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No Uniques 2k Wolves List

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

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

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

Rune Priest - jaws of the world wolf, living lightning

Wolf Priest - plasma pistol

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

Venerable Dreadnought - multimelta, heavy flamer
Drop Pod

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

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

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

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

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

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

6 Long Fangs - 5 heavy bolters

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

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

HQ

Ragnar Blackmane

Wolf Priest - combimelta

TROOPS

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

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

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

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

FAST ATTACK

Landspeeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Landspeeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

HEAVY SUPPORT

Land Raider Redeemer - multimelta

6 Long Fangs - 5 heavy bolters

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

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

Space Wolves Lists

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

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

The core:

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

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

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

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

2 Land Speeders - multimeltas, heavy flamers

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

2 Predators - heavy bolter sponsons

LOOK TO THE SKEES VARIANT:

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

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

YOU CAN CALL ME BETTY VARIANT:

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

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

Tournament: BOLSCon

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

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

My Chaos list:

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

Dearth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Psychic Battle Squad - 9 Psykers
Chimera - heavy bolter

Veteran Squad - 3 plasma guns, demolitions

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - heavy flamer

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - heavy flamer

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

Hellhound

Hellhound

Valkyrie - rocket pods

Leman Russ Demolisher - plasma cannons, lascannon

Leman Russ Demolisher - plasma cannons, lascannon

Manticore - camo netting

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

Here's a few pics from other tables:

Game 1 - Necrons

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

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

Game 2 - Dark Eldar

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

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

Game 3 - Imperial Guard

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

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

Tournament: Battleforge Games 6-06-09

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

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

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

Sly Marbo

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

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - hull heavy flamer

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

Hellhound - hull heavy flamer

Hellhound - hull heavy flamer

3 Sentinels - autocannons

Leman Russ Demolisher - lascannon, sponson plasma cannons

Leman Russ - heavy bolters, heavy stubber

Basilisk

Game 1 - Tau

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

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

Game 2 - Imperial Guard

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

Game 3 - Chaos

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

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

Catachans

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

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

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

Sly Marbo

Veteran Squad - Harker, 3 grenade launchers, autocannon

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns

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

2 Hellhounds - smoke launchers

Devildog - smoke launchers

Valkyrie - rocket pods

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma cannon sponsons

Leman Russ - heavy bolters, heavy stubber

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

Straken

Harker

Marbo

Tournament: Battleforge Games 5-16-09

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

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

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

Sly Marbo

9 Battle Psykers w/ Overseer
Chimera - hull heavy bolter

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

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

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

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Devildog - smoke launchers

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma sponsons

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma sponsons

Basilisk

Game 1 - Chaos Space Marines

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

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

Game 2 - Imperial Guard

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

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

Game 3 - Imperial Guard

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

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

Witch Chain Gang

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

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

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

Mechatachan

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

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

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

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

Psyker Battle Squad - 9 psykers, 1 overseer
Chimera

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

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns, lascannon
Chimera

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns, lascannon
Chimera

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Devildog - smoke launchers

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma cannon sponsons

Leman Russ Demolisher - hull lascannon, plasma cannon sponsons

Basilisk

More Guard Testing

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

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

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

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

10 Ratlings

10 Veterans - 3 plasma guns, lascannon
Chimera

10 Veterans - 3 melta guns, lascannon
Chimera

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

Hellhound

Hellhound

3 Sentinels

Demolisher - lascannon, plasma cannons

Demolisher - lascannon, plasma cannons

Leman Russ - heavy bolters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guard Experiments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Ratlings

Guardsman Marbo

Full Pysker Battle Squad
Chimera

Veteran Squad - 3 meltaguns
Chimera - heavy flamer

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

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Hellhound - smoke launchers

Vendetta

Leman Russ - heavy bolter sponsons

Leman Russ - heavy bolter sponsons

Leman Russ - heavy bolter sponsons

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

Choices Choices Choices

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

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

Medusa

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

Manticore

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

Hydra

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

Tournament: Battleforge Games 4-11-09

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

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

Here was my list:

Abaddon

Sorceror - mark of slaanesh, lash of submission

8 Berzerkers - skull champion w/ power fist

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

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

10 Lesser Demons

Defiler - 2 CCW

3 Obliterators

Land Raider - possession

Game 1 - Orks

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

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

Game 2 - Witch Hunters

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

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

Game 3 - Space Marines

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

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

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 4-04-09

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

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

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

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

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

5 Veterans - 3 meltaguns

10 Ratlings

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

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

Hellhound - extra armor, smoke launchers

Hellhound - extra armor, smoke launchers

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

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

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

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

Game 1 - Imperial Guard

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

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

Game 2 - Eldar

Mission: Capture and Control
Deployment: Dawn of War

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

Game 3 - Eldar

Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Spearhead

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

Latest Wolves List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11 Blood Claws - flamer, 3 power fists

3 Attack Bikes

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

Land Raider - multimelta, extra armor

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

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

Tournament: Battleforge Games 3-14-09

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

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

Abaddon

Sorceror - mark of slaanesh, lash of submission

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

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

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

10 Lesser Demons

3 Defilers - 2 CCWs

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

Game 1 - Chaos

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

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

Game 2 - Eldar

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

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

Game 3 - Orks

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

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

Tournament: Battlefield Games 2-14-09

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

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

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

Game 1 - Space Marines

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

Game 2 - Tau

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

Game 3 - Dark Eldar

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

Weird mech list

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

Would this be viable at all in a tournament?

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

Sentinel - lascannon

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

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

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

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

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

Sentinel - lascannon

Hellhound - extra armor

Hellhound - extra armor

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

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

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

More of the Saim

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

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

HQ

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

Autarch - jetbike, laser lance, mandiblasters

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

6 Fire Dragons

3 x 6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

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

Vyper - bright lance

2 Fire Prisms - spirit stones, holofield

Falcon - scatter laser, spirit stones, holofield

Tournament: Battleforge Games 2-07-09

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

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

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

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

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

10 Ratlings

Eversor assassin

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

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

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

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

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

Here's a couple of other games:

Chaos Space Marines vs. Chaos Daemons

Tyranids vs. Ultramarines

Game 1 – Demons

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

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

Game 2 – Dark Eldar

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

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

Game 3 – Tau

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

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

Latest Guard List

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

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

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

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

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

10 Ratlings

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

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

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

Leman Russ demolisher - plasma cannons, lascannon, extra armor

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

Basilisk - indirect fire

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

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 1-24-09

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

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

Here's the list:

Celestine

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

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

Callidus Assassin

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

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

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

2 Exorcists - extra armor

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

Game 1 - Orks

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

Game 2 - Tau

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

Game 3 - Chaos

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

Don't Fight It

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

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

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

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

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

6 Grey Hunters - 2 powerfists, 1 meltagun
Razorback

6 Grey Hunters - 2 powerfists, 1 meltagun
Razorback

15 Blood Claws - 3 powerfists

Land Speeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Land Raider Crusader - multimelta, extra armor

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

Predator - heavy bolter sponsons

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