monstrous creature attacks.

Kill Your Bugs

2008-08-27T19:48:00.006-06:00

I’ve played a couple of 5th edition games with my tyranids over the last few weeks. Unfortunately both games have been played against extremely mobile armies using the annihilation mission, which I’ve come to realize is probably worst-case scenario for my nids (especially gaunts). I lost both games but learned a bit about what works and what doesn’t in the new paradigm.

The first game was against Jay’s Blood Angels with pitched battle deployment. Jay had a death company squad led by Lemartes, an inquisitor with retinue and land raider, several jump marine squads, and three vindicators. I was using my flying dakkarant, four stealer squads with scuttlers, flesh hooks, and carapace, two squads of 20 termagants without number, three zoanthropes with synapse and blast, and two beefy gunfexes. In this game I flanked my four stealer squads and split the rest of my forces into a pincer to try and keep the assault marines nervous about moving out and getting charged. All four stealer squads arrived on the second turn, which seemed quite fortuitous for a moment, but in Jay’s next turn he moved his whole army to attack just one side and I realized I had made a big tactical error. The stealers on the right side would never reach any opponents, and without much in the way of help the stealers on the left would be annihilated. I actually managed to get a decent sized squad on the left into combat with one jump squad but the bugs totally whiffed (I had been thinking flesh hooks would serve them better than tendrils – another mistake – thanks Kingsley). The lictor arrived and blew out one of the vindicators, which was nice, but he was quickly gunned down in the next turn. The hive tyrant shot and assaulted the death company, inflicting only a few casualties before he was easily brought down by their rending attacks. Another mistake – I always succumb to the temptation to charge him into combat, when he’s probably better off just jumping and shooting every turn. After he finished off the stealers on the left side, he jumped up and wiped the two zoanthropes and gaunt squad camping out in the woods a short distance away. The gaunts came back the next turn from my table edge, but who really gives a crap in killpoints? I believe he ended up winning by two or three points.

For my second game I ditched “without number” and took two squads of 28 gaunts instead of the smaller squads. I also wanted to try out a close combat fex at least once, so I tooled one of my gunfexes up with talons, tusks, and a mace tail. Instead of flesh hooks I gave the stealers feeding tendrils. The rest of the army was the same. Robert’s back in town and he brought over his dark eldar army. I wasn’t ecstatic to see the dice roll for mission pick kill points again, but then again, I hadn’t played against S&Mdar in quite a long time so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad this time. It was. Robert played a fairly mixed force of two squads of wyches in raiders, three warrior squads with two dark lances each, two ravagers with three destructors each, a squad of 7 bikes led by an archon, a beastmaster with four warp beasts, a squad of 7 or 8 incubi led by a dracon, and a talos. When he reminded me what all the particular units were capable of, I knew I was in a lot of trouble. Their mobility, combat drugs, and wych weapons were going to negate the stealers better than possibly any other army. We rolled for table quarters deployment zones, and I went first. I decided to outflank with only two of the stealer squads, keeping the other two in the mix of gaunts and fexes in the middle. After a single blast from my gunfex’s barbed strangler wiped out nine warriors, the ravagers and warriors laid into him with destructor blasts and dark lances, destroying him in a single turn. He charged into the front-most gaunt squad with one team of wyches and did plenty of damage there. The fearless rule really works against you when you only have a 6+ save. Not such a good idea to let gaunts get assaulted. A squad of stealers and the combat fex quickly ate them in return, but the stealers were killed by the charging talos (though it died as well) and the combat fex was dropped by lances and destructors before he could regenerate any wounds. The hive tyrant also did very little damage to anything before he was shot down. The lictor arrived, deep-striking right into one of the warrior squads, and I rolled a 2 on the mishap table, meaning he was DOA. The first squad of outflanking stealers came in on my left but were intercepted by robert’s second wych squad (which had conveniently rolled for “always strike first” drugs). Brought down to just three stealers, they actually managed to push the wyches back and wipe them out with a sweeping advance. By this time, however, they were my last models on the table. The second squad of flanking stealers had tried to bring down the ravagers (which Robert had forgotten to move the previous turn) but could only destroy one, and it had exploded and killed three stealers in the blast. Yeesh. I will say that feeding tendrils still paid off in this game, doing much to alleviate my apparently abominable luck when it comes to rolling hits in close combat.

So, in closing, I learned the following lessons about bugs in 5th edition:

feeding tendrils are good as they sound

extended carapace on stealers is deader than dead – total waste and I'm ditching them as of today

bigger squads of stealers are better as you really don’t want them to lose combat and have to take armor saves

lictors, meh

zoanthropes were decent – the 24” blast attack is especially nice

close combat fex... I dunno about this guy yet. I mostly took him to keep opponents antsy about charging into gaunts holding an objective, but obviously in kill points that’s pretty moot. He's great when he can get stuck in and a tendrils unit is nearby. I still like the idea but he may go back to being gunfex #2.

monstrous creatures in general do not last as long without cover saves available to them like in 4th edition. Unfortunately I may have to switch to the tyrant guard approach instead of the wings. With run he could still be in firing range by the second turn at the latest.

gaunts are pretty meh, especially in annihilation games, but I still think their large numbers and synapse-range implacability would be useful in objective-type missions.

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 8/23/08

2008-08-27T19:21:00.009-06:00

I made a mixed guard-sisters army for Saturday’s Dragon’s Lair 2000 point tournament, consisting of:

Command HQ squad - veteran with standard, lascannon team
Junior officer - iron discipline, bolter

4 Hardened veterans - plasma gun, 2 meltaguns
Veteran sergeant - plasma pistol

4 Hardened veterans - plasma gun, 2 meltaguns
Veteran sergeant - plasma pistol

Infantry platoon
Command squad - 2 meltaguns, lascannon team
Junior officer - iron discipline, bolter
Infantry squad – plasma gun, lascannon team
Infantry squad – plasma gun, lascannon team
Infantry squad – plasma gun, lascannon team
Infantry squad – plasma gun, lascannon team

10 Sisters of battle – meltagun, flamer
Veteran sister superior – book of st. lucius
Rhino – smoke launchers, extra armor

10 Sisters of battle – meltagun, flamer
Veteran sister superior – book of st. lucius
Rhino – smoke launchers, extra armor

Hellhound – extra armor, pintle heavy stubber

Hellhound – extra armor, pintle heavy stubber

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, hull lascannon

Leman Russ Demolisher – extra armor, hull lascannon

Leman Russ – extra armor, hull heavy bolter, sponson heavy bolters, pintle heavy stubber

I won the first match but lost the second and third. Somehow I ended up with the third place best painted prize, but I traded the winnings to Nick for a couple of broadsides he apparently doesn’t use. My plan is to make a tau army combining a ton of battlesuits with a ton of kroot. I’m sure there’ll be a hammerhead or two in there, too. It’s all quite a long ways off though.

Here are a few more pictures from nearby games:

Chaos vs. Demons

Eldar vs. Guard

Eldar vs. Pre-Heresy Alpha Legion

Game 1 - Blood Angels - Seize Ground - Pitched Battle

David had a jump death company squad led by lemartes, 5 terminators with 2 assault cannons, a death company dreadnought, a veteran assault squad, a couple squads of 10 marines in rhinos, and two baal predators. The blood angels had a lot of ground to cover in order to bring their strenghts to bear on my guard and ladies, and I dealt with the death company and terminators pretty quickly. Then my ordnance really got going in the late turns and it went from bad to worse. I ended up controlling more objectives, imperial guard wins.

Game 2 - Space Marines - Capture and Control - Dawn of War

Chris was playing his pre-heresy alpha legion army, which included a commander with a tank hunter command squad, a demonhunter inquisitor with a psycannon and some kind of cheap retinue, a veteran assault squad, a vindicare assassin, two large tactical marine squads, and two predator destructors. He outflanked with his veterans and they arrived on my right side, quickly wiping out the infantry squads grouped there. They eventually segued into a couple of my tanks and destroyed them. I wiped out one of the big tac squads with tanks and deep-striking veterans, but couldn’t finish off the second squad. A rhino picked up the one survivor, and though I destroyed the tank, the lone marine still got out in time to contest my home objective. Alpha legion wins.

Game 3 - Imperial Guard - Annihilation - Table Quarters

My last game was against Kings' bug hunting guard. He set up half of his force way back in his corner with some armor and light troops up front (the sentinels and nearby men seen in the bottom left are actually waiting to outflank). It quickly became a tank battle supreme in the middle of the table with devastating ordnance flying in both directions. I tried to mass my sisters toward his demolisher and hellhound but their meltaguns failed to bring the big tank down. Fortunately my deep-striking elements landed bang on target and brought two or three tanks down in one turn (with explosions IIRC). Two of his sentinels outflanked behind my russ, destroying it immediately, so I sent the conscripts over to get a little battle experience fighting them in hand-to-hand, tying them up for the rest of the game so I could concentrate my fire on better targets. Eventually Kings racked up enough kill points to put him ahead when the end of the game was called. Imperial guard wins.

Tournament: Battleforge Games 8-09-08

2008-08-12T16:37:00.009-06:00

Last Saturday BFG put on another 2000 point hobby tournament, only this time with much less free bbq (sad face). I hurried to paint up one last thousand son marine so I could field the appropriate chosen number of the four cult squads (and the terminators) in my "cult car" army.

Demon Prince - mark of slaanesh, lash of submission, wings
9 Terminators - 6 combiplasmas, 1 combiflamer, 2 chainfists, 1 reaper autocannon, 1 pair lightning claws, mark of tzeentch
9 Thousand Sons - sorceror with bolt of change, rhino with extra armor
8 Berzerkers - skull champion with power weapon and meltabomb, rhino with extra armor
7 Plaguemarines - plague champion with power fist, rhino with extra armor
6 Noise Marines - noise champion with power weapon and doom siren, rhino with extra armor
6 Lesser Demons
3 x 1 Obliterators

Overall the army worked well, and did best when the obliterators and terminators were doing their jobs. The lesser demons are good even though I miss having 10 of them; as any modest application of firepower can RTS them back to the warp PDQ (no COD). Lash is always great but I still need more practice. I'm considering bringing a defiler on board for ordnance (and just to have the bad ass model), maybe I could cram that in and ditch the weensy squad of demons. Also the "chosen number" gimmick is neat in theory, but I miss having similar sized squads of each cult. Six noise marines don't last long, so I sometimes had to get the doom siren in while I could, before they were vaporized into purple pink roadstains. Here's some more pictures of various armies:

Jay's Eldar vs. Monty's Witch Hunters

John's Tallarn Guard vs. a horde of living molded plastic orks

Kingsley's Guard vs. Mike's Chaos

Game 1 - Chaos (Pre-Heresy World Eaters)

Deployment: 12" long edges
Primary Objective: Victory points
Secondary Objective: Command and control
Tertiary Objective: Table quarters
Bonus Point: Have one unit in your own deployment zone at the end of the game

Adam's got a great pre-heresy world eater army, complete with pre-betrayal Kharn (pre "^" even?). It included a chaos lord with a bloodfeeder, 9 or 10 berzerkers, 4 squads of 10 chaos marines with two meltaguns, icon of khorne, and a powerfist champion, each in rhinos, and a land raider. I believe Adam chose to go second, so I deployed my gang in a long line with the prince, tzeentchers, and an oblit initially camping out the home objective. He responded by crunching up in his right corner, on the opposite side of his objective, and bursting forward from there. I slowed down a couple of the rhinos early on, brought in the terminators on my right side to back up the noise marines, and sent the demons running towards his objective. I brought the plaguemarines back to hold my objective and paired the thousand sons with the berzerkers and met him in the middle. There was an epic battle on my left side when his land raider pulled around and disgorged the chaos lord and berzerkers right into the tzeentch terminators. The lord's bloodfeeder whiffed two turns in a row as the terminators slowly wiped out his bloodthirsty brothers. When he did get in one good round of attacks, the tzeentch invulnerable saved only one of my guys and the chainfist terminator cut him in half. Nearby, he brought in two obliterators right in front of two of my own, they exchanged fire, and one of my big guys fell. The other sprinted off in pursuit of the dratted land raider, missing or glancing it with his multimelta until he too was brought down under heavy fire from Adam's obliterators. However, the last terminator saved the day once again and exploded the land raider with his chainfist, helping me lock down the primary mission. My demons eventually made it to Adam's objective, but they were intercepted by one of his marine squads. My berzerkers and demon prince (1 wound left!), having wiped out a couple squads in the middle, made a last turn effort to stop them and grab his objective for their own. The marines had actually been pinned by lash when I stupidly decided to attack them with the prince (must be the chaos bloodthirst). I think Toggog killed one or two before the marine champion dragon-punched him the fuck out *blau*. But the berzerkers had grabbed the objective and blocked the approach with their rhino, so I accomplished the second objective as well. I also controlled more quarters and earned the bonus point. The vintage world eaters were sent packing back in time in their mega-armored deloreans!

Game 2 - Imperial Guard (Tallarn)

Deployment: 12" long edges
Primary objective: Seize Ground
Secondary objective: Headhunter (destroy enemy HQ)
Tertiary objective: Annihilation (kill points)
Bonus point: Have one unit in your own deployment zone at the end of the game

My opponent for my second game was John. He had an hq with a plasma pistol and standard, a chimera, an autocannon fire support team, a missile launcher anti-tank squadsome veterans with meltaguns, several different infantry squads, four autocannon sentinels, a hellhound, a demolisher, and a basilisk. He went first and deployed his armor, infiltrating most if not all of his infantry. I probably should have deployed in a long line to keep from getting encircled but I wanted to own the left side strongly since there were more objectives and hard cover over there. Consequently he built a ring of fire around me and poured it on for six turns until I had only a few models left. The dice luck swung strongly back and forth pretty much every turn. He had plenty of great shots in the second turn but actually inflicted very little damage thanks to a lot of scatters and good smoke launcher saves on my part. My demon prince got in place to lash his HQ into assault but rolled a 2 or 3 and was left standing out in the open. All three of my obliterators deep struck into great positions but could not manage to bring down any of the heavy tanks. I managed to get the berzerkers to the far left objective but after the obliterator assigned to kill the demolisher totally failed, the heavy ordnance reduced them to the champion. The skullmeister tried to assault one of the Russes himself, did zippo, and was brought down by Commander El Amin whoever-the-fuck's power weapon charge in the next turn. The plaguemarines cut right towards the fire support corral and managed to send one of the nearby squads running with a burst of bolter and melta fire. Then they were wiped out by a basilisk barrage. His veterans outflanked low on my left and shot up my demons. The surviving two charged in and wiped them out. In the end, he controlled two or three objectives to my one, had fragged my demon prince, and had 9 kill points to my 6 for a full sweep.

Game 3 - Eldar

Deployment: 12" long edges
Primary objective: Seize ground
Secondary objective: Destroy your opponent's most expensive unit
Tertiary objective: Victory points

Third round I drew Jay. I might have the objectives switched around in priority for this one. Anyway, he was fielding an avatar, a 6-man squad of jetbikes, three squads of pathfinders, a big unit of howling banshees in a wave serpent, a unit of wraithguard with a warlock in a wave serpent, a vyper with a rocket launcher, three war walkers with scatter lasers, and two fire prisms. The pathfinders and fire prisms took my obliterators out early on, as the demon prince and thousand sons advanced and tried to deal with the avatar. I rolled a shitty lash distance against some pathfinders and the demon prince was left out of assault. He was finished off in the next turn and never could get over to help the thousand sons. The squad lasted three turns in assault against the avatar, but the sorceror's force weapon never managed to roll a 6 to wound and they were wiped out. The terminators teleported in behind the brawl though, wiped out the wraithguard, and finally finished off the avatar with chainfists after a couple of turns of fighting. The berzerkers fought off the howling banshees but were cleared out by the outflanking war walkers. The nurgle marines were holding an objective until the jetbikes pulled a last turn turboboost to contest. He didn't wipe out my pricey terminators but won the primary mission by holding one objective to my zero. He also came out ahead in victory points.

Drop it

2008-08-04T20:21:00.008-06:00

Even though there are supposedly plastic drop pod kits on the way, I seriously doubt I will buy them to switch in for my DIY pods. Hopefully most people will not have a problem with this, given that they are pretty much the same height and girth as the old forge world pods (and with luck, the new GWs will be the same size). I already play-tested this 1750 list against a couple of people and it was fun even when things weren't going all that well.

HQ

Wolf Guard Battle Leader – frost blade, bolt pistol, wolf pelt, belt of russ, frag grenades

Rune Priest – frost blade, runic staff, wolf pelt, chooser of the slain, frag grenades

Wolf Guard Battle Leader – terminator armor, twin lightning claws, wolf pelt, runic charm
4 Wolf Guard Bodyguards - terminator armor, 2 bolter-flamers, 2 heavy flamers, 2 power weapons, 1 chain fist, 1 thunder hammer, 4 wolf pelts, 4 runic charms
Drop Pod

ELITES

Venerable Dreadnought – plasma cannon, heavy flamer, extra armor
Drop Pod

5 Wolf Scouts – 2 plasma pistols, 2 power weapons, 1 meltagun, frag grenades
Wolf Guard Leader – bolt pistol, power fist, wolf pelt, wolf tooth necklace

TROOPS

9 Grey Hunters – 2 plasma pistols, 1 meltagun, 2 power fists
Drop Pod

9 Grey Hunters – 2 plasma pistols, 1 meltagun, 2 power fists
Drop Pod

9 Blood Claws – flamer, 2 power fists
Wolf Guard Leader – bolt pistol, power fist, wolf pelt, wolf tooth necklace
Drop Pod

I would have played this kind of list a lot sooner, except in 4th edition I couldn’t join up characters with squads in drop pods, only with their retinues. Now I can hook them up with the grey hunters and add even more assault teeth to those already hardy fellows. I’d love to try out the deathwind missile launchers given the new blast rules; I could use the fire support, but they’re pretty damn expensive. For a 2000 point list I might try adding them as well as a couple of melta/flamer land speeders. Like any theme list, it definitely has its competitiveness issues. Obviously everyone comes in reserve, all in pods except for the scouts, so I may not get everything when I need it. When they all come in at once, like they did in one of my two games, it's pretty spectacular. It definitely lacks substantial long range anti-vehicle, but hopefully the pods will always get me close enough to hurt things (if my guys can manage to shoot straight!). I think this list should always go second if I have a choice (the ven dread should help with that) for three reasons: a) choice of deployment zone doesn’t matter much to a drop pod army, b) since I’m trading off numbers for mobility and surprise, the less turns my guys are standing out there getting shot, the better, and c) I would get that final turn to pry off any pesky fast things that try to contest objectives at the last second. If there was only some way to help them reroll reserves...

The terminators have always been very hit and miss (usually miss). I changed them up a bit for this list, ditching the usual plasma and assault cannon bath for a bunch of flamey goodness and giving them all runic charms and wolf pelts. With drop pods stopping short if they scatter into the enemy, I should usually be able to set up the terms in perfect position to really pour on the templates. This should ensure more total hits and wounds than their old gun configuration. The new template rules (calculate total number of hits before rolling to wound) make concentrated flamer fire extra deadly. And with the wolf pelts, if you charge into them without killing any, you’ll have to deal with 7 lightning claw attacks at I5, 8 power weapon attacks at I4, and 8 power fist attacks coming back at you. Plus the 5th edition retinue rule change means you can’t single out the battle leader until all his buddies are dead, and he can attack even when out of base contact. I might eventually double up on chain fists instead of including a thunder hammer, but I wanted to try it out once or twice. My wolves’ nemesis has always been the eldar Avatar; its high weapon skill, high... well, high everything, really, makes it a huge pain to deal with. In my game against Jake last week, the thunder hammer dropped him down to I1 twice, which meant more wolves left standing when the big lug finally hit the dirt.

In their second game (against Jay's necrons), the stalling strategy helped quite a bit, considering the goddamn Nightbringer was eating everyone he came into contact with. Given a couple more turns he would have probably wiped me out completely. 5 T8 wounds is a real bitch when you don't get any shots in first. I don't remember if I ever slapped him with the hammer or not. I believe the game came out to a draw in the end.

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 8-02-08

2008-08-03T21:49:00.006-06:00

Dragon’s Lair hosted a big Gaming for the Troops 40k tournament on Saturday, where everyone’s admission was donated to the cause of buying gaming supplies for the real life army dudes overseas. I decided to take guard just because I was in a tanky sort of mood at the end of last week. My list consisted of:

Command HQ – veteran with company standard, veteran medic, heavy bolter team
Junior Officer – carapace armor, bolter, honorifica imperialis, iron discipline

4 Veterans – 2 meltaguns, 1 plasma gun
Veteran sergeant – plasma pistol

2 Infantry Platoons
Command squad – Junior officer with bolter and iron discipline, 2 flamers, 2 meltaguns
2 Infantry squads – plasma gun, lascannon

2 Hellhounds – extra armor, hull heavy bolter, pintle stubber

2 Demolishers – extra armor, plasma cannon sponsons, hull lascannon

Leman Russ – extra armor, heavy bolter sponsons, hull heavy bolter, pintle stubber

There was at least 16 people playing with a decent mix of armies, including eldar, necrons, imperial guard, daemons, chaos space marines, space marines, and orks. Here’s a few of the armies:

Kings' Bug Hunters

Colby's Orks

Thomas' Nurgle Daemons

Jay's Necrons

Chris' Eldar

Game 1 - Imperial Guard - Seize Ground

I usually draw Kingsley later in the tournament, but this time we were paired up in the first round for a guard grudge match. Other than our heavy tanks, our lists were fairly different. He had a command HQ, anti-tank squad, several storm trooper squads, an infantry platoon with 3 or 4 squads, a hellhound, 2 squadrons of 2 sentinels, 2 demolishers, and a leman russ. We had 5 objectives scattered around the board, with three closer to his side, one closer to me on the right side, and one right in the middle. The deployment was dawn of war, so with nightfighting in effect on the first turn, neither of us got very much done. On his second turn he killed a few guardsmen and destroyed one hellhound and one demolisher before they could do anything at all. I returned fire with little effect for a turn or two, but at some point my rolls got much better and I began to take apart his heavy armor with ordnance and deep-striking meltaguns. In the end, he used the new go-to-ground rules to good effect to forego leadership tests and contest or score objectives with units that were just slaughtered down to 1 or 2 survivors. I was going to charge forward and contest one of his home objectives but he immobilized my leman russ on the very last turn. We both held two objectives and contested the one in the middle. It is still taking some adjusting to get used to the chintzy way the 5th edition standard missions can sometimes play out in tournaments. Draws seem to be much more common, mainly because you pretty much have to kill absolutely everything, as one or two stubborn little douches can ignore leadership tests, “go to ground,” and turn the whole game around. It seems just a little retarded that pinned troops count as scoring or contesting. Draw, 10-10.

Game 2 - Orks - Command and Control

This game proved to me more than any before how even a bare minimum squad of ork biker nobz can totally break the game. Their base stats, movement speed, number of S10 attacks on the charge, endless layers of armor and invulnerable saves, multiple wounds, feel no pain, and practical immunity to leadership tests thanks to the boss pole are really just the beginning; all anyone has to do is equip them all slightly differently and they can get out of removing whole models, taking one wound at a time on this or that nob, while they grind through just about every other unit the game has to offer. And silly me, I thought they had actually fixed the wording to avoid people doing that kind of thing. Of course not. Colby had just one squad of 5 of these guys, and even though I shot my ENTIRE IMPERIAL GUARD ARMY at them on the first turn, I only killed two. They proceeded to wipe out at least one squad and one tank every turn thereafter. It didn’t help that deployment was yet again dawn of war, with nightfighting in effect on the first turn (even though he was only 12” away from my line), or that I had totally screwed myself while placing my objective and initial units. His two or three trukks arrived a turn later and I didn’t really have a chance. One of my command squads flamed an entire squad of stormboyz after deepstriking on the second turn, but that was about as good as it got. I tried to contest his home objective with my second command squad on the fifth and last turn, but I scattered 3 inches and rolled a 1 for their run, and so ended up an inch short. It would have been a shitty way to deny him the win anyway, as Colby did pretty much everything he needed to do. Orks win, 15-5.

Game 3 - Tyranids - Annihilation

Ian was my third opponent. He had a flying hive tyrant, a broodlord and retinue, 4 or 5 carnifexes, 3 squads of scuttling genestealers, and a lictor. Deployment was table quarters, which is definitely not my favorite for guard after the game against Mike at the last BFG hobby tournament. It squeezes all my tanks together and usually there’s a bunch of cover in the middle that allows assault troops to get really close. I think he was somewhat new to tyranids, as he never really used any of the units to their full abilities. After I found out he was outflanking all the stealers, I shifted my army away from the closest short table edge and into a big hill in my quarter. For a couple of turns I gave them sacrificial squads and then shot the well-fed stealers to pieces right afterwards. Thanks to some big pieces of cover where he managed to hide his MCs from my lascannons, we drew for kill points (4-4) and the game. Draw, 10-10.

Action Report: Space Wolves vs. Eldar 7-29-08

2008-07-30T17:02:00.008-06:00

The eldar warhost might have been completely silent in its progress but for the mighty avatar, whose massive footfalls reverberated loudly through the ancient forest. Guardians, dire avengers, dark reapers, and a battery of d-cannons followed behind their warrior god on their way to attack an imperial outpost recently installed on the former maiden world. Grav-tanks glided along on the flanks of the formation. Cut off from the guiding premonitions of their farseer, they did not anticipate the imminent attack from the fiercest protectors of the imperium.

Suddenly the air was filled with ear-piercing howls as five drop pods screamed through the planet’s atmosphere. In seconds, they had all impacted in a nearly perfect circumference around the eldar, and into the resultant smoke and debris stepped the mighty space wolves, armed to the teeth. Their mission: to ensure the destruction of the perfidious alien warhost while minimizing their own casualties.

The first to fire were veteran wolf guard clad in tactical dreadnought armor. Plumes of white hot flame issued from each of their weapons, sweeping through one squad of guardians and reducing fifteen of them to ashes in moments. A nearby squad of grey hunters, led by another wolf guard veteran, aimed their bolt and plasma pistols into a second squad of guardians, killing many of them as the survivors scrambled to gain control of the eldar rocket launcher platform. The guardians returned fire and three of the mighty astartes fell, their unit falling back towards cover to regroup. Across the battlefield, a wise venerable dreadnought extracted itself from its drop capsule and combined fire with nearby units of blood claws and grey hunters, sending more tongues of fire into the forest, burning up several dire avengers and, more importantly, melting the delicate d-cannon platforms.

The dark reaper exarch led his unit to the top of a human chemical storage tank. As his fellows took careful aim with their reaper launchers, he began to spin a bolo-like weapon, faster and faster, until he released it nearly straight up into the air with a single delicate gesture. The eldar bombs soared in an almost imperceptible arc and descended on the unit of grey hunters led by the space wolf rune priest, who had emerged from their drop pod to the left of the eldar column. At the precise point of impact, the dark reapers opened fire with their launchers, and the combined destruction wiped out seven of the space marines. The reaper exarch watched sadly as a squad of dire avengers charged into the rest. They were no match for the rune priest, and he cut them all down with little effort. Their attack had been merely a distraction, however, and suddenly a different foe emerged from behind the space wolf seer – a team of harlequins were flitting in and out of sight, encircling him and the two surviving grey hunters with their deadly dance. Confused by the horrible costumes closing in on him and the violent deaths of his brothers, the rune priest backed up, and thus did not see the wounded dire avenger exarch lying behind him, who extended one final fatal thrust with his diresword before dying.

The avatar, screaming with fury, charged the wolf guard terminators, felling two of them before they could react. The battle leader reacted instantly with a flurry of attacks, but his lightning claws could find no purchase in the demon’s molten iron skin. One of his bodyguard, however, stunned the mighty beast with a single swing of his thunder hammer, giving the blood claws squad time to run over and join in the fight.

The reaper exarch turned his attention instead to the second squad of grey hunters, who were pulling back from the circle of drop pods trying to rally for another charge. Another volley of missiles from the reapers and guardians dropped a few more marines and sent them running further back into the forest, where the sightless wraithguard would be waiting for them. The exarch’s second barrage of tempest bombs missed their target, however, landing instead on the big fray between the avatar, wolf guard terminators, and blood claws. When the smoke cleared, the eldar D-cannon crew and half of the blood claws were dead.

When the avatar recovered from the impact of the thunder hammer (not to mention the reaper exarch’s tempest bombs), he swung the wailing doom with deadly precision, killing two more terminators before finally falling beneath the weight of the blood claws’ many power fists. Having finished off their most hated foe, the blood claws ran directly for the tower where the dark reapers’ position, and by combining their fire with several drop pod storm bolters, managed to finish their targets off.

An additional unit of guardians, covering the rear of the eldar advance, had heard the horrible sounds of war and hastened to join the fight. Just as they were setting up their weapons to fire on the human enemy, space wolf scouts emerged from the underbrush behind them. One guardian turned in time to see and was able to kill one of the wolf scouts, but it was already too late. The determined scouts killed several guardians with their plasma pistols and meltagun before charging headlong into them and wiping them out in close combat. As they finished off the wounded, an eldar falcon tank came around the corner of a rock outcropping and opened fire with its pulse laser and star cannon, reducing the scouts down to two men. Undeterred, they charged the grav-tank, but after taking a glancing hit from the scout’s meltagun, the falcon turned and fled the scene.

The venerable dreadnought, incensed after having watched the rune priest die at the hands of the foul alien dancers, unleashed his heavy flamer and plasma cannon on the harlequins, killing two, including their shadowseer. The obscuring haze that had been clinging to the harlequins fell away, and suddenly they were exposed. Before they could get away, he reached out and grabbed one more, crushing the puny eldar body with an enormous claw. As the three surviving harlequins flipped away from the giant walking tomb, one of them took aim with his fusion pistol and sent a jet of superheated air directly into a critical joint, causing a catastrophic explosion that sent pieces of the dreadnought flying and annihilated one of the harlequins’ own number. Having recovered control of its weapon systems, the eldar falcon returned to the area to evacuate the beleagured harlequins, but the last two wolf scouts finished them off with bolt pistol and meltagun fire before they could get on board. The falcon launched one last salvo of plasma into the scouts, only killing one of them. The last scout stunned its weapon systems with his meltagun before the tank once again turned and blazed away into the forest, never to be seen again.

As the wolf guard battle leader led his grey hunters into the woods to regroup, an eldar wave serpent circled around behind them and dropped off its mysterious cargo: a squad of silent eldar wraithguard led by a spirit seer. Their horrible wraithcannons killed one of the grey hunters and wounded the battle leader before they came to grips in close combat. The wolf guard’s frost blade decapitated two of the eldar constructs before he himself fell to the spirit seer’s witchblade. The terminator battle leader stumbled over from the avatar’s remains to join the fight next to the two surviving grey hunters, his lightning claws slicing up two more wraithguard. Since the eldar grav tanks had retreated, it would likely be the final brawl of the day. Though they had lost many brave wolves, their mission of stopping the eldar advance had most certainly been accomplished.