08ak1

40k Combat Patrol: Wrapup

2010-10-26T11:08:00.002-08:00

Well the Combat Patrol has come and gone, i wrestled my way to a 3rd place spot overall and managed to come away with Best appearance trophy which was a nice surprise given that while i'm not a terrible painter i would call myself a "looks for any loophole" painter.....that is to say i don't go the extra mile unless it's 100% worth it, and black wash is myfreind =)

Overall i had a great time at the tournie for sure, everyone was chill as usual with only a few exceptions that weren't that big a deal. My list is below and i'll go ahead and give some post tournie thoughts on their performance, followed by a quick and dirty of the 6 games.

List:
5 Man Grey Hunters w/Flamer
5 Man Grey Hunters w/Flamer

These guys did what they were supposed to do, better then average space marines in close combat and at medium to close range. Given that most of my army was much more threatening they didn't get shot at much overall.

Lone Wolf W/Fenrisian wolf

Wolf and son were a good combo, in the first two games i'm fairly certain the wolf did more damage then the lone wolf....but thats a dice anomaly. Overall worth their points but still rather ineffective because of the huge amount of armor i ended up facing. Had i played against someone with infantry they would have done better im sure.

Lone Wolf W/powerfist

This guy was upgraded in response to Nob biker lists and Bloodcrusher lists i had faced pre-tournie, the Nobs weren't there though due to time constraints and i never faced the crushers. But he did good overall, a huge amount of vehicles in the games meant the enemy was putting fire on this guy to keep their stuff safe, and any time fire is put on a lone wolf instead of elsewhere it's a good thing.

Land Speeder Typhoon W/Heavy Flamer

So i brought the heavy flamer for infantry, but i faced next to none of it....so it ended up firing maybe 2-3 times to little effect against other light vehicles or like a power armored marine or two. I still think it was the right choice, as it would have been hell for an Ork mob army or IG blob army. Otherwise the Typhoon did pretty good, it was certainly a valuable asset in every game. It's only problem of course was as soon as the enemy sneezed on it it died, every penetrating hit it took killed it, and only a couple of glances came its way. Overall worth its points, but i do wish it could have survived a little better.

ThunderWolf Caverly W/Wolf claw

This guy did well in a couple games, earning back his points for sure. He proved badass but very killable if the enemy got a chance to shoot at him. Backing him up with another squad mate would have been a great help to both spread wounds (thus keeping both models around longer) and ensuring they won combat and stayed in combat through multi charges. The wolf claw was a good choice, i missed the extra str a few times while fighint the tons of vehicles, but it wasn't that big a deal compared to the reliability of the claw's rerolls.

5 Long Fangs w/4 Missile Launchers

Devastators are just great, the long fang fire splitting is ok at this point level, but often it's more important to send them all at one target to ensure it dies, worth every point and then some. more importantly at NO POINT during the tournament did they run off the board......thank god

So on to the games, gonna keep it brief. Head over to Rob's blog for pictures of each army, just reference the name i use: http://www.warhammer39999.com/2010/10/500-point-tournament-recap/

Game 1 Vs. Kurt's Space Wolves......

Wolf and wolf action to start! Kurt was all about the infantry, he brought 3 six man squads of grey hunters each led by a wolf guard with some sort of power weapon/fist, along with a long fangs unit. We played on a table that is...lets say...notorious with local gamers. It includes hedges, hedges that completely block line of site for a marine sized model. These hedges created a multi part maze of sorts in the middle of the table, the end result of which was that both our long fangs were pointless. Pretty much only my land speeder could see over the hedges. So in the end our troops clashed through the hedges in the middle, i got my long fangs all the way to his deployment zone and was mopping up his long fangs and 2nd of the the three grey hunter squads when time was called during our 4th turn. Because of that both of his units lived so my grey hunters couldn't make the 1 inch they needed to be "wholly within his deployment zone", so we tied the primary objective, he won the secondary objective because again his units were still there, 1 lone wolf was still alive(and in combat with 4 grey hunters alone) and so he won 3Kp's to 1.

Game 2 Vs. Jeff's Tau

City terrain is my favorite, we setup 3 objectives down the middle of a road and went at it. Jeff brought 2 suits with missiles, 2 with plasma ect., a pirhana, an apc with pathfinders and some troops. My long fangs did a number on his units from afar and the thunderwolf did a good job against the suits, it was a bad matchup for Jeff and i won hands down.

Game 3 Vs. Eric1's Eldar

I have so little experience with Eldar, his force was basically 4 warwalkers with tons of shooting, some jetbikers, striking scorpions with exarch, and some dire avengers. He declared his scorps were in reserve and deployed the rest, i deployed way out in the middle for first turn and then he stole the initiative. I did really well wiping out his units on the board slowly but surely, waiting for those scorps to come in and counter attack. When they did though he rolled for outflank and they came in an inch away from my long fangs in the back which was the primary objective of the game. I was a bit annoyed because he had said reserved not outflank, and i had played the game waiting for them to walk on his board edge, had i realized they were in fact outflanking i would certainly have not left the unit he needed to kill to win at the boards edge all game. He apologized for the miss communications and showed me that he had purchased wargear for them that allowed them to outflank so it was his intention.. at this point my inner power gamer decided to take a break. I know Eric and i dont believe he was trying to deceive me, despite the fact that he had nothing else on the table and that his scorps plus exarch would simply win the game right then i decided not to turn it into an argument and basically conceded the game through that decision. Perhaps if i knew more of the Eldar rules i would have double checked with him that he meant outflank not normal reserve, but oh well. Total loss as nearly everything bonus point and otherwise revolved around my long fangs living and his scorps dieing.

Game 4 Vs. Tony's Blood Angels

Tony brought 3 attack bikes with multi meltas, a devastator squad, and an assault squad in an assault cannon Rhino with a Sanguinary priest. We had a good game, i held down a forest out in the middle while we exchanged ranged fire, eventually his rhino made it's way to my force and my thunderwolf ran out and said hello, after that my lone wolves had to clean up the rest and all of his units except the remnants of the long fangs were wiped out. A good victory for me, though tense after he blew my long fangs off their hill reducing my ranged options to natta, fortunately he only had 2 rockets at range so if he wanted to win he would have to come play with the wolves he wouldn't be able to shoot me down all the way.

Game 5 Vs. Tony2's Eldar

Another Warwalker list, but this one was completely devoted to it. 5 War walkers this time, 2 Vypers with double cannons, and 2 jetbiker squads with 1 cannon each. It meant he had 15 cannons with 3 str 6 shots a piece on mobile platforms. We played on a map with some grey blocks that could sorta block line of site to a marine but the objective was get to the middle and stay there for 2 turns... The end result is he opened up with a torrent of fire on whatever he pleased each turn. On turn 1 he blew away the thunderwolf with no problem, a couple long fangs went down, and a wound was given to the power fist lone wolf... a very bad way to start for me. My long fangs returned the fire with all three hitting with krak missile, then all three rolled 1's to penetrate (they need a 2 to glance and at least stop them from shooting....). My speeder managed to destroy a weapon on one vyper with it's double Krak, and everyone else advanced, at this point im pretty much done....if i roll great armor saves it might be ok i tell myself.... His turn see's the long fangs down to a single model, speeder gone, couple random marines dead. The long wolf with power fist was the only one rollin good and he survived a decent amount of fire. In my turn i did 3 glances to his vyper in melee with like 8 grey hunters and the normal lone wolf, all of which just shook it despite it being open topped...the Power fist lone wolf assaulted a 2 war walker squad and died to their attacks before he could strike..... a couple turns later i was wiped out. If i had some terrain that blocked line of site this would have really helped, sure my army got cover saves thanks to all the random terrain on the board but who cares because i got armor saves that are better, instead he had unrestrained access to shoot at any target he wanted each turn, which with his army make up was just killer. I did manage to keep him from winning the primary objective though, so it wasn't a total loss.

Game 6 Vs. Jared's Space Marines

Jared brought a sniper scout squad with rocket, 2 tactical squads one with a rhino the other with a razorback. We had a humerous objective which was to cross 48 inches of terrain to get a scoring unit into the other player deployment zone which was a tiny triangle of the corner. My Grey hunters spent the first 4 turns running straight at them, while my ranged elements dealt with his army slowly but surely, the thunderwolf and speeder held off the razorback with combat squad, and scout squad on my left flank alone. Overall it was kinda fun to run headlong at them, in the end i won.

40k Combat Patrol: Ready2Drop

2010-10-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

I am finished with all prep work for this Saturday's Combat Patrol Tournie. After a lot of consideration i finally settled on the list below, i also discovered upon entering it in Excel that i in fact had 10 points to spare.....not sure how that came about but i tripled checked all my numbers and in deed i had a dime to spend. More about the changes after the list.

Feel free to click the pics for some seriously big versions.

Troops:
Pack Alpha
5 Grey Hunters W/Flamer

Pack Bravo
5 Grey Hunters W/Flamer

Elites:
Lone Wolf W/Fenrisian Wolf
Lone Wolf W/Power Fist

Fast Attack:
Land Speeder Typhoon W/Heavy Flamer

ThunderWolf Rider W/Wolf Claw

Heavy Support:
Long Fang Pack W/4 Missile Launchers

So that's that, from my previous list i removed one of the vanilla lone wolves as planned. I then changed the Thunderwolf from a Frost Weapon to a Wolf Claw for another few points. Using these points i bought a power fist for one of my lone wolves to give me a major threat to heavy melee units which had given me trouble in a few games.

Then as mentioned i discovered i had 10 points to play with.....i toiled as ever over where they should be spent, a couple of good options were available:

Upgrade the Thunderwolf back to a frost blade, and maybe give out a melta gun instead of a flamer to a Grey hunter pack.
Give a Fenrisian Wolf to a lone wolf.
Upgrade a Flamer to a Plasma Gun in one of the Grey Hunter packs
Add a Wolf Standard to a Grey Hunter pack.

However one major problem loomed, i was nearly done with everything when i discovered my extra points...and so any changes would require frantic painting of something to get it ready for tommorrow....

Option 1 was good, it meant no one would give me naughty eyes for my "wolf claw" on my Thunderwolf, which to my defense he is carrying a pole arm which is no defined by any rules in their book and can thus represent any reasonable melee weapon i choose.... Not to mention this brings him back to strength 6 in melee with an extra attack. However i had come to really like the idea of his increased reliability through the wolf claw given his ability to fail in the past. That and as before a melta gun would mean either ripping a flamer from a marine or painting a new marine....so no thanks.

Option 2 was a fluffy idea i like a lot, sure i would have to green stuff and paint a wolf, but wolves are super easy to paint so whatever. It gets me another model on the table too, though an easyish to kill one.

Option 3 was an ok idea, a little more bang in my ranged firepower, plus i have a plasma gunner already painted....don't like to see my marines kill themselves though when i have so few.

Option 4 was a good idea because it can really really help that unit in one assault, however i would have to model and paint a standard at the least, and a marine holding it at the most....

In the end i really wanted to get a Fenrisian wolf in there because it sounded fun, i don't believe it is at all the best tactical choice....i also should have given the wolf to the power fist lone wolf to help him survive shooting, but the other wolf was so jealous of all his upgrades...so F it he got the pet so he didn't have to feel so vanilla =)

On another note i decided to study my Japanese while playing, so each model has a word written on his base....it's their unofficial names, although they're very poor names lol.

from left to right: Hidari(left), Demo(but), Migi(right), Mae(front)

Mulling it over: 40k Combat Patrol

2010-10-11T21:34:00.000-08:00

Life's been pretty hellishly busy lately with college, work, pregnant wife, and of course...3 year old. What little time i have had for gaming iv spent either on Halo or Warmachine, so with a combat patrol tournament just 2 weeks away im well behind the curve.

Traditionally i like to get lots of practice with a force and fine tune it the way i want, but so far iv only played a measly 4 games with the force i drew up nearly a month ago. Firstly for those who are wondering what a combat patrol tournament is, check out Adepticon's website for the rules:
http://www.adepticon.org/?page_id=680

Please if you dont know the restrictions in place for this go read them, they're quite extensive.

One exception is we are playing 500 points instead of 400. I also recently went looking for feedback on this years combat patrol tournie hosted by adepticon themselves, only to find it's this weekend, and they don't appear to be using the same exact rules. They add in a 0-1 restriction for everything except troop choices, no monstrous creatures, and no vehicles with an armor facing of more then 11 that isn't a Dedicated transport none of which is in the pdf from them...

While the 400-500 point change is negotiable in it's effect, these other changes i think are actually quite important to making this tournament into what it's supposed to be. Obviously the 0-1 would change my list quite a bit, but i know it would also make big changes to some of the other lists i've seen floating around my community. The Monstrous creatures would effect at least one player who i've heard plans to spam 5 or something tomb spiders(and will be using all the exploits they have in 5th ed), and the armor facing invalidates things like IG Hydra's which i used last year in my IG list.

After playing in this tournie last year im not real psyched for it, the game was not meant to be played at this point level and while the restrictions attempt to make it work they end up being either ineffective or too restrictive(just ask a Nid player). Many other players i've spoken with share that opinion and don't bother with this tournie, they feel like it's too much of a who can bring the most broken mini 'Ard boyz tournie. I think ill give it another shot this year, but wouldn't be all that heart broken if i missed it.

So on to my current list:

Elite
Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf
(these guys are base line no upgrades, i love the unit's fluff and have wanted to use them for some time now. Theyre not very killy without upgrades and are more liken to a tarpit unit really, it's a little spammy for my taste but i doubt they will be game changers)

Troops
5 Grey Hunters W/flamer
5 Grey Hunters W/flamer
(i need troops to capture and Space wolves have some of the best baseline troops. They have some great options available to them like wulfen and wolf banners, but both need larger packs to really survive so im going with base line squads.)

Fast Attack
1 ThunderWolf Cavalry W/Frost Blade
(this guys a cruise missile of destruction...well he's supposed to be, so far he must have been hitting the pub a little hard before my battles...)
1 Land Speeder Typhoon W/Heavy Flamer
(i think the typhoon is going to be great, and if i were going to spam game winning units they would be a good start)

Heavy Support
5 Long Fangs W/4 Missile Launchers
(the rules for this tournie mean missile launchers are gravy train for what i can face, now if i can just get them to F'ing shoot....)

my 4 games went like this:
Game 1 Vs. Rob from http://www.warhammer39999.com/

Rob brought 3 Land speeder Storms, with 3 scout squads with powerfists and combi-melta's. I was going first so he reserved it all. My force pretty easily dismantled the first scout squad that came in, though they did ravage all 4 of my long fang ML's. The other two fell in their own time, overall a bad matchup i think for Rob's army.

Game 2 Vs. Jeff's Orks

Jeff had a squad of grots, a squad of 6 lootas, and unit of nob bikers with painboy, power claw, banner thingy, the works basically. We got dawn of war so only my grey hunters could deploy, he had 1st turn so he turbo-boosted his bikers to mid field. My army moved on in the corner as far as they could, and the thunder wolf assaulted the bikers. The Thunderwolf managed to miss 5 of 6 attacks..and didn't wound with the one that hit. The bikers wounded him once and he of course fled the battle. Jeff moved up the bikers and shot at my long fangs in the back, they killed 2 and the long fangs decided to flee the battle.......... i put gobs of wounds on the bikers and assaulted them with what i had left, the end result of all this ? 1 wound....i however failed most of my saves and we moved on. End result i got tabled.

I have mixed feelings about this battle, obviously the Nob biker squad is a notoriously troublesome unit and without a wargear limit in this years version of combat patrol they became viable, but good lord a couple of key areas could have really changed the outcome. It's hard to troubleshoot the battle, because space marines failing LD checks all over isn't normal, a model with 6 str 6 power attacks should have done something, and with the number of wounds i put on those orcs more should have died even through a 4+ 4+ save. I think in the end of the game i had done 3 wounds total to the unit. Obviously dawn of war helped too...

Game 3 Vs. Charles Daemons

Charles brought 2 units of bloodcrushers, a unit of horrors, and a unit of daemonettes. I'v faced charles a lot, and bloodcrushers really are a hard target in this tournie format but theyre not as bad as nob bikers. In the end we Tied, i was able to wipe out 1 unit of Crushers, reduce the other to 2 models(of 4), and nearly wipe out the horrors. An interesting note, AGAIN in this game my long fangs took 2 casualties on turn 1, and ran off the table without firing a shot..... I managed to tie him as he was unable to deal with my Land speeder.

Game 4 Vs. Charles Daemons

This time Charles brought a unit of 6 fiends instead of 4 crushers, this game was much different...for one thing my long fangs actually got to shoot lol!!! In the end i wiped out his army for the win. The game was in essence what i wanted my army to do, the lone wolves engaged the enemy first after shooting and stayed with them until death took them. Meanwhile my shooting elements dealt with the rest of the enemy that wasn't engaged.

So now the good stuff, what could i change to help the short comings of the list? Right now i feel like i need a little more close support for these disgusting units like nob bikers and bloodcrushers. I'm not 100% that i do need it though as my luck was pretty terrible on the two games i essentially lost so i want to be sure im not over reacting.

Option 1:
-lose a Lone Wolf
-change the Thunderwolf's frost blade to a power weapon
+give a power weapon to a lone wolf
+give mark of the wulfen to the other

This option loses a model, but makes the other 2 more killy. The Wulfen is a somewhat random but possibly great model as it is both good at clearing crowds and with rending can cause unreliable armor pen/no Feel no pain attacks. With their WS 5 the lone wolves are more apt to hit things with the power weapon, where the thunder wolf is only WS 4 and ST 5 already, giving him the +1 strength does help the attacks that do hit wound, but perhaps it isn't needed.

Option 2:
-lose a Lone Wolf
+give a power weapon to a lone wolf
+upgrade a flamer to a melta gun in a grey hunter pack

Again i lose a lone wolf, but i make another more killy. I get an extra strength 8 shot at opponents in my face as well.

Option 3:
-lose a Lone Wolf
+Add another member to the long fangs armed with a Heavy Bolter

Sensing a trend on where i feel i could get points from =), in this example i trade a model for another model. I'm not to sure on this one but having an extra 3 str 5 shots going out at long range would be generally useful(assuming they dont you know....run away on turn 1).

Option 4:
No change, chalk the bad battles up to bad luck and lack of practice...

What do you think, support an option or purpose another.

My own little Nightmare

2010-09-14T01:48:00.000-08:00

Continuing my explanation of my new experience with Warmachine, this time we'll go over my force.

In Warmachine there are 5 Factions, and 1 "merc" faction.

Cygnar, blue guys, they're the good guys with the best tech. Think America...their armies tend to be all about staying away from you and causing lots of little damage either at range or in mass. One very cool mechanic they often sport is Lightning based weaponry, when many of these weapons attack they arc lightning to the next closest model from the target, doing another hit to them(friend of foe...though many of their units are also immune to lightning damage).
Khador, Russians.....They sport serious armor and serious damage. In exchange they tend to be slower, tend to be easier to hit for the enemy. If you want an army where your models are not likely to go down easily this one's for you. initially this is the army i wanted to play, but i got my Wife into Warmachine as well and she said she liked them. Being very eager to get her involved i bowed out, after buying the first part of my force she decided Cygnar was cooler.....
Menoth, Church Cult if you will, they really like lighting people on fire...a lot. They tend to have a mixture of very cheap and likewise ineffective units that are then made worthwhile through proper tactics and synergy, and a few very good units. They also tend to follow a denial path, preventing the enemy from doing things or being able to use things on them. Did i mention they can light people on fire, shoot they can make you explode and light your freinds near by on fire....
Retribution, Elves, think space marines. Most of their units tend to be effective in all things, but expensive points wise. They also have a good number of ways to move you around... theyre the new guys in the new edition of the game.
Mercenaries, it's an entire book of "allies" each one has certain other factions he/they/it will work for, so for instance not every Merc will hire on with your cygnar army. You can also simply field an army of them, theyre all over the map so it's not easy to sum up what they do.
Cryx, the Undead pirate nation/corporation. This is my army, they're glass cannons. They hit hardish, they're fast across the board, they tend to be hard to hit and good at hitting you. They also tend to not play a straight forward game, using odd tricks or assassination attempts to win. My units can't take a hit though, well one can, but the rest can't.

It's also worth noting that Hordes, the sister game to Warmachine, is 100% compatible to play with/against. Hordes has some changes to the way the armies work, but all the core mechanics are the same and they are balanced on each other. Warmachine represents the major city states of the world, where Hordes represents the Barbarian areas not yet fully civilized.

So on to my force. First my list, click any picture for a huge version to see my terrible paint job up close!

First is my Warcaster:

Skarre, Queen of the Pirate Coast.

Skarre actually has two versions of her available to play, both have different rules and models. Rules wise they are Similar only to an extent, this is actually very common and the idea is that my Skarre is the new version of her as the Story line has progressed and she has changed during it. Unlike 40k, Warmachine's story is happening now which i must admit....i like a lot.

Points are very similar in Warmachine, each unit has a cost just like 40k. The Warcaster is free, but comes with some bonus points you can only spend on Warjacks. These points are different depending on the Warcaster though, my Skarre comes with 6 bonus Jack points.

So i have a 35 point list, this is the staple value for most tournaments and 2 hour games. 50 points is also reasonably common, but anything else is quite rare.

Warjacks:

Seether

Seether is very mobile and pissed off, he enjoy's beating face and long walks on the beach.

DeathJack

aka "DeathJerk" This jack is the most expensive jack in the Cryx book, and is every bit worth it. They didn't actually build him, he was found wondering around the woods murding people, towns, kittens, if it had a yummy soul he was all over it. Cryx managed to subdue it and bend it to their will, though many of the techs aren't real sure it should be "trusted". He's a huge jack and really has a nasty gambit of abilities, including but not limited to the ability to suck up any living things soul that dies nearby then use that soul to heal or later to "boost" it'self, his skulls on his shoulder appear to be in control giving him magic of his own and a 360' field of vision(a big deal), and he hits you really hard.....

Units(aka squads of stuff that isn't good enough to be alone)

Satyxis Raiders

i have a full squad of 10, i also purchased a "unit attachment" which is the sea witch in front with the trident. These chicks are super fast and have a large melee range with their chain weapons. They also hurt casters if they hurt the casters jacks which is neat, and can knock things down. They are VERY easy to kill however if you can hit them, this is made doubly hard for ranged attacks by adding that Sea Witch, along with a few other bonuses she gives.

Solo's

Necro Surgeon and her pups.

Did i mention Skarre(my Warcaster in case you already forgot) is super emo? She cuts her self a lot, which is cool.... but to counter this a bit i bring the surgeon to bandage her up so she doesn't get to low. She can actually do other things if i were to bring some other units, but alas no room in the list.

War Witch Siren

A cool toolbox with the ability to do random things of worth, including her sword which binds you in place if she hits you. I like to use this combined with her large melee range to help keep enemies from running away =) she also has some very helpful spells available and is nearly impossible to kill at range.

Skarlock

A generic attachment for a warcaster, it can cast one of Skarres spells for free each turn along with the ability to collect souls ect. very helpful overall if some what simple in design.

Darragh Wriath

Darragh is a cool light cavalry solo, he is a battle wizard dragoon...what this means is he can cast a few of his own spells all of which are pretty good, he can also choose to attack things and if he kill something he can cast a spell for free. The Dragoon part means once he has taken 10 damage he will dismount and become less mobile and less armored(you get both a mounted and dismount model as well), but still around and ready to keep going. He's a utility problem solver really, and a very cool model.

Well thats my 35 point force, hope you enjoyed the pics. Cya next time for a battle report to help illustrate the game play a little better.

Machine of War

2010-09-07T14:23:00.002-08:00

Over the last month i have been knee deep in Warmachine, so with my interest peaked i thought i would use this blog for what it's meant for....a place for me to rant about what i am into at the moment. So on that note i will be putting together a group of articles to bring my friends from Hammer of War into at least a decent understanding of the fundamentals of Machine of War. Including a run down of my personal force.

Step 1: Basic's of the Game, i.e. what makes it different from Warhammer?

Size Difference

So the first thing you should know about Warmachine, is that it's generally played as a skirmish game, it does have rules for much much larger games but like 40k's apoc they arent something you will play often in most gaming groups. Warhammer has slowly built up the number of models players generally expect to use to the point now where it truly is a war game. It used to be that a single marine was an important model, and taking Plasma pistols ect. were completely worth it for killing MEQ's (Marine Equivalents), but now Melta is king as the game has further broken it's boundaries and encouraged not just loads and loads more models but now vehicles o plenty. This isn't a bad thing, but it is very different from WarMachine.

In WarMachine my current army has 17 models, most armies i have played against have had less then this though some armies will have more. One of the fundamentals changes here is the importance of each model on the field of battle, with so few units out there i need everyone of them to perform or things will go badly. You can of course play a friendly game with an army that's just thrown together, but generally speaking an army list of a vetern player will have a large amount of thought put into each and every choice within it. It will have a unifying purpose and each unit will have its role to play in the plan. Warhammer achieves this same thing, but on a much larger scale which leads to the elements within it being less and less important to the whole for most units.

To put it another way, it's generally accepted that in the scale of tactics Warhammer Fantasy is more tactical and strategic then 40k, if you accept that then know this, Warmachine is more tactical then Fantasy. Size is only one reason.

Personality

In Warhammer you have no personal stake in your army, by this i mean while you have an HQ choice it's really just another unit in your army. It doesn't change much if it dies in a game, it doesn't make a huge difference on your force typically. With a few noteable exceptions, it's generally just a bad ass dude.

In Warmachine the first choice you make when setting up a list is your Warcaster, it's "free" as far as point level is concerned as all the Warcasters are considered balanced even though they are all radically different. Your Warcaster is what shapes your force, it's spells, abilities, and traits unlock viscous combo's with other units in the force books, they allow you to setup maneuvers and tactics not available to other warcasters. They even provide restrictive army lists that allow you build a force that is "fluff" correct for each warcaster, while giving you bonuses for accepting the limits of such a list if you choose it.

The big difference is that nearly every game of Warmachine you ever play comes with the victory condition "if at the end of your turn you are the only player with a warcaster you win" This means kill their Warcaster and you win...there are objectives, there are scenario's, but keeping your caster alive is priority 1. This gives Warmachine an almost Chess like feel to it, you can lose on turn 1, you will lose on turn 2 at some point, you can be completely wiping your opponent from the field...but if you leave him the chance he can pull out an assassination in a heartbeat from an angle you didn't anticipate.

To sum it up, in Warmachine your Warcaster is a huge choice, and protecting it while getting the most from it is a large part of the game.

Luck vs Skill

In Warhammer we all have those tales of terrible luck, the day you rolled all one's on your Terminators armor saves against grots, ect. ect. In Warhammer most things are done on a table basis, ie. a Marine has a 3+ to shoot it, doesn't matter what it is. A Marine has a 3+ to save against it, or nothing, again doesn't matter what it is. The main benefit of this system is speed, which means it isn't necessarily bad but it also means that armies who throw buckets of dice on the table are better off in the long run as their averages will even out and bad luck won't usually be able to lose the game for them.

In Warmachine nearly everything important is done on two dice, and is usually referencing two different numbers against each other not a table. For example, to shoot at someone you take your models shooting ability number, which usually low like a 5, and roll two dice adding them together. Let's say we roll a 7, this gives us a 12, then we look at our opponents ability to defend it's self if that number is a 12 or less we hit! if it's a 13 or more it succeeded in evading our attack, we missed, whatever. Armor is the same, except the amount that surpasses our armor is what is dealt in damage so no matter what armor is helping you.

So while two dice, and no table means the ability for luck to screw is diminished it certainly still there (ask me about snake eyes). In Warmachine you have a resource called Focus, essentially your Warcaster is psychically connected with your Warjacks(large steam golems) and can spend it's time focusing it's power through the jack each turn. The more Focus you spend on your jack the better it's abilities. For instance, if you know you really need your Jack to hit someone, you can spend a focus point on it to "boost" the before mentioned attack roll. So now instead of 2 dice, plus your shooting skill, you get 3 dice plus the shooting skill! You can boost nearly any roll, though your Focus points are quite limited and are required for all kinds of special actions. You can also get boosts from other methods/sources, like Souls in the case of my army (nom nom nom).

To summarize, In Warmachine Luck is still present, it can still screw up your plans royaly, but thanks to low model count and the games mechanics of not relying upon charts and allowing you to spend resources to increase your needed actions, the affect of luck is lessened.

Balance

In Warhammer the designers don't have a real clear vision of the purpose of the game, they start by telling you just have fun no matter what which is fine, they take this notion into most things they do like their "FAQ's" online that actually state "this is how we play it, but it's not an official ruling", or for another example they recently put up 2 army books online in pdf format after taking the time to edit them quite a bit removing many of the issues those books cause in the game due to their age and ability to interact with brand new books, they then say "use whichever version you want"..... After all this it seems clear this is just DnD with minatures and space right? Wrong, we have Ard' boyz a GW sponsored tournament for "hard core who's da best", we have a brand new tournament circuit being brought back to life by GW, we have huge tournaments held all the time for Warhammer. Army books escalate in power every book generally speaking, the number of models fielded by new armies is staggering compared to older books. It's not super broken, the system works in it's own way, but anyone really into it will tell you warhammer is not balanced and needs quite a bit of love to get it there, but GW seems unwilling to give it said love.

  Warmachine however is much closer, it's not perfect either, but the message is clear, this game is meant to be played to win. When the new edition came out they updated every unit in the game without exception. New units were not necessarily better then old and "official" ruling are made all the time on their own forums. They still provide fluff based scenario's, unbalanced event games, loads of fluff on each unit and even as mentioned earlier the ability to take an army list that is correct fluff wise based on your caster. As mentioned before though even the fluff based list provides in game bonuses for accepting it's limitations to help make sure it can at least be competitive. All in all it's just nice to know that their is direction in game design.

Hobby

  I will start this area off by saying GW models are better then Warmachine models, art design and personal taste aside, the quality of GW minatures is leagues above Privateer Press. The recent kits from GW are all super amazing in Quality, Customization options, and Duality. One thing does Erk me about Warhammer though in the hobby aspect, because the new system relies upon true line of site and things like 50% of the model for cover, you can be punished for overly dramatic or enlarged custom jobs. On the same token a serious power gamer may go the other route and have say his Wraithlord squating down to create a much smaller model than intended...
  Now all that said the PP minatures are not bad at all, their pewter kits tend to be of better quality with much less flash and junk to remove, their plastic kits also are kinda neat in that they don't come on sprues...all the bits are in bags and ready to be assembled more or less. As PP moves more into plastics i hope this subsides, they are doing the right thing releasing Jack boxes that contain parts for multiple jacks, but the number of these kits is very low right now and you should be prepared to field mostly pewter models. On the second point Warmachine has no issue, there is no TLOS in warmachine, in fact the models are entirely for show, instead all things like cover and los are based entirely on a unit's base size not the actual physical model size. This also leads to fun bits like the "extremes" available from PP's online store, they are "extreme" re-sculpts of popular units that tend to be much larger then the normal model.

Example:

Lastly from a painter's perspective is that Warmachine has far fewer models required in each army, thus allowing you to lavish more time on each or have a fully painted force in much less time then your average Warhammer army.

That's it for this post, cya next time!

Bug's, T-Fex Vs Carni

2010-07-29T11:59:00.003-08:00

So the question i am wondering is....TyranoFex or CarniFex for Tyranid Heavy Support/Heavy Tank busting? I would bring 1 Trygon already, but would rather not spam them even though i think they're pretty awesome for the points. Mawlocs don't impress me much, Old one eye is poop, and Biovore's are good but probably not something i want for lots of little reasons. So two HS slots are open......

First we'll start with the Carni:

Pro's

Modest starting point cost, for a Monstrous Creature anyway.
Strength 9 makes him the best unit in the codex for Melee Tank busting
Living Ram makes it possible for the Carni to attack against Powerfists ect. first if it gets the charge.
The ranged options for the Carni are numerous and mostly good, some are considered better then others like the "DakkaFex" which includes 2 sets of Twinlinked Devourers.
When taking a good ranged weapon, you have a Versatile unit capable of melee and ranged support.

Con's

4 Wounds honestly feels low to me, the Carni is supposed to be the original living tank i think 1 more or at least the option to purchase 1 more should be present. That or perhaps a Toughness of 7, the point is the Carni is easy for many armies to put down in a single turn if it's caught out of cover, i should know....i'v done it many times =)
4 Attacks also feels low when combined with a low weapon skill. The Crushing Claw upgrade needs to be a guaranteed number of attacks or a larger amount for it to be worth it's hefty point cost and detriment to your Initiative(i mean it essentially removes the Carni's one Unique special rule). The Carni really needs to keep Scything Talons to be effective in melee at it's point cost, without them its basically a Chainfist Terminator.
No Inv Save, sure its basically a con of 90% of the nids....but at this point cost it's a big Con.
Ranged Weapon options while good, weaken Melee ability, and force the Carni to walk slowly each turn without a Tervigon's assistance. It's the common case of utility vs excellence, you can make him good at it all but it removes his ability to be amazing at either.
Initiative 1 means Space Wolf players will be trying to get you to fall down a crack, all rune priests are priority 1 for death.

Some builds i would consider:

"DakkaFex"

2x Twin-Linked Devourers with brainleech worms

Adrenal Glands

Clocking in at a straight 200 points, this Carni is a mid range support unit thats decent in melee but pretty fantastic on lightly armored infantry or light vehicles. The adrenal glands let it strike with Space Marines on the charge, and give it str 10 against vehicles and units of Toughness 5 models that i would rather instant death. The problem here is melee support, your getting 4-5 attacks on WS 3, that means you should miss 2, leaving you with 2 hits. While individuals and the aforementioned Toughness 5's will be scared of him, units of models need not fear as he just doesn't have the attacks to win combat against most foes.

"Screamer Killer"

2x Scything Talons

Adrenal Glands

Frag Spines

Bio-Plasma

At 195 points he's a tad cheaper, and is clearly better at melee. The Scything Talons give you a much better chance to put out the attacks in the to hit roll and his str 9/10 makes sure they hurt once they hit. Frag Spines lets you assault anyone you want, and adrenal glands again puts you on par with marines and into instant death range for toughness 5. Bio-plasma is the oddity here, in one corner it adds versatility to the Carni allowing him a useful shooting attack with a low AP, something most nid weapons lack. However, its also short range and is mounted on something that really wants to close distance first and assault asap to earn its keep. If the plasma had something special that made it scatter less or made it ordnance so it was more reliable then i would be happy, but atm i'm not sure its worth its points for short ranged plasma cannon that lets me keep my CC weapons. Removing Bio-Plasma however makes him the cheapest option.

"Cannoneer"

Scything Talons

Heavy Venom Cannon

Adrenal Glands

at 195 points this Carni is tooled to be the Versatile slow moving unit, it's HVC allows it to provide much needed long range Str 9 blasts to the front, opening up vehicles for others to attack whatever s within, and it keeps a single set of Scything talons so that it's a bit more dependable in Melee. It's problem then stems from being not all that good at either ranged or melee, and having a gun to shoot means its gonna be walking each turn so it wont be assaulting anything quickly unless its foolish enough to come to the Carni.

So on to the TyranoFex option:

Pro's

Best Ranged Anti-Tank in the Codex, hell its great anti-tank by anyone's terms.
6 Wounds, i guess it's in the "bigger MC" category, with 50% more wounds then a Carni it's survivable and will likely never die in a single turn.
it's save of 2+ is Amazing, especially when combined with the 6 wounds....it really will survive unless focus fired, and again even then your hard pressed to bring it down in one turn.
No official model means it's up to you, we know its big based on the stat line so use that to make a large LOS blocking cover granting beasty for your others to hide behind, with the above mentioned survivable traits he works well here.
Guns guns and more guns, sure the Rupture cannon is the highlight here, but packing the ability to fire it, a str 5 large blast, and a poison 2+ template all in one turn and this guy can bring serious serious pain to anyone that gets close.
Regeneration while the most expensive on this unit might actually be worth the points here.....

Con's

Expensive as can be in the codex, this unit isn't something your likely to see spammed...then again Land Raiders are spammed so who knows.
Like the Tervigon and Mawloc, it's not great by Tyranid MC standards in melee. WS 3 and only 3 attacks mean its not gonna clear units out on it own. It's not terrible overall but devoted assault units may be something you try to avoid or at least don't send it into assault un supported.
BS 3 means you will average a single hit with the rupture cannon each time you fire, i actually don't have a big problem with this as you have a 75% chance to get a single hit, a 12.5% chance to miss entirely, and a 12.5% chance to hit twice. I call that dependable, with burst/fail potential, unfortunaly your bringing this unit to shoot and those odds while fine are not fine when the point cost is considered.
The weapons carried are not a good combination when you take the Rupture cannon, the cannon is super ranged while the other weapons are all short range...chances are you wont be firing the short ranged weapons until late game, which means their point cost is most likely a waste overall. If it could maybe choose two targets to shoot at this would fix the issue, making the short ranged weapons at least capable of defending the T-Fex from pesky fast attack units ect.
Imitative 1 like before, but worse here because this is more points going down a crack.....
Again no Inv save, not as much of an issue for the T-fex as its got basically everything else going for it survival wise but still a con none the less.

The only build i really consider here is below, Regeneration would be nice on this unit but it pains me to sink those points into the unit with it's already huge price tag of 265....i am guessing my opponent s will ignore it mostly and its armor save and stat line will see it through most battles. No need to explain the build, as its explanation is rooted in the pro/con above.

"Tanka"TyranoFex

Rupture Cannon

Desccator larvae

Cluster Spines

Thoughts on the two units, experiences with them, builds i haven't considered and why?

Status Update, Puppies

2010-07-12T11:53:00.000-08:00

After a brief obsession over the monster hunter game i have recently been back at work with my wolves.

I set out to paint up my 15 terminators, and would call myself about 60% done. Basecoating is done, the whole model received a blackwash, the shoulder pads got their final yellow color and the runes have been filled in. I still need to do all of their armor the right color, i need to retouch everything with a ruin as their so small theirs plenty of excess paint spilled from their sides, some other details like gems and eyes and transfer, and once those steps are done comes highlighting then basing which i do last.

Their bases now have random stuff on them, but what they dont have is the mix of black/grey pebble material, smattering of tan grass, and snow that will basically cover them only showing the items on their now a bit.

I had also bought a Canis model and redone it up as a wolf lord, because while im not about to spam them there is no doubt they rock....and he has rocked in just about every game i bring him.

Right now i use him with this setup:

Wolf Lord +

ThunderWolf Mount

Frost Pole Axe

Runic Armor

Storm Shield

Wolftooth talisman

Wolftail necklace

For awhile i used Saga of the Warrior Born, because it is an amazing ability and when combined with this unit's power and mobility even more amazing...in theory. In practice it was a good bit less amazing, sure he got extra attacks from time to time when he was able to slay multiple baddies and get in combat the next turn, but overall the points cost became something i was willing to give on if i needed it. If i have the points Saga of the Beastslayer will probably be a very decently priced alternative, but as i use a Frost weapon for Str 6 Ini 5 attacks sending him against big stuff isn't usually the plan.... Saga of the Bear is a fine one as well, but expensive, and i have not once had him sweat being insta-deathed with his toughness 5.

I also used him with some wolves for a bit, a retinue of 2, and a pack of 8. The idea was that the enemy had 3 units to spread their attacks on, confusing them into hopefully being less effective or at least having attacks wasted. It would also allow me to multi assault over a large area and keep the wolf lord engaged in assault as much as possible.

However in practice there are two downfalls, the first i knew about, that casualties from shooting causing moral checks on my wolf lord when the feeble wolves are killed. This is bad news, as the whole unit can fall back 3d6 making it possible for them to just fall off the table turn 1 with a little luck from the enemy. The second was the same basic thing, but in assault. Sure the wolves attack in mass, they're ok overall as they're basically space marines with an extra attack, but they lack armor....which means a smart enemy will send his attacks at them instead of the super tough wolf lord. this meant that i would often lose or tie or not win by much in assault because of the wolves dieing to basic attacks.

So for now the wolves are out, though i may try adding them back in and giving the lord Saga of the Wolfkin, perhaps giving the wolves Ini 5 will assist them in carrying their weight in assault more then they do now but it could also lead to allowing my enemy to stack the nasty wolf lord wounds as they'll be taken with the mass of basic wolf wounds.

Anyway, heres the model, its a light conversion but took some effort to get just right. I felt he needed a longer reach then a normal weapon had because he was on this massive wolf, so i chopped up a thunder hammer and added a Sentinel Chainsaw to the end, then finished it out with the end of a chaos daemons standard i had laying around. The shield arm is nothing remarkable, but getting it to fit correctly was fun as the Canis model has his cloak partialy hiding his shoulder pad, so i had to carve out the new shoulder pad in just the same manner to get it to fit flush. You can't see it to well because it's all primed black, but the wolf is holding the head of a Daemonette with the rest of said daemonette scattered about the base, i liked this better then the wolf looking like he was prancing like a pretty pony.....

Nid Angel FAQ's out

2010-06-30T09:40:00.001-08:00

I'm sure most of you already know that the Nid and Blood Angel FAQ's are out, but sense i have been SUPER lazy with putting anything up i'll take the chance to throw out a post on what is pretty significant about them.

Nid:
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1240364a_FAQ_Tyranids_2010.pdf

Creatures outside Synapse at the start of the movement phase must test for instincts, regardless of whether a Synapse creature comes into range that turn. So you can't move a synpase unit into range before moving a unit outside of range to prevent them testing.
Hive Tyrants and Swarmlord are NOT independent characters when joined to a Tyrant guard unit, and so can not be singled out in close combat nor do they need to be base to base to contribute. Being a huge fan of Tyrants and the Lord i think this is pretty awesome.
Harpies/Tyrants with wings can Deep strike! It kinda sucks the other units with wings weren't included...
Zoanthropes seem to be breaking the unit of multiple wound identical models rule when a wound comes from a perils of the warp.
Mawloc rules are explained a little more, doesn't change much overall but helps with stubborn people.
Myctic spores are immobile, but can be moved by other rules specifically the mawlocs attack. For me this folds over to other units in the same situation like immobile vehicles.
Shadow of the warp doesn't affect psykers in vehicles....weird but ok.
Doom of Malanti is sorted out, cover saves allowed and units in vehicles are immune.
Lash Whips reduce you to Ini. 1, then you can add any bonus's to that like furious charge or "i strike first" stuff.

Overall the nids FAQ is what i expected, nothing really jumped out as a major change or WTF. I also think they did a pretty good job overall being clear.

Blood Angels:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1240365a_FAQ_BloodAngels_2010.pdf

Oddly they say your model only gets Furious charge bonuses if within range of the Sang. Priest when it makes its attacks in melee...thats strange i would play it as the unit must have been in range before it charged but this is indicating not only later application, but model specific application instead of unit.
Baal Predators can use Smoke launchers in their scout moves! Pretty awesome for preventing alpha strikes when your going second.
Decent of Angels only works with jump packs, so your out of luck with that land raider or drop pod. Being a non-Blood angel player that makes me happy.
Corbulo wont let you re-roll your first turn or deployment zone dice...which is weird.

Overall the Angels didn't get as many good questions answered, mostly a lot of clarification of things RAW lawyers were pushin.

Mulling it over: 'Ard Boyz list

2010-05-18T11:14:00.002-08:00

So first off here is the exact result of our 'Ard Boyz, huge grats to Jeff and his Orks! He had played exactly one game with Orks before stepping into 'Ard Boyz.

1st: Cole (Space Wolves): 60
2nd: Dan (IG): 57
3rd: Ron(IG): 50
4th: Tim(Eldar): 48
5th: Jeff(Orks!): 39
6th: Chris B(Dark Eldar): 38
7th: Andy(SM): 33
8th: Drew(Chaos): 27
9th: Chris M(IG): 25
10th: Tyson(Dark Angels): 22
11th: Danny(Chaos): 19
12th: Jeb(Tau): 4

So i have been mulling over some possible changes to my list.

current list:

Logan Grimnar
Njal StormCaller
Rune Priest
Wolf Priest

5 Man Terminator Wolf Guard
4 Man terminator Wolf Guard (Njal's Bodyguard)
6 Man Power Armored Wolf Guard, 1 Termie
5 Man Power Armored Wolf Guard (Rune Priests Bodyguard)
8 Man Grey Hunter unit (W/WG)

5 Man Wolf Scouts (W/WG)
5 Man Wolf Scouts

6 Man Long Fangs (W/WG, 5 Multi Melta)
6 Man Long fangs (W/WG, 3 Missiles, 2 Heavy Bolters)

Njal --> Rune Priest with Terminator Armor, chooser, Combi/melta/plasma

Njal is a great character for use in normal games, he has the fun storm ability and the equipment and abilities to be useful against most every army. The thing that gets me about him is that he is what i would call an "all rounder" that being he has the ability to be useful in every game, but its only against certain armies that he will be truly worth his exceedingly high point cost of 270. Now all rounders are a good thing in most cases, but when they cost that much and are 1 model with only 2 wounds and no eternal warrior you may want to rethink it. He will be truly amazing against psyker heavy lists, which i admit are popular on the internet.

-Blood Angels seem to have a lot of lists built around their librarians.
-Eldrad lists seem quite common elsewhere, just not here in Anchorage.
-Tyranid Lists are in many cases packed full of psyker's, Zoans, Tervigons, Tyrants, ect.
-Space Wolves often have multiple Rune Priests, like me =)

so the point is he offers a very solid defense against those units and abilities that are often the cornerstone of the above armies...of course he has to be within 24 inches of the psyker and he has to be alive still... Normal Rune priests still offer good defense as well, a 4+ instead of a 3+. So it's not like removing Njal means im defenseless but given the power of most psychic abilities its a worthwhile bonus to get the 3+.

It's also worth noting that he has all the psychic abilities. The funny thing here is that it's not so much that he can choose some of the other less commonly used abilities, its that it allows me to bring two models with both Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf. If Njal is replaced by a Rune Priest, i can't give both Rune Priests the same two spells so one of them will lose one of these two spells.

LL is the all rounder spell, it provides a very solid skill that affect nearly anything you want, and in my army of close range fighters having an Unlimited range assault d6 AutoCannon that hits on 2's is pretty helpful.

Jaws is a foe specific spell, against Tyranids running lots of expensive low Ini Monsters its amazing. Against very hard to wound/kill models its also amazing, for instance even if the mob will only fail on a 6(all models fail on a 6 despite a high Ini value) it can be better to make your opponent roll and hope for the 6. Fateweaver is a good example of this, rolling it off between useing LL and Jaws, your more likely to kill him first with Jaws then LL having two Jaws available increases your ability to remove nasty things 100%. It also allows you to snipe, so if that huge ork mob has a pain boy, just run the line on through to hit him and hope he fails his test....problem solved. On the flip side, against Mech armies its pretty useless, against high Ini armies or even marine ini armies it's effectiveness goes down a ton.

Lastly is Njal's storm, easily his highest profile ability. The problem is it doesn't seem to do a whole lot honestly.... Njal is drop poding in, and GW FAQ says he doesn't get it that turn, so 1 turn wasted by default. GW FAQ says if im going second the first two results on the storm table have no effect.... After that you have some decent abilities, but they are often either out of range or simply ineffective. Bottom line if this were the only reason to keep him, i wouldn't have typed all this.

Long Fangs W/3 Missile Launchers, 2 Heavy Bolters, 1 Melta gun ---> 5 Man Wolf Guard Terminators w/ 2 Storm Shiels, 2 Combi-Melta's, Power Fist, Thunder Hammer, wolf claws, Cyclone Missile Launcher.

So the second long fang unit has a few purposes. It's there for Logan and wolf priest to swap too if i faced a horde list, that would mean they drop pod down and let fly 3 Frag missiles, 2 Heavy Bolters, storm bolter and bolt pistol into a horde mob hopefully decimating it, and one combi-melta into something else.

The other purpose is against an opponent who reserves it all, they can deploy with the initial wave of pods and get into a good fire position, being the only true long range fire power in my army.

The problem is that if either of those situations is not true, they're a rather ineffective unit. Yes i gave the squad leader a melta gun, so that he and the WG with combi melta can blast something when the unit comes down later in the game, but then they need to sit still to fire and at that point who knows what will be left.

The Terminator unit is essentially a copy of my current 5 man unit, except it has a Thunder hammer instead of a chainfist, and a Cyclone missile launcher instead of a Heavy flamer. This gives me a little of that long ranged love the long fangs had, but mobile and ready to go the turn it pods in. Not to mention they are a supreme threat in assault, and are harder to kill in Terminator armor, oh and their scoring. This also means the WG with combi-melta will be reassigned out, probably to the wolf scouts without one or he can be cannibalized into something else.

Overall this change i think is good, but the problem is it relies upon me changing Njal out as well for points.... I considered changing the wolf priest out instead, but his Fearless is pretty important to logan being ready to move on turn 2 and not pinned/broken whatever.

What do you think?

'Ard Boyz aftermath

2010-05-16T16:36:00.003-08:00

'Ard Boyz was this weekend, and boy what a great time it was. Our local scene is pretty chill overall, but there were still some healthy 'Ard Boyz style lists to be seen.

The exact list will be out later this week, but for now the top three were:
1. Me and my Space Wolves
2. Dan and his Imperial Guard
3. Ron and his Imperial Guard

Dan had a pretty standard guard list, focusing on Artillery with a mind numbing 3 Manticore's, accompanied by all the regular guard vet chimera spam, Inq. W/Mystics ect ect, with a few flavor units thrown in like a small 5 man stormtrooper squad and a sentinel squad.

Ron had a rather different'ish take on it, bringing double Medusa's and a Manticore, accompanied by a diversity of mostly normal guardsmen, some special weapons teams, and double HQ's in chimera's ect. And of course Inq W/Mystics, Psychic hood, ect.

I brought my Drop podding Wolves, while i for sure use a few tricks of the book and i surely spent a good amount of time changing my list about, i really wanted to stick to a fluffy theme for my force (Heresy for 'Ard Boyz i know...), i was more excited really about the high point's free tournament where i could come get trashed and learn tons about this new army i picked up last month.

So the Theme of my force was just a continuation of my normal points wolves lists i had built, Logan Grimnar leading an elite force drop podding in. So to keep this theme i made sure all my units could fit in, and so i had 7 drop pods in total, 4 Wolf Guard Packs, and every unit had a wolf guard with only a single exception. I pulled in two units of scouts, who not only would prove helpful but fluff wise were the "eyes on the ground" who called in the strike force, and it was one of the two scout squads that did not have a WG, as i reasoned the other squads WG was simple the one in charge of ground operations.

Here's the list:

Logan Grimnar
Njal StormCaller
Rune Priest
Wolf Priest

5 Man Terminator Wolf Guard
4 Man terminator Wolf Guard (Njal's Bodyguard)
6 Man Power Armored Wolf Guard, 1 Termie
5 Man Power Armored Wolf Guard (Rune Priests Bodyguard)
8 Man Grey Hunter unit (W/WG)

5 Man Wolf Scouts (W/WG)
5 Man Wolf Scouts

6 Man Long Fangs (W/WG, 5 Multi Melta)
6 Man Long fangs (W/WG, 3 Missiles, 2 Heavy Bolters)

Theres lots of gear in there, and the WG squads are bigger then those numbers as i didnt include the one's sent to other units. Overall i tried to make every unit "Drop Pod" effective, that being that every unit had the ability to affect the battle field on the turn they came down. For the most part this worked out well, but Mystics really managed to Crump this strategy well.

The long fangs with missiles/HB didnt do much overall, and are easily the biggest unit that "could have been something else" though they did have a purpose, they were there for a horde army or if my opponent reserved it all. If i had faced massed orks or Tyranids, Logan and the wolf priest would swap from the Multi melta long fangs to them to deliver death to a large infantry unit. Or i have heard of Eldar useing a reserve it all strategy involving deniing a few turns of combat essentially then coming in and doing great damage without giving your opponent time to really respond. I might look into replacing them with another WG unit, maybe with a Cyclone to make up some of the firepower loss but im not sure.

Njal remains an oddity in my list, i had a few games back when i started where he was a star player...but sense then he has been very lack luster. His storm ability is often out of range or useless, for some reason he tends to overheat or fail his psyker test way more then statistically he should, and he's a bucket load of points. He was ok in my last game where he negated some psychic abilities, and really his 3+ to negate is the thing keeping him in the list...against Eldar it will be invaluable we just dont have many Eldar players around here.

Overall the best part of my army really was the large number of models, despite it being a VERY elite geared out army. Often my opponents would be capable of killing my men, but would end up not being able to completely wipe them out leaving a lot of 1 man units running about, still able to capture objectives and table quarters ect.

my opponents were very similar to last tournie....
IG, Chaos, IG....it would be really nice to not play so many IG lists at whatever tournament comes next.

One thing i wonder too about the results of our tournament was whether it would have been someone else in second if Table 2 hadn't been Mech guard vs. Mech guard, which means neither is really at a disadvantage because of the crazy anti mech scoring for mission 3.

If you played in 'Ard Boyz, or know how your local tournie went, please indulge my curiosity in the new poll i set up!

Emperor's Dilemma: Mystics

2010-04-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

When i started playing 40k again after a 5 year break i came back with a truck load of random space marine stuff, and a fully fledged Daemonhunters army. Complete with no less then 30 grey knights, 10 grey knight Terminators, 3 God hammer land raiders, 1 land raider crusader, 2 Inquisitors, loads of minions, and both Characters from the book.

So Naturally i took them up and played with them for a bit, added a few figures and even got second place in a local 1k tournament with them.

Eventually i played a cool version of them where i converted some of the minions into inquisitors with Psycannons, and played a force with 4 Inquistors with full blown pew pew squads and mystics ect.

This force proved fun ish, if ineffective against hard armor at range, and i educated a few folks around here about what an amazing unit the Mystics are. But then i got the urge to add some IG to them for more model support, which snow balled into an IG army, which led to me not really being interested in my Daemohunters anymore until they revamp them some day never(or soon, if every rumormill is to believed every month it seems)

Now to the point of the article, and poll, sense playing my IG i have not ONCE used mystics. I say this with pride because my stance on it is clear, Mystics are very very powerful for an IG force at this time. The IG of today is very good at being a gun line, they can outshoot any army with ease and little skill from the controlling general assuming he's not completely crap at list building. the best way to mess with them is to actually get your units into their line some how, at which point most guard armies begin to crumble or begin to show seriously lower ability to react to ranged threats while they attempt to remove the cancer. So Deepstriking units are your ticket, outflanking as well to a lesser degree.

Thanks to a 32 point investment on the part of the guard player however this is no longer an issue, instead the guard player relish's the opportunity to get in some extra shots on your army as it drops in near by. This is pretty wrong, more so when you consider then length of time between the two books.

What should happen?
Should they be more points? Sure thats an option, a lot more for sure say in the 150+ range might help do the trick.
Should they be changed to require first LOS from the Inquisitor and second some sort of leadership test as well? Probably.
Should they be limited to only firing themselves, and not being able to relay the order to any other unit within 12 inches or perhaps not to other units not in the daemonhunter codex? Sounds very reasonable to me...

All good ideas for keeping the theme, but for now their out there and in use by many players who are looking for the best possible IG list for winning.

So what say you, is it fine to use them or is it a clear sign of a power gamer?

Puppies List

2010-04-22T00:50:00.000-08:00

Had my first loss today with the puppies, while i certainly look back and see a few choices made that could have helped, lady luck was most certainly against me.

From Logan falling to 3 wounds his Inv. save just didn't like in the first round of combat before even getting to attack, to both terminators squads that were attempting to come help taking a full 2 turns to move 12 inchs through difficult terrain (thats 12 total including assaults, both units rolled 1's and 2's both turns for move and assault). My opponent on the other hand was on fire, with Dante making 6 inv. saves against power fist hits that would insta kill him in one turn and scattering a plasma cannon shot from its target into melee causing only hits on me....for examples, oh i could bitch on and on but lessons learned and i knew bad luck would be devastating on a small elite force.

It did get me motivated to actually draw up a good 2k force, instead of just throwing in Ragnar haphazardly. I also tried to streamline my 1750 force a bit more, so please take a look and let me know what you think. Again though my wolves are meant to be fun first, tournament math hammered second.

1750------

Logan Grimnar
Njal StormCaller W/Termie Armor
5 Man Wolf Guard in Termie armor

2 Storm Shields
Power fist
Thunder Hammer
Combi-Melta
Double Claw
Claw

4 Man Wolf Guard in Termie Armor

1 Shield
Claw
Power Fist
Thunder Hammer

7 Man Wolf Guard in Power Armor

Thunder Hammer
Combi-Melta

1 Termie armor W/Assault Cannon/Claw
1 W/Power fist being sent to Grey Hunters

5 Man Grey Hunter Squad

Melta Gun

6 Man Long Fangs

5 Multi Melta's

Dreadnought W/Multi-Melta/Heavy Flamer

All Drop Poding, 6 pods total

The Main difference is the wolf guard, im leaving the Termie with assault cannon and claw in the unit, and adding a Thunder hammer. This gives them the ability to deal with everything instead of making them this wacky little anti bad armor saves guys. I have 5 points left over, which i can give out as melta bombs to some one.

For my 2k version i take all the above minus the random melta bombs, and add in.

Rune Priest W/Chooser/Living Lighting/Jaws
5 Man Wolf Guard in Power armor

Power Fist

They also have a drop pod.

This puts me at 7 Pods, im nearly done painting my first pod and trust me, this fact PAINS me....but 7 pods means i can drop 4 on turn 1 which is very cool and having one unit in a rhino was just bizarre. The Rune Priest goes with them, he provides both close combat help with his force weapon and ranged support with his powers, as well as another 24 inch bubble to challenge opponents psychic powers or to double challenge them if Njal is also near by. this also gives me 5 scoring units which is very nice.

Some Alternatives i had drawn up were

Wolf Lord

ThunderWolf Mount
Power Fist
Storm Shield
Saga of the Warrior Born
Runic Armor

This guy just sounds fun, he's a beast and while it would arguably better to give him Saga of the Bear, i really wanna get someone with Warrior Born in there somewhere. The other big bonus is his movement ability, as Cavalry he's able to move 6, fleet d6, and assault 12 meaning that he could very quickly assist where needed and could easily keep that Warrior Born Tally going. I was torn between a Frost weapon and the power fist, because the power fist wastes his I5....and would be Strength 6 on a wolf. The power fist though is Strength 10 on the wolf making it uber for insta killing things....at the exact same price.

10 Man Wolf Guard in Power Armor

Power Fist
Power weapon
Combi-Melta

Again in a drop pod, brining me to 7 pods. The appeal here is that its a large unit, something i dont have right now.

Lastly i thought about adding say Wolf Scouts or a Lone Wolf, both of which are very cool units and will eventually make their way into my armies in the future...

I worry that perhaps my squad sizes are too small and i should stop trying for more and focus on bulk. Certainly kill point missions will be interesting with all these units plus drop pods available, but i refuse to subscribe to the idea that my pods are free kill points. At Armor 12 even open topped isn't super easy to take down without the right weapons, and if those weapons are firing at drop pods their not shooting my troops. In a normal force where only a single unit is drop poding, i can understand this notion of free kill points, but in a force of nothing but drop pods my enemy can either waste time attacking the pods or focus on the wolves that are raining from the sky in their face.

lord though....7 pods to paint...............sad face

Grey Hunters painted

2010-04-17T15:26:00.000-08:00

So i'v finished the paint job's on my grey hunter's. I choose them first because while cool i wanted more practice with the paint scheme before i moved on to the terminators and lastly my HQ's.

Overall i think it came out well, they look great from game distances (so like 2 feet away) and still look pretty darn good close up, though that depends on your personal taste i suppose. I favor a dirty well used look to my paint jobs, not only is it easier....which i won't lie is a big plus in my book, but for me anyone going to war isn't going to be sporting prestinly perfect armor. I'm no amazing painter, after all this time iv picked up a good few tricks and tips, but most of mine focus on getting the miniature playing quality quickly instead of being microscope quality.

Anyway take a look, click the pics for big versions.

I also managed to get another game in with them this week despite our local friday spot being closed, and man was it a fun one.

My list was the same as before, 1750 points so no Ragnar nonsense.

My opponent played Tyranids:
HQ Tervigon w/ big crab claws and toxin, adrenalin ect. the works....
Troop Tervigon w/same
Troop Tervigon w/same
20 Termigaunts (i think, might have been 24)
20 Termigaunts
3 Zoanathrope squad
Doom of Malanti
3 Hive Guard
Mawloc
Mawloc

He gave me 1st turn, we were playing table sides with 5 objectives that we placed in a plus sign of sorts on the table(sorry no pics).

So initially i was concerned....Mawlocs are gonna be brutal against my termies, Zoans are good against them, Malanti is good against them....even Tervigons can do some damage with all the upgrades they had. But i was glad to be fighting a challenging list none the less, and i knew my opponent was a skilled player too so it was gonna be fun for sure.

I deployed nothing, with one objective 12 inches from my board edge i figured i would capture it with my rhino squad at some point later and the rest is in drop pods. My opponent decided to deploy nothing as well....so here it was, the big gotcha of a drop pod list!

So turn 1, i had to drop 3 pods. I thought about dropping in my back field and shooting at them as they advanced....but really my shooting is quite weak at range as its mostly storm bolters and melta stuff and with so many tervigons pumping out babies on their way to me the horde situation could be bad. So i decided that Russ would be pissed if i did that, so i deployed Logan/long Fangs, the dreadnought, and Njal's unit about 12 inches from the nid board edge in the middle of the board.

his turn 1 was obviously non existent.

Turn 2 i got in both other pods but not the rhino, they came down with the termie wolf guard close to the nid board edge and the power armor near the middle of the map, so they could adjust and possibly take an objective if the nids broke through the termie wall too slowly. Logan left the long fangs and joined the Termies, giving them preferred enemy.

His Turn 2 a Troop Tervigon, a mass squad of Termigaunts, Doom of Malanti, his Hive Guard and both Mawlocs came on. His Mawlocs tried to deep strike onto the termies, and the long fangs, with only the long fangs taking a good hit and losing 3 of them and their leader. The rest came on in the middle ready to assault. Doom managed to get both Logan and Njal's unit in his range, but i passed both checks without issue so he shot in and killed nothing. The Termigaunts assaulted Njal's unit, given both Toxin Sacs and Adrenalin glands from the local Tervigon they were a force to be reckoned with. They tore down only one terminator though, and lost quite a few in return both to our attacks and the subsequent fearless resolution wounds. The Hive guard Managed to stun the dreadnought despite Njal's -1 BS storm raging.

My turn 3 Logan and his unit headed forward and threw a few bolter rounds into the hive guard, the rhino still stayed out. The long fangs threw a few shots into the mawloc that decimated them, and the wolf guard in power armor threw some random shots into the other one, i thought about assaulting it but my power armor wolf guard lack power weapons or power fists so they decided not to...i think i might change that. the Doom's pulse affected the same two units again, but again they both passed their tests. In Assault Logans unit assaulted the guard and included Doom as well, Logan smashed doom in with all power fist attacks and the termies took care of the hive guard. Njal and his unit finished off the termigaunts they were in combat with as well.

Nid turn 3 saw another troop choice Tervigon come in, the other mass Termigaunt squad, and the Zoanathropes, leaving only the HQ Tervigon still in reserve. The tervigon tried giving himself feel no pain, but Njal had his say and it didnt work. One of the Mawlocs went back underground while the other waited to finish what it started with the long fangs. the Zonathropes came in behind a building and did nothing. The intial Tervigon that came on made something like 7 babies and broke his baby maker, angry he charged Njal's unit and his babies joined the mass blob of termigaunts that just came in, as well as the new Tervigon in assaulting Logan's unit. It didnt look good for logan..so i trumpeted his horn of OMG DO BETTER and gave my units their +1 attack. Boy was it bloody....Logan himself smashed 7 gaunts into the ground, the Termies added another 6 with the power fist and thunder hammer being dragged down before being able to attack. In the end it was only logan left with only 1 wound left. But he still won the combat, so a whole ton of the gaunts died to fearless wounds and even the tervigon took a few wounds. Njal and his unit lost two Termies but managed to beat the Tervigon down to 1 wound, then it failed a save against its extra fearless wounds and died!

My turn 4, the rhino showed up and just drove up to park on the objective as planned. The mawloc that stayed had forgotten to assault so we shot it up a few times and managed a wound or two with various types of bolters. Njal moved over to assault the gaunt squad still swarming Logan and the dreadnought now unstunned move to assault the Tervigon in combat with Logan as well. In Assault logan smashed more gaunts, Njal and his boys did as well. The Termigaunts however pulled Logan down finally. The Tervigon and the dreadnought went at it, the dreadnought wounding it a couple times and the Tervigon managing some crappy armor pen rolls did nothing in return. Again we won combat by a lot and all but 3 of gaunts died to fearless rolls, but then the Tervigon succumbed to fearless wounds and died killing off the remaining guants in his death screams.

Nid turn 4 brought the mawloc back, but it scattered and only hit one termie in Njal's unit but killed it. The Zoan's shot at Njal but he negated 2 of their attacks and the third saved on a storm shield. In Assault the mawloc that had been loitering near the remains of my long fangs assaulted them, took a wound from the termie armored guard with wolf claw in the process but wiped them out. The last HQ Tervigon came on and assaulted Njal's unit, it killed a Termie and took a good 4 wounds itself, taking another to a failed fearless wound at the end.

In my turn 5 my Dice decided it was time for the game to be officially over, so the drop pods shot down the mawloc that killed the long fangs with storm bolters and a little help from the power armored wolf guard bolters. The remaining pods put two more wounds on the other mawloc leaving it with 2 left. The dreadnought moved over to the Zoan's and smashed one with a multi melta hit, he then assaulted them and managed nothing thanks to their saves. But in what was surely the craziest bit ever Njal's bird, took its S3 attacks against the Tervigon and pecked out its eye taking its last wound before anyone else struck!

I currently had 3 objectives, and my opponent had no troops and only a mawloc and the engaged zoan's (Which had no chance of ever winning against the dreadnought in melee) so we called it.

Man what a bloody battle this was, and i wished i had my camera...it was SUPER fun because it truly was back and forth at times. Luck was on my side for a good bit of it there at the end, and i was very pleased with my Terminators for surviving what they did and not going by their classic roll all 1's issue, even if only a single one survived to the end they did well overall.

Angels Vs Puppies Batrep

2010-04-14T18:48:00.001-08:00

Finally got to take my wolves list for a spin today at the local comic shop, and low and behold i got to face off against blood angels!

My list was:

Logan
Njal w/Termie armor
5 Wolf Guard in Termie armor
4 Wolf Guard in Termie armor (w/ Njal)
6 Wolf Guard only 1 with Termie armor and Assault Cannon
7 Grey Hunters (one of the power armored wolf guard above joined them, with a PF)
6 Long Fangs
Dreadnought W/MM and HF
5 Drop pods, and 1 Rhino(grey hunters)

The Wolf guard had all kinds of random equipment, see one of my earlier posts for a more in depth list. Now my opponent had a 2k force he wanted to run, so i needed another 250 points...i didnt bring the models but i did have a couple extra...so i added Ragnar why not!

Blood angels:

Sanguinar
25 Death Company W/jump packs, lots of power weapons and a few thunder hammers
5 Death Company Dreadnoughts W/Blood talons and a single Magna Grapple

yeah...no scoring units, he said he wins by wiping you out. We naturally rolled a 5 objective mission =)

He gave me first turn and i deployed my Rhino w/ Grey hunters 12 inch's out in the middle with the rest in reserve.

He deployed the death company blob in the west, 3 dreadnoughts in the middle, and 2 in the east.

on first turn i brought in the long fangs, w/ Grimnar and Ragnar, Njal and his guard, and the 5 Guard termies. I brought them all down on the 2 lone dreadnoughts and put both into the ground in shooting. My Rhino pushed straight forward and toward the deathcompany and popped smoke.

In his turn the 3 dreadnoughts in middle headed off toward my line but couldn't make assault range even with fleet. The death company were forced to follow my orders and Raged toward the rhino in the middle, sanguinar decided to follow along. (click the picture for a much bigger version, and YES i do not yet own drop pods so the soda/beer are their stand ins =()

On Turn 2 i got both my other drop pods in, Logan swapped over to the guard squad with the assault cannon and gave them tank hunter. I dropped 2 of the 3 dreadnoughts with the other making its cover saves. My Rhino made haste to the board edge and away from my formation being sure to keep it's self the closest target to the death company.

The one surviving dreadnought made all speed for my line and wiped out the long fangs easily in assault. My Trolling technique was working great and the death blob followed my rhino ever further away, they did assault but only managed to shake and immobolize the rhino.

Turn 3 i brought the last dreadnought down and began preping for the death company to come my way. My grey hunters got out, killed a death company in shooting and assaulted them. I managed another kill before the squad was wiped out, but because i had assaulted them they were unable to attack the rhino.....

In his turn he had only the blob and Sanguinar, the blob had to stay and rage against my rhino so Sanguinar also stayed, they blew it up and lost 2 men to the explosion.

Turn 4 was spent shooting a little at the death company and getting into position to attack them.

His turn was spent moving toward me as well.

Turn 5 i let ragnar break ranks and charge them even though i knew he wouldnt have assault range and would die.

His Turn 5 he shot at and killed ragnar with bolt pistols....but that denied him the charge. He also lost a few men to Tempests wrath. He did manage to assault the non termie wolf guard unit with Sanguinar, Logan who was attached had given them preferred enemy. The end result was that he threw all attacks against logan and wounded him once(after saves), the wolf guard wounded him once, and Logan finished him off with power fist attacks.

Turn 6 we shot up a few random men, then Logan sounded his horn and his unit plus the dreadnought assaulted. The end result was 2 wolf guard died and the death company were wiped out. With no remaining units he was tabled.

I was very happy with my force, Ragnar was uneeded of course and sorta unplanned. I dont think i would take him again in this force, or maybe i would i did basically throw him away lol. The Angels all death company list was interesting but really easy to play around there really wasnt any point where i was sweating.

Apocalypse Rehashed

2010-04-12T12:17:00.000-08:00

So our recent Apoc game came and went this last weekend. Feel free to see the last post on my army comp ect. Otherwise ill just rehash how it went with some lovely pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Here's my army first of all:

I ended up deciding i would taste a little of what the dark side had to offer and was defected to the Evil team, which once the teams were settled seemed a good plan as our teams superheavies consisted of no less then:
1. Emperor Class Titan (the 4000 point one...)
1. Reaver Titan
1. Warlord Titan
2. Heirophant Bio-Titans
3. BaneBlades
1. Brass Scorpion
1. Hellhammer
1. Squigoth
1. Super ZZZZAAAPP gun

The good guys had:
1. Paladin class titan (smaller then warhound?)
1. Warhound titan
3. Baneblades
1. Hellhammer

Given the above....things look good, if very unbalanced in the Strength D weaponry department.

We were going second, and i had my choice of a rock maze that blocked all kinds of LOS for my Blades, or a wide open field. We decided to hold the field and my force was a sort of "defence" force for the emperor titan.

Some Highlights of the setup would be our Khorne Player knowing full well he was going second, but lining his marines up right at the gunline ready to rush forward if they lived.

Eventually the battle disolved into a massive Cluster..... Here's some pictures of the mess.

Bugs in the city!

A massive flank marching dreadnought legion meets genestealers.

what was left over around turn 2 of a massive land raider block.

there seemed to be a locator beacon buried behind my guys....the sentinels had great fun just dumping plasma into the spot though.

The wolf player was quite surprised when my penal legion managed 5 rending wounds on him....

Da Ork's is Landed

Overall the game was fun, i only lost a single whole unit which was one baneblade that died to Hammerblow before the game really started.... I killed a good amount but ended up with most of my force being kinda blocking from either the massive LOS blocking clifs or the emperor's legs. The other half of my force, my IG assault Wing didnt do much of anything because the game ended on turn 3......it was there plan to drop to the ground turn 4 and assault that turn while holding an objective with the 2 units of vets so that was a big bummer.

In the end we called it on turn 3 like i said, the good guys managed to hold a single objective after 3 of the marines made a 6+ go to ground save against my Baneblade. When you end on turn 3 its really hard to say anyone won, we simply had no time to deal with it. I dont really enjoy just dukeing it out for 3 turns and then being done, i like to fully resolve the narrative and at least give the units i had planned to use a chance to do their thing.

Apocalypse

2010-04-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

This weekend we have an Apoc Game happening at our local warhammer group, something tells me its going to be crazy because our local forums have been buzzing with activity about it and seems like everyone is going.

Not only this but there have been a large amount of home made data sheets up for community approval and lots of questions about "how many big nasty things can i bring?". Which leads me to the first part of my post subject which will be followed by my IG list ill bring to this game.

Big Nasties in Apoc.....

I guess the question i would ask you first is what does Apoc mean to you, think about it for a second...................................

Ok so for me it means massive battles, huge amounts of units taking up a ping pong table sized board or an entire living room floor. It means spending literally all day and evening plaything through the one game with your mates while consuming too much sugar, caffine, and pizza.

My vision includes maybe 1 big nasty on each side, 1 beast that annihilates all the little stuff around it each turn. This 1 big nasty is resilient and around for lets say 4 out of 6 turns before its dragged down, while its around its very killy of course.

The problem around here is thats not quite the way it works out, instead we have 3 out of 5 people who spend 80% of their points on one model, i.e. a titan. They then outfit it with only the best weapons, a notable example is a scratch built Chaos Reaver with 3 Laser Destructors. What then transpires is that the titans duke it out, taking turns knocking each other out in 1 turn's shooting while what "normal" units are around spend a little time pecking at each other and the whole things ends up feeling kinda lame.

The problem is 2 fold.

D weapons are too good

They shouldn't cause instant death no matter toughness, instead they should just instant death toughness 5 or below like a strength 10 weapon or perhaps cause 2 wounds to models toughness 6 and above. This would make Tyranid monstrous creatures actually viable in Apoc....
They shouldn't ignore cover saves no matter what, maybe ignore area cover but the mechanics behind cover should still apply in general so that units without an inv. save can maybe stand a chance. Perhaps make units reroll successful cover saves if you want to make the rule change a little smaller.
Restrict the equipment on these units, or if you dont want to be restrictive, officially "suggest" players restrict the spam of D weapons where other weapon systems are available so that super liberal players dont feel they're going against the game by restricting them. This goes back to that reaver with triple laser destructor, Apoc is supposed to be a fun game it is so open for abuse you can't possibly step up to an Apoc game and expect a fair fight if players are just out to win. So whats more fun, the triple weapon titan, or a titan with 3 different weapons systems blasting apart different targets? well i guess that moves us on to big point 2....

Players

My stand point is come up with a good army that has some fun combo's for killing opponents in it but make sure the force at least partially represents the army and isnt full of cheese meant only to win.

Apoc is the setting where you give out upgrades you wouldn't normally because the points are available and its not math hammer time. Give that IG sergeant a power sword, give the Russ's side sponsons, ect. Make your army characterful!
Come up with a theme, for my list against the Tyranids last apoc game i wanted to use a Steel Fury Formation, so i took that and then took my other IG units as sorta the force that protects the formation from assault. I recently took up Space Wolves, my plan is once i have them ready they will be doing what space marines do....drop podding into the enemy while my IG gun line pounds them from afar and slowly advances.
After you've made your force, step back and say..."does any of this seem cheesy to me, if i were to be playing against it" If you feel your force is sorta cheesy then adjust it, throw in some fun flavor units that might suck in Apoc...like Penal legion or an Infantry platoon with no heavy weapons....sure they might not be pivtol units but they add a flavor to the battle that when all players do the same is just so much fun. In my first Apoc game it was an infantry squad with a flamer that captured the last objective on top of a hill to win the game for our side, so you never know!
Try and stay in a single codex army, or at most 2. If you do go for 2 make sure the split makes sense, like IG and marines, or Marines and Daemohunters. If your playing xeno's i would simply recommend your two forces fight on different areas, so have your eldar attack from the west while the ork's they tricked into fighting with them attack in the south.

Some players are in it to win it...

if your not able to talk to your team days before the battle, try and listen to other players in the pregame huddle and decide if they're trying to have fun or stack the deck to win. If they offer up strategies like "guys if we dont get first turn lets reserve everything" speak out and say no that would super gay for an apoc game.... Dont be mean but remind your team that its about having fun first in apoc, winning second.
Don't abuse the rules or lack of rules in apoc, Yes you can bring a Harlequin squad with a dark elder archon, and a sanguinary priest escorting Marneus Calgar who are backup by Fateweaver.....but you shouldn't because people would be obligated to donkey punch you. Dont put your warlord titan in reserve so it can flank march and have your opponents go "oh didnt see that skyscraper sized titan back there...."

I guess what it really comes down is playing with people in the right mind set, then coming up with house rules so that folks can be sure their mind set is on the same level as the groups. If a house rule steps on something someone wants to use bring it up with group and talk about it, if the whole group thinks its gay then just move on. If you can get someone willing, make a Game Master, an impartial third party responsible for reviewing the lists, resolving Apoc rules snafu's, and possibly even setting up a cool scenario and/or secret missions.

so enough with that rant.... here's the list im planning to bring for this weekend of apoc slaughter!

Company Command Squad

Straken

Medic

2x Bodyguard

2x Grenade Launcher

Sergeant Kell

Carapace Armor

Commissar Yarrick

* This is gonna be a super fun squad, in Apoc they're really not overpowering but it should be great fun to drop them off and watch them melee it up IG style!

Steel Eagle Valkryie

* He is going to carry Straken into the heart of the enemy!

Vet Squad

2x Melta

Grenade Launcher

Harker

Vendetta

HB sides

* This unit is going into the Vendetta and going with Straken into enemy lines.

Vet Squad

2x Melta

Grenade Launcher

Vendetta

* Same, so they are my 3 Valkryie Wing of IG assault awsome

Vet Squad

3x Melta

Chimera

Penal Legion Squad

Manticore

3x Armored Sentinels W/Plasma Cannons

Demolisher Russ

Leman Russ W/Lascannon

Pysker Battle Squad

Chimera

* So all this makes up my mainstay force, theyre going to be escorting my Steel Fury Formation below, the Legion will attempt to attack from the side as usual hopefully to assist Straken.

Steel Fury Formation

212 Arethusa

2x BaneBlades

So my plan is the Blade's push into the enemy with their bodyguards and Straken's force gets dropped off somewhere dangerous to melee it up. Should be super fun if my blades dont get eaten by D weapons turn 1.... =)

Dont have a clue what i want for a strategic Asset at the moment...shield generator would be cool for the blades but i want them moving and D weapons could care less about their "obscured" save. Ideas?

Puppies Test run

2010-04-05T21:03:00.005-08:00

so on Friday night i picked up my 50 odd space wolves deal. The next morning i had plans to play again at the local comic shop, and that morning i decided i was going to play the wolves....

Now i dont mind Proxy'ing, it really doesnt bother me. But that said i dislike doing it myself whenever possible and so i set out to make a 1750 list out of the models i had, that were assembled, despite what they might have or in my case not have..

The end list was something like

Njal Stormcaller

10 man grey hunter
W/ plasma, flamer, Rhino, Mark of Wolfin

10 man grey hunter

W/ plasma, flamer, Rhino, Mark of Wolfin

10 man grey hunter

W/ plasma, plasma, Rhino, Mark of Wolfin

10 man grey hunter

W/ plasma, plasma, Rhino, Mark of Wolfin

dreadnought

W/ Plasma cannon, Missile Launcher

Ven. Dreadnought

W/ Multi Melta

Wolf Scouts

W/2x Plasma Pistols, Melta Bombs, Mark of Wolfin

LandSpeeder Typhoon

W/ Multi Melta

I had most of the models for this, though 3 of the Rhino's were in fact Chimera.....

I fully expected this list to fail, but looking back it really wasnt all that bad and it proved to be just that.

My first game was against Tau, and we rolled the "All around defence" space marine battle mission. The middle of the map half open and half a large cathedral, so i setup my mass of wolves mostly in the ruins. In the end we pretty well controlled the field, it might have been due to the piecemeal way the tau came in from reserves but overall i was quite surprised at how well the wolves dealt with the tau threats despite a subtle lack of anti armor (the speeder spent most of the game shaken or stunned)

Next i played against some Daemons, playing the "Vanguard" space marine mission, which was kinda a joke because it was supposed to be me assaulting his lines....but he's daemons so there was no line. I wasn't sure how this game would work out as this just happened to be the force that took 2nd place at our recent tournament just behind my Guard army. He would later tell me that he loves playing space marine armies because its an easy win...

i setup (including my "free" first turn move thanks to daemons) very close to the board edge with about 6-8 inches between my units and the edge, despite the objectives being all the way across the board. My thought was to make Deep striking behind me appetizing and hope he would scatter off the board or into my units. It paid off too, as a unit of 3 flamers and a unit of 10 or something horrors did just that throughout the game...both rolling destroyed on their mishap!

The rest of the daemons poured into the midfield, with Fateweaver dropping super close to my lines. Having faced Fateweaver before i know he is the linchpin of the army, and i reject others advice of not wasting shooting on him...instead i focused everything i had on him from bolters to typhoon rockets, mangeing to wound him twice on turn 2. He survived the assault of my grey hunters that turn, and tried to turn Njal into a gibbering pile of flesh using his super cheapo spell, luckily Njal resisted it... A huge pack of bloodletters came to his aid in the melee and wiped out my grey hunters, but Njal furious with fateweavers attempted attack on him turned the elements on him and roasted the greater daemon with lightning. I sighed a great sigh of relief at this, but i still had a monstrous squad of blood crushers and 2 large squads of bloodletters to deal with...among other stuff.

I staved off the bloodcrushers by allowing them to waste a charge on my now vacant rhino's, and in the next shooting phase whittled them down from 7 models to 3, Njal led the charge with his grey hunters and finished them off in melee though many hunters died as well. My Venerable dreadnought had been trying to kill things in melee all game, but his low number of attacks did not mesh will with the daemons inv. saves. One pack of grey hunters assisted him in wipeing out the large pack of horrors he had assaulted, only to be wiped out themselves by a large squad of bloodletters, we whittled down the other squad of bloodletters to only 4 and the last grey hunter squad finished them off in assault with minimal casualties.

At this point my opponent had only a 2 man flamer squad and 2 3 man melta bomb ray things left and so he conceded.

Not only was i extremely proud of my wolves winning, but i learned a TON about daemons this fight... Way more then i have playing them as guard before. Easily the MVP of this game was Njal, his Baleful gale (-1 enemy BS) saved him from the first attempt at the cheapo turn into blob spell, it made the horrors shooting super crappy the turn they came down too. He maintained Tempest's wrath the entire game, and let me tell you....it killed nearly one model from every deepstriking unit, killed at least 3 of the melta bomb flying squad things as they moved around....just awsome. And it was his 2+ to wound attacks against the bloodcrushers that finished them off saving what remained of the grey hunters with him.

overall i was super happy with their performance and can't wait to play them again. Having done more work on my list take a look below and give me any advice, its got less drop poding...a little less anyway. I had to include an assault cannon on a termie because the model is just awesome from the wolf guard kit! I plan on him coming in with the long fangs and logan, i figured this way the fangs have a little more firepower they can divy out and if assaulted (they are dropping into the thick of it) he will provide good close support. I still think i might just put the hunters in a pod too...they seem very odd ball with a rhino but i like the potential for them being reliable backup for whatever drops first turn instead of relying upon reserve rolls.

Logan (drops with Long fangs)

Njal/Termie (drops with 4 man Wolf guard)

5 Man Wolf guard
Termies
PW/Shield
Claw/Shield
SB/TH
Claw/Claw
CombiMelta/PF
Drop pod

4 Man Wolf Guard
Termies
SB/Claw
SB/PF
PW/Shield
CombiMelta/TH
Drop pod

6 Man Wolf Guard
Termie/Assault Cannon/Claw (drops with Long fangs)
1 W/Combi Melta
Drop pod

10 man Grey Hunters
Flamer
Plasma Gun
Rhino

6 Man Long fangs
5 Multi Melta's
Drop pod

Dreadnought
Multi Melta
Heavy Flamer
Drop pod

For 2k point i would probably just bulk up my troops, maybe add some Razorback Wolf guard or grey hunter packs. It would for sure be using power armored models of some sort, maybe the speeder if i can find a base for it.

Puppies win over Angels!

2010-04-01T13:50:00.001-08:00

So after reviewing both codex's more i'v decided i'll go with Space Wolves.

Couple reasons why....

Love the Paint scheme, it will be a pleasure to not paint red and black models...
I'v wanted to use Njal sense i read his rules, and while my list wont initially have him Ragnar seems powerful as well.
I love customizing characters, while my initial list doesn't have any beyond the wolf guard the army really lets you go to town and im sure i cant work them in later or at different point values.
Terminators are cool, but rarely cost effective. While im not about to say Wolf Termies are cost effective, because they can easily be far more points then a standard termie with similar equipment, the wolves make it easier to bring "some" termies without investing mad points necessarily. My intial force does have a lot of them though, but this is more for future lists.
While many of the wolf rules are copies of SM rules with different names, and some of their units are arguably worse then the SM counterpart, many of them are simply more focused on one thing or another and are less all rounders. For instance Skyclaws, they're worse at shooting their pistols, worse at hitting low WS combatants, but gain an extra attack on the charge which is arguably better then the two minuses put together.
I already have a good bit of space wolf models, as you'll see below. Including a now OOP wolf dreadnought.
A freind of mine has a paint Logan Grimnar i will be using, so no need to buy or paint him.
Another freind of mine has two battleforces worth of Grey Hunters, Scouts, and long fangs he doesnt want, on top of Njal....im getting it all for a mere 50 bucks....while i dont NEED the lot of it for my list Njal alone would be 20 bucks from GW and most of my models are not wolves entirely, many of them just have wolf bits. So for 30 more bucks how can i possibly pass that up?

Here's some pics of my current reservoir of Marine models that some how made their way to me from various sources over the many years i played.

One of my freinds from back in the day had a great time tormenting his dark angels....im really not sure why...

Here's the winner of "Most in need of Paint stripping"...though as you can see the competition was steep...

Here's the wolf dreadnought.

Here's a single model i cleaned up and began practicing the Space Wolf paint scheme on, he's not done but im glad i could at least get the color right. I ended up using a 1 : 1 mix of Shadow Grey and Space Wolves grey, it gives the dark blue tint but then lightens it up a bunch. It will then be highlighted with pure space wolves grey.

So lastly my list....i want to shoot for a 1750 list atm, i prefer 2000 battles but a lot of people still dont so 1750 is a good inbetween size that i find most people ready for...the problem now is that my original force idea didn't include the fact that you have to PAY 25 more points for Njal to wear Termie armor....so now i need to shave points or change things a lot.

Logan Grimnar
Njal StormCaller

Termie Armor

Elite

Dreadnought

Multi Melta

Drop Pod

Troop

Wolf Guard

5 Members
Termie Armor

PW/Shield
Claw/Shield
SB/TH
Claw/Claw
CombiMelta/Frost

Drop Pod

Wolf Guard

4 Members
Termie Armor

SB/PW
SB/PF
PW/Shield
TH/CombiMelta

Drop Pod

Grey Hunters

10 Members

Melta Gun
Plasma Gun

Drop Pod

Grey Hunters

5 Members

Melta Gun

Drop Pod

Grey Hunters

5 Members

Melta Gun

Drop Pod

Heavy Support

Long Fangs

5 Long Fangs

5 Multi Melta's

1 Squad Leader
Drop Pod

So the General Idea is first turn this comes in:

Logan W/ Long Fangs in pod, Logan gives them Relentless.

Blasts two Vehicles
Logan provides protection with his 4+ Inv save and Eternal warrior
Logan can either break away on turn 2 and assault or join another unit or stay with them as needed.

Wolf Guard 5 man unit

Blasts a vehicle with the combi melta

Wolf Guard 4 man unit W/ Njal Stormcaller

Blasts a vehicle with combi melta and psychic ability depending on whats there
Njal provides all kinds of support with his Runic weapon and storm ability

Dreadnought

Blasts a vehicle

the storm bolters of the drop pods will pick at what they can, but otherwise all targeting preference will be on AP 2 weaponry like Demo cannons ect. I believe i have enough to ensure this stuff dies.

The 10 man grey hunters will probably support the front line when they come in, while the 2 5 man grey hunters will have their pods bound for objectives.

There are 2 MAJOR issues with the list.

Enemies reserve their whole force

in this case i would deploy the grey hunters on their targets, along with the dreadnought. Then i would pray the rest of my stuff comes in better then the enemies...overall this sucks and is really irritating as it crushes the whole theme of the list.

Mystics

I know nearly everyone complains about mystics, and rightly so as allies they are very over poweringly useful and can with skilled placement and backup literraly disable a list like mine. Overall im just not gonna care about them, ill do my best should this day come but using a Mystic allie is very power gamer so if you really need to win that bad fine but ill bring my guard next time =)

WHEW that was a long post, if your still reading give me some input on whatever...while i wont post up point values if you have a recommendation for shaving 25 points from my list i would greatly appreciate it to! Otherwise chances are the 10 man hunter squad will go to 8 man....

Puppies or Angels?

2010-03-28T12:41:00.000-08:00

So i have tons of extra marine models sitting around, literally around 50 standard marines, maybe 10-15 jump marines, couple bikes, speeder, rhino, 2-3 dreadnoughts.... loads of random.

Because of this i'v always known i would start up a marine army, and i wanted it to be a CC army to provide a different playstyle from my Guard and to compliment them in Apoc games. Plus the price to start up a new force would be lessened by the amount of models i already had. I dont really intend on them being my tournament list, so im not keen about math hammering out the best possible list.....but i like winning too so its important whatever force i do build is at least capable against most opponents.

But the question is what chapter, Wolves and Blood Angel came to mind and as of next week both have a new codex.

Wolves:
+ Awsome color scheme, love it
+ Cool amount of character and customization
+ Possibility to be VERY cheap money wise

- Not the best rules.. many of their items are just renamed SM wargear
- No CC dreadnought really annoys me, i love the ironclad
- Overall they seem to be high cost with less overall gain then other codex's

Blood Angels:
+ Awsome rules so far as i've seen, lots of FNP and mobility are important to melee, theirs just loads of interesting things in there.
+ Fantastic models, Wolves arent bad...but the Sanguinary Guard are pretty amazing
+ Loads of Dreadnought options, even crazy stuff like Librarian and magna harpoon or whatever!

- My guard are black clothing with red armor....i REALLY dont want to paint more red and black stuff
- higher start up cost, i dont imagine my 40+ standard marines will get used much in a BA list

Now i obviously have only looked at the BA codex in store, so if you have more info feel free to post about it. If you have cool ideas for Wolves that i might not have heard of post that too!

Battle Missions: Double Battle Report

2010-03-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

So in a streak of crazy i managed to get Wed. afternoon off and attended my local comic shop to throw some dice down with the regulars.

I ended up playing through 2 Battle missions.

Game 1: VS Vanilla Marines
We randomed off and pulled up the Battle mission "War of Attrition" for the IG. This meant it was table halves with deployment all the way to the middle line, and any troops destroyed could re-enter battle from reserves. Victory points decided the winner.

The enemy got to deploy first, so he of course setup his entire force along the middle line to force me up against the edge and to get his units up close fast. I deployed along a semi extended front, but with the bulk of my force in the west opposite the bulk of his force. It was odd deploying second when i more or less knew i had first turn...

The game went fast, after second turn was over my opponent had little to nothing left and we spent the next few turns mopping up. In the end the "unlimted reserves" never kicked in. It was a nice twist but again didnt make a huge difference in game play.

Game 2: VS Tyranids
We rolled the "First Contact" battle mission for this one, and let me tell you right now...This Sh&% is Banana's.

So the table is divided into 6 squares, each has an objective dead center. The non-Tyranid player, thats me, rolls a dice for each of his units. That dice roll determines which square that unit deploys in. And no reserves are allowed.

My Units deployed in an almost even randomness around the board, but wherever possible i kept them near the middle. The Nid's keep everything in reserver, or walking on first turn alla dawn of war. But everything that comes on has to roll just like me, and it then comes in from a board edge in that zone, or deep strikes into that zone.

My opponent had his 3 Zoanthropes and a Biovore walk on turn 1, 2 Zoans and the biovore all managed to come in on the same zone, and right in front of my leman russ. The Zoan's manged to blast off the battle cannon and the Biovore manged to nuke my stormtroopers from 7 guys to 2. The other Zoan came in across the board and immobilized the Manticore. I wiped them all out in my turn.

Next his Massive warrior squad with Prime came in, along with a large genestealer squad with lord. They came in on zones next to each other so they bunched up along the line. The warriors shot up a chimera causing some damage, then the genestealers assaulted it wrecking it. In my turn i managed to wipe out a good 60% of the warriors and all but 3 genestealers and their lord.

Next his Tyrant and guard came on, along with a Carnifex. The Tyrant assaulted my Demolisher russ and blew it sky high, the Carnifex was across the board near nothing so it just moved toward an objective. The Genestealers assaulted the Vet's that were in the chimera and decimated them. The warriors shot up and killed the remaining two stormtroopers. In my turn i killed a tyrant guard and the last genestealers but not the damned lord, all but the warrior prime died as well.

Lastly his final squad of Genestealers arrived from the opposite board edge, the Carnifex was pissed he was alone so he reverted to his base instincts and ran blindly after my prisoners instead of holding the objective. The Tyrant moved toward the new squad of genestealers and shoot at the prisoners pinning them in the woods. The new stealers squad managed to reach my Command Chimera and wreck it in assault. In my turn Straken was pissed about his ride getting blown up and ordered the force to focus all fire on the genestealers, killing all but 3 and the lord, who he then assaulted. The other Brood lord alone assaulted my Sentinels, and they would remain locked in mortal combat for the game. The Prime received a gift in the form of my last Manticore round, but didn't survive to thank me. Straken successfully killed the last 3 genestealers, leaving only him and the broodlord, which he now had to be in base contact with....

the Tyrant joined up in assault against Straken and the Carnifex lumbered on fixed on the prisoners in the woods. Straken sadly dared look in the eyes of the Brood lord and was unable to attack...his squad took a few loses as a result and did nothing in return. In my turn i dropped squads off at 3 objectives, and my Vendetta's took care of the lumbering Carnifex with ease. The Prisoners ran at full speed toward the straken assault, as it was near an objective.

The end result was that Straken spent the rest of his assault phases transfixed and unable to attack until finnally dieing (it took 4 rounds though...he even survived a bone sword hit). The Prisoners successfully stayed in the area though and contested the objective, leaving the score 3 objectives to 0 in my favor.

Overall this was a BLAST it was super weird, and super fun. I think my opponents point heavy force needed more bulk and it would have more effective overall, but as it was i was forced to constantly react to monsters coming from random sides....

Vehicle Squadron Cover Saves

2010-03-22T10:46:00.001-08:00

So After this last tournament i noticed there was a lot of misconception about the way vehicle cover saves work and instead of continuing the discussion in comments i decided ill just throw up a post about it.

so the BRB says
"use the rules for vehicles to determine if each squadron member is in cover(ignoring other members of the squadron, as if they were not there), and then the rules for normal units to work out if the entire squadron is in cover or not."

So there is a two part process here.

1. Determine if each member of the squadron is in cover, ignoring the other members of the squadron for this.
2. Determine if overall, the unit is in cover or not.

What i commonly see is that people follow only the first part, and ignore the second. This results is the thought that one member of a unit can get a cover save while others dont. The second part however negates that thought, it states we use unit rules. Unit rules state that if the majority of the unit is in cover the whole unit is in cover, if the majority is not in cover the whole unit is not in cover.

in the below amazing msPaint examples, the green is a complete LOS blocking piece of whatever. Each rectangle is a model in the vehicle squadron, each has a % in it that describes how much of it is visible to the attacking arrow model.

So in this Example A: The Vehicle squadron does get a cover save on all attacks from the arrow, while the left model is 100% visible the other is 0% visible, so the unit is 50% visible.

Example B: In this example one model is 100% visible and the other is 50% visible, so one of the models out of 2 is in cover, therefor again the unit gets cover saves against all attacks from the arrow.

Example C: In this example we have 3 models in the unit, the one on the left is 100% visible, the middle is 60% visible, and the right is 0% visible. So the left and middle are not in cover, so the entire unit receives no cover saves from all attacks from the arrow even if an attack is allocated to the 0% visible model.

Example D: In this last example we see part of the first bit of the rules, it would seem like the front model is blocking the second model, but because they're in a squadron you don't get cover from other models in the squadron. Therefor both models in the middle are 100% visible and not in cover, so 2 of the 3 models are not in cover and all attacks against the unit receive no cover saves even if an attack is allocated to the model that is 0% visible.

1750 Tournie Wrapup

2010-03-20T23:59:00.001-08:00

We had our 1750 Tournie today, had a great turn out of i believe 16 people. We played the 40k Championship scenario's you can find on Adepticon's website if your interested in the full details of each, ill sum each battle up below though.

http://www.adepticon.org/wpfiles/2010/201040KChampPrimer.pdf

My List, so you dont have to go back to other posts...

-Command Squad W/Straken, medic, 2 grenade launchers, astropath, bodyguard, Chimera

-Vet Squad W/ 2Melta, grenade launcher(in Vendetta)
-Vet Squad W/ 2Melta, grenade launcher(in Vendetta)
-Vet Squad W/ 3Melta, Chimera
-Penal Legion Squad

-Marbo

-Vendetta W/ Heavy Bolter sides
-Vendetta
-3x Armored Sentinels, W/ Plasma Cannons

-Manticore
-Leman Russ battle tank, W/ Lascannon front
-Leman Russ Demolisher

Battle 1: VS Dan's Mech Guard

Dan had a mech guard list as well, he had something akin to 3 2Sentinel squads, 4 or so Chimera's with Vets, Chimera with HQ, triple Hydra squadron, Leman Russ Punisher W/ Pask, 2 Gryphon heavy mortar squadron and for the cherry a Rhino carrying an Inquisitor and Mystics.

I rolled first turn and deployed in a long spread across my board. Penal legion went psychopath as usual and outflanked with marbo somewhere out there. Dan spread his setup as well in response, with all sentinels on the left, hydras in the middle, and mortors plus russ on the right.

The first two turns had a lot of bloodshed, i poped his command out and destroyed 2 of the hydras. Dan immobilized both vendetta's, then killed one.

After that i managed to deal with each chimera Vet squad that raced into my lines within a single turns shooting, but other then that the rest of the board more or less shot each others bits off with little actually dieing. The Penal legion came in and tied up 2 squads of sentinels for 3 turns before finally dieing to a sweeping advance. Marbo showed up and threw Pask a Demo charge, sadly Pask caught it and chucked it back....Marbo ducked in time, but Pask used that time to back up and pour 23 Strength 5 shots into em....Marbo Almost survived and failed a mere 3 saves before continuing his uselessness in the box.

The end result was a hard fought slug fest, in the end i came out on top of KP's and managed to scrape together a 303 victory point lead, securing me the primary and Tertiary objectives.

Battle 2: VS Jeff's Tau

Jeff brought a Hammerhead, Skyray, two devilfish, a squadron of Paranah, 2 squads of stealth suits, a squad of crisis suits,a commander in crisis suit, and some pathfinders.

Jeff rolled first turn, but as it was a Dawn of war style battle had me take first turn instead. I deployed a Chimera and Vets eighteen inches out in the middle in the hope i could have it searchlight whatever the tau would have out.

Jeff deployed a Devilfish nearish the middle behind a wall, but close enough with a little luck i was able to race my chimera forward six inches and tag it with the multi laser and thus searchlight. My 2 vendetta's that skim'd on were then able to light it up from afar and managed to stun and immobilize it through their tau cover saves.

Jeff didnt manage much with night fight going on, but did shake the chimera with its bright light shining. I feel bad for Jeff though because our battles seem to be similar each time and i think the Tau just really need a new codex or something because Jeff is a good and thoughtful player. By that i mean on turn two i wiped out nearly all of his ranged serious anti tank, the skyray, the hammerhead and one pirahana went down hard. From there it was a sorta mop up operation from the left to right, though his stealth suits did an amazing job when they dropped in felling both Vendetta's, the Demolisher, and the Manticore which amounted to i believe the only things that i lost.

In the end Jeff controlled no terrain elements and i controlled many, i stomped his commander in close combat with Sentinels, and had vastly greater VP's in pocket. I also managed all of the bonus points, with a Vet squad holding the center point bunker, Straken still alive and beating ass in his deployment zone, and a 4 to 1 troop choice ratio.

Battle 3: VS Ron's Aerial Assault Guard

Another guard army >.<, though at least this one was pretty vastly different. Ron used a simple list on paper, a command squad and 7 vet squads with flamers and demolitions, mounted in a squadron of 3 Valkryie, and 2 squads of 2 Vendetta's.

Ron rolled first turn, but gave it to me. We had table quarters and i assumed he gave me first turn so he could deepstrike or outflank on me, so as the terrain was a ruined city with large multilevel ruins i choose to castle in my corner near the objectives which were out in what amounts to a sort of long large courtyard in the middle.

However Ron decided to deploy everything, he decided he could out range me i believe was his plan. So he deployed a vendetta squad and valkryie squad behind a couple buildings large enough to shield much of it from my castle, and the other vendetta squad went way in the back. We scout moved, i brought my Vendetta's out to get good fields of fire on his closest squadron, and he moved the far away squadron farther away and more to my side.

By the end of my turn 2's shooting, 1 valkryie was wrecked, and all 4 Vendetta's were as well. I wouldn't call it all luck(but luck helped im sure), Manticore's and Leman Russ blasts rarely miss when fired at huge models like the Valkryie...but then when you've got this many of them clumped up out there it gets nasty. The Squadron rules were definitely to blame as well, at least 2 of them wrecked from Immobilize results. Even Marbo managed to do something (shocking i know), in a somewhat climactic looking kill he appeared on a floor the same height as a vendetta and chucked his demo pack with all the fury of the rage quitter he is. Of course after this shining achievement he charged the FOUR remained guardsmen, killed one, and died to the other 3's attacks ........

It was another mop up operation from here, his other Valkryies made "death or glory" moves to the center of the map even attempting Grav-Chute insertions along the way, of which 1 squad went splat on the side of a russ after watching their command squad land beautifully. Eventually the guardsmen who had all been dismounted made their way to the center to die, i was grateful Ron wasn't one of those players that holds their stuff back in bunkers doing nothing more then denying their opponents the ability to kill them as i needed to win by 750+ VP's for my Tertiary and needed to kill off all but 3 units for a bonus point.

In the end i captured all the points, managed to kill all but the 3 guardsmen that killed marbo, and had a unit in every table quarter. Scoring me every point except the bonus for having a scoring unit in every table quarter, which i could have had too if my stupid prisoners didn't take nearly 5 turns to kill the vet squad they jumped.

End Result was a 1st place win for me overall, which is my first major Tournie win so i was very proud it was the last Brimfrost (and sad....) All of my opponents were great to play against, and even though my battle report might make them sound like sweeps at times every commander put up a great fight and things could easily have not gone my way.

Things i learned from this Tournie:

There is a significant amount of confusion amongst players about how vehicle squadron cover works. (edit)Check out a new post for a nice pictoral view on how it works if you think your shaky about it.
There is also a large issue with just determining cover for vehicles, i tend to play very conservatively and dont usually push for saves on my units unless i feel it is obvious. Most of the time if i feel i "might" have it, ill simply ask my opponent and if he believes (after checking from his units perspective of course) it does not get cover i go with it. However more and more i play players who take an aggressive cover stand and constantly argue covers that are borderline at best. As great as True Line of Sight is on paper, i believe it adds a dimension of opinion into the game more then maybe it should...i'm not a pushy player and i never want my opponent to feel im jerking the rules to my favor, but im also not gonna let bits that i see as obvious fly when they could be potentially game changing.
Im addicted to Marbo, and i need to quit because he's not worth it..
The Astropath could go, most of the time my units didn't need to come in ASAP, and i rerolled only 1 outflank, which promptly rolled the same result.
Grenade Launchers are awsome, i always discounted them as inferior in so many ways but their range firstly is fantastic for my infantry on the move and their krak grenades did very well overall.
I dislike playing two of the same army in one tournament, even more that they're my army >.< but oh well.

Sentinel Conversion Project Set 1 Complete!

2010-03-12T14:22:00.000-09:00

They are painted, they are based, the first squad of 3 Armored Sentinels is Complete!

Im no super pro painter, but i think they look pretty good. As before the pictures are huge if you click em.

Tournie Prep

2010-03-09T11:28:00.000-09:00

In prep for the 1750 tournie iv run a few test games, and have been painting up all the mini's i need to fill out the list.

For the tournie i needed:
a Penal Legion squad converted/painted
4 grenade launcher guardsmen converted/painted
1 astropath finished paint job
3 Sentinels converted/painted

so far iv got it all done except the Sentinels, which are in the painting stage atm. That leaves me sitting pretty with the tournie not until the 20th.

The Grenade launcher guardsmen were easy to get done, i didn't have any and i didn't really want to buy another guardsmen box so thankfully many guard kits come with spare legs! I used the legs from the tank commander that comes with a Baneblade, the legs from one of the door gunners from a Valkyrie, the legs from a tank kit, and finally the last legs left over from the 10 man Catachan box i bought for the Penal legion squad (squad is 9 prisoners and an overseer).

Next up i had to finish the Astropath, i had actually converted up 10 Empire Flaggelents(sp? dont care =) to be a psyker battle squad, and the models double as Astropaths/Primaris Psykers as needed.

and lastly i needed my penal legion squad, which is simply a catachan squad equipped with knives and random bits ect. its hard to be strictly WYSIWYG with them as you aren't sure what they'll have come battle, but i doubt anyone would really care and god help me i wasn't going to magnetize the turds.

so far the Penal legion has seen three battles with me and overall i enjoy them even if their ability has been hit and miss.

The 1st battle was against nids/chaos in a 2v2. They rolled Gunslingers and outflanked over to eventually assault some shooty nid warriors. They i believe killed 1 warrior and tied the squad up for 2 turns before fleeing back to base and doing little else.

The 2nd battle was against Vanilla marines, they rolled Psychopaths and outflanked over to Multi Assault a devastator squad and Tactical squad (5 man combat squads of each, so not 20 marines but 10). They killed a good 5 or 6 marines before being dragged down by the initial two squads and a further 5 man squad that came to assist the melee. On top of the marine kills this helped tie up the marines for 2 and 1/2 turns which i believe really helped.

The 3rd battle was again against Vanilla marines, they rolled Psychopaths again and outflanked to assault another devastator squad, this one 7 men strong. Annoyingly they rolled terrible for reserves and didn't come in until turn 4, which proved very irritating because the devastators did quite well in that time. They assaulted turn 4 and killed 1 marine while losing no prisoners (2 successful flak armor saves ftw =) The marines stayed though, and in the marines turn won combat by 1 wound after killing another marine. I promptly failed my moral check, and rolled a 1 for my initiative run away check which is an insta death.

Overall like i said i enjoy the playstyle difference with them, they're kinda like a lame squad of Genestealers. I'm still not 100% that they're worth their place but they seem to at least be capable of distracting the enemy for a turn or two.

Battle Missions: IG Missions

2010-03-08T09:49:00.001-09:00

Battle Missions is here finally, and overall im very happy with it.

I played this weekend and we Random'd on the table, pulling up the Tau Mission Vertical Envelopment. It was my IG vs. Vanilla marines and we rolled to see who was the enemy, which ended up being the marines. Essentially the mission was Annihilation but with slightly larger deployment halves, no reserves for the enemy, and "Tau" skimmer reserves were forced to come in on the enemy table edge. It would have been fun i guess to bring in my Vendettas as such, but in the end i need them on the table from turn 1 to put down armored threats so really the mission didn't really feel all that special for us. Im not saying it wasn't a neat idea or that the mission was bad, it just didn't end up shaking it up for our two forces.

I love the IG missions though... I wont copy em over but ill give a general overview.

1.Prep'd Assault
   Essentially its table halves, with one objective middle and the rest in the enemy zone so the guard player is assaulting instead of defending. No reserves, which i take to mean no normal reserves but you deepstrike/outflank if able. The guard player gets 2 pieces of 1/2 inch square paper to represent off table artillery supporting the guard, and the enemy gets one to represent how much our artillery suck at aiming. During any shooting phase the players may declare these shots coming in. They take their paper and hold it about 36 inches up and let it drop.....it flutters to the surface and summons a Battle cannon blast at that location!

I love the paper mechanic, and i cant wait to play this one i already enjoy assaulting with my guard more then acting as a defense line.

2. Attrition
   Table Halves again, but Victory points are counted for victory. The twist here is simple, no troop may be put in reserve but any troop fully destroyed on the battle field enters reserve at full strength but with no transport. They then come out on any table edge in your teams half, but they also offer their victory points up for grabs again (so you get their points for killing them, then you could kill them again and get the points a second time).

Simple, but sounds fun.

3. Trench War
   Table halves, with objectives. All units in open ground at the beginning of game though are given 4 up cover saves until they move that game, and each player gets to put out some razor wire and/or tank traps.

I actually like this one a lot, and it would be very fun for a large game between two shooty armies.

Sentinel Conversion Project V

2010-03-01T14:25:00.000-09:00

Sorry for the long delay, its been nuts around here sense i got back from LA and while iv gotten a lot done i haven't really sat down to write it up and take pictures ect.

So i wanted to use these guys in a 1750 Tournie coming up on the 18th. Because of that i needed to get a squad of 3 done, and so i have. They are Primed and just beginning to be painted.

you can see a few of the finished bits, and im sorry they're not as easy to see now that they're completely black...but the rivets from green stuff turned out really well once i used a mechanic pencil tip to form them. The guns still allude me in terms of making them look easy to handle and aim. I changed em a bit by putting a handle at the front giving the model an extra half inch reach to it, this helped a bit but i may go back and make the handle on top instead...but we'll see. not to mention i still need to create other variant weapons besides just the plasma cannons. (they'll wield plasma in the Tournie though so for now its ok)

I made the middle guy a sergeant of sorts, and he's easily my favorite. I worked on these at a freinds house and when i got to the point where i was ready to glue him into position i said "damn i wanted him with one leg on a big rock..." living in Alaska, there are no easily accessible rocks this time of year... so I went with the next best thing =)

Im not 100% on my paint job either for them, chances are they will remain mostly black which is what my tanks are. But with some accent red and white stripes perhaps, combined with white lettering. Any suggestions are welcome of course.

I actually used the squad on Friday, against my good friend Rob over at Warhammer 39999. It's the second time iv used plasma armed armored sentinels, and again they survived the battle...which is more then i can say for the scout sentinels iv used prior. I wouldn't call them Wildly successful though, they threw out some plasma and killed a few marines, they did stomp a Jump pack Chaplin into the dirt in close combat, but it took about 3-4 rounds to do it during which they couldn't fire. Rob will put up a battle report with Pictures and his cool Vassall program so i'll shamelessly wait to link it here.

1750 Tournie Prep

2010-02-24T09:12:00.000-09:00

So coming up here soon is a 1750 tournie, and i would like to get a new force setup and tested as soon as possible.

The current list im considering would be:

HQ
Company Command Squad
W/ Straken, Bodyguard, 2xGrenade Launcher, Medic, Astropath, Chimera

Troop
Vet Squad
W/ 2x Melta, Grenade Launcher

Vet Squad

W/ 2x Melta, Grenade Launcher

Vet Squad
W/ 3x Melta, Chimera

Penal Legion Squad

Fast Attack
Vendetta
W/ HB Sides

Vendetta

3x Armored Sentinel Squadron
W/ Plasma Cannons

Elite
Marbo

Heavy Support
Leman Russ
W/ Lascannon Front

Leman Russ Demolisher

Manticore

This equates out to exactly 1750, while giving me 4 scoring units.

I find now a days that i care so much more for my Fast Attack slots then Heavy Support which is just odd for Imperial Guard. I want to bring my newly converted sentinels and i think they will do well regaurdless of nostalgia value. I do have an additional Valk model sitting on my desk waiting to be assembled, and mod'd into a Vendetta and Steel Eagle capable model.

Basically the biggest "should i really bring that" of the list is the Penal Legion Squad. I like them, but i dont think they are in any way competitive which isnt to say i wont use them. Im a competitive person and enjoy winning, but i also have this weird side that craves a fun game and wont allow me to math hammer my way to victory or field ultra cheesy armies and so i often throw in units that arent geared perfect or dont function well just to "handicap" myself and sooth that weird side of me.

I have used them in a game, and they did.... marginal. The problem is their random abilities are:

Assaulty
Assaulty
Shooty

So its difficult to really place them into a spot unitl you make the roll pre-game. The 2 Assaulty elements make them a decent choice to outflank onto an objective and hopefully if they can recieve support from Straken actually kill something. The shooty element makes them sub par back/mid field objective holders/cover squaters thanks to their range and stubborn. All this added with their expense being 10 points more then a vet squad and their a fluff unit at best.

On top of this im bring an Astropath for them pretty much, sure it will get Marbo in sooner as well, but overall its there to insure my legion can outflank to the spot i want them. So at this point im investing 110 points for the squad.

As far as the Tournie goes it is supposadly going to be Adepticon Champ. style (Danny i know you said you read this maybe you can confirm?) which looking through the battles means it is more focused on Victory points then Kill points. That really is awsome because it makes many of the guard lesser used units a little more fun to try as soo many of them are low cost and easily killed.

Any insight on the list, the legion, or Adepticon Champ scenarios?

Skull...

2010-02-22T15:59:00.000-09:00

so after being away for 2 weeks in LA i come back just in time to make sure i dont miss another of my super important classes at the University.

Around here its no secret i hate my art appreciation class, i guess theyre trying to make me appreciate art more but the art they show me is just not doing it for me. "Yes i see that it is a picture of a flower, but so close you can almost not tell its a flower...neat can we move on its been 15 minutes now on the stupid flower?"

To make matters worse for people like me that need to see the "purpose" in whats being taught to me, i spent 2 hours of class time engaged in a project im fairly certain i did back in kindergarten.

She called in Print making, but at the end of the day we really just cut up some styrofoam box lids and made pretty pictures, then painted on em and used a roller to press the design on construction paper. At some point during this i learned to appreciate art...i guess.

see if you can guess which one is mine =)

if you cant guess its in the middle, green flag/imperial eagle with a red chaos circle over it.

if you wanna be deep and artsy you can say that my feelings of annoyance for being forced to take this class as part of the General Ed requirments led me to portray rebellion to the norm in my piece. If you want the truth i like warhammer and needed 2 patterns so i made the eagle and chaos, then i needed a stupid mash up so i put them together >.>'

Sentinel Conversion Project IV

2010-02-05T15:15:00.001-09:00

Nearing completion of the prototype.

i bulked up the legs quite a bit, as well as the fore arms. I left the backside mostly open, it is afterall still armor 10 back there, and it already looks super armored on the sides (which are 10 still as well.... but oh well)

so far iv only used:
1x Sentinel Kit
1x Drop pod kits bits (from a freinds left overs)
Green Stuff
Plasticard

Added more fingers from sprue, added some rivets from green stuff, they will get more detail once they dry more and become easier to mess with without just poping off. depending on how it looks i may take the easy route though on the next ones and just cut some plasticard tubing for them instead of greenstuff which is frankly a pain in back side.

For those of you just starting to look, im converting up a 10 man Armored Sentinel Stompa Hunter force for Apoc. games, click the pictures for enormous versions. I also included some other models for scale.

enjoy!

Sentinel Conversion Project III

2010-02-03T20:01:00.001-09:00

So i updated it a bit more.

added shoulder pads , added magnets for hands, along with a single "finger" though there will be more probably just made from cut sprue. added a cockpit of sorts, i felt the pilot was way too exposed, and his leg compartment has had its foundation work done. The plasticard on the sides of it need some details, but i have to keep telling myself ill do details last.... i tend to get carried away =)

Also made his plasma cannon, it needed to be longer so its pretty heavily modified.

anyway, lots more to do as it still looks ramshackle.

Sentinel Conversion Project II

2010-02-02T11:42:00.004-09:00

The local hobby shop finally restocked and i was able to grab a sentinel box to get started.

Iv made great progress on the initial prototype, and so far am very happy that i have kept the parts within it from only 2 kits, as i will be building it out to a full 10 sentinel stompa hunter force.

At this point i have the basic Skeletal structure in place, essentially it gives a basic idea of the form it will take, though in no way does it resemble the final products actual look because i plan to use a good bit of plasticard to create armor plating around the 4 limbs and shoulders. I want the structure to be visible still of course but right now its way to skinny.

for this first prototype i decided to keep the pegs for the legs in tact to allow me more ability to mess with them during the process without having to glue them in place. In the future versions i will most likely not use them so i can have the legs bending in different directions. The first probably wont be posed super cool either, just a simple standing pose so i can get the overall design right, then the next batch will be posed.

Believe it or not its already much skinnier then a normal sentinel, as i took the leg motor piece and cut the entire middle from it, then glued the two sides back together.

It kinda resembles a cross right now between the mech's in Matrix 3 and Avatar...neither of which are what im going for lol. The Pilot has no legs at the moment, but i plan to conceal that area anyway with a sorta compartment, though right now it would make for some funny jokes that this is the IG version of a dreadnought...you lose your legs but you get to keep fighting!

The pictures are huge if you click em.

Team Tournie Wrap up

2010-02-01T14:11:00.002-09:00

This weekends Team Tournie is done, and while i dont have conclusive numbers ill go ahead and go through the battle reports. Here is the post with lists if your interested. http://08ak1.blogspot.com/2010/01/team-tournie.html

Battle 1:

Primary: Kill Points, but you track it for each team member and the lowest of your two is the teams score.
Secondary: Control the middle point with a scoring unit.
Tertiary: Destroy the opposing teams most costly unit.

we faced off against a Tau/Dark Angels team.

The Tau had a Hammerhead, 2 Crisis suit teams one with a commander, a devilfish and 3 squads of ground troopers.

The Dark angels had Belial (sp?) with 2 squads of Termies, a dreadnought with double Missiles, and one with double Heavy Bolters, and a 3 biker squad.

the map was a mud village of sorts, lots of buildings and Los blocking cover, spearhead deployment.

so we rolled to go first, i deployed a Vendetta on each side of our zone, Strakens Chimera and Demolisher dead center and as forward as possible. Obviously George didnt deploy anything as he is 100% deepstrike.

Our opponents sorta choose their own sides in response to my deployment, the tau bunched up in the west and the dark angels in the east, everything but the tau commander and freinds was deployed.

Before first turn i scout moved my west vendetta straight up to the Tau's west side, my East Vendetta joined straken and demolisher in the center. At this point my plan of spreading deployment and then contracting it with scout move had worked as our opponents had dispersed their deployment across the whole board edge.

We started the game off meanly, breaking the Hammerheads big gun off and poping the devilfish. Georges Ironclads were both on the Tau and all my units were gunning for them as well. The thought was that the Dark angels were all short to medium range, so we would ignore them until we were done with the tau.

Second turn saw one none of our units dead from turn 1, but the Dark angels only long range support, the double missile dread would be plastered by a vendetta. The commander of the Tau showed up turn 2 and melted the sad little Chaplin though but otherwise again not much happend to us.

Turn three saw the commander of the Tau runnning for the board with so much imperial between him and it that he would not rally, much of the Tau was now extinct and the squad of infantry that had been hiding in a building found an ironclad had made a new door for itself.

At this point the game was officially over, we mopped up the dark angels as planned and Straken claimed Belial's head for his own in close combat. We won primary as we both had more KP's then either of them, we won Secondary with my Vendetta hovering in the middle with its vet squad inside, and we won Tertiary as straken put Belial down. They got 1 commanders head for killing the Chaplin, we got 3 for their two commanders dieing and Straken being alive.

Battle 2

Primary: Table Quarters
Secondary: Objectives (3 points for your own, 5 points for the enemies)
Tertiary: Kill points

This game we played against a Traitor Guard and Chaos Marine force.

Traitor guard had 3 Chimeras, 2 vet squads and company command, Devil Dog, 2 Executioners.
Chaos had a Sorcerer with Lash, noise marines, 2 Rhinos full of marines with melta stuff, Terminators with meltas.

We got first turn again, i setup similar to last time but in a table quarters fashion, they setup in a castle stance preparing to defend against us.

first turn was terrible....i managed to rip off an executioners main gun, and pop the command chimera then pin its occupants. But George manged nothing, he landed his drop pods to ambush the other executioner but succeeded in rolling double 1's for his melta shots and didnt fire the hunter killers. Overal not terrible....but not as good as it should have been. Their first turn saw one iron clad get lashed into turning around so it could be wreked by a melta gun from a trooper so overall not bad.

Turn two we managed to shake my executioner, and georges ironclad managed only to shake the one it assaulted, however the ironclad had it pinned in place so it wasn't going anywhere and he would get to attack again next turn. Georges Vanguard squad came in, they assaulted and massacred the chaos marines squad that had killed the dreadnought. Their Turn 2 however was a fair bit more productive, they lashed the vanguard out into the open and managed to kill 5 of them with bolter fire and IG fire...thats a lot of points right there for sure. They also manged to rip off a lascannon from a vendetta and immoblize the other one.

Turn three saw the chaplin arrive, the Rhino of marines that came out into mid field got immobilized and its bolter gone from my vendetta, and the other vendetta poped a chimera(as its firing arc was now limited) Georges Vanguard hid behind a barrade and assaulted the marines rhino again, managing to not kill it. George's Ironclad had forgotten to hit the executioner it was still in base to base with on turn 2's second assault phase sadly, so it waited and finished off the executioner this turn. George's drop of marines arrived, i suggested it go down near the enemies IG command squad as i knew his bolters would shred them. Unfortunately it scattered in the right direction far enough to go off the board, and then he rolled a 1 for his mishap and they were gone and our opponents 2 KP's richer. Their Turn 3 saw the vanguard lashed out and destroyed, the marines in the middle poped straken out of his chimera, and the Termies arrived in the same middle area.

Turn four saw Marbo arrive, and completely miss with his demo pack. He relies upon cover and sadly the table was only stone pieces that provided LoS blocking but little to no cover areas. My mobile vendetta took its shots at the Termies in front of it, and managed to kill one, the other vendetta took out the last chimera. Straken and co. navigated their wrecked chimera to get ready to assault the marines. Georges dreadnought slowly made its way through the wreckage of its freind, and his chaplin jumped to a location near them but stayed behind cover for now. In assault straken wasted the marines down to 3 men who managed their leadership thanks to a reroll from an icon. Their turn saw the dreadnought lashed out and backward facing so he could be wrecked. The Termies poped the vendetta with their melta gun, sadly i forgot about assault and placed my troops from within the vendetta close enough to be assaulted...to make it better they multi assaulted marbo near by, the end result of which was Marbo put a knife in one termie. We lost by 3 and the guardsmen broke, Marbo being fearless then took 3 hits and died. Straken finished off the last 2 of the marines but only barely as he was then the only one left of his unit thanks to the powerfist seargent that would not die.

Turn five, straken was tied up with the seargent still but finnaly took his head in the assault phase, my immobile vendetta took a few shots and did little due to its choices and my guardsmen that broke from CC with the Termies continued running away. Georges Chaplin siezed the day and jumped into the midst of the enemy, then assaulted the guardsmen there. He ended up winning combat with them, and running them down...i chastised George for killing them all as this now meant his Chap was ready to be shot at instead of being stuck in right next to their objective. It was, at this point, that all of our terrible dice luck that had plagued us all game long (or apparently had been given to the other team as nearly all their single shot meltas hit and wrecked whatever they shot...) did a little switcharo...not that it helped all that much. Straken survive, 3 plasma cannon blasts, 2 heavy bolter wounds and 3 bolter wounds. The Chaplin was lashed away from the objective of course....and managed to survive the torrent of bolter/las fire, 2 lascannons ect. that was fired at him. The Devil Dog finally showed up from reserver and just rolled over to our side of the table to contest the quarter i had with my immobile vendetta/vet squad.

Primary: Tie, they had only the vet squads of IG left in their original table quarter, which the Chaplin was contesting and we had the vet squad way back in ours.
Secondary: loss, they lashed the chaplin far enough away to capture their own objective, but Straken made sure they didn't have ours.
Tertiary: loss

Looking back this game wasn't nearly as bad as it had seemed. George suffered some seriously bad luck on his dice, losing tons of expensive Vanguard to bolter fire (not even massed bolter fire were talking like 4-5 shots) and wasting tons of his dreadnoughts time on the tank for various reasons, not to mention the double KP loss due to mishap on deepstrike. Marbo did nothing this game but kill a termie in CC and then die, and our opponent rolls were on fire for nearly everything ( i know people complain about dice luck all the time, but when you miss 2 out of 20+ attacks in CC that hit on 3+ your luck is good...) The Combined effect was nasty for us.

Final Game

Primary: Objective control, 3 objectives one of which is randomly harder to control after deployment because it then requires a troop from both armies to control it.
Secondary: Table Quarters
Tertiary: Kill points

spearhead deployment, with Dawn of war rules.

We played against a Space Wolves/ Crimson Fists army here. it was brought to my attention after game 2 that my army was actually illegal due to containing Marbo and Straken, Marbo hadn't done much so i didn't feel too bad but its still dishearting as we had talked about the character rules for Team tournies a bunch but never bothered to go read them ourselves, so of course everyone we had talked to was wrong lol....lesson learned. What was funnier is this game was against Bjorn and Pedro, which is against the rules too...so while i was prepared to not have Marbo in this game we decided between the two teams and the TO that we would just go ahead and do it, even though clearly making one of the opponent s characters go away would have been better for us being as Marbo is hardly equal to either of them.

The middle objective ended up being the hard one, and we had second turn.

they had drop pods o plenty, and thunderfires and lots of dreadnoughts so i deployed nothing for turn 1.

Turn one, their drop pods of normal marines and Bjorn came down in the middle and spread out, they also brought on the thunderfires way in the flank. My units came in turn 1 and my two Vendetta's vaporized the thunder fires, Georges Dreadnoughts took the multi melta off the arm of one of their dreadnoughts and my Demolisher tank chewed up around 4 wolves.

Turn 2 the Sternguard arrived and attempted to pop my Demolisher, but only manged to immobilize it. The dreadnought george had blown the gun off of charged his and the end result was George ironclad was immobilized and the normal dread was wrecked, and his other dreadnought continued his unlucky streak by having a single wolf with melta gun take it to wrecked... Our turn 2 the Vanguard arrived and positioned themselves to assault the big wolf pack that had killed the dread, Straken got out of his transport and made his way into position to show the sternguard just how elite they werent. The vendetta's took out some random guys and shoke Bjorn, the Demolisher demolished some marines, and Marbo showed up and put his Demo pack into a large pack of wolves killing all but 2. George then fired his bolt pistols from the Vanguard into the wolves, now George had spent literraly all night painting his Ultramarine drop pods...he hadnt slept at all....after our loss on Game 2 he had lost all steam he had before. After firing his squad and killing nothing, he went over and checked his codex, he came back and told me that meant he could no longer assault with them, which is the whole point of paying more for Vanguard. George is a very honest person, super honest, and even though his opponents had no clue about it he did the right thing and didnt assault because of it. Though he was pretty much a corpse from there on. Straken destroyed all but 3 of the Sternguard and their droppod.

Turn three the Vanguard got jacked up, shot down to about 5 guys. Bjorn killed Marbo in Close Combat, and the vanguard got assaulted. They did well in assault, winning by 2, leaving 2 of them left and 5 wolves. Straken finished off the Sternguard. In our turn straken moved forward and multi assaulted the marines there plus the wolf drop pod on top of the objective. The vendettas plasterred Pedro into a fine goey stain on the ground, they would have been fine insta killing him, but with 3 lascannon hits he rolled 3 1's for his inv. saves....so either way he was gone. Bjorn was shaken again by my Vendetta it was due to bad luck not even his reroll.

Turn four the wolves ended up killing the last Vanguard and shot his Chaplin who came down last turn to death. My Chimera moved around back ready to race over and contest the objective the wolves held not much else happend, lots of random shooting that accomplished little.

Turn 5 my Vendetta jumped over the woods to contest their objective, my Chimera drove around to contest their other objective. Georges last drop pod with tac. squad dropped down onto the now clear middle objective and my other vendetta sped over to park on it as well.

Primary: Win, we managed to capture the middle harder to capture objective and contest both of theirs.
Secondary: Tie. no one manged to not have a contested quarter.
Tertiary: Win

So overall it was a fun Tournie and we did very well, George will be sleeping next time before it though =)

Colonel Straken

2010-01-26T18:07:00.003-09:00

Just a quick shout out for the talk of the IG town these days, iv used him for some time now even before the SW FAQ threw him smack into the spotlight of everyone.

Colonel 'Iron Hand' Straken

Mr. Straken is easily one of the more unique options for your IG army, the reason is that he is good at pounding face in close combat!

With an Impressive profile, that still maintains the human side of him with a low Initiative of 3, Straken brings in the highest base strength in the codex. Coupled with his Furious Charge he swings at a staggering strength 7 on the charge. Cool you say? well he doesn't stop there, he also ignores all your fancy armor saves, this means he is literally a guard power fist that strikes at initiative, with furious charge tipping the scales even further. Neat you say? well Straken isn't done yet son, if you happen to be a vehicle then Straken is gonna strike you with an added 2d6 like a melta....add all that up, and he is a very impressive support package at a seriously value price.

Whats all that matter if he dies though, well he's got some tricks there too. For starters the dudes wearing power armor (or he is power armor? mostly?), he's toughness 4 which is high for a guardsmen and hes got a wheeny 5+ inv save just in case. It's also a nice trick to let him take as many small arms fire saves as you can with his 3+ save. But more then any of that, he's not an independent character! so your enemy cant focus attacks on him in CC, and he doesnt have to jockey for position with his squad to get his hits in. Also take into account that he can allocate his attacks out to any model the squads in contact with, it seems minor but it can really help maxamize his potential in a multi assault.

For instance, say you multi assault a tank and a squad. Chances are good Straken will do something to that tank. If he's not in base contact with it, you can allocate say 2 of his attacks to the tank, and 3 to the squad. This way the tank is likely to be shaken or worse (probably worse considering its 7+2d6 against back amour) and you can still use him to cause a few more wounds on the squad.

Shooting wise hes good enough, BS is good for guard, but at least he's got options with his shotgun or plasma pistol.

Straken is also a very good leader, giving fearless to his own unit, and furious charge / counter attack to friendlies within 12 inchs. This is the part that brought him into the spot light, its still really amazing even if Furious doesnt work with counter attack, it just takes a little more skill to make sure you assault first =)

While Straken is at home just being plopped into a command squad, if you really want to see him shine you need to pimp him out with all the trimmings.

-Chimera
If you tool him out, its worth investing in something to get him there. if your useing him for counter assault unit then feel free to leave it out. Probably my favorite thing is when someone pops the Chimera and feels all good about it, then Straken pops out and says "do i have to do everything myself!?"

-Medic
Feel no pain and 3+ armour save at T4 and 3 wounds...awsome. Plus this is for your whole squad, this increases survival so much it just has to be seen to believe. It's not uncommon for my squad to take 5+ wounds and suffer no casualties. One note, never EVER take a save on the medic if you can. He is the single biggest boost to this squad.

-Priest W/ Eviscerator
Rerolling hits is Omazing for this squad, this is number two on the "dont put a wound on it" list behind the medic, not only that but giving it the Evis. means you have a second vehicle killer, she also has a 4+ inv save so if you just took a lascannon round and its priest or Straken or the medic...let the priest say a prayer and take it. Two down sides though, well three. 1. Independent character means it can be singled out and must be in base to base to attack 2. Its a kill point.... 3. Its pretty expensive, nearly anywhere else in a guard army theyre not worth it (large clumps of infantry they might be too)

-Bodyguard (s)
At least one bodyguard is needed, you can double up some nasty wounds on them which is awsome. They also have 2 attacks base which is nifty as well. Stupid rules note though, if you bring 2 BG's and try and double up the wounds by placeing one on a BG and one on Straken, which you then bring over to the BG, you roll two saves (or not in most cases of nasty firepower) and will lose both BG's because theyre the same. Its dumb, it makes little sense that one BG can do what two can not, but its the rules for models that are the same in a mixed unit.

-Special Weapons
Dont bring to many, you dont need em. I usually bring 1 or 2 melta or grenade launchers are good, grenades are good for fireing from the roof of a transport before you actually get there. Just be careful shooting things right before you assault, dont want to kill the models and leave yourself stranded without an assault.

-Advisors
Astropath or Master of the fleet work well here, they preform their job for the first few turns then they can take a hit =) Their also more attacks for the pool.

-Other Independent HQ's
I usually take the Primaris Psyker, his force weapon is nice to have and his shooting attack is pretty fantastic. Throwing up his defensive power is sometimes good too, but i dont use it to often. The Commissar is good too and with the squad being fearless you dont have to worry about him shooting Straken.

I would definitely recommend Carapace Armour as well, its a worthwhile investment for sure when you bring BG's and Advisors. Camo Cloaks are good too, but less useful.

Arctic Apocolypse III

2010-01-26T08:43:00.002-09:00

So lets move on to force list for the Arctic Apoc. game, even though i haven't posted how the game went ill go ahead and put in both a pre game and post game comment on each unit and how they did. Hopefully this might be helpful if your thinking of including them in your own apoc games.

My list ended up as

-Company Command Squad
W/ Straken, and light options

Pre-Game: I didnt tool him out as i usually do mostly because of points i needed for models i wanted to also include, but also a little bit because (and im ashamed to say this) the new nids scare even Straken a bit in close combat.... I figured he would stay back and help keep my guardsmen in line with his standard and orders, then provide counter assault when the bugs came too close.

Post-Game: He did little to nothing because he stayed back as planned. Our deployment was so snug to the board he never even really had LoS to a nid that wasnt some deep striking trash that would die to lasgun fire....he eventually died to a well placed scheduled bombardment. I think my original idea to put him in a vendetta flyer and drop him in the thick of it with his tooled out CC squad would have been far more fun, i dont think the original plan of line support was bad it just didn't end even being necessary as the nids kinda ignored me.

-Steel Fury Formation
W/ 2x Baneblades, 212 Arethusa (Baneblade character)

Pre: Their job was too huddle around the shield gen. and massacre bugs. The lascannons would go toward Phants, the demo cannons too if they got that close, but everything else including the big gun would be better off against other stuff. I specifically didnt make 212 the command tank of the formation, because i wanted 2 targets for my enemy, the command tank is valuable because of its integral role in the formation and 212 is valuable for its beefed up stats. Making them one and the same would just make it a no brainer for the enemy as to which Blade should be pounded.

Post: People had said Baneblades were "ineffective overall" to me many times pre game. This might have been the story if i were facing math hammer players trying at all costs to win the apoc game with tooled out titans of nothing but D weapons, but for our game they did amazing. If it was within LoS, it died. The Blades main cannon wiped out massive swaths of anything, i ended up firing it more at phants then i originall thought because i could then position the templete on the phants outside edges so as to catch a good chunk of nids with it. With the co-axil autocannon allowing me to then reroll scatter i never once had a problem hitting what i wanted.

Sadly they ended up so restricted in deployment that they just cleared up my area and slowly moved onward to get more LOS on the rest of the horde. 212 lost its main gun, and was immobilized, but otherwise there was no other damage done to them. One of the Heirophants tried real hard, but that just annoyed my boyz so we had to put it down ... =) On their kill list was 1 Phant, and 1 Heirodule as well (though they just sniped off its last wound in reality)

-Infantry Platoon
W/ Command and 3 Inf. Squads 3 Chimeras

Pre: It was their job to take up space, plain and simple i didnt want deep strikes or outflanks getting to my Baneblades so i bought a bunch of meat to put around them. The Chimeras are basically there for the exact same reason and would be deployed empty.

Post: They did there job i guess, the nids kinda ignored me so they killed some random stuff. one of the squads couldn't be put out in deployment because we didn't have room and ran out of time so it came in later to help my team mates. Overall they didn't do much but i think thats more because my deployment area was so small i couldn't form the circle of them around the Baneblades so they go stuck on table edge duty.

-Vet Squad
W/ Harker, snipes, autocannon

Pre: I love harker and his boys, i just assumed they would kill stuff as usual, take up space around my tanks with the platoon, and get a 2+ save from the other IG players reinforced lines.

Post: We didnt get to deploy them due to space in our deployment, they eventually came on to support my allies and killled a broodlord and some stealers before being assaulted to death. I think again their strat was fine but the deployment problems screwed up their use.

-Leman Russ and Leman Russ Demolisher

Pre: They would be support and provide extra fire as needed, no amazing plan here.

Post: it actually did quite well, no real surprises. The normal russ sniped from a hill and the Demo ran out in front of the Blades as they advanced. Honestly i wish i would have had points for more.

-Manticore Missile Launcher

Pre: no strats beyond the obvious here, lob missile of doom kgo.

Post: worked as expected, though it fired an annoying 3 volleys of only 1 blast out of its 4 volleys...we'll get to our dice problems in the battle report.......

-2x Scout Sentinels
W/ Autocannons

Pre: extra cheap firepower and i enjoy bringing these guys as theyre extra armor running around distracting shots to them selves.

Post: nothing amazing, sat back and shot at Zoanathrops mostly.

-Banewolf

Pre: I figured the nids would have Carnifexs and what not, the formation that gives Carni's Fleet sounded pretty nasty to me, so this would be there to rush out and get an extra few wounds then hopefully get assaulted. Being Fast it can move 12 inches and be hit on 6's in CC, plus as the Banewolfs Chem Cannon is Str 1 it counts as Defensive and so it can fire both hull and turret after going 12 which is why i ended up with it instead of a hellhound.

Post: wow, loser of the battle award right here....it immobilized its self on turn 1, 6 inches from my board edge....it did literally nothing all game.

-2x Vendetta GunShips

Pre: They get Flyer and hover in Apoc, their plan was simple. Shoot at stuff, mostly Heirophants.

Post: They did well, they assisted in taking down the 1st Phant, but because my allies hadn't received my Astropaths 30 odd messages about bring anti Phant weaponry and thus had caused about 1 wound on the phants to far from the rest of my force, my vendetta's moved on to more precision strikes against other targets like a tervigon that took 16 of his little buddies with him at death. They also had some fail creep in late game, but that was the dice gods laughing at us really...let me tell you right now before the actual battle report, the dice gods were there in force.....

Sentinel Conversion Project

2010-01-21T12:33:00.004-09:00

Now that i have a large force completely painted and ready to play even Apoc sized battles, its time to start a conversion project and put real time in on each model it produces.

Given how much fun Apoc is i wanted to give myself more toys to play with in future battles, especially if they end up being larger battles allowing me to field more then 3500-4000 points. The problem is that most of the Imperial Guard formations require crazy amounts of particular models, many of which would never see the light of a normal 40k table.

The formations that stick out to me, not considering my poor bank account:
1. Emperor's Fist Leman Russ Squadrons/Battalion. A cheap but useful formation that allows your russes to ignore crew shaken results. Easily one of the more manageable to purchase and still use in normal 40k, but also kinda boring and while its my opinion that the Apoc Formation "Squadron" is different then the codex "Squadron" some might argue against it.

2. Imperial Shield Company. I can already do this one, and its probably a good overall formation thanks to its 3 assets.

3. Hellstorm Squadron. Another of the actually feasible formations, its pretty good too but overall not that tactically interesting.

4. Armageddon Stompa Hunters. This one i like, i like it a lot... 10 Armoured Sentinels is cheap points wise, and while not super cheap model wise isnt to bad. Not only are the rules it provides good, with its +1 to armour pen rolls and ability to double tap their guns against a single foe, but they provide some interesting tactical options. For instance, imagine 10 Lascannons (str 10 essentially thanks to their +1), double tapping on a superheavy, who you used Precision strike on (everyone hits that model on a 2+), while supported by Steel Eagle (they gain tank hunter, which brings them to str 11 essentially going into the armor pen roll). Thats some serious damage output for very low points....

Or you could give them plasma cannons instead, their skill juices them to Str 8 against vehicles which means you have a chance against anything, str 9 with Steel Eagle making them lascannons. But you don't need precision strike because their blasts now, not to mention that this makes them vastly more effective against elite infantry.

5. Rough Rider Company. I love this formation, its so not Guard in thats its all about assault. But the fact is it rocks, again the formation is super cheap points wise. In exchange you get a super valuable unit that flank marchs itself in to contest objectives your guns have cleared. If there are enemies near by the Riders gain skilled rider to handle any terrain bits, and if within 6" of the command squad gain furious charge and +2 attacks on the charge. Combine the above with the Hunting Lance rules and you can quickly see why this formation would be very deadly.

The biggest issue with this formation is the number of models required. I would love to convert up some rough riders on scout bikes, its a common conversion but its common because it looks about 100x better then the standard guard on horseback. so you need 30 of them minimum, at 12 bucks a biker, your talking 360 bucks just for the bikers to start the conversions.....ouch.

6. Heavy Weapons Company. Good lord this would cause damage to anyone. Twin Link all 36 teams onto a single target within LOS of the command team....its similar to the Armageddon stompas in its role. Of course you did read that right? 36 heavy weapons teams.....good lord thats a lot of teams to own, paint, assemble, buy.....

7. Steel Fury, already have this formation and love it.

so with all that considered i have decided to convert up a Stompa Hunter Formation. But i have never been a huge fan of the sentinel model, the new one is leagues better then the old one but still its very...lame.

So the plan is to convert them heavily, generally speaking i want to go for a mech/powerloader look. With the pilot at least partially exposed. Im fairly certain i can utilize standard sentinel legs plus some added bits to beef them up and not look so chicken walker ish. The arms i want to be humanoid and holding the guns so perhaps the tau suit arms will work with some modification of course. Chest wise im a little lost, nothing sprouts to mind so something tells me their going to be highly modified versions of something.

sadly i recently traded away two of my Tau Broadside suits i had converted a long time back, not only are the tau bits helpful but i had converted them with sentinel legs....which would also be very helpful.

More on this as i get beyond the conceptual stage, but let me know if you have ideas for a chest.

Arctic Apocolypse II

2010-01-19T15:17:00.006-09:00

So now lets talk Forces and the Tactics that were talked about for team Vikitim before hand.

First off, the big stuff!

The first bit of info we knew, was that team Bug had at its desposal no less then 3 Heriophants. If your not sure what that is let me clue you in, they're the really....really big bugs. On top of this we were told they had access to a myriad of the other smaller biotitan/forgeworld stuff.

so what did team vikitim have? nuttin.....

From there we decided to borrow a Warhound titan, and i decided i would buy a super heavy tank for my guard. Later, i decided i would buy three super heavy tanks for my guard =) After all 3 is a lucky number right and lets face it when do you really have enough warhammer?

Of course now we had to discuss what our plan was to actually kill these things with their T9 W10 2+/6+ stat line with Regeneration. Oh and now that we bought big expensive armored things, how were we going to keep those alive and not have them get eaten as well?

I settled on the Steel Fury Formation for my purchase, thats 3 Baneblade Super heavy battle tanks. The thinking is that their very usable in any situation, and while against a Biotitan they are no match, in future games against armoured targets they would prove even more useful. The combined fire rule for the formation was especially cool in my mind. It allows a +1 on the damage chart (make sure you use the Apoc Reload book, not the older individual sheet available on GW's site, it has Cat. Damage chart which is far less useful) for each baneblade cannon shot that rolled on the table previous that turn. So with 3 Baneblades i could get a +2 on the table for the third shot if all went well, this means on a 4+ i get a chain reaction result, which lets you roll again with the same modifiers as before O.o This turns the Baneblade from a lackluster superheavy killer to a very threatening little group. They still are far better against none superheavies, but the point is it increases their already ubiquitous role.

Against everything in the nid army except the Bio titans my Baneblades would reign supreme, slinging Pie plates of death and heavy bolter shells as they saw fit.

Steel fury offered 2 other bonuses that would actually be useful against Tyranids. It offered the anti assault Ground shakes, that forces a LD check at -2 to anything assaulting my Blades, and the Command tank while mobile allows them all to ignore gun crew shaken. Both attractive bonuses as Tyranids like to assault, and like to Glance amour.

I also choose them because of the rules for 212 Arethusa, a named Baneblade tank whose rules have been updated in the IA update to the new guard codex. It's BS 4 which is almost worth the 100 points alone, can twin-link a single weapon a turn, has a pintle mounted Heavy Bolter, and turns Driver Stunned into gun crew shaken. Alone i would call that last bit a disadvantage....Baneblades don't NEED to move, but they do need to shoot, however combined with the Steel Fury formation =) we just knocked two possible results on the damage table into the trash bin.

212 Arethusa

His Word (Command Tank)

4Grt Justice

Now that i have these 3 beautiful super heavies, i need to make sure they don't get massacred by Bio-Titan shooting on turn 1.

Heirophants and Dules, have BS 3. Which means right off they should miss half the time, bringing the hits from one titan from 16 to 8. At Strength 10 against a baneblades front armour of 14, 4 of those 8 should do something. Of the 4 we'll say 1 glances and 3 pen....thats enough to easily cripple or even destroy a Baneblade in one round of shooting from one Phant.

The Shield Generator Asset, i decided this was my asset. It provides a 4+ Inv. save to models within 12 inches, for vehicles they get to count as obscured which is the same 4+ save. Because my Tanks need to stay together anyway this would be great. If we add this in above it reduces the Phants shooting down to 2 hits that do something to a Baneblade instead of 4. 2 hits is a whole lot better....and turns my tanks into mean fire soaking machines. On top of this Tyranids lack something important in Apoc size battles, the ability to fire stuff up and over. They used to have biovores with bio-acid spores but not anymore, and in fact they don't even have the ability to chuck em up anymore. So my Shield generator would be nice and safe nestled in behind the middle Baneblade.

Ok, so:
Big Pie Plates of Bio Death (check)
Insurance Policy on said Pie Plate Slingers (check)

Team Tournie

2010-01-18T15:32:00.002-09:00

On the 30th is a Team Tournie here in Anchorage

It's 1000 points a person, 2 people a team. You can bring 1 HQ, 1 Elite/Fast/Heavy choice, 3 Troop choices, and are only required to bring 1 HQ and 1 Troop. You then get a floater choice, so you can take an additional Fast Attack for instance, or Elite, but your team mate can not take the same choice as you.

My Team Mate is my buddy George, who will be playing an Ultramarine force thats pretty much set in stone.
-Chaplin W/Jump pack
-IronClad Dread in Droppod w/2 Hunter Killers
-IronClad Dread in Droppod w/2 Hunter Killers (floater Elite choice)
-5 man Tactical squad in Droppod
-10 man Vanguard vet squad
8 Kill Points

I could be off on the number of vets, but thats the basic list. Its straight forward, he'll drop the two IronClads on our opponents face turn 1, they both have locator beacons so his vanguard will come in and have a good chance to Heroic Intervention that turn. His Chaplin will come down and attempt to join up with the Vets once he's down, and lastly the Tac squad will come down on an objective somwhere later.

My Force so far looks to be something around these lines;
-Company Command Squad
W/ Straken, Medic, 2 melta, chimera
-Vet Squad W/3 melta, chimera
-Vet Squad W/2 melta (in Vendetta)
-Vendetta W/Heavy bolter sides
-Vendetta (floater fast attack choice)
-Marbo
-Leman Russ Demolisher
9 Kill Points

17 Kill Points together

My Purpose would be to have the Vendettas immediantly provide support for his IronClads, removing any melta ect. that posses a real threat to them. Then they help disable vehicles and other mobile annoyances, as the IronClads if they survive can easily handle heavy tanks (if their melta/hunterkillers dont handle them turn 1). On top of that the Vets in the Vendetta are the mobile scoring unit providing end game scoring with the vendettas 24 inch move.

Straken is one of my favorite parts of IG right now, and while he doesnt have the support in place to be super uber in this force (no priest, bodyguard, ect.) He is still a valuable anti assault unit and worth his points. On top of this i believe the team tournament will have extra rules for killing enemy commanders, straken is the toughest of the IG commanders so he should shine there too. His squad will move forward to act as a turn 2/3 support for the Marines assault.

Vets in Chimera will follow straken basically.

Marbo does his thing, he's a valuable unit to remove "problems"

The Demolisher Russ will be the last resort model, it will troddle along behind the chimera's ready to blast any deep strikers or stray units.

So thats the plan, im a little unsure about it though. The Demo Russ in particular doesn't fit the theme, his inaccurate devastation is usually ok for the guard, but with so much of our combined force looking to tie up the enemy in assault, chances are his target opportunities will be plagued by the possibility of our own troops being near by. I also wanted to bring a Psyker squad in chimera, which almost fits better then the demo russ as it will allow me to break moral on units which should be near their board edge, but its 2 easy kill points instead of 1 resilient one.

Arctic Apocolypse

2010-01-18T10:34:00.002-09:00

So my first post, everyone always tells me to do this blog thing and i do love to chatter on and on about whatever is on my mind so perhaps coming out of my introverted shell would be a good idea after all. Something tells me this first post will be more robotic then i usually write, but give it a post or two and i should lighten up.

So we'll start it off with an extended write up on an Apocalypse game i played in this weekend.

First we'll talk about the basic premise (read "story") that was the purpose of the game as well as pre game.

We played on the 16th, which was the day of the New nid codex. Initially it was planned to arrive earlier so we would have a week or so to read through it, as this didn't happen we ended up using the German codex leaked online instead. Which was actually more entertaining then you think trying to decipher what "Shatten Iem Warp" or some such was. Of course i knew it was shadow in the warp, but its more fun to believe the creatures special rules were "Synpase Creature, Psyker, and Shitter in the Warp". Thanks to Googles translator we werent nearly as blind about the changes, and so we agreed to go ahead with the new Codex for the nids.

So Teams.....

Team Bug

4 Nid Players

Team Viktim

Me (ImpGuard/Daemonhunters)

Kris (Relictors/Space Wolves)

Matt (ChaosMarines/Daemons)

Sam (Space Marines)

Sam couldnt play so it was us 3 for a month.

Finnaly we got word that Matt's brother would play, no idea of army.

A week before the game Matt and his Brother couldnt play anymore, but Sam was in again and his freind Ryan could come as well.

So Team Viktim was officially renamed:

Team Turnover

Me (ImpGuard/Daemonhunters)
Kris (Relictors/Space Wolves)
Ryan (ImpGuard)
Sam (Space Marines)

Near the beginning i hastened to get our team talking (remember the part where i like the talk so i should start a blog?) Kris was on it with me and we exchanged a lot of tactical talk pre game, Matt contributed some as well. We never once heard from his brother, and Sam and Ryan scare sly had time to contribute once back on board. So needless to say our team was in shambles tactically. I did my best to get everyone pointed in the direction i thought we needed to be in, but no one voted me king so in the end i always tried to suggest what i thought but support whatever they came up with because its really about us all having fun not me dictating their lists to victory. I'll get into the "tactics" we talked about in the next post.

So in a way Team Vikitim was a standard Tyranid assault viktim....... The Shadow in the warp had come and our Astropaths were having trouble getting word to our allies, while the Hivemind stayed the constant and planned its attack without interruption. So in the end we were a mess and it just got worse....