Legio Minimus

Some Idle Thoughts...

2012-01-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Howdy Y’all! Sorry for the lack of posts over the month of December but it has been insanely busy at work and I also went home for Christmas for the first time in about 3 years (11 day trip). Throw both of those together and it equals zero time to paint or do anything with the hobby really. In fact I don’t think I have painted a model in almost a month, so hopefully over the coming weeks I will be able to get back into the swing of things.

I am currently working on an in depth tutorial on converting, basing and painting Ymgarl Genestealers for my Tyranid army. Going to talk a bit more about how to go about the feathering technique (ie how the army is painted) as well as the colours involved. The last part will be about basing in general and how to do scenic bases easily and on budget and how doing simple scenic bases vastly increases the appeal for your army. I am also getting into Warhammer Fantasy a bit and as I mentioned before I am starting an Ogre army (more pics soon…hopefully lol). I also managed to find my old High Elf army that I thought my ex girlfriend threw out. The crazy thing it is still all brand new, still on the sprue and comes out to about 4300pts of High Elves...so merry Christmas to me lol.

The main focus of this article though is to talk about something I have been thinking about for quite a while and that is what I feel is wrong with the 5^th ed Tyranid codex and my own take on how to fix it.

**Disclaimer** I acknowledge the fact that this is a completely redundant exercise as literally nothing I do or say will ever be taken into account by games workshop. This is something I did just as a fun exercise to entertain myself while it is slow at work…plus it’s just fun to think “what if”**

The first thing I wanted was outline what I feel the current Tyranid Codex does well as there are a bunch of things that I do really like.

1) Reserve Shinanigans: By far the best aspect of this codex is how many deployment options you have access to as well as different ways to alter your reserve rolls. It really makes it feel like an alien invasion out of Starship Troopers or something with Tyranids coming at you from all sides. It is the one thing that regardless of the main issues with this book that keeps me coming back and still having fun playing this army.

2) Little Gribblies: I feel that Cruddace did a great job on all the smaller “Gant” type creatures in this army book. Last edition Hormagaunts were almost un-usable because of how expensive they were and without number while a good idea was a bit wonky in execution as well as being fairly expensive. I love all the changes both in their points cost (5-8 points per model) and what they do. Gargoyles especially are fantastic in both their rules and their models. All the smaller bugs (not counting rippers) feel exactly how they should in my mind.

3) Streamlining: I am sure I am very much in the minority on this one but I think it was pretty much essential for the current book to streamline the stats for the ranged weapons and the units instead of keeping the 3^rd and 4^th ed stat swapping system. It just reduces the confusion for your opponent and most of the time you just took the same stats anyway so why not just streamline it and find the middle ground? Here is a good example of what I am talking about:

Tyranid Player: “My Carnifex here has a toughness of 6, 4 wounds and a 3+ armor save”
Opponent: “Okay, good to know. I will fire at that other Carnifex in the back then with the two big guns with my Missile Launchers!”
*After Opponent Shoots*
Tyranid Player: “Oh…actually THAT Carnifex is toughness 7, 5 wounds and a 2+ armor save”
Opponent: “…..sigh”

4) Mega Worms!: This more has to do with the models than the actual codex. I just love these models and simply don’t care what they do…I will still field them lol.

With that out of the way I wanted to nail down what I personally feel are the real issues with this book that need to be addressed.

1) Horribly Written Rules: Never before have I seen a book that needed an FAQ before it actually came out. Things like the Trygon Tunnel, Doom of Malantai, Terror from the Deep, Lictor Deployment, etc. All of these rules are all over the place and/or are completely useless (*cough* Trygon Tunnel *cough*). If this book just had a solid once over from an editor or even just someone who played the game it would have been a way better book.

2) Redundancy: This one is of my personal biggest issues. What I mean about redundancy is how many options, both in unit choices and the ranged weapon section, that just flat out do the exact same thing. Why do we have 3 Devourers (Devourer, Stinger Salvo and Deathspitters)? Why do we have two “Sniper Fexs” (Tyrannofex and Carnifex are virtually the same unit when you break it down). Why do we have 2 different units of Lictors (Ymgarls have the Lictor’s deployment and fill the exact same role). The Hive Mind is all about hyper focusing and constantly evolving to create an army of creatures that specialize in one or two defined rolls working in synergy with each other to overcome their enemies. This book isn’t that.

3) Overcrowded Elites Section: Everything is crammed into the elites section, specifically all of our useful anti tank. It vexes me that I have to forgo all the “fun” units in the army if I want to make sure I have enough anti tank to survive in this current meta game which brings me to my next point…

4) Ranged Anti Tank: This and the all Carnifex armies were probably the two single biggest issues with the 4^th edition codex and it was the number one issue I was hoping the 5^th edition Codex would have solved. At first glance it almost looks like the issue was fixed with the addition of Hive Guard and to a lesser extent Tyrannofex’s. At second glance though you realize that Hive Guard share the same slot as everything you would want to take in your army and the Tyrannofex is a 4^th edition Sniper Fex (Carnifex with a Venom Cannon and Barbed Strangler) with worse weapons and WAY more expensive. All Cruddace had to do was remove the “always glance” effect on the Venom Cannons while keeping everything else the same for them and this issue would have been rectified. Fixing Venom Cannons would have helped spread out the Anti Tank throughout the different Force Organization Slots and therefore removing the massive crutch in Tyranid army list building and that is taking as many Hive Guard as you can. Instead he actually makes the gun WORSE and therefore making the problem worse. Sigh.

5) Overpriced Monstrous Creatures: If you look at every other Codex, especially the ones written for 5^th edition you will start to see what I mean. The Talos is 100pts base and better then a Carnifex (which is 60pts more expensive) in virtually every way. Dreadknights are only 135pts and same deal. Cruddace completely over estimated just how powerful Monstrous Creatures without an invulnerable save really are and it REALLY hurts the army. The only one that is pretty much spot on is the Trygon, everything else is 20-30 points too expensive (in the case of the Harpy which is 160pts base it is closer to 60pts). Either make the MCs a bit better or give them a slight discount.

6) Instant Death and Toughness 4 Tyranid Warriors: I remember playing Tyranids back in 3^rd edition and one universal thing I noticed is that NOBODY took Tyranid Warriors, which was a real shame because they just received a great looking new model at the time and are one of the most iconic units in the army. The reason for this is that there were just getting insta-gibbed by every battle cannon and missile launcher under the sun. Fast forward to 4^th edition and the designers knew they had to do something to address this so they added instant death protection to everything within synapse which all of a sudden made them a great unit. I will admit though that giving everything in Synapse Range Eternal Warrior was a bit over the top and I really wouldn’t want to see that return. Tyranids are a living army and mass eternal warrior should be reserved for Demons. With that being said though something should be done whether it is eternal warrior JUST for Tyranid Warriors or making them Toughness 5. Regardless though something really needs to be done to make them a more attractive option.

7) Lack Of Assault Grenades: For the most part I think it really fits the Tyranid Army that the majority of the army doesn’t have assault grenades. Even now we have tones of ways to mitigate the damage we take when assaulting into cover with things like Catalyst, Paroxysm and Lash Whips. The only unit that SHOULD have grenades though are Genestealers. You add some rule for them to assault into cover and you would have one super happy Tyranid Player here.

So, with all the above issues in mind I made changes based on how I would love to see the 5^th Edition Tyranid Codex look. All the changes are just personal opinions on things and obviously none of it was play-tested. It was just changed based on my own experience with the current Tyranid Book and what just doesn’t work in it (or does work). Please feel free to make suggestions if you think things aren’t good enough or more likely to things that are too good. I have no issues toning things down or changing things if they are deemed too good and would very much love to hear people’s opinions on things. My main goal is to make something that is balanced and fits in line with the rest of the 5^th Edition Codices, not something that sits in its own category (*cough Grey Knights *cough).

Tyranid Codex Redux

Dark Eldar Invade Real Space at Winter War!

2011-11-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend my local game stored held a small tournament (16 spots…but only 10 showed up since this is Calgary where Fantasy rules the roost). The one really neat thing about this tournament though is that it used the rules from the GW supplement “Spearhead”. I know most of you probably groaned when reading that but after playing a couple of test games and then this tournament I have to say it’s actually really fun. The thing I liked about it was the fact that it breathes some much needed life into an incredibly stale game since there are so many different types of Spearheads that drastically change the game and really make you think outside the box as both how you want to set your army up and planning on what could potentially come your way. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Spearhead I am just going to do a quick rundown for you:

- The game is played from short edge to short edge so the long board edges would be the sides you outflank from (if you can). This means that the range of your weapons really comes into play since you are using all 6 feet of the board
- The Force Org chart is changed so nothing is mandatory (so troops would be 0-6 for example). The main change is that ALL Tanks and Walkers can score in addition to your Troops section and any Spearheads that you take also can score (so my first opponent had something like 22 scoring units lol)
- The addition of Spearhead Formations. These fit outside the main Force Organization and normally are built towards Walkers or Tanks with some for troop transports and skimmers (18 in total). How they work is you have to take up to 3 Units of Tanks/Walkers for a specific Spearhead and they all have to be the same unit (so 3 Predators for example) but they don’t have to be armed the same (so you could have a “Dakka” Pred, a Lascannon Pred and a Pred with an Autocannon for example). You pay a certain amount of points ranging from 15 points to 90 points and it gives you special abilities like a 5+ invulnerable save or the ability to fire all their weapons once before the game starts, etc. As long as the units within the Spearhead stick with in 4” of each other they are also able to fire one more weapon then they would normally be allowed and they can fire that weapon at a different target if they want (so a Chimera could move 12” and still fire it’s multi laser, or move 6” and fire its multi laser at one target and heavy bolter at another for example).

With all that in mind it took me a while to decide on what type of army list I wanted to take for my Dark Eldar. When looking at the different Spearheads there seemed like a massive potential for some soul crushing Alpha Strikes if you didn’t win the first turn or depending on the Spearhead before the first turn lol. With all that in mind I decided to do a Hybrid reserve bomb army using a Web Way Portal and one of the dirtiest Spearheads, which is Mechanized Assault (choose 3 transports which outflank turn 1…along the long table edges…right in the middle of your opponents deployment zone with a web way portal). I also chose a Spearhead called “Skyfall” for my 3 Ravagers which allowed them to come in via Deep Strike and shoot all their Dark Lances against the side armor of anything they are shooting at regardless of facing to represent them shooting as they are landing. Here is the list I used:

Haemonculi - Web Way Portal

Elites

Trueborn (4) - 4 x Blasters

Troops

Wyches (10) - 2 x Hydra Gauntlets, Hekatrix w/ Agonizer, Haywire Grenades
Wyches (10) - 2 x Shardnets/Impalers, Hekatrix w/ Agonizer, Haywire Grenades

Fast Attack

Reaver Jetbikes (6) - 2 x Heat Lances
Scourges (5) - 2 x Haywire Blasters
Beastmasters (4) - 10 Khymera, 2 Razorwing Flocks, Clawed Fiend

Heavy Support

Talos - twin linked haywire blaster, chain flails, extra close combat weapon

Mechinsed Assault Spearhead

- 3 x Raiders w/ Flicker Fields (both wyches and trueborn with haemonculi in here)

Skyfall Spearhead

- 3 x Ravagers w/ Flicker Fields

So how the list works is everything gets held in reserve with the Wyches and Trueborn outflanking turn 1 into my enemies deployment zone for me to drop off the Web Way Portal. After that I now have the option of having stuff come out of the WWP in my enemies deployment zone or to come in via reserve or deep strike (in the case of the scourges) on my side if there are units there. I was a bit nervous going into a “Tank Tournament” with so little ranged anti tank (I have 238pts into a unit that is ONLY anti infantry in the form of the beast pack) and so few scoring units since Dark Eldar don’t have any “Tanks” or “Walkers”. My other big worry was how this army was going to fair with so little on the board turn 1 right in my enemies face while everything else in my army comes in piecemeal. There was a big chance that my stuff would get shot up in little chunks leaving me with nothing to retaliate. My hope was to win at least one game while having my mighty TALOS do something (in which case I would yell “TALOS!” in my best heavy metal rocker voice).

Game 1: Mechanized Guard

Le Sigh. So my biggest “nightmare army” is obviously my first opponent (and surprisingly the only army at the tourney where I didn’t give myself much chance lol). We actually joked before the game on how I was just going to flail all over his army while he just shoots me to bits. At least there was virtually no terrain on the board lol (again…le sigh). Even before the game started I knew what kind of up-hill battle this was going to be and decided that while I will probably lose I will try and take as much of the Imperial scum with me as I could.

The scenario was 5 objectives, one big one in the middle of the board with 4 others in the middle of each quarter. Every scenario for this tourney had a special rule and the special rule for this scenario was the middle objective was an alien weapon of unknown origin that shoots a massive laser (str 9, ap3) in a random direction at the start of each players turn. I figured that worked in my advantage since I only have open topped, low armor vehicles…wait…dammit! Here is Cory’s list (keep in mind I don’t know it exactly since I haven’t played the current Guard very much and when you are faced with a million chimeras it all looks the same lol):

Cory’s Army:

- 9 Chimeras with command squads and an infantry platoon
- The one infantry platoon forms into a blob squad with two auto cannon heavy weapon squads
- Mechanized Assault w/ 3 Chimeras w/ vets in them (2 melta squads, one flamer squad)
- 2 Basilisks

So when looking through that list he has 12 (yes 12) chimeras all with Multi Lasers and Heavy Bolters (so 36 shots of EACH a turn). It doesn’t really matter if I even blow up half of them in one turn because whatever I don’t kill will easily be able to shoot my tanks out of the sky…or so I thought. I managed to win the roll for first turn in which I gave it to Cory so he would effectively lose one turn of shooting while I would still have 5, so here it goes!

Highlights of the Game:

- I managed to get the side I wanted for outflanking which was RIGHT beside his massive Guard Blob which happened to be a huge piece of terrain to hide my stuff. Cory was smart and popped smoke on all his tanks to protect them from what I had incoming. My Trueborn managed to hit all 4 times and then penetrate all 4 times on his Command Squad’s Chimera (they had 4 flamers…do not want lol) and then he proceeded to make ALL FOUR cover saves lol. In fact he didn’t fail a single smoke cover save the entire first round which helped my cause immensely lol.
- I completely underestimated the durability of the massive guard blob squad. My Wyches charged in, did something like 25 wounds (he made almost half his saves on a 5+) and did quite a bit of damage back. In fact, after a couple turns he had whittled me down to the point where I just didn’t have the power to fight back and they managed to kill 20 wyches in close combat.
- Turn 2 my Skyfall Ravagers came in and changed the game to the point where Cory wouldn’t recover. Basically I managed to Stun/Weapon Destroy/Immoblise/Wreck 5 tanks on the turn they landed creating a complete pile up in the middle of the board making sure that almost anything that could fire back at me would give me a cover save. At the start of turn 3 I looked Cory in the eye and said “just so you know all 3 of my Ravagers WILL be here at the start of my turn”. He scoffed and got onto rolling. By the end of the turn taking an entire parking lot worth of shots which included 3 melta guns in melta range and a basilisk shell I lost a single Dark Lance from the squad. That’s it.
- The “Alien Artifact” blew up 3 of Cory’s tanks, while doing nothing to me lol. He just had SO MANY tanks in the middle of the board you just couldn’t draw a line out without blowing something up. My Talos got hit at the end of the game but I already had a pain token so I laughed it off.

Final Result: Victory! I ended up winning the game 2 objectives to 0 with a mad dash right at the end of the game (start of turn 5 he had 4 objectives and I had none with only 5 minutes to do my entire turn). I managed to contest the middle objective with my Jet Bikes and kill the squad of guard on the other with my Talos. My scourges came in turn 5 and wiped out another squad of guard on an objective in my deployment zone while both my remaining Ravagers turbo boosted to grab the two un-contested objectives. One thing I really enjoyed about this game is that Cory is a very smart player and really focused on the objectives. So many times in games I find people going after the stuff that doesn’t matter (aka not scoring units) but he kept his focus and went out of his way to remove any and all of the things I had that I could use to win the game (just 2 out of 9 scoring units of mine left at the end of the game). This was an incredibly hard game to win and to say I was surprised that I came out with a victory is an understatement.

Game 2: Salamanders

This game was against a fellow named Anthony Dalla Lanna and his Salamander list. Every since I got into the tournament scene here in Calgary Anthony is one of the people who basically win everything (mostly best general and overall) so I knew this was going to be a super tough game. I had two things working in my favor for this game. The first is that he didn’t have any spearheads at all and the second is before I saw what he brought I already knew exactly what was in the army since he has been using the same force since the 5^th ed Space Marine book came out and to be honest his list hasn’t aged well (only two scoring units).

Our mission was a modified Kill Point mission where you also earned Kill Points for each unit of yours that were still functional in your opponents half of the table. This obviously is a MASSIVE advantage for me since my entire army will be coming out of his half of the table lol. This was the only mission that didn’t have any really crazy rules so it was just business as usual. As with the first game I won the roll off to see who goes first (which is massively important playing Anthony) and I made him go first.

Anthony’s Army:

Vulkan
7 Terminators + Land Raider Crusader
2 Tactical Squads (one combat squaded in a Razorback w/ a twin linked heavy bolter, the other in a drop pod with flamers and a multi melta)
2 Iron Clad Dreads in Drop Pods with Hunter killer Missiles
2 Vindicators

Highlights of the Game:

- First turn the Trueborn managed to blow up a Vindicator. On Anthony’s turn he deep struck his Ironclad right beside them flaming them with a heavy flamer (he figured he would just wipe them out not realizing the Haemonculi gave them a pain token). Two managed to live and they passed their panic test. The following turn (my turn 2) they blew up the Land Raider (got a “6” on the damage chart) and killed a Terminator in the explosion. 108pts well spent lol
- The start of his turn 2 he fired his Land Raider at my two turbo boosting Wyche Raiders and managed to blow them both up with a Multi Melta and Assault Cannon. Lost only 2 in the explosion (the other one was just wrecked) and they both managed to pass their pinning tests
- We talked for a minute about what happens when someone rolls “double 1’s “ when assaulting through cover as the rules state that you can’t be within 1” of an enemy if you aren’t in combat. So I said obviously the charge would fail. I then roll my difficult terrain roll for the Wyches assaulting his 5 man combat squad (I figured a quick pain token) and then of COURSE rolled “Double 1’s”. What are the freaking odds on that lol?
- My Beast pack showed up just in time and rushed his Terminator squad. They managed to kill 6 Terminators and broke Vulkan (who was escorted off the board by my Scourges that showed up the following turn). They were completely ace this game.

Final Result: Victory! I won the game 15kp to 5kp as I had my entire army in his half and I had earned more kill points then he did. Basically from turn 1 I had Anthony on the ropes and he was just playing the “reaction game”. The Web Way Portal in particular messed him up since he couldn’t get far enough away from it or surround it. Overall, like the first game, it was a really hard fought and more importantly fun game.

Game 3: Grey Knights

Grey Knights are an army I have only faced once and have heard complete horror stories about. There are a bunch of things that (in my mind) are totally broken in this book like Auto Cannon Dreadnoughts, Grenades and Paladins. Good thing to note that my opponent had all of those lol. What was even better was that his Autocannon Dreads were in a Spearhead which gave them Tank Hunter lol (so now they were each firing 4 x Str 9 twin linked shots against vehicles). Good times.

Our Mission was probably the strangest one of the day. It was 4 objectives, 3 minor, 1 major and the 3 minor are placed in one board half while the lone major objective was placed in the other (the minor ones are worth 1 each while the major is worth 3). The “weirdness” comes into play turn 4 since the 4 objectives are supposed to be fragments of an alien ship or something and you have to randomly roll to see if any of them explode (one explodes for a large blast of Str 10, ap1 while the other three do an EMP pulse which causes a glancing hit to anything within 6”).

My opponents name was John and he drove all the way from Grand Prairie to be there. The list was actually pretty fun to play against despite my earlier run down of the negative fun options of the GK army once you boil it down and he was a great opponent to play against. Here is his list:

John's Army:

Librarian (sanctuary and something else…he never used either so it didn’t matter lol)
Inquisitor w/ grenades (ugh)
Paladins (7 believe, all with halberds, 1 hammer, 2 psycannons)
3 x 10 Strike Squads w/ Rhinos, 1 demon hammer, 2 psycannons)
2 x “Psyfleman” Dreads (dual str 8 autocannons) w/ Tank Hunter Spear Head
(all squads had psy-bolts to make their storm bolters str 5)

Highlights of the game:

- This game for me was all about controlling the objectives by limiting my opponent’s movement since he was castling in a building in the corner of the board. I went out of my way to focus all of my anti tank firepower on his Rhinos and I managed to blow them all up early on in the game. This one thing decided the game.
- The rest of the game was about maiming his regular Grey Knights while either avoiding or distracting his Paladin squad.
- My Ravagers came available for deepstrike on turn 3 and scattered about 5” away from one of the objectives JUST in time to get “EMP’d” at the start of turn 4. Luckily only one Ravager was in range for that glancing hit…and un-luckily my opponent rolled a “6” on the damage chart wrecking it lol. What else was nice was to see the large Str 10, AP1 blast be RIGHT beside my unit of wyches that were near the middle objective. The best part of that is they made all their cover saves lol. Strange stuff.

Final Result: Victory! This game was won during deployment as I ended the game with 4 objectives to his 1. John never once tried to get to the other objectives and just camped his lone one (I think the farthest either of his Dreads moved was up or down one level). He also took all the “bait” I offered him like charging my beast pack into the middle of his army in an attempt to pull the Paladins off his home objective (which he did). John opted to leave his basically unstoppable Paladin squad on his home objective instead of moving them to the far objective in his half of the table which my Web Way Portal was sitting on. He just shot down a raider or two or tried to kill my scourges at range. John was a great guy to play against though and like the other games was really fun and I would happily play him any time as I voted him “best sport”.

Final Tournament Result: First Overall!

I managed to win all my games and had the highest marks for painting (don’t know how I did in sports but hopefully I wasn’t a massive douche lol). It felt like to me that nobody was prepared for the type of list I was bringing to this tournament since everyone else just had a stand up and fight type army. I was determined to play this game on my own terms and dictate the flow of the game (which is, as a player, typically how I win) and it worked perfectly.

Despite there being only 10 people at the tournament there still was quite a bit of fierce competition with some pretty tough lists. I think I am the only one who actually won all 3 games. The tournament was also run fairly smoothly with only a couple weird things on some scores and whatnot but it was all pretty minor. One thing that was nice and a big change from most 40k events you go to lately is how laid back the atmosphere for this one was. Even normally really competitive people were just letting thing slide and taking everything in stride (myself included).

As far as the special twist for the tournament (aka using Spearhead) I would have to say it was successful. The armies were all really fun to play against, lots of challenges and it really made you think outside the box and change how you approached the game. Kind of sucked that I was the only non-imperial player there (2 blood angles, 2 space wolves, 1 marine, 2 grey knights and myself) but alas due to GWs release schedule for 5^th ed (6 imperial vs. 3 xenos) that is the climate we live in. I think it is really good to participate in this type of tournament every once in a while just to keep things fresh and for me it keeps me sharp. I am also REALLY pleased with the performance of this army as this was their first tournament and they haven’t disappointed. I hope you enjoyed the battle report and hopefully I can get more in (both tournaments and battle reports) and get them posted up on the site.

Now for Something Completely Different...

2011-11-20T07:05:00.000-08:00

...A man with a tape recorder up his nose.

Now that my Dark Eldar army is almost complete (just have a second Razorwing and the Hellions left) I felt it was time for something new. These days I am finding 40k is getting incredibly stale mostly due to how the only armies you see any more are either Marines (mostly GKs now) and some Imperial Guard. I am just not feeling 40k like I used to and I am hoping that 6th edition (with maybe a massive Errata for the Nid Dex? :D) will change that. Since 6th ed isn't coming out till the summer of next year I figured I would really change things up and try something new...

...OGRES!

That's right, Warhammer Fantasy Ogres. For those of you who know me this is the first time I have done anything for Fantasy since 3rd edition (almost 20 years), so it is a big change for me. A friend of mine gave me the Ogre Army book, the IOB rule book and a box of ogres to get me started. I also managed to trade some stuff for an Ogre Battalion and a Thundertusk which is also really cool. My goal is to paint up 2500pts so I can get the feel of Warhammer Fantasy after being away from the game that long. I have finished up some test models and I finally hit something that I was really happy with. So here is my 3rd attempt at doing Ogres:

The first couple of tries I either really didn't like the skin colour (the first test model...way too much shadow grey) or I found I did too much "streaking" on the skin (similar style as my Tyranids brown colour). This one I pulled back how much I was doing with the skin and made the choice to do less as far as highlighting goes. I also plan to do a lot with extra details (its going to be an Ogre raiding party on Imperial lands, hence the shoulder shield) and scenic bases.

Let me know what you think and if there is anything you would change on this guy!

Lest we forget....

2011-11-11T10:32:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to say thank you to all the Men and Women in uniform that have served their country over the years and paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten and I am eternally grateful.

2 Moar!

2011-10-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest 2 additions to team Purge-ery. Both standard CSM.

2' x 4' worth of Pink Nids.

2011-10-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to taking some pictures of my tyranid army(painted models only, I have 45-50% more that are still in progress) that I have been working on for the past 6-7 years. I apologize for vastness of the shots;I didn't have the time to do individual unit shots.

edit: reread what I wrote; was a bit confusing before on the amount that is actually complete

Beastmasters + Friends Finished!

2011-10-22T20:26:00.001-07:00

After much procrastination on finishing my last two beastmasters I FINALLY have the squad done! I really like how it looks when set up on the table. I am thinking now that I have close to 3000pts painted it is time for break and to paint something new...just gotta figure out what that is :)

2 more Marines finished.

2011-10-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

So this past week I had time to finish two marines rather than the normal one. They both aren't Purge Marines though, the second one is for a unit of mercenaries for the campaign me and my group of friends are currently playing in. (http://www.gvegames.com/imgdrop/Planetary_Empires.pdf if you are interested in the rules/running your own Campaign). The 'Merc' scheme is going to be done up as The Punishers; just as a fun little side project to work on my free hand. The Punisher isn't 100% done, still need to do some touch ups on the face tattoo and finish the browns and obviously the base.

Talos!

2011-10-10T17:01:00.001-07:00

This weekend was suprisingly quiet at work being Thanksgiving weekend so I was able to get in some serious painting time in. I have my Hellion unit, the Baron and my last two Beastmasters to do up but I found I was getting a bit sick of "Wyche" units (as I just finished my last Wyche squad a couple weeks ago) and I wanted a change, so the Talos it is.

After seeing the model sprues for this figure (comes on 3 jam packed sprues) I was impressed with the overall look of it. Painting it just greatly increased my love for this model...to the point where I will be getting 2 more kits (1 more talos and a chronos) simply because of how much I loved painting this kit. So here it is!

Warmachine BattleBox

2011-10-09T18:16:00.001-07:00

Ghoulio once told me that Warmachine had very good mechanics as a game, and was on the whole more balanced than 40k owing to the fact that they release ALL factions at the same time (roughly). I'll add to that, that they might release the miniatures at different times, but they've already generated the stats and play tested it beforehand. They also tend not to make any of your figs "nerfed" with continuous updated codices.

That was last year, and ever since I was wondering "hmm, what IS this warmachine thingy"? Anyway my regular gaming group was interested in trying it. I read the rules and they seemed neat, so I bought the book and picked the "Protectorate of Menoth" as my faction owing to their having awesome looking "Warjacks".

The 'Jacks are basically steampowered, magic enhanced robot dreadnaughts that can do lots of damage to the infantry (and each other when buffed). That said infantry is also quite good. Menoth's advantages are they are good at denying the enemy magic, and having lots of melee buffs for their jacks and other troops. Cool stuff. Oh yes, and they are a super religious cult who loves to set stuff on fire. Awesome.

Anyway after a few games, I finally finished painting my initial battlebox. I do have several other figs to paint, but I figured I'd post the first 3 Jacks. They are from left to right, A Revenger Light Jack, a Crusader Heavy Jack, and a Repenter Light Jack. All of them are pretty sweet in combat, although the Repenter's only real claim to fame is that it has a flame thrower template weapon. Not bad, but you can do better I think with other Jacks or infantry (just wait till I finish my Deliverers. Hand held rocket launchers!). I'll have their warcaster controller guy finished soon, and then onto the only "autoinclude" of the army, The Choir of Menoth.

Dark Eldar Tactica: Web Way Portals!

2011-10-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

Now that I have gone over the two main troop choices for the Dark Eldar army I figured it was time to go into depth for probably the most unique style of play for this or any army, and that is with the use of Web Way Portals.

Ever since the original Dark Eldar codex came out in 3^rd Ed this style of play has always appealed me to the point where I actually made an Ulthwe Strike Force (which is virtually the same style of play as this army). I just love the idea of holding a large portion of you army back in reserves and having some specific points on the board that you can bring them in through all the while being able to act normally the turn they show up. Another really neat thing about this army is it allows you to use certain builds for squads that you wouldn’t really use anywhere else while other units completely come into their own. For this article I am going to cover how to set up your army in regards to deployment and the first couple turns of the game as well as what choices you can make to give this army a greater chance of success which include unit choices, unit options and how to get the most out of your choices.

The first thing we should talk about is what exactly is this style of play? This style of play is referring to a piece war gear that Archons and Haemonculi can purchase which basically creates an extra board edge in the shape of a 3” diameter template for you to use during the game to bring your models in from reserve. This style of play will typically have a very small amount of units start on the board (basically just enough to deploy the portal(s)) while everything else is held in reserve.

There are a few things of note to remember when using WWPs (Web Way Portals). First is you can’t deploy a portal when you are embarked in a transport which means your IC will have to get out pretty much on turn one to guarantee you get you are ready for your units to come in turn 2. The second point which kind of ties into the first point is no vehicle can use the WWP to enter play so this generally will limit you to how many vehicles you can or will want to use. The last point which is one of the biggest benefits to Dark Eldar players using this type of list is unlike the Tyranid Trygon Tunnel it doesn’t matter how you declare your units are coming in from reserve (as in Deep Strike, Out Flank, etc) you ALWAYS have the option of either going with their original reserve deployment OR bringing them through the portal. This is great for two reasons. First it gives you pretty much the ultimate flexibility in how you want to deploy your army as you don’t have to make that choice until you are literally deploying them on the board. So, if it is more beneficial to bring your units in on your own board edge to capture your home objective or if it is better to have them come through the portal so they can assault that turn, you get to decide. The second is you can never be “boxed in”. One of the main strategies to defending against this list is surrounding the portal so none of your models can come through it (like the same you would for models trapped in a vehicle). With the current form of the Portal this can never happen as you can just opt to come in from your own board edge, deep strike, etc. depending on the unit.

Web Way Portal Basics:

The main thing to think about is if you decide this is a play style that you would really like to use is make sure you have at least two portals. This is really important for a bunch of reasons. First off if you have only one WWP and quite a few units coming through you really run the risk of creating a serious “traffic jam” at the entry point as all those units are fighting for space to come out. The next problem about running only 1 portal is it becomes very easy to either avoid all together or defend against as your opponent can fairly easily just lock that portal down by surrounding it with a handful of units. The last main reason to have 2+ portals is it gives your army a bit of security if you happen to be going second since it gives you double the chance of having something still there by the time your turn comes around.

Deployment:

I am going to go over the 3 different main deployment types from the rule book with ways of getting the most out of your portals. The common focus for the 3 deployment types is “box in” your opponent and to leave them with as little wiggle room as possible all the while giving your units maximum effectiveness the turn they arrive from the portal.

Pitched Battle: With this type of deployment I typically place my two WWP units about 1/3 of the way along the deployment line (you want to set up right on the deployment line to be as far forward as possible). During your first turn you move both Raiders as far forward as possible and disembark the Haemonculi with his unit (for me its normally just a 5 man warrior squad with a blaster but Wracks work well too due to their durability) into cover if you can and deploy the WWP. This will place both portals up to 27” in from your own board edge which leaves only 21” to your opponents board edge and you have effectively boxed in the enemy. What I really like about this set up is it makes it so your opponent really can’t hide from your fast assault units (as Beastmasters and Hellions both have a minimum charge range of 19”).

Spearhead: There are many similarities with this set up as with pitched battle and like all 3 deployments the focus is making sure you box your enemy in as much as possible so your units coming out of that portal really hit home. I normally set up both of my Raiders/Venoms right on the edges of the 12” bubble in the middle (basically the shortest distances to their deployment zone) then on turn 1 I move as far forward as possible trying to block off as much of their movement as possible.

Dawn of War: This is the most unique and problematic of the 3 set ups, but with a bit of maneuvering it potentially is the best at removing the playing field for your opponent. The reason why this set up can potentially throw that monkey into your wrench is you can only have one of your WWPs starting on the board. This is the only set up where if I am going first I set up my transport away from the WWP squad to maximize how far back I push my opponent into their own deployment zone (hopefully making it so they just hold everything off of the board and walk on). On my turn one I turbo boost my second Raider towards the center line on the opposite side as my first web way portal. Turn 2 I move that second Raider into the most beneficial spot within 12” to maximize the “boxing in” effect that this army creates which greatly benefits my second wave of reserves.

Deploying for your Mission:

The last thing to consider when deploying your WWPs is which mission are you playing? If you are playing one of the objective missions like Seize Ground or Capture and Control you can do your best to try to have your WWPs in the middle of as many objectives as possible to help you control the game (it is can be much harder in Capture and Control just based off where your opponent places their objective)

Going Second:

Sometimes it just happens that you are going second with only a very small portion of your army on the field (and if you are me this happens A LOT lol). The only thing you should focus on is protecting your Web Way Portals. Literally nothing else matters. Here are a few things you can do try to limit the damage you take on the first turn.

1) Hide!: The biggest thing to strive for is trying to hide them with LOS blocking terrain or anything else you can find, even if it means setting up a bit back from the deployment line. One thing you can do to help yourself out with this is by taking Venoms instead of Raiders since they have such a smaller profile and are therefore easier to hide.

2) Alternate Deployment Options: Another really good option for deploying your Web Way Portal is putting your Haemonculi in a small 5 man unit of Harlequins with a Shadow Seer. Enemy units have to be within 24" just for a CHANCE to shoot this unit so having something like this could be very valuable in this type of list.

3) Target Saturation: Set up more units then you typically would on the board while holding just a couple choice units in the portal for later in the game. This way you aren't faced with just having two Raiders or Venoms for your opponent to shoot at while still keeping to the overall theme of your army.

4) Other Options: Other options you could consider to help with who goes first would be taking Characters that give you a much greater chance of getting the first turn like the Baron or Vect. Another way you could go would be to use all the alternate deployment options of the units in the Web Way Portal. So if you have things that can outflank (like Mandrakes) or Deep Strike (like Scourges) make sure they are using them in case your portals go "poof". The nice thing about this is if the portals are still alive then you are free to use them and if not then your game plan isn't hurt too much by their loss.

Unit Selection:

One of the best parts of playing this type of list is it allows you to take units that you would normally never really consider due to their lack of speed (a Talos typically doesn’t fit into a “Raider Rush” type list but is PERFECT for this list) or things that might be too frail to simply just walk across the board (like a 15 strong units of Wyches). The biggest thing to consider when selecting units for this type of army is “layering” the choices you have. What I mean by that is you want things with different speeds (so mixing up standard foot troops with Reavers and Hellions) as well as having some shooting elements come out of the portal. The reason for this partially ties into the “Traffic Jam” idea which is making sure you don’t bog down your deployment zone. The other reason for this is to have some elements that can pop transports so your fast close combat units have something to assault the turn they arrive. Here are some examples of different units that do work really well for this type of list.

Wyches: This style of play is the only time I would run them in a unit of 15. The great thing is it allows you to use this unit in a different fashion then 99% of the other times you would use them. You can use all your Wyche weapons and you can actually put out a decent amount of wounds so it no longer is just a “Tar Pit” unit and becomes a damage dealing unit. I would also really consider starting this unit with a Haemonculi so you are as durable as possible when coming out of that portal. The last thing to consider is taking Haywire Grenades since you don’t have many tanks and you need all the anti tank you can get.

Warriors: Other than having some small squads to help deploy this army this is a great place to use that big 20 man unit since it will give you a great, tough scoring unit as well as something that can appear and throw down a huge number of poison shots without having to get too close to the enemy. You can also take some smaller 10 man squads to camp your objectives and are set up on the board at the start of the game. I normally have them armed with Dark lances and Blasters to help soften up enemy tanks before your main force arrives.

Hellions + Baron: This unit is one of the single best units you could take for this list. It is fast, puts out huge firepower and is great in CC. The biggest thing though is for you to get the most out of it is you should always take the Baron for your one decent sized squad of 15 (so 14+ Helliarch armed with an Agonizer). He takes them from being an “okay” unit to being an incredible unit. The other really important thing about taking the Baron is he gives you that mighty "+1" to see who goes first and like most DE builds that is incredibly important (as it allows you to place your portals before you get shot to crap).

Beastmasters: The other main unit that I would include in virtually every WWP army that I played. In my mind there really is no “optimal” build for this unit and it is more based on personal preference. For me I like having a mix of a decent amount of Khymera with some Razorflocks and maybe a Clawed Fiend thrown in (this is only because I love the model lol). I personally feel that you need those str 4 Khymera attacks to help out with your str 3 Razorflock attacks (on average you will only get 1 rend per 2 bases of Razorflocks per round of combat…which isn’t great). Doing the mixed approach with some different multi wound creatures also helps with wound allocation, which is great.

Talos: Another creature MADE for this type of list. You can arm him however you like but I normally go for either a twin linked Heat Lance or Haywire Blaster, Chain Flails (a real must) and maybe a twin linked liquefier. I would target vehicles that are close by or throw him in other combats to help turn the tide in your favor.

Talos by Gareth - Easily one of my favorite painters on the net

Chronos: Like the Talos this is one of the best places for it and is a great option for this type of list. When taking the Chronos I would always go for both upgrades. It is still really cheap and gives you the chance to get 3 pain tokens per turn. If things go your way it can be a massive help in both survivability and offence as you can give some units enough pain tokens for Furious Charge (*cough…Talos…cough*).

Grotesques: Another unit that normally gets forgotten about that really comes into its own in this type of list. You can take them in decent size units and it gives you something with real toughness coming at your enemy. I normally set up my Aberration with Scissor Hands as it gives him 7 attacks on the charge (4 base, +2 for the scissor hands/extra CC weapon and +1 for the charge) and he re-rolls all wounds on anything T5 or 6 or lower (if he has furious charge) with a “to wound” roll of a 3+. One great addition to this unit if you know you are going to be facing a lot of Grey Knights is adding in Lady Malays with an extra Haemonculus. That way the whole unit is 100% immune to all of the GK’s tricks including Force Weapons and Hammer Hand and Malays will get Furious Charge to go along with her large number of power weapon attacks. Most standard Grey Knight units (except for Paladins of course) will fold faster than Superman on laundry day when getting assaulted by this.

Scourges: A great anti tank unit with some speed. The way I normally take them is a unit of 5 with either Haywire Blasters or Heat Lances (the Heat Lances I would only take in a WWP list as Reavers are a WAY better platform for those weapons). You can also make them 10 strong and go 4 blasters or go all anti troop with 4 splinter cannons. For me personally this army doesn’t need all that much help with anti infantry, especially in this list because of all your elite CC units. You really do need all the anti tank you can get.

Reavers: Along with Hellions and Beastmasters this is one of those units that I would always take in this list. Their speed and special abilities as well as their Heat Lances make them invaluable. I love being able to move out 12”, blow up a transport, then move out of the way to give your Beastmaster unit a direct line to assault the contents. I always run 6 with 2 Heat Lances as my standard set up but that isn’t by any means the only way to run them. Another way which is effective and super fun (especially if you are running two portals) is a max unit with 3 cluster caltrops so you can just criss-cross the board bladevaneing people to death. Doing 7d3 str 4 hits combined with 3d6 str 6 hits is a substantial amount of damage, especially when you consider you aren’t taking any hits in return and you are also giving yourself a 3+ cover save. If you do plan on this type of squad I would definitely invest in a squad leader as you want to protect this investment as much as possible.

Mandrakes: Yup. I have gone and done it. I have included Mandrakes! I personally think this is by far the best list to include this unit (if you are actually going to). The way I do it is take 10 plain Mandrakes for 150pts and include a Haemonculi with a Liquifier and maybe a CC weapon. Now you have a unit that has stealth, coming out of the portal with 20 Str 4, Ap4, pinning shots and is insanely tough if it is in cover. It will help support the rest of the units (fits into that “layering” effect I was talking about earlier) and is also fairly decent in close combat (with two pain tokens they are Str 5, init 6 on the charge, which is very decent). Now, understand I am not saying that this is the best choice in the book but I am all about finding uses for units that most people have disregarded.

This list of units is by no means the only units to run in this army. I just listed these as some examples of units, some of which you never really see in most lists unless you are trying to do something different. The best thing you can do is try out as many different types of units/unit combinations as you can and really find what fits your play-style the best. Regardless of what units you are going to be taking the biggest thing to keep in mind with this style of army is focus fire on one point of the board and keep your reserved units together. The main drawback for a WWP portal army is that your army is coming in piecemeal, especially since DE don’t have any way to modify the reserve roll. With that in mind if you focus on one flank (and having two portals gives you way more flexibility on where you want to go) you can do crippling damage to one flank (hopefully) and what you do have on the board will be able to support each other.

While playing a Web Way Portal army might not be the most competitive army choice in the world it is something that is very different from your standard Raider Rush/Venom Spam type army and can make for some seriously enjoyable games. I am finding more and more these days I am starting to focus on what is “fun” instead of what is “uber competitive” and trying to make that work in a tournament setting. I am hoping over the next couple months to get some more games in with some “unconventional” armies and I am going to do up some battle reports with a tournament at the end of November. If there is anything I missed in this article, anything you guys would like to add or anything you would like to see articles about please feel free to make requests in the comments section.

Dark Eldar Full Army Shots!

2011-09-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

After much help from my friends Nathan and Teri I finally was able to get some decent shots of the army now that it is all finished. So without further adieu, here it is! (Warning! 8 Million Pics inbound!)

Progress

2011-09-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

2 more marines completed; almost have a legal squad built.
I tried out a new technique for the rusty bits on the green part of the armour; rather than inking chestnut, I just lined with Dark flesh. Which do people prefer? The first few models, or the latest 2?

Waaagh GT 2011 USS Hornet

2011-09-25T21:04:00.001-07:00

That was an interesting tournament. It had its ups and downs. First of all, here's our venue, the USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier in Alameda, CA. Awesome stuff.

No we weren't on the deck but I was able to sneak up there on Sunday to see what they had. An F-4 Phantom, an F-14 Topgun Tomcat, and ... I think a Skyhawk or a Raider. I forget which. Its at the front on the steam catapult if you can see it.

But enough of that. Down in the storage hanger, we did battle...

Battle 1: Orks.

Highlights: Playing against Orks for the 1st time. Some REALLY cool conversions and builds. This guy actually won player's army choice at the end, so I was glad I got a good up close (too close) and personal look at it. A really cool Godzilla theme. Also neat was that Orks are an even crappier shot than my IG, so it was a nice change... until they got into H2H with me.

Lowlights: Well... I wasn't as aquainted with the rules as I thought. The guy was very understanding and nice, which was cool. But it was really hard to figure out how to defeat a battlewagon with an invulnerable save and a pile of orks around it. Also hard to know how to defeat motorcycle nobs. They are just plain complicated and kind of cheesy frankly since they can put wounds on each individual model etc. etc. Either way, I got kicked to the curb.

Lessons Learned: I need more horde control? Learn the rules AND play a game or two BEFORE attending a tourney.

These squigs are in fact boyz in the buggy. Cool idea I thought, and he was true to fluff and didn't shoot them once! Also notice those accursed Nobz. I didn't know how to unload my Ogryns properly for the all important charge, so they did crap all, as did the flamer.

What happened to that lovely blob of 30 infantry?

Game 2: IG Vendetta Squadrons of Death!

Hightlight: Able to play against another Guard player so see what he was going to do. Also a nice player.

Lowlight: The entire game. This was the lowpoint of the tourney actually. The guy was nice enough although he was a bit snippy about bases. Really cool paintjobs on the Vendettas though.

My army started getting blown to crap, and I after turn 2 I sat there wondering if my poor little army that I'd spent so long painting was going to be able to do anything more interesting in this tourney than just die. It was to the point where my army took more time to setup than it did to get killed. We can't shoot, we can't assault, we can't move... If the rest of the tourney was going to be like these two games, what's the f*@&$ing point of me playing 40k? I obviously don't "get it", and never have... blahdie blahdie blah.

Lessons Learned: Don't shoot with Ogryns if you are about 4-6" inches away or you may not be able to charge if you gun the front row down. Also, after speaking with the guy afterwards, 2 Valkarie/Vendettas might be useful. Vendetta is dedicated gunship. Valkarie carries the veterans to deploy.

Holy crap! 6 Vendettas and a whole pile of melta guns!
The Ogyrns exit their burning wreck of a Chimera to shoot ripper guns at those juicy veterans. Alas they were too effective and shot them out of charge range! A good lesson there.
Oh dear. That fact that he insisted on putting lots of flame on my vendetta kind of ticked me off, but I tried to keep smiling.

Game 3: Gray Knights

Highlights: Best game of the tourney. This guy pulled me out of my funk from the 1st two games. We voted each other most fun player. Again I got blown to crap, BUT NOT TABLED. I actually make this a 6th mission for the tourney. I did not want to get tabled by ANYBODY no matter how badly a lost points wise. I look forward to playing this guy next year. I really hope I can make it. We pronounce this game "the party table" since we were both 0-2 and sure as hell weren't going to win any prizes. Just there to have fun. Oh, and my battlecannon missed and blew up my entire platoon commander. We high fived on that one as a sign of how fun the game was.

Lowlights: Well I was a bit tired, and sat down. He noticed and shouted "don't get down on me Chris!", and I realized. DON'T SIT down at a game. It lowers the whole energy level of the game. Even if you are tired, it just looks sh&@#ty.

Lessons Learned: Gamewise, was still getting used to flank moves with the sentinals and vendetta as well as how to charge with Ogyrns. They got eaten again. At least I killed his librarian. Also, terrain is really nasty for Guard. All the tables were terrain heavy and those cover saves KILLED me, since even my lascannons and battlecannons were less effective.

Ha! At least I killed 2 rhinos... SUCK IT!

Day 2. Game 4: Blood Angels

Highlights: The guy was really nice. He voted me his move fun player, which I appreciated. My Ogryns were running defense in the back row ready to try to intercept/counter charge an assault marine deep strike. They were too far from the objective though.

Lowlights: I think he took the true line of sight thing WAY too far shooting through 10 jungles and 3 units to try to hit my LR. Yes you can do it, but come on... He took me to the cleaners as was becoming usual (but DIDN'T table me. SUCK IT!) I still don't know how to handle Assault marines. Especially super hero Blood Angels. I also couldn't hit crap. I think I killed all of 1 unit the whole game. Things were threatening to repeat themselves from the previous day. But I kept smiling, because I'm here to have fun...... kind of.

Lessons Learned: Instead of holding my blob back where they would die, I decided to run them forward. This actually worked well.. except that his assault marines then dropped in behind them.... So perhaps not for this game.

Final Game: Eldar

Highlights: This was a fun game actually. The guy and I had met on Saturday and were looking forward to gaming against each other. Sure enough I was 0-4, he was 0-1-3 so we were fighting for the bottom. I'm happy about this one because I was able to pull off a TIE. The mission was to get your scoring units into the opponent's deployment zone.

Lowlights: The guy was a little silly with the true line of sight, but not really any lowlights. I felt like I had a chance with this game, and that really helps to make it more fun. Nothing sucks more than thinking that your army has no chance. My luck was SHITE this game, but that's ok.

Lessons Learned: Eyes on the prize. My blob just said screw it, and ran forward. The order "Move move move!" REALLY helps with this. My lascannons sat on a hill and hit zero. My vendetta swooped in, and tried to pick up both the senior and junior command squads to take them to the deployment zone for a win. The other guy only had a couple of scoring units so it was fairly easy for my Ogyrns to run interception (Which they ROCKED at). This guy was my skill level. Although his army wasn't painted totally, I voted him my player's choice because I'd already voted on my favourite player.

The blob moves into cover. They keep running. Next time I'm not taking any heavy weapons with a blob. Maybe I won't do a blob again. Time to paint up those Chimeras and melta guns...

Conga line of Ogryns running interception on those eldar. We sent that Warlock packing. Go Ogyrns. Pity their Chimera got a track blown off in the opening turn.

Junior command squad move move moves for the tie! The vendetta couldn't move after its engine got blown off, so it couldn't pick up the senior/junior command squads and fly them into the deployment zone.

Really nice guy's Black Templar army. Met him at the beginning. I didn't get to play against them, but if I ever get to paint my BT, I'll look for him.

Waaagh GT 2011

2011-09-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, so tomorrow will be the Waaagh GT.

I couldn't play last year because of work issues, and my army wasn't ready anyway.

This year I finished the army back in February so we're good there, and work has been lighter so I can make it...

Anyway, since I don't attend tourney's like this EVER, I have 4 things to accomplish:

Win most fun player
Win best painted army (or maybe coolest theme since there are some REALLY good armies in there)
Get good idea of IG strategy that isn't just sit in gun line and blast away hoping to kill the inevitable space marine charge in a land raider before they reduce my boys to jelly.
Defeat a player who is about my skill level or better.
Ok 5. Re-aquaint myself with the 40k rules so I know what I'm doing and won't look like a doofus.

I'll take lots of pictures of the aircraft carrier etc. That reminds me, I have to see the deck of that thing this weekend.

Purge Update

2011-09-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Just finished 2 more models for my Purge warband; A temporary commander and a standard marine.

Group Shot

Dark Eldar Tactica: Wyches!

2011-09-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

For the second article I am primarily going to focus on Wyches and Bloodbrides. As I mentioned in the last article Wyches are probably my favorite unit in the Codex. For me they are consistently the best performing unit in my army, pretty much every game and they have some of the nicest models Games Workshop produces. Like Warriors there are tonnes of different ways to run these ladies to tailor them to specific roles. Once you start adding in HQ choices it gives you just that many more options.

The main role for Wyches is to tie units up enemy units and pin them down while you whittle down the rest of the enemies army with shooting. They are fairly resilient in close combat with their 4+ invulnerable save and once they get their first pain token they are downright impossible to move. Their role (like anything I suppose) also changes slightly depending on how you arm them. You can turn them into character/monstrous creature assassins but adding in lots of shardnets and impalers, or you can turn them loose on crowd control with Hydra Gauntlets. The biggest thing to focus on is making sure these guys get into combat and stay there. You pretty much want them locked up for as much as the game as possible since they go from being one of the most fragile units in the game to one of the most maddeningly durable units in the game.

Like everything in the Dark Eldar Codex even though they have some awesome up-sides they have some serious weakness too (which is partially what makes this Codex one of the best Codices’s ever made). The big one is their durability out of combat. With only being T3 and a 6+ save they are probably the second most vulnerable squad in the game to shooting after Grots (without a pain token or cover of course). Flamers are your bane and will just remove these guys from the table effortlessly. Another thing to note is how many will typically die when their transport crashes. I had one unlucky game where my opponent wounded 8 times out of 10 on that 4+ to wound and I failed all those saves so the squad was left with a Hekatrix and a Hydra Gauntlet. Painful Stuff. Another thing to really think about is since they are only Str 3 they do have a hard time really putting “the hurt” on enemy units, so they aren’t really your big heavy hitters in combat (although, with some lucky rolls you can do some damage). With all this in mind lets get to it!

The Two Main Wyche Load Outs:

The Crowd Control Squad: This build would be focusing on having Hydra Gauntlets in the squad with maybe a special character to get as many attacks as possible. For the troop version I normally run either a max squad of 10 with a Hekatrix that has an Agonizer and 2 sets of Hydra Gauntlets or 9 with 1 Hydra Gauntlet, the same Hekatrix and a Succubus with just an Agonizer (so 10 Agonizer attacks on the charge). It gives you a fair amount of attacks and is fairly cheap (between 210-220pts with a Raider, depending on upgrades plus another 85 for the Succubus if you take her). I have had this unit do 17 wounds to an Imperial Guard unit in one round of close combat as well as taking out an 8 man unit of Death Company (obviously got lucky on that one and also already had a pain token but it happens…a lot). You will notice that I haven’t included Razorflails for weapon upgrades for this squad since, for me, Hydra Gauntlets win out every time. This is for three reasons. The first is you can get “re-roll to wound” for your combat drugs so that negates half of the flails benefit right there. The second is its just plain old fun rolling a bunch of dice (they can literally triple the amount of attacks that one model gets). The last, and most importantly is I have an obsession with yelling out “SHORYUKEN!” (and sometimes even make the motion) every time they get to attack.

The Blood Brides version of this squad really pushes the envelope for the amount of attacks this squad generates. If you have 9 Blood Brides with 3 Hydra Gauntlets and throw in Lilith you could have a possible 82 attacks on the charge if you get the +1 attack combat drug and roll perfectly with the Hydra Gauntlets. Not bad for a 10 man/woman unit. Even just putting in a plain old Succubus for almost 100pts less then Lilith adds another 6 Agonizer attacks which is still fantastic. You can take these squads from being irritating in combat to being deadly. If I wanted an elite Close Combat squad I would actually take this unit over Incubi every day of the week. Invulnerable saves, assault grenades, base initiative of 6 and being almost half the cost per model just push them over Incubi in my mind as their huge increase in close combat durability and grenades makes up for in their slight decrease in offensive power when compared to Incubi.

The Neutralizing Squad: This squad is made up of focusing on Shardnets/Impalers as your special weapon. While the Crowd Control Squad has a very specific purpose that it is designed for this squad a little bit more of a “Jack of all Trades” type squad. First off how I typically arm this squad (for Wyches specifically) is 10 Wyches, 2 Shardnets/Impalers, a Hekatrix with a Blast Pistol and Venom Blade all armed with Haywire Grenades. As you can see with these options you are quite a bit more versatile than their Hydra Gauntlet wielding cousins as you can literally affect every unit in the game. They are still great in regular close combat (maybe lacking a little bit of the “punch” from not having an Agonizer), but they can take on a much wider variety of targets.

The first main target I focus on with this squad would be Dreadnoughts which as I mentioned in the Warrior tactica is one of the biggest banes of this army now that Agonizers can no longer glance vehicles. With this squad you can now tie down virtually any Dreadnought and reduce its attacks to 1 which means you should only take 1 wound every 4 rounds of close combat (On average). You also have 10 attacks that hit on 6s but glance on a 2+ which means you can nickel and dime it down over a turn or two without much fear of taking any damage. They are also another great tool for anti armor, especially on pesky things like Monoliths since the most you will ever need to hit one is a 4+. Also, because of the Shardnets this squad is great at taking out Monstrous Creatures. With this lone squad I have taken out Trygons, Demon Princes, Warbosses, you name it, they have done it.

Like the Crowd Control Squad the effects ramp up as you turn them into Blood Brides. You can really turn them into great character assassins. One of the more interesting builds is having 3 Shardnets with Urien. You effectively have to have a minimum of 5 attacks base just to get ONE hit on Urien (-3 attacks for the Shardnets and Urien’s clone field negates D3 attacks which can reduce you to 0 attacks). Urien’s attacks also all cause instant death and always wound on a 3+ so it is just a matter of time before he does in whatever it is you want to kill especially since he regenerates a wound after every round.

Alternative Builds:

Blob Squad: Like the Warriors you can take Wyches in larger squads up to 15 strong which also allows you to take 3 special weapons. The great thing about this squad is it becomes a bit “hordey” and has the bodies, attacks and special weapons to actually do some serious damage to whatever they might charge. The only real issue is they are now too large to put in a transport and WAY too fragile to just walk across the board so you pretty much have to have them come out through a Web Way Portal which is actually a great unit for that purpose.

Venom Squad: If you are running a Wyche cult army one of the biggest issues you will run into is anti tank and ranged anti infantry. This squad is 5 Wyches armed with haywire grenades and they have a Hekatrix with a blast pistol and venom blade loaded up in a Venom with an extra Splinter Cannon. This squad comes in at 155pts and serves the same purpose as the Warrior Venom squad except it just goes about it in a slightly roundabout way as you really have to get into people’s faces (which is what Wyche cult armies are all about).

Succubus Hit Squad: This squad is made up of 4 Bloodbrides armed with a Hydra Gauntlet, a Hekatrix with an Agonizer and a Succubus with an Agonizer all in a Venom. It may look a bit wimpy at first until you realize how cheap this squad is (245pts total) and you get 11 Agonizer attacks minimum on the charge as well as at least 12 regular attacks (up to 21 attacks with the right drugs/hydra rolls). The vehicle has a small profile and the squad itself is very small so it’s very easy to hide until you can get it into position to snipe smaller squads like Long Fangs, BA assault squads, etc.

Bloodbrides and When to Use them:

A big question many people have is when to actually use Bloodbrides over standard Wyches. Unlike Trueborn which have vastly different weapon options available to them then Warriors, Bloodbrides are actually very similar in many ways to regular Wyches in how they are armed and the options available to them. Despite having more attacks and ability to get slightly more Wyche Weapons into a squad they do have 2 major draw backs over Wyches. First off they are more expensive then Wyches (obviously) without that much of a benefit. With the extra weapons and the fact that they are 3 points more per model you are paying 47points more for a 9 strong squad with a Hekatrix. The other issue which is way more important is the fact that Wyches are scoring and Bloodbrides are not. In the current climate of 40k you have to have lots of troops to win since 66% of the missions you play are based on capturing objectives which of course only troops can do. This fact alone makes me take Wyches most of the time over Bloodbrides.

The one area where Bloodbrides do shine though is filling the role of the Elite Close Combat unit in the army. The main reason for this is because you only need 9 Bloodbrides to max out your unit options which leaves that one space for your General so you can really maximize their efficiency. I also like the fact that they can act as a total throw away/distraction unit as they can’t score so in those missions it 100% doesn’t matter if they die. The last main place for this squad is if you are running a Wyche cult army and want to add some heavier hitting, offensively minded Wyche Squads.

Characters and Wyches:

Haemonculi: This is going to be the single most common character to throw in this squad as it helps negate their single largest weakness and that is their durability. The reason for this is the Haemonculi transfers his pain token to the squad so they now have Feel No Pain which is huge. He is also really cheap and you can get 3 of them per slot choice so it’s really easy to spread out the pain token love. As far as arming your Haemonculi I would suggest wasting as few points as possible since they are brutal in close combat. I typically just give him a Liquifer (which is worth its weight in gold) and maybe a Venom Blade and maybe the occasional shatter shard and call it a day. It does work really well so I would definitely try it out. One thing to also mention is that you will notice that the Haemonculi doesn't come with fleet of foot and will naturally slow the squad down. For me the best way to get around it (and the main reason why I normally only arm him with a Liquifier) is to just leave him in the transport and have your Wyches "steal" his pain token. That way you still gain his benefit while not slowing yourself down at all meanwhile the Haemonculi is free to zoom around the board liquifying things.

Archon: As long as you give your Archon combat drugs you are golden. As I mentioned before just due to their assault grenades and invuln saves in close combat Bloodbrides in particular can be much better suited for your Archon’s body guard then Incubi. They also save your Archon 25 points as he doesn’t have to purchase a Phantasm Grenade Launcher. In my mind the best load out for your Archon in this combo would be a Husk Blade, Soul Cube, Combat Drugs and a Shadow Field. Cheap, simple and deadly.

Succubus: Like the Haemonculi she really is a no brainer choice and one that I really LOVE using. In my style of list building I almost never spend points on HQ. No idea why, I just don’t. I like spending my points on more units instead which is one of the main reasons I love this HQ so much (kind of like a Prime for the Tyranids). She is only 85pts has 6 x WS8, Init 8 Agonizer attacks on the charge. If she dies it totally doesn’t matter as she cost virtually nothing and your game plan doesn’t even really factor her in to win.

Duke Slicus: Ah, the Duke. This guy is 100% MADE for a combat drug heavy army and in my mind is probably the most important character you can take to get the most out of your list. If you want to throw him in with your Wyches there is a catch though. In order to have him actually join a Wyche squad you can’t have ANY Warriors (Kabalite or Trueborn) in your army as he MUST join those squads first. The main reason why he is so great for this type of list is his ability to roll two dice for combat drugs and choose the one you want so the chances of getting Painbringer (best drug by far…re-roll wounds) or Splintermind (pain token) is that much greater.

Lilith: The strange thing about this character is that the Lord of the Wyches just isn’t very good (in my opinion of course because there are a lot of people out there who love her). The reason I say this is because she DOESN’T come with combat drugs. In my mind that is one of the biggest mistakes in this entire codex. The reason I say this is specifically from a game balance point of view since she is 175pts and is only str 3. Even with her 11 attacks on the charge she only (on average) kills 2 Space Marines. Combat Drugs would really help to make her worth her points and would allow her to actually keep up with her fellow Wyches when the roll the dreaded “1” on the combat drug table (roll 3d6 and pick the highest for fleet).

That is pretty much all I have for now. As with all my Tactica Articles this should just be used as a jumping off point as there are just so many ways to run these squads and no way is really “wrong” per say. Next up will be either be the Heavy Support Section, Fast Attack or I might just get into some themed armies J

The Oh, Hello's + a start

2011-09-12T15:00:00.001-07:00

Howdy friends

I Just wanted to start off with a big hello to all the followers of this fine blog, and wanted to introduce my self. I've been in the hobby almost 12 years now,and have worked as a Red Shirt for just under two years. I've played just about every single GW game, although have cut back and currently only play 40k. While I'm not a huge tournament goer, I have won my self a few best overalls and even more best painted. I've also got myself a Golden Demon (2006 Staff large Model, back when Canada had Games Days) and won Best Overall the same year at the 2006 Canada Staff tournament. My main armies are Tyranids, Space Marines and am just starting/redoing chaos.
Enough about me though, and onto the models(or talk of models)

The main reason I wanted to start contributing was to do a log of my chaos as I build it back up using my old chaos army(from about 9 years ago) and my 13th company army (7 years ago). I'm doing a Nurgle/Purge warband with an interesting twist - horde marine army. I'm not too sure on how it will work out, but it will be fun challenge in any case.

Onto the Models
Test Model and 5 man unit.

My goal is to convert up each individual model, along with actual dynamic poses(so sick of standard legs). My plan is to finish a model at least a week. ONWARD!

Legio Minimus welcomes Slopes as a contributing Legionnaire

2011-09-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I'm pleased to announce that Slopes is going to start posting here on Legio Minimus. If you haven't seen his Tyranids or Space Sharks perviously featured here check them out. His work is awesome and I know I will be looking forward to some of the awesome models that he will paint.

I can't wait to see his first post!

Wyches...part 2!

2011-09-08T23:17:00.000-07:00

So, after a couple more really slow days at work I really pushed myself and managed to get this squad done in 3 days and it officially caps off my 1850pts army (well...pre design work on the vehicles anyways). I have modified the final army slightly so it is less spammy and has more utility.

HQ

Succubus - Agonizer, Haywire Grenades

Troops

Kabalite Warriors(10) - Dark Lance, Blaster
3 x Kabalite Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ Additional Splinter Cannon
Wyches (10) - 2 x Shardnets/Impalers, Hekatrix w/ Agonizer, Haywire Grenades, Raider w/ Night Shields
Wyches (9) - Hydra Gauntlet, Hekatrix w/ Agonizer, Raider w/ Night Shields

Fast Attack

Reaver Jet Bikes (6) - 2 x Heat Lances
Scourges (5) - 2 x Haywire Blasters
Beastmasters (2) - 10 x Khmyera

Heavy Support

Razorwing Jet Fighter - 2 x Dark Lances, 4 x Monoscythe Missiles, Flicker Fields
2 x Ravager - 3 x Dark Lances, Flicker Fields

1850pts right on the dot. I have played a bunch of test games and so far it is by far the most fun and versatile of all builds I have tried. Cant WAIT to play this in a tournament!

Next Up: A whole lotta vehicles gettin' a whole lotta design work!

Dark Eldar Tactica: Kabalite Warriors!

2011-09-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, time to delve back into some good old fashioned 40k tactica articles. It has been a while since I wrote my Tyranid articles and have since then shelved that army (until a new codex comes out) in favor of the Dark Eldar. I can honestly say I have never had this much fun both painting and playing any army for 40k which is saying something since I have been playing for 20 years. I have held off starting this series of articles for quite a while (they came out almost a year ago) because there are so many viable options not just in unit choices, but the choices available within the units themselves. I had to do a lot of play testing to start getting the hang of how things work and I feel that I have still only just scratched the surface. The crazy thing is there is still so much of this book I haven’t even had a chance to use yet and I am still working out configurations for even just the basic units like Warriors and Wyches (which is what my first two articles will be about including their elite counter-parts). Writing Tactica articles for the Dark Eldar is such a different beast then the writing for the Tyranids. The Tyranid book all the choices are just so obvious as to what is useable and what is complete garbage (hint, most of the book lol). Virtually EVERYTHING in the DE codex is viable, yes, including Mandrakes (note: I am not endorsing Mandrakes, just saying they COULD be useful in the right circumstances).

The Dark Eldar troop choices are really versatile and very fun to use. It is also nice having options with your HQ to alter the force organization chart to give you an even larger selection of troops you can use like the Haemonculus making Wracks troops or Baron Sarthonyx making Hellions troops. Whichever route you chose though the one constant thing I would like to stress with this army is taking at least 4 troops in your army (this is for 1500pts+). With the way 5th edition is set up 66% of the time you are playing objective based game and when your primary troops are Toughness 3 with a 5+ armor save being the best you can get, your troops can disappear very fast. In my 1700pts+ list I always run 6 troop choices and it has yet to fail me, even in kill point games as they are some of the better units in the Codex anyways.

The first unit I want to talk about is the most iconic unit in the codex and that is Kabalite Warriors. The main strength of this unit lies in its versatility of shooting. They have great weapon options which includes their basic weapon, the splinter rifle, which shouldn’t be overlooked. There are just so many ways you can run these units and still be effective and I will do my best to give you guys some ideas on different builds you can try.

Kabalite Warrior Basics: There are so many options and places to put your points for this unit. You can keep them cheap or really go nuts with fleshing out their Sybarites, special weapons and transports. I typically stay away from any of the close combat options, specifically anything for the Sybarite. In my experience they just aren’t that useful because if your Warrior squad is actually in combat then they are normally toast, Sybarite or not. The main thing (like anything I suppose) is figuring out what the main focus for this unit should be and sticking with it and obviously that is ranged combat. The main choice you have is picking where you want to focus: ranged anti infantry or ranged anti tank. Now here are a couple of different ideas for different builds for your Kabalite Warrior Squads (some competitive, some for fun):

3rd Ed Throw Backs: Everyone and their dog used to run 100pts DE warrior squads that had 2 Dark Lances in them. Obviously you can’t do that anymore but what you can do is a Dark Lance and a Blaster which comes in at 130pts. This is actually a squad I use quite a bit, basically in every army. Its main purpose is to be my static home objective holder as well as some resilient anti tank (well…when compared to Raiders and Ravagers of course lol).

Venom Spam: This is the most common build for Warriors. Virtually every Net List you will see spams these puppies. There is a reason for this as I have had nothing but success with them and I love running them (I normally opt for 3 in most lists). They are cheap, pack a huge amount of firepower for both anti infantry with some small amount anti tank. The basic set up is just 5 Warriors with a Blaster in a Venom that has 2 Splinter Cannons and that comes to 125pts. I find these guys are a great in a supporting role but not much else. Due to my play style I would never make them the sole focus of my troops as your Warriors and Wyches have so many important roles they can and should fill. Their real strength comes into play as a harassment unit, taking on longer range targets that need softening up near the beginning of the game specifically units like Devastors, Long Fangs and Lootas and to overload your enemies with target priority.

Jack of All Trades: This unit would be 10 Warriors with a Splinter Cannon and a Blaster (or Shredder depending on your preference) in a Raider. It comes in at a cool 175 points (with a blaster) and offers some great anti troop shooting combined with some anti tank. The best way to think of it is it’s basically the first two options combined into one unit minus 1 splinter cannon. For their Raiders the 3 upgrades I would look into are Night Shields (I normally include these on all my Wyche Raiders as they are always moving flat out), Splinter Wracks and Flicker Fields (I would consider these for my Warrior Raiders as they will be more stationary). Doing that effectively turns the Raider into a really nice little gun boat. One thing to note is you do have to be very careful to not go overboard with the upgrades for your Transports as even just a couple of upgrades makes them very expensive for what they are (60 point Raiders die just as easily as 90+ point ones). Just make sure you really know what you want each squad doing and upgrade accordingly. The thing I like about this unit over the “Venom Spam” unit is it has the numbers to grab and hold forward objectives with the versatility to deal with most threats.

Warrior Blob Squad: Typically there are two ways of running this squad, both of which are fairly similar. The first would be with 20 Warriors with 2 Splinter Cannons and a Sybarite with an Agonizer (or no Sybarite if you want to keep it cheap). I ran this squad almost exclusively for the first little while and the only time I ever lost it was when it was charged by a Death Company Dreadnought with Blood Talons (did 17 wounds on the turn it charged nothing I could do lol). The second way, which is the one I would do now that I have quite a few more games in with the army, is running that squad same as above but take out the Sybarite and add in Duke Slicus and a Haemonculus with a Liquifier. Now if you don’t move you have 30 shots at 24” or 48 shots at 12” that all hit AND wound on a 3+. You can put a significant number of wounds on anything with a toughness and you have a unit that is almost immune to standard shooting when in cover.

Trueborn Basics: It’s all the exact same as the Warriors just pushed that much further due to the incredible number of weapon options this squad has. This squad also a number of options to make themed “fun” units (I will go into one of those below). The reason why I love the Dark Eldar book as much as I do is unlike almost all the books for 5th ed it is the only one I can think of where the rules mimic what the fluff says, which is fantastic and its one of the main reasons why the Tyranid book is so horrendous. Here are a couple different ideas on ways to equip this squad:

Blaster Trueborn: Basically if you ever post a list for critique on any of the main forums the first comment you will see is “take whatever option you have and replace it with 4 Trueborn with Blasters in a Venom!”. It is obviously an effective unit that is perfectly geared towards a dual role on the battlefield. Once you start getting into larger games it is a great way to add some much needed Dark Light firepower into your army. An alternative way of running this tried and proven squad is 4 Blaster Trueborn and 2 Dark Lance Trueborn in a Raider. Doing this turns it into a very focused squad that gives you 7 Dark Light shots per turn. You are now effective at longer ranges as well as being mobile if need be as you can still move 6” and fire your 4 blasters and the hull mounted Dark Lance. If you want to go really crazy you could also add in an Archon with another blaster to bump your blaster shots up to 5 (so 8 Dark Light weapons). At this point it is getting very expensive and verging on overkill…although…in my opinion there just isn’t such a thing as overkill as I ALWAYS roll horribly for these weapons lol.

Dakka Trueborn: I am referring to the Splinter Weapon based anti troop options for this squad. Your basic squad would be 3 Trueborn with 2 Splinter Cannons in a Venom. This unit costs 121pts gives you 20-24 shots a turn but evaporates in the blink of an eye to any enemy resistance. The variation that I have been trying out with much success is bumping that squad up just a bit and turning it into a 5 man squad with 2 Splinter Cannons and 3 Shard Carbines in a Venom with an extra splinter cannon for a possible 33 shots at 160pts. To me this is the sweet spot for this squad as the cost is still fairly cheap for their output and there are no wasted bodies in the unit plus it just looks awesome lol. The maxed out variation of this squad which I have been working towards is 9 Trueborn with 7 Shard Carbines and 2 Splinter Cannons with Duke Slicus in a Raider. Same amount of shots as the previous Trueborn Squad except you wound everything on a 3+ and actually have some staying power because your numbers are doubled.

Template Trueborn: Another fun and very effective way to run some alternative Anti Troop if you really enjoy getting into people’s faces are having a 4 man Trueborn Squad all armed with Shredders in a Venom which comes out to 133pts. It gives you 4 x str 6 blast templates which can really put some hurt on units. You can also add in a Haemonculus with a liquifier for even more templatey goodness and additional staying power. Doing that though does up the price of the squad which almost defeats its purpose in a way which is having a cheap squad that can dish out a whole wack of wounds.

Themed Trueborn: This last one totally goes against their primary role but I wanted to include it as something to think about if you ever plan on running a fully themed Kabalite Army and wanted some hand to hand combat Warriors. These guys can switch out their splinter rifles for close combat weapons and pistols for free. You can also include some Shredders to soften the enemy up before you charge. They also have the option of taking assault grenades and haywire grenades for 1 and 2 points respectively which is another nice bonus (something I wish Incubi had…sigh lol). Going with this set up gives each Warrior 4 attacks on the charge which is pretty decent and your Dracon will have 5 attacks on the charge with an Agonizer. As I said before, definitely not the most competitive unit out there (as Wyches cost the same and are significantly better at this role) I just think it is really cool that Phil Kelly gave Dark Eldar the option to do this if you want to go for something fun and different.

There are definitely more builds out there for these two core units. I just wanted to point out some examples of the ways you can run them (some competitive, some not as much). The next article in the series will be the Wyches and Bloodbrides which I am looking forward to as they just might be my favorite unit in the codex. If you guys have favorite builds of your own for Warriors and Trueborn that I didn’t list here I would love to hear them as I am always on the lookout for fun and different builds. As always thanks for reading!

Pacificon 2011 Games

2011-09-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

This a bit different, but this is the fantasy blog, so here's my time at Pacificon 2011. Lots of fun.

First up, all the games I wanted to play got cancelled, so I volunteered to help out my buddies run the Battle for Pelennor Fields.

We started at 7:30am to setup. Started at 9am, and we ran with a couple of breaks until around 7pm.

IT was INTENSE. I dreamt about it that night and I think we'll be leaving WOTR alone for a while now.

Rohan came in, then Gondor, then 5 Mumaks(!), then the dead.

Evil JUST won by killing enough points worth of figures.

The field of battle. Rohan just showed to steamroller the orcs in the way...

One thing to note when looking at this table. There are in fact 2 TABLES! The gap in between is so that we can move between them and move figures around easily. In reality, that gap isn't there and two tables are next to each other. So you can see Rohan in the back.. The orc horde with 10 Trolls, catapaults, ballistas etc. is facing the walls. Gondor is about to sally forth out of the city to fight them (Sieges are dull for a con game). Note the river. I wonder what's going to come out of there in a few turns time..

The Mumaks showed up. I commanded a few of them a bit (filling in for players that came and went). I also commanded a whole division of Easterlings and fallen realms.

We even had dead Mumaks when they fell. Only 1 was lost. You can see it in the middle. Also, the dead have just come ashore to kill evil. I was sneaky though because I'd seen the movie, and lined up my Easterings to receive the charge... The dead aren't actually all that good when they aren't attacking the Mumaks (and they never got the chance).

This was neat. A 3D Space Hulk multi player game being played next to us. Cool terrain. Totally home made, and the guy was selling it too (I didn't buy).

40k Skirmish 2011 Round 4 Space Wolves vs Imperial Guard in "First Stop No mans land then the Enemies Base!"

2011-08-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

Wolves Make it into the guard line and start tearing them to pieces (finally ;) )

Round 4 was objective based with one objective in each deployment zone and one in the centre. I played against Chris who is a very skilled player and veteran of Adepticon. He had just lost against Will Paul and I think had he won that game he would have been playing for the top spot in the tournament. His list looked something like this:

Command Squad with Plasma and banner

Elites

Psyker Battle squad in Chimera

Troops

30 x man squad with autocannons, power swords and a commisar

10 x veterans with Melta in Chimera

10 x veterans with Meltas and Lascannon in Chimera

Heavy Support

Plasma Leman Russ

Manticore

Basilisk

SET UP

The Wolves prepare to make a move against the lone guard squad and Chimera.

The loan starting units.

TURN 1

The Wolf lord and his wolves move towards the IG Chimera.

The remainder of the force moves up to support their Lord.

The Long Fangs take position on a hill to provide covering fire.

The lone Chimera isn't to much worse for wear.

The IG take the board in force deploying on mass along to back table edge.

The Heavy Arty takes up both corners to ensure they both won't be taken out.

TURN 2 - 3

A lot of shooting and little else while the Wolves tried to get close. I didn't take as many pictures as I should have and I asked a lot of questions because Chris is a much better and faster player than I am. In the end we ran out of time on turn 4 with us contesting the same objective.

Finally the Wolves get dug in!

If there was more time the game could have gone either way but as it was we ran out of time and called in a draw. There were several things that didn't make sense to me from a game mechanics perspective so I think I may stick with Flames of War for a while because it just makes sense to me. I love the 40k universe, the models and all the fluff but I think I'll keep the games to a minimum.

40k Skirmish 2011 Round 3 Space Wolves vs Orks in "I remember 3rd Ed do you?"

2011-08-26T03:42:00.000-07:00

The Burnaz's ride goes up in smoke before it has a chance to move!

Round 3 was a victory point game from 3rd Ed with the exception of not getting half points. I played against Paul and his Orks. His list look something like this

Gaz

Mek Boy with Kustom Force field

Elites

15 x Burnaz in Battle Wagon

10 x Kommandos with Snikrot and 2 Burnaz

Troops

30 x Shootas

30 x Choppas

20 x Grethcin

Heavy Supports

15 x Lootas

3 x Killa Kans

SET UP

The Battle lines are with the Wolves broken into 2 main attack prongs.

Lootaz's take the high ground to support the advance of the boyz, Dread mob and Burnaz.

The Shoota Boyz spread out with a Gretchin screen.

The Wolf Lords, a Land Speeder and the Long Fangs take one flank.

The Grey Hunters, Rune Priest and Land Speeder take the other. Check out those 40k Radio and Wolf head dice!

TURN 1

The Long Fangs open up on the Battlewagon destroying it!

TURN 2

A Land Speeder sweeps in but is only able to roast a few green skins.

The other Land Speeder moves to take out the Burnaz.

The Wolf Lords move to reposition themselves, while the Long Fangs Razor back smokes after being hit with Dreadnought missiles.

TURN 3

The Wolf Lords launch their attack and charge into the Dreads smashing 2 of the Power Claws off!

Every once in a while Orks make their saves...

But it isn't enough to stop the Burnaz from being whipped out! Only a single Dread remains.

The Mob of Boyz advances.

Turn 3 was the last full turn that we played and because of time we ended up playing only his turn 4, which I'm not happy with but since I was lucky enough to win I can't complain. Basically turn 4 saw Ghaz with Snikrot and the Kommandos come in from Reserves, Waaagghh and the charge the Wolf Lords. They in turn withstood his assault (thank you Saga of the bear!) and killed off the supporting cast enough to force a moral check, then time ended the game. Great game and awesome opponent, stay tuned for the final Round against IG!

Venom Squadron!

2011-08-22T06:22:00.001-07:00

I am so close to finishing this army I can taste it lol. Over the weekend I managed to finish off the last of my warriors for my Venom Squadron as well as the 3rd Venom. I have been using this set up (3 venoms with 5 warriors with a blaster in each) for a bunch of games now and for some reason this 375pts of awesomeness does so well every game. I love it. All I have left to paint is a single squad of 10 Wyches, so hopefully I will have that finished within the next week or so :)

I also wanted to post my revised list to show you guys what I have been using and what I have been having great success with:

HQ

Haemonculus - Liquifier Gun, Venom Blade
Haemonculus - Liquifier Gun, Venom Blade

Troops

Warriors (10) - Blaster, Dark Lance
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ extra splinter cannon
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ extra splinter cannon
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ extra splinter cannon
Wyches (9) - Hydra Gauntlet, Hekatrix, Agonizer, Raider, Night Shields
Wyches (9) - Hydra Gauntlet, Hekatrix, Agonizer, Raider, Night Shields

Fast Attack

Reaver Jetbikes (6) - 2 x Heat Lances
Scourges (5) - 2 x Haywire Blaters
Beastmasters (2) - 10 x Khymera

Heavy Support

Razorwing - 2 x Dark Lances, 4 x Monoscythe Missiles, Flicker Field
Ravager - 3 x Dark Lances, Flicker Field
Ravager - 3 x Dark Lances, Flicker Field

1850pts right on the dot

I keep switching between setting up my first Wych squad with 2 Shardnets/Impalers and 10 Haywire Grenades and just running a Succubus with the Hydra Gauntlet Wych squad (gives you a min of 10 agonizer attacks on the charge) and what I have now. Both ways seem to have their benefit, although, I have never actually had a chance to use the Haywire Grenades, which is why I went back to this one. The main strength of this army is the fact it has maxed out Troops, which I find is crucial for DE as they are made of glass, so you NEED backups.

In the Works: I will have my last squad of Wyches up shortly plus I have just started work on my first of many Dark Eldar Tactics articles (like how I did with the Tyranids).

40k Skirmish 2011 Round 2 Space Wolves vs Lysander Marines in a modified "Secure and Control"

2011-08-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

Lysander lays a beating on everything even Thunder Wolf mounted Wolf Lords!

The next round had me playing against a Lysander lead marine army. I can't remember his name, totally my bad but his army looked something like this:

Lysander

Tech Marine with Thunderfire Cannon

Elites

7 Terminators (3 x LC and 4 x TH/SS) in Redeemer

Command Squad with Champion, Medic and TH

Dreadnought with Multimelta and Dread CCW

Troops

10 x Scouts

10 x Marines with Lascannon and Meltagun in Rhino

Fast Attack

Land Speeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

Heavy Support

Vindicator

The mission had 5 objectives, one centred in each table quarter and the other in the centre of the board. Each was worth the same amount so it was fairly straight forward game. My plan was to hold the centre, my own and far right while denying him the other objectives. We were playing the table quarter deployment so I started with everything on the board.

The lines are drawn and the wolves are marching right at the Marines.

Lysander attempts to bring his forces in waves and take care to use any and all cover, will it work?

Tech Marine sets up on the hill to support the Marines advance.

Long Fangs do the same across the board.

TURN 1

The Wolves move forward and receive a charge from Lysander and his escorting Terminators.

The Wolves manage to stun the Vindicator and destroy the Thunder Fire Cannon!

The Wolves counter attack the terminators with the Fenrisian wolves dragging down the majority of the Terminators.

After the first round all the Terminators are gone but Lysander remains un-phased by the loss of his squad.

TURN 2

Lysander demonstrates just how much hurt can dish out instantly killing Canis Wolfborne!

The scouts arrive from reserve and prepare to make a play for the only objective without a unit near.

The Land Speeder and Dreadnought move to engage the Grey Hunters holding an objective, while the Land Raider is stunned by Long Fang fire.

TURN 3

The Company Command Squad moved up to support Lysander but it was too little too late. However, Lysander kills the other Wolf Lord in the process. The Land Speeder takes out the Land Raider while the Rune Priest stuns the enemy Land Speeder.

Scouts start to congo line to the objective trying to stay mostly in cover.

The Rhino mess with lines of sight and cover for their respective squads, while the Tech Marine moves to get into the fight.

The Company Command Squad will just not die and they hold one while the Speeders trade shots and the Dreadnought loses its CCW to the Grey Hunters.

TURN 4

Grey Hunters continue to hound the Dreadnought this time immobilizing it. The Land Speeder moves in for the kill against the Vindicator.

The Wolf Lord finally kills the squad and prepares for the next challenge.

The Land Speeder finds his mark and knocks out the Vindicator.

We played another couple of turns with me taking out his Rhinos, Squad in one and the Scouts while securing 3 objectives and contesting the other two. It was a great game and I have to say that Lysander is a force to be reckoned with having felled two Wolf Lords in CC! At this point I'm 1-0-1 for the day and having a great time. Stay tuned for Battle Report 3 from 40k at Skirmish 2011.

40k Skirmish 2011 Round 1 Space Wolves vs Salamanders in "Looks expensive I'll take it"

2011-08-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

When twinlinked Melta fails it's a good day for the Space Wolves!

The first game was against Derek from Petawawa who was running a mean Salamanders list lead by Vulcan. We were playing a modified kill point scenario where the most expensive thing was worth 2 KP everything else was 1 except the cheapest non-transport which was worth nothing.

Space Wolf Assault pack Lupus

Wolf Lord with Thunder wolf, TH/SS, Saga of the bear, Wolf tooth necklace

Wolf Lord with Thunder wolf, Frost blade/SS, Saga of the warrior, Wolf tooth necklace with 2 wolves

Canis Wolfborne with 2 Wolves

Rune Priest with Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf

Troops

9 x Grey Hunters with Meltagun, Power fist in Rhino

6 x Grey Hunters with Meltagun, Power fist, Wolf Standard in Rhino

5 x Fersian Wolves with a Cyber wolf

Fast Attack

Land Speeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

Heavy Support

5 x Long Fangs with 3 Missile launchers, Lascannon in Razorback with Lascannon and twin linked Plasmaguns

Salamanders

Vulcan

Elites

5 x TH/SS Terminators in a Land Raider Redeemer with Multimelta

3 x TH/SS and 2 x LC Terminators

Troops

Tactical squad with Power sword, Plasma cannon and meltagun in Razorback with heavy bolters

Tactical squad with Power sword, Plasma cannon and meltagun in Razorback with lascannons

6 x Scout squad with Combimelta

Fast Attack

Land Speeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

Land Speeder Storm

Heavy Support

Land Raider

We rolled Dawn of war deployment and I put on my Saga of the bear Wolf Lord and the Fenrisian Wolves while he combat squaded a tactical squad and deployed them and their Razorback. I won the roll to go first and did.

TURN 1

Bottom of turn 1, the Wolves draw first blood taking out a Razor back while the remained of the army moves to cover the advancing Wolf Lords.

The squad jumps out away from the advancing wolves

TURN 2

Vulcan leads the Terminators into combat while the other squad is pinned when their Land Raider explodes due to a very lucky shot from the Long Fangs Razorback. But they take out the Wolves and their Wolf Lord.

The second wave of Wolf Lords takes a ton of fire but one Wolf Lord lives.

The Wolves move to flank the Salamanders.

TURN 3

The remaining Wolf Lord begins to sweep through the line Salamanders with ease.

With their Rhino gone the small unit of Grey Hunters moves to engage the Salamanders, who get reinforcements in the form of the scouts. The small unit gets wiped out but they take 3 Terminators with them!

TURN 4

The Wolves continue to flank the Lizards.

The Long Fangs continue to support the flanking with their fire.

The Salamanders move to counter attack the wolves.

TURN 5

The Land Speeders start to out distance the Rhinos and engage at long range with their Multimeltas

Vulcan leads his host into the mouth of the wolves!

Skimmers engage in the centre causing little damage.

The Wolf Lord continues to jump from one unit to the next.

TURN 7

Rhinos pop smoke and prepare for the coming assault.

The lone speeder moves in for the kill on the Razorback.

Some unlucky terminator swings in assault, but they still manage to break 2 full units of Grey Hunters who would not rally and hand the game to Derek.

Derek ended up winning 11 KP to 9 KP the difference being the last 2 squads of Grey Hunters. He ended up going on to win best General so I don't feel to bad. Stay tuned for 3 more Battle reports from 40k at Skirmish 2011

Razorwing!

2011-08-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

I have slowly but surely been knocking off items to finish painting for my current 1850pts list. Feels good to get the biggest piece out of the way. Overall the Razorwing was actually a really easy model to paint. No real extra bits like pesky crew and since you will never be able to see the underside of it I just didn't bother painting it lol (well..except the missiles). It probably took me less time to paint this then it does to paint one of my Raiders. I also managed to finish my 3rd Venom but just ran out of time when working on that warrior squad (which I will finish Saturday). Once I finish that I will do a post of my "Venom Squadron" as it looks really cool when set up together. After that all I have left is my last squad of Hydra Gauntlet Wyches and I am done!

40k Skirmish 2011

2011-08-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the FoW and 40k tournaments at Skirmish. Here is the coverage for the 40k and check out the FoW coverage on Covering Fire!

Orks!

Lysander lead Marines

Necrons, bet he can't wait for the new codex!

Chaos Marines

Mechanized Guard

Very Green Death Guard

Very Silver Grey Knights

More Grey Knights

I have 4 Battle Reports from the Skirmish that I'm working on. More to follow soon, I hope....

Beastmasters Part 1!

2011-08-06T18:25:00.000-07:00

I have slowly been picking away at my 1850pts force and this week it is all about working on the first half of my Beastmaster pack which consists of 10 Khymera and 2 Beastmasters.

I had been waiting a while to see the new models that GW would be putting out for the warp beasts (as they were one of my fav units in the old dex). I was really happy when I saw the model itself...then I scrolled down to the price and that is when I decided there was NO WAY I was paying $17 PER MODEL for a 12pt model. I was figuring they would be in a box like the Mandrakes or Incubi coming in around $7 each. With that in mind I set out trying to find something I could use as a replacement model for the Khymera. Then I remembered the old Chaos Hounds I used for my first go through with the Dark Eldar - you can see them here:

I have always liked these models and I had 5 of them so I did some fancy trading and managed to pick up another 5 more. The other thing I noticed was the Beastmaster models themselves (metal flying stand models...ugh) were also $18 per model which made no sense to me since I could just pick up a box of 5 Hellions for $7 more and be done with it. The other great thing about this is that I get my 4 Beastmasters is I would have an extra one to convert into my Baron Sarthonyx to lead my Hellions (he is finished, will post him at some point). The only two things I bought that were actually NEW were 2 blisters of Razorwings and a Clawed Fiend since I just loved the way the model looked.

My final squad will be made up of:

- 4 Beastmasters (all converted from hellions) - $24
- 10 Khymera (all older metal chaos hounds) - $0
- 2 Razorwings - $29
- 1 Clawed Fiend - $26

The whole unit comes to 238 points, it has 4 different wound groups that have 28 wounds in total which is freaking amazing. Best part is the whole huge unit only cost me around $80. So, without further adieu here are some pics of how the unit is looking so far:

I repainted the Khymera to resemble the current warp beasts a bit more. So I added muscle texture to their skin and wanted to make it look like bones were poking out here and there. I went really extreme on the highlights (almost to white for all the colours) as I really wanted them to "pop" and make them look somewhat un-natural. For the Beastmasters I wanted to make them look very different then the Hellions from a colour scheme point of view. I changed up their skyboards to red and changed a lot of the black leather over to a standard brown leather. I am also going to add some Hawk Turquoise design work on the boards them selves to help tie everything in together (so they will look like a reverse version of the standard Hellions). After painting the Beastmasters I gotta say I just can't wait to paint the Hellions. Such fun models to do up and they look just fantastic when set up on the table top.

Next Up: Finishing off my last warriors and my 3rd venom. I also am hoping to have a battle report and a "WIP" group shot of the army as it currently stands sometime this week.

Scourges!

2011-07-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

So, life has finally calmed down a bit and the wave of visitors for the new born have subsided so I figured it was time to get back into the painting saddle and finish up my 1850pts army.

Since I last posted I have made some minor changes here and there and now have the whole army 100% built, primed and based (bases built I mean). With the change out I made sure I kept 6 troop choices, (4 warriors, 2 wyches), and threw in a pack of Beastmasters for visual interest as I love how my unit is looking so far. The army has a great balance of anti troop shooting, anti armor shooting, a unit with haywire grenades for a last ditch anti armor and some really decent counter attack units. I have to say this is probably the happiest I have been with an all comers army...well...ever actually.

This unit actually came together quite quickly as there are only 5 models. I did buy 2 units of 5. This unit has 2 haywire blasters and the other has 2 Heatlances. Just because of how amazing these models are both in looks, options and how easy they are to put together, I am even considering buying another box of 5 just to make 4 splinter cannons for a 10 man squad (if they stay stationary they get 42 splinter shots a turn!). I decided to paint the wings black for the feathers and the bat wings the same colour as the Haemonculus' skin, just to help tie things together. While the elites have white helmets, I figured I would give these guys gold ones.

Next Up: Beastmasters!

Haemonculi Finished!

2011-07-02T06:51:00.000-07:00

I managed to get in a bunch of work last week and I finished off my new finecast Haemonculus and Urien. I didn't get a chance to really post anything till this weekend as I have been busy with baby prep all week with the wife. This article is going to be a two part. First I am going to post the army list that I have been working towards in regards to what I want my "conventional" 1850pts list to be then I will get to the good stuff...pics of the new figs :)

Dark Eldar Final "Conventional" 1850pts:

HQ
Succubus - Agonizer
Haemonculi - Venom Blade, Liquifier, Casket of Flensing

Elites
Blood Brids (9) - Hydra Gauntlets x 3, Syren w/ Agonizer, Raider w/ Night Shields (Succubus goes here)

Troops
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ Extra Splinter Cannon
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ Extra Splinter Cannon
Warriors (10) - Blaster, Dark Lance
Warriors (10) - Shredder, Splinter Cannon, Sybarite w/ Venom Blade, Raider w/ Night Shields
Wyches (9) - Shardnet, Hekatrix w/ Agonizer, Raider w/ Night Shields (Haemonculus goes here)

Fast Attack
Reavers (6) - Heat Lances x 2
Scourges (5) - Haywire Blasters x 2

Heavy Support
Ravager - Flicker Fields
Ravager - Flicker Fields
Razorwing Fighter - 4 x Monoscythe Missiles, Flicker Fields

1848pts

Basically, all Raiders/Ravagers/Razorwings all are armed with Dark Lances. I feel this list gives me a lot of versatility in that it has decent long range anti troop, anti tank and some great options for counter charges in CC. I also like that it has a decent variation in models to help break up the look of the force.

Now for the Haemonculi!

Battle for the Portal

2011-06-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

2000 pt Battle between Chaos and Orcs

Mistakes form the last post, I checked the rules on allies and you can ally armies but not just a lord/hero choice so I wont be able to take the wizard with the Dwarf army :( Until Storm of Magic comes out....maybe...
This Battle features Orcs fighting almost the same Chaos army as last battle. In fact the Chosen warriors rolled another 12 on the eye of god table and received Divine Greatness again....He also had it against the Tomb Kings who he beat in his last game...and yes his dice were checked after...
Scenario
The scenario played this time was Battle 4 “Blood or Glory.” This scenario is a bit unusual and so worth explaining. Basically their are no victory points and the idea is to break your opponents entire army. At the begging of the battle the armies “fortitudes” are calculated. 1 pt for each standard and two points for the general, Chaos had 7 and Orcs had 6. As standards are captured or Generals are killed the fortitude is reduced. If the Fortitude reaches 2 then the whole army flees the battle. Armies also deploy 18” from each other.
Their was also one piece of magical scenery used a “Sorcerers Portal” Basically it cast a random spell each magic phase at the nearest target.

Deployment
Chaos deployed his entire army in the centre of the board, very near the portal. Apparently he wasn't worried. The Orcs also placed a fair amount of units in the centre with flanking units further out on each side. The plan for the Orcs was an envelopment. After the deployment Chaos was able to roll on the Eye of the Gods table. The resulting Divine Greatness and the fact that his General and Battle Standard were in that unit meant that I could only win if I destroyed that incredibly tough unit. On the bright side my units without standards were worth nothing to him (Giant, archers, and war machines!)

Turn 1
Once again Chaos finished deployment first but did not win the dice off and the Orcs went first. Both the Giant and Spider riders advanced beyond the sight of Chaos's flanking units. The winds of magic were light and the only spell came from the portal, it enhanced the Chosen making them both tougher and stronger :(. During shooting the Doom diver killed three knights, paying for its self in one shot! And the Rock lobber misfired :( On Chaos's turn they had a general advance with the unit on his right turning to face the Giant and what remained of the chaos knights charging the unit of Goblins to their front. The charge failed but pulled out the fanatic that was sent against the Chosen. The fanatic smashed through the Chosen and out the other side with out killing a single model :( Magic was again light and the portal cast another spell on the chosen weakening them and nullifying the previous spell. And one of the sorcerers cast a fireball on the goblins spear men killing 4.

Turn 2

The envelopment seemed to be going according to plan until all three units in the centre failed animosity and instead of holding charged into the Chaos army. Sadly as the Goblin Archers charged the Chosen they were required to release their fanatic as well. The fanatic was shoved to the right and
out of harms way until the other unit of goblins failed their animosity and charged the knights through the fanatic. This time the fanatic killed 9 goblins and caused them to panic and flee :( All was not lost as the units on the left Flank had both got into combat with the Chaos Halberds. The combination of a Giant and Goblin hoard with Warlord should have been enough.....Magic was boring again this time the portal cast fire ball on both the Chosen and Goblin Archers as they were the same distance from the portal and yup... no Chosen died but a handful of goblins did. In the shooting phase the Doom Diver finished of the Knights and the rock lobber misfired again... Time for Combat! In the battle with the Giant and the halberds the Giant was slain before being able to strike (Chaos was a little lucky, average was 4 wounds and he got 6) The goblins threw their nets over themselves and the resulting chaos meant that the Goblins lost combat but the proximity of their general and sheer numbers kept them in the fight. The unit of Big'uns mashed their opponents and sent them fleeing but they were to slow to run them down and as the Chosen rather predictably routed the archers they were able to reform instead of pursuing and line up a flank charge on the Big'uns, we will talk more about this later. On the right the goblins continued to flee but did not panic the stone thrower and the spiders closed in on Chaos's flank.Chaos' turn went rather predictably as the warriors on his right and the chosen fought and won both their combats and only the size of the Orc units kept them fighting. No spells were cast this turn.

Turn 3
The Spiders being the only unit not in combat charged both wizards. The doom divers and rock lobber missed the only un-engaged unit of warriors the only highlight is neither war machine was panicked by the flood of fleeing Goblins. Combat did not go well for the Orcs, the spider riders won but the sorcerers stood there ground and both the Big'uns and remaining Goblins fled. The only small victory was that the Orc Warboss chopped down the Chaos Lord moments before the unit he was with turn tail and then were run down by the Chosen. Surprisingly the Orcs whittled Chaos down to 3 Vps it was almost a tie.........

After the Dust settles..

Well not a particularly good outing for the Orcs, in fact one could argue that with Chaos's deployment and gift from the Gods it was impossible for them to win or even draw. The only thing that gave them a chance was the Chaos Lords Challenge other wise getting points for the Chosen or for the BSB and the Lord would have been next to impossible. Just thinking out loud here but, I think the orcs needed 168 Str 5 attacks to kill all 16 Chosen (on average), oh and they are only str 5 on the first round of combat after that they are str 4 and only have 15 attacks not including heros per round.....Ugh.
That being said I was most disappointed with the Goblins and Giant on the flank. 9 time out of ten that combat should have been mine. I was unlucky to snarl my own guys with the nets and then to have 6 wounds done to the Giant :( But the real kicker was I forgot to roll for the dead Giant to fall over, which is good for about 7 dead warriors if he falls the right way, about a 50/50 chance.
Since we are on the topic of forgetting things, the Chosen needed to make a Ld test not to pursue the Goblin Archers (Ld 9) if they failed this it would have prevented them killing my Big'uns for a turn or two. The final stupid mistake I made was having my Orc Shaman out of the boyz unit. A lot of his spells have short range and are good in close combat but he was out of range most of the game... C'est la vie.

Venoms!

2011-06-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

I picked up two of these kits right when they came out (have a 3rd one still in the box) and I have to say they were pretty fun to both put together and paint. One thing I was surprised about is just how many extra bits you get with it. You get two full sets of extra crew (going to paint them up for the raiders, and use some of the warrior ones on these) as well as a couple different sets of flags and spears. I WAS going paint the fellow sitting in the cockpits for these vehicles but decided at the last second to be lazy, plus I really like how my lazy-ness turned out :).

Next Up: Haemonculi!

Razorwing and Finecast!

2011-06-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

So, as I have been on night shifts this week I have had a chance to build some of the new kits being produced by Games Workshop, namely the Razorwing Fighter and the Finecast Haemonculus.

Razorwing Fighter:

The overall look of the kit is incredible. I would have to say it is one of the nicest looking vehicle kits on the market, regardless of company (high praise I know). With that said there are some issues with the kit.

First off, the thing is a NIGHTMARE to put together. To the point where after I FINALLY finished building my first one I actually considered returning my second one for something else...ANYTHING else lol. Starting off is fine when you are gluing all the pieces to the main frame, setting everything up, etc. The nightmare part comes into play when you have to glue the top half and the bottom half together because it is SUCH a tight fit. For starters, they just don't fit very well at all, even with a heavy amount of filing down (which I did). The other big thing is you have to glue the pieces for the weapon housing and the jet engine intake valve to the top half, then line up the bottom half perfectly when gluing the two halves together. So if you haven't waited for it to 100% fully set (ie waiting like 24 hours) then every time you try to put the top half on they "pop" backwards into the model and refuse to line up properly because of the way it is designed. I am a very experienced model builder (25+ years under my belt) and after a couple of hours of work, including holding it together with 3 rubber bands this is what the bottom of my Razorwing looks like:

So, in order to get the model to go together properly you need to do 2 things:

1st) Patience. You need to glue the two jet intake vents and the weapon housing a day before you want to build the rest of the model and make 100% sure they set properly.

2nd) Get some sort of mini "vice clips" to hold those problem areas into place because rubber bands just don't do it. There is no way to get the kid of pressure needed to hold it together.

The second issue (well, not an issue, just a surprise really) is how darn SMALL the kit actually is lol. When you see pics of it online you figure it is about the same size as a Valkyrie, just sleeker. It isn't though, not even close.

Even though the underside of the kit does greatly irk me, the bottom line though is you will almost never see it, so I have to keep telling myself it isn't THAT big of a deal lol (it's difficult though haha). The other really nice thing I forgot to mention is if you are into magnetizing your kits like Greedo did with his Valk this kit is almost effortless to do that with :)

Finecast

Ah Finecast. The source of much "nerd rage" for the last couple months. I finally got my hands on my first finecast model, the new Dark Eldar Haemonculus. So here is my first hand experience with the product.

For starters the model itself is incredible. Sure, the pose looks like he is going "I AM HERE BITCHES! TIME TO START THIS PARTY!" but you quickly get over that when you start noticing all the small details that make up this model. He has two extra arms, both with wargear options which you can easily replace with Wyche arms if you don't want them. The soul cube thing which can be used for a handful of their wargear and a liquifier, which for me is the most common piece of wargear, so win! The back piece as well as the coat are also incredibly well detailed and the overall silhouette of is amazing. The model looks fantastic when thrown into a huge unit of Warriors or Wyches.

Now for the Finecast part of the model.

The Bad:

Overall I would have to say I think this model would look 100% the exact same in metal. I have the metal Urien, who is more detailed than the finecast one and when primed you can't tell which is metal and which is Finecast. The big difference though was Urien was a MILLION times easier to clean. I couldn't get over the amount of flash on the Finecast model, in some places right over important parts of detail (especially the liquifier gun). This model has the most flash of any model I have ever built, hands down. I checked all 4 Haemonculus models at the GW store to pick the best cast, and this one was by far the best one (one of the kits was even missing the extra arms lol). There was also a huge mold line down the center of the model (from side to side). I had to file off a lot of the "stitch" work on his robe as well as other smaller details on his shoulder and head. His right hand (the metal glove) was extremely messed up because of this as his fingers were horribly cast. I tried cleaning it up and ended up popping off his middle finger with just the slightest touch with the exacto knife. As you can guess the model feels very flimsy. I have read that they do have a lot of give though and are very durable, so hopefully that is the case.

The Good:

Once you get past the all the flash and shoddy casting the model itself was actually very easy to put together. You don't really need anything other then just plain old super glue to glue it together, which is an awesome change over metal where you need either pin it or use green stuff. Finecast might not be that great for smaller models, like the Haemonculus, but I could see it being amazing for larger, more difficult models to put together, like the Hive Tyrant and Hive Guard. The other really nice thing is the weight of the model. My finecast model weighs virtually nothing. It's ultra light weight and I would imagine because of this would be much more resistant to chips then it's metal counterpart.

Final Thoughts:

My personal opinion is that the ONLY reason that Finecast exists is to greatly increase Games Workshop's profit margins. That's it. Games Workshop has been talking for months about the improved quality of miniatures with this product and how nothing has ever been seen like this but I 100% just don't see it. I am actually happy I bought all my DE special characters in metal because they are flat out better casts. No contest. The other thing that is very frustrating is the price. Resin costs significantly less then metal, yet the Finecast models are INCREDIBLY expensive, especially here in Canada. I do understand that is a large investment on GW's part to switch over the molds but this could of been the perfect time to garner some good will in a time when they are jacking up all the prices of their products as well as removing the ability for certain countries to buy abroad. Consider this, Finecast models cost almost FIFTY percent MORE here then what people have to pay in the UK and the United States. As an example a box of Wracks is $33 in the states, but is $45 here...even though our dollar is worth MORE. Don't even get me started on those poor bastards in Australia lol. I honestly just can't wrap my head around it. I would be fine with it if I felt it was a vastly superior product, but just from my limited experience I would have to say that in many ways is actually inferior to pewter when you consider how much time will be spent on cleaning up these models. The only reason I haven't totally written this product off is because everything out now was sculpted with Pewter casting in mind, not Finecast, so I will wait till we see stuff specifically designed for Finecast. As it stands now though colour me un-impressed.

Ravagers!

2011-06-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

As promised I finally finished these 3 tanks. I have to say it almost killed me finishing these as they just have soooo much detail and so many extra pieces to paint. Each one has 4 crew members. Typically a warrior will take me about 2-3 hours to paint total, so these guys I cut a lot of corners and got it down to about 3 hours for each group of 4 crew. Each tank I would say took at least 8 hours total (not including the bases as they are finished), so a lot of work went into it. THANK GOD THEY ARE DONE!...well...almost lol. I still have to figure out the design work for the red on the front of the hulls and the white free-hand symbols on the sails.

Next Up, VENOMS!

The Battle for High Pass

2011-06-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

Following is the battle report for a 2000pt battle between Dwarfs and Warriors of Tzeentch. It was fought at the Ottawa GW during their Tuesday Warhammer Night . I would also like to give the staff a quick shout out as they provided awesome scenery, arbitration on the rules, and a peanut gallery ;)

The scenario for the battle was “Battle for the Pass” and the only magical scenery used was a blood forest which was avoided all game and an enchanted tomb which provided a +1 to units armour saves if they were withing 6”(we made that one up).

Deployment
Units were deployed in accordance with the scenario deployment. The two Tzeentch Sorcerers both took their signature fireballs and I have forgotten the other spells. It didn't matter as the Dwarfs dispelled all but one fireball during the battle. Despite Chaos finishing their deployment first and the short legs of the Dwarfs. The little stunties still managed to sneak the first turn.

The Armies line up for battle.

Turn 1
The battle began with the sound of cannons!! One of them was a misfire and the other failed to wound a single Chosen but no matter that is how the battle began. The only other movement on the Dwarf side was the Thunderers who moved up to the edge of the woods. The Warriors then began a general advance across the front of their army and the winds of magic did nothing to write home about.

Turn 2
Was much the same as the first for the Dwarfs but this time a cannon found a Knight and sent him back to his god! The Dwarf made small adjustments to their line and the Thunderers in the forest were still out of range of the nearest group of warriors. Chaos continued their advance with the exception of the knights who slowed to allow the rest of the army to catch up.

Turn 3
Finally the Warriors came in range of the Thunderers in the forest who let them have it and killed 3. once again the cannons fired into the Chosen but this time those that were wounded were saved by the blessings of their God (Divine Greatness will be mentioned later). The Dwarf Lord also brought his Longbeards up in an attempt to flank any Chaos units moving from around the hill. Chaos continued their steady march forward with the Chosen edging slightly forward of the knights. The winds of magic blew stronger and forced the Runesmith to use one of his runes of spell breaking.

Chaos Warriors approach the Dwarf lines.

Turn 4
Once again the Dwarf cannons fired into the ranks of the Chosen this time killing two, not enough to panic them yet. One of the cannons also misfired and destroyed itself as well as all of its crew. The Thunderers killed another warrior in the unit apposing them. Sensing the time was right the Chaos Lord lead his Chosen Warriors against the Dwarf Thunderers who chose discretion over valour and fled back through the woods. The Chaos Knights also moved up to stay along side these mighty warriors. Finally the winds of magic blew strong and the wizards were able to cast Fireball on the Dwarf Warriors killing 4 of them. The battle was shifting to Chaos.

Turn 5
Sensing the battle swaying to Chaos the Dwarf Lord ordered his Longbeards against the knights. The Knights put up a good fight wounding 8 but the Dwarf armour was strong and saved all but three warriors. The knights did not fair so well as the Dwarf Lord cut down three single handily and his remaining Longbeards finished of the last one. Seeing the destruction of the Knights the Chosen lead by their Lord charged into the remaining Longbeards (they could just see them, it is not shown well in the diagram) and declaring a challenge against the Dwarf Lord. The Longbeards lost combat but having more ranks kept them from running. In the duel the Chaos lord scored only a single wound against the Dwarf lord. Other then this combat the Thunderers and cannon killed a few more warriors and no spells were cast.

Turn 6
The Slayers declared a charge against the Chosen but only rolled a 3 on the charge dice so stumbled forward out of the woods and into the front of the oncoming warriors. There was more shooting from the Thunderers and the cannons this time the thunderers managed to kill a Sorcerer who still had not joined a unit for protection. The battle with the Longbeards was not going well and it was only the presence of the Battle Standard that kept them going. The Dwarf lord however managed a wound on the Chaos Lord this turn, a very close fight.
In Chaos's last turn both units of Warriors charged into the Slayers managing to just squeak into the Thunderers as well. This battle was a massacre and sent the Thunderers fleeing but a few slayer remained behind to die (later) and denied the warriors a chance to pursue and finish the thunderers. The battle between the Chosen and Longbeards finally came to an end as the Longbeards broke and ran. Strangely they out ran the Chosen and so remained alive and denied Chaos of any victory points for them.
Even though Chaos was driving the Dwarfs from the field they only managed 100pts ish for the cannon and was not enough to match the 400+ points for the knights and sorcerer. The Dwarfs had won the day.

As the sun sets the Dwarfs areseen fleeing (regrouping) from the field of battle :(

After the Dust Settles..

I am by no means a veteran of Warhammer as I am learning new rules every game but here are a few lessons I learned from the battle;

Deployment, deployment was fairly standard after the battle we all agreed that the knights would have been better on the other flank and have the three Chaos infantry units march a breast down the battle field.

Flow of the battle, generally Chaos was too timid, the fact that you might not make a charge is not a reason not to try especially when your close combat power is so much greater. Basically charging is not as awesome as it was in 7th. Also by the time we did get into combat there wasn't the opportunity to finish off the units that were beaten in combat.

The Chosen Warriors rolled Divine Greatness on the Eye of Chaos, this made them suborn with a 3+ ward save in addition to their normal armour save :( For those of you that play more 40k he might as well have replaced the unit with a squad of Thousand Sons. Since my army was without any Lascannons this unit became effectively un-kill-able. The only thing that saved me was that they didn't start fighting until turn 5.

Knights, What to do with expensive cavalry in 8th ed? The only Cavalry that can hope to break a large unit of infantry on the charge are Bretonian (3 guys to a rank) or perhaps cheaper knights like Empire. Their 7th ed role as line breakers has disappeared. It seems in 8th expensive knights can be used effectively to run down routed units when they fight in conjunction with a unit of infantry. The infantry remove the stubbornness of the apposing unit and then the knights can run them down. What ever the case they are no longer the one hit wonders of old.

The Slayers unbreakable rule can be very useful, especially in the last few turns of the game. The fact that they prevented the warriors running down the Thunderers prevented the game going to a draw. I think great advantages can be made by having small units of slayers that are deeper then they are wide (frontage of two or three) and are able to stand up to several rounds of fighting even in the face of a hoard.

Magic, Well what can I say, he only got off one spell. I am thinking of getting an allied Empire Wizard, that combined with the Runesmith and rune of Vallya will give me a stomping magic phase.

Anyway, I have spent enough time writing this, please let me know what other lessons you drew from the battle or what I got completely wrong.

The Great Devourer Descends on Red Deer!

2011-06-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I participated in only my second tournament this year. I missed out on all the big events at the beginning of the year because of work. My wife is giving birth to our first child next month so I am trying to cram in some gamin’ action while I can. I know I said I wasn’t going to be taking the “mighty” Tyranids to another event, but alas, I just couldn’t get the Dark Eldar up and running in time, so bugs it is.

The Tournament in Red Deer was being run by a gaming group called “Da Grots”. I have seen a couple of their members at some of the events in Calgary, but by and large, I know almost none of them. I therefore thought it would be a good chance to get in some games against people I have never played before. The tournament was a standard 3 game format, each game being a combination of missions and deployments from the main rule book (so standard stuff). Despite only being 10 people at this tournament there was a really wide variety of armies. There were 2 Nids, 2 Imperial Guard, 2 Space Marines, 1 Necron, 1 Ork, 1 Tau and 1 Demon. So almost all the armies were represented. There were supposed to be a couple more but I think there were some no shows.

The Tyranid List:

HQ

Tyranid Prime – Dual Boneswords, Scything Talons, Adrenal Glands

Elites

Venomthropes (2)
Hive Guard (3)
Zoanthropes (3)

Troops

Termagants (20)
Tervigon – Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, Catalyst
Hormagaunts (25) – Toxin Sacs
Genestealers (5) – Toxin Sacs, Broodlord Upgrade (BL – Scything Talons)
Genestealers (5) – Toxin Sacs, Broodlord Upgrade

Heavy Support

Mawloc
Mawloc
Trygon – Adrenal Glands

Total Points – 1849pts

Game 1: Capture and Control, Dawn of War vs. Blood Angels

Let me start off by saying that this game actually shouldn’t have taken place. What I mean by that is my opponent was a 13 year old kid with a barely painted army who couldn’t grasp the basic mechanics of the game, let alone enough to play in an actual tournament. Before we even set up I knew the game wasn’t going to be close. He placed his objective in a building, fairly close to the center of the board and I placed mine on the complete opposite side in a crater. Since he won first turn he combat squaded the Tact Squad in the building with the objective, placed his Chaplain on a Bike in the middle of the board on the center line and infiltrated his scout squad about 13” from my board edge. Everything else came in on turn 1 except Astorath and the DC which he opted to deep strike. I in turn just held my entire army off the board to walk on turn 1. Here is Nick’s list:

HQ

Chaplain on a Bike
Astorath

Elites

Sanguinary Priests (2) – Power Weapons, Combi-Meltas
Furioso Dread – Dread CC weapon, heavy flamer, scatter cannon (or whatever it’s called lol)

Troops

Tactical Squad (10) – Missile Launcher, Flamer, Power Fist
Scout Squad (5) – Sniper Rifles
Death Company (5) – Assortment of power weapons, thunder hammers, inferno pistols, etc… (basically everything you could give them…it was crazy how much this squad cost)

Fast Attack

Baal Pred – Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter Side Sponsons
Scout Bike Squadron

Heavy Support

Predator – Autocannon Turret, Las Cannon side sponsons

High Points:

- The game lasted 45mins of the 2 hour allotted time.

Low Points:

Sigh, where to begin?
- I knew Nick would only focus on killing me, so I brought out the 20 strong squad of Termagants onto my own objective and sent 1750pts worth of Tyranids at his objective.
- Nick decided to deep strike his death company squad 6” from 1450pts worth of Tyranids which were wiped out to a man the following turn after being charged by a Trygon, 25 untouched hormagaunts with Catalyst and 12 Termagants I spawned (as this is all I could fit in base to base)
- The one stealer squad wiped out the Scouts turn 1
- By turn 3 almost my entire army had swamped his objective and the only kill point he managed was killing 2 Venomthropes because I couldn’t make a saving throw to save my life

Final Result: Tyranid Victory. I held both objectives and killed him to a man by the bottom of turn 3. This is the type of game that just shouldn’t happen in a tournament. Nobody has fun when one person gets trounced especially to this degree. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Nick had any concept of what was actually happening, but alas he didn’t. He just seemed confused at every point and was flustered even by the concept of rolling dice. I would have to say it was easily one of the worst games I have had in a tournament as it was literally a “bye” to the next round.

Game 2: Kill Points, Spear Head vs. Sons of Medusa (aka Space Marines)

This game was against my good friend Jon Wong and his optically devastating Sons of Medusa. I knew what was in his army before hand as we had been sending lists back and forth so I knew that this was maybe the worst combination of missions and deployment as Jon has nothing by long ranged anti tank firepower. Jon set up his parking lot/gun line in a line about 15”-20” away from the center while I set up everything but the two infiltrating stealer squads and the Trygon as close to the center of the board as possible. I knew Jon had an ultra death Sternguard squad with 8 combi meltas so I was trying to figure out how to have my Tervigon live past turn 1. I noticed I had a building with no windows or doors, so no line of sight, so that is where he was set up. I then infiltrated my stealers closer to the back side of his army, 18” away where if Jon wanted to shoot at me he would HAVE to shoot through cover. Jon gave me first turn so off I went!

Sons of Medusa

HQ

Lysander

Elites

Sternguard (10) – 8 Combi Meltas, Sergent w/ Powerfist, Drop Pod
Dreadnought – Auto Cannon
Dreadnought – Plasma Cannon

Troops

Tactical Squad (10) – Melta Gun, Missile Launcher, Serg w/ Power Fist, Rhino
Tactical Squad (5) – Melta Gun, Razorback w/ Twin Linked Las Cannons
Scout Squad (5) – Just CC weapons I think

Heavy Support

Land Raider – Chronos Upgrade (so BS 5)
Predator – Autocannon Turret, Las Cannon Sponsons
Predator – Autocannon Turret, Las Cannon Sponsons

High Points:

- The Genestealers were Ace this game. The first squad managed to fleet 6” the first turn, reaching cover and being very much in charge range to the battle line for turn 2 (which it did, wrecking one of the predators). The other squad took a full round of shooting from the stern guard using “Bolter Drill” from Lysander (ie re-rolls all misses) and they used the “Ignore Cover” ammunition. The Broodlord was all that was left with full wounds.
- The Hive Guard just had their way with Jon’s battle line. Every time they shot something died…every…time.
- Mawlocs wrecked havoc on the parking lot, sending tanks in multiple directions, immobilizing one of the preds and just getting in Jon’s face.

Low Points:

Well, all these belong to Jon lol
- The previous game for Jon was against a Necron army with THREE Monoliths. Chronos by himself wrecked 2 and immobilized one lol. So, naturally, this game he missed 3 of the 4 shots in the first two rounds (this is on a 2+ with a re-roll)
- That luck continued for the first round as I either saved all incoming shots (Zoans never failed a save, took about 6 or 7 of them from Las Cannons) or he just flat out missed.
- I think the biggest one was how he deployed his Sternguard Squad. He was far too aggressive with his deployment of them, trying to force them into place to kill a high priority target on turn 1. He shot at the one stealer squad which just due to the nature of the 5 man unit is virtually impossible to kill with that squad (on average you need to do THIRTY wounds to kill the 5 guys, I will explain later :). He should have either deep struck the squad BEHIND my lines in hopes of killing the Hive Guard or deployed them in his battle line to help defend against things like the Mawlocs or Trygons.

Final Result: Tyranid Victory. By the time the Trygon came up on turn 3 Lysander and the Sternguard were almost dead and only the tact squad, Chronos and one of the Predators were still functional. I still had almost my entire army so Jon just conceded (but not before we figured out how long Lysander could last lol). Overall it was a fun game, Jon was a great guy to play against and took everything in stride, and when stuff goes wrong, dice wise, it can be difficult to do lol.

Game 3: Seize Ground (5 Objectives), Pitched Battle vs. Tyranids

This game was against the OTHER Tyranid player in the tournament. I thought it was pretty cool that at this point the only two armies that went 2-0 were Tyranids. Tyler’s army was awesome. It was perfectly designed to take on imperial armies with a combination of lots of bodies and massive toughness. His was the army I knew would give me the hardest time. He has significantly more toughness then I did (including a 700pts Deathstar Squad and a Tyrannofex) and my Mawlocs are almost useless against him. It was 5 objectives which was good as my stealers really gave me an edge. I knew the only path to victory was side step and bait his Hive Tyrant Death Star while putting all my focus on killing all his troops (killed 8 units of troops by the end of the game lol) and try to outlast him.

Tylers List:

HQ

Hive Tyrant – Bonesword, Lashwhip, Venom Cannon, Old Adversary, Regen
Tyrant Guard (3) – Lash Whips
Tyranid Prime – Dual Boneswords, Regen

Elites

Hive Guard (3)
Hive Guard (3)

Troops

Termagants (10)
Termagants (10)
Tervigon – toxin sacs, adrenal glands, catalyst
Tervigon – toxin sacs, adrenal glands, catalyst

Fast Attack

Gargoyles (27) – Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands

Heavy Support

Tyrannofex – Rupture Cannon

High Points:

- Genestealers won me this game. I infiltrated both squads, one of which was on one of the objectives in his deployment zone which was on a high bastion tower. There was physically no way he could get up there so the squad just went to ground the whole game for a 2+ cover save basically eating up 5 full turns of shooting from 6 hive guard. The other squad I botched their deployment and they served as a speed bump for the Gargoyles (but, making them take tonnes of dangerous terrain rolls).
- Trygon earned his keep. He killed a squad of Termagants , a Tervigon and a squad of Hive Guard by the time the game ended
- Tyranid Prime did extremely well this game. He “bonesworded” a Tyrannofex and then a turn later “bonesworded” the last remaining Tervigon which was Tyler’s last troop unit

Low Points:

- I had the perfect placement for my second unit of infiltrating Genestealers then at the last second I doubted myself and moved them to a spot where they were just devoured by Gargoyles. I think if I had left them where they were it would have been a much quicker game
- My Zoans did virtually nothing this game. I killed a couple termagants, did a wound to a Tervigon, then they took 5 impaler cannon hits failing every single one
- I miss-placed a unit of spawned termagants which ended up opening a lane for Tyler to engage my Tervigon with his own Termagants. I thought this was going to be the end but due to some inspiring rolling from my tervigon I ended up fighting off the Termagant swarm.

Final Result: Tyranid (mine) Victory. The game ended on turn 5 with me holding two objectives to Tyler’s zero (he had no troops left at this point). Overall I played this game very well using my Mawlocs to distract the Deathstar away from my own objectives and I had a great use of counter attacks with my different units. The biggest thing is I ONLY attacked his troop units while he spread his focus too thin on my supporting units that didn’t matter. I think this game also helped me prove two of my opinions on this army. 1) Tyrannofex’s suuuuck lol. He killed virtually nothing and got chopped to bits by my Tyranid Prime (so a 100pt model killed a 265pt model in cc). 2) Venom Cannon’s are the biggest waste of points on a Tyrant. Tyler spent most of the game shooting me with the Venom Cannon instead of running his insane close combat unit forward. This one thing more than any other won me the game as it left his Tyrant too far away to effect the game.

Final Tournament Standing: First Overall, Best Painted. I won every single category I could (since it was just most games won and best painted). It was one of the most dominating outings this army has had to date.

Army Thoughts: The list worked incredibly well as it was very flexible. It just feels like the most complete army I have brought to a tournament to date. 5 scoring units really helps as well. The biggest thing though is this army is FUN to play. Lots of interesting units and massive synergy.The only things I would change might be switching the Mawlocs to Trygons. That’s about it. The one group of units that surprised me the most were the min sized Genestealer Squads with the Broodlord. These squads are incredible. They have two main things going for them.

1) They are so small they can infiltrate virtually anywhere. The only reason I won that last game is because the squad was just small enough to infiltrate out of sight onto an objective.
2) Due to their small size they get forgotten and aren’t a priority target. This happened almost every game. Against Marine armies this squad is very deadly. They still get 17 WS6-7 attacks on the charge that re-roll virtually all wounds with rending. You end up getting something like 3-4 rends on the charge. They can threaten vehicles and small units alike. I love them lol

Tournament Thoughts: I am going to go on kind of “Rant” so bare with me here lol. When I first signed up for this Tournament the poster with all the information on it said “Prizes for first place, second place, third place, best painted and best sport”. So I figured I would at least have a shot at best painted and best overall. After driving an hour and a half to the event I ended up talking with one of the guys that runs the game club and he informed me that “In order to make sure people don’t bring ‘Leaf Blower’ type lists we are just going to ‘randomly’ give out the prizes”. This made me do a bit of a double take as it meant there is no reason to do pretty much anything. Nothing the players did had any impact on what would happen through the day. It transformed the event from a tournament to a club game day. I also thought since if the organizers were so worried about this type of thing that they would have had some sort of comp score or have other soft scores impact the final overall score (like painting, sports, etc.). The “Tournament’s” only scoring method was through battle points. So they wanted a soft score type tournament when they set it up to be Ard Boyz.

Another strange thing was after the first round the fellow running the event called my name out for best painted, but then called another guy’s name as well to come get a prize (with NO indication of what he might of won). So he got there first, getting the prize I wanted so I ended up getting stuck with a box of Wyches (which was the worst prize there). There was no more mention of prizes and I figured they would do the “draw” after the last game but once I finished my last game I noticed everyone already had their prizes. The thing that REALLY bothered me was they just gave out the prizes to their own members with no “random draw” at all (nether Jon nor I received any of these “random” prizes). So the first kid I played (who plays blood angels) got a Storm Raven, and so on. The prizes ranged from a Space Wolf Battle Force (the best prize, who was “won” by someone playing IG who came in the middle of the pack) to a box of Wyches (the worst prize). If I am speaking honestly I felt cheated and I felt that it was under handed to just change everything about the tournament on the day of the event to better benefit your own members. If they wanted a “Members Only” event then they should have put that on the poster. Another great thing is that I had to pay an EXTRA $10 over everyone else just to participate. Sigh lol.

One thing I wanted to ask is how would you guys feel if you travelled 150kms to an event to have everything about it changed (very much not in your favor)? Am I over reacting as far as being “irked” over how things went down? I would love to hear from you guys

Lilith Finished!

2011-05-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

On a whim last night after looking at my Ravagers I decided I wanted to do something different and take a crack at one of the last two characters I had to paint (Lilith and the new Urien). So, obviously Lilith won as I am hoping to take her to a tournament at the beginning of next month. I have to say that even though she was fairly fun to paint I would put her in my top 3 hardest models I have ever painted. She took just over 6 hours from start to finish (maybe 7) and my camera just doesn't show the actual detail that is on the fig in real life (she is MUCH cleaner). Ah well, might be time to get a real camera lol.

Next Up: Ravagers! For "realz" this time lol!

Wyche squad 1...FINISHED!

2011-05-06T02:38:00.001-07:00

After much work the first squad of Wyches is finally finished. While these models are really fun to paint it is surprising just how time consuming they are lol. Never realized just how many little details are all over these figs. The unit I am really starting to dread painting now that I am finished half of my Wyches are the Hellions...as they are just Wyches with skyboards...sigh.

Overall I am really happy how they turned out and I am really liking how the colour scheme looks on these guys. They have the same scheme as the warriors but extra things like brown boots and their skin as well as the metal weapons really makes things 'pop' as it were.

Next Up: Ravagers!

Dark Eldar Raiders!

2011-05-04T07:39:00.001-07:00

It is that time of year again when work just 100% dies off lol. In the last 2 weeks I have painted more then the rest of the year combined (well...almost lol). I finished these two Raiders last week and I have almost finished my 3 Ravagers and my first block of 10 Wyches (both of which will be coming shortly). Overall I am pleased with how they turned out, although they are slightly darker then my original one (didnt notice till I was finished and held them up together lol). I still have to do their bases since the entire army has scenic bases, but I am going to do that after I get my 1500pts army finished. After this block of units I will have 20 Hellions, the Baron and my squad of Warp Beasts then everything I own for DE will be finished!

Tallarn 110th Redux: Battlegroup Ptolemy.

2011-04-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

So I've finally rebased all my Tallarns to actually be in a desert as they should be. Some grey rocks chucked in for a bit of variety...

Anyway, I now have 1850 (and a little extra) points to take with me to the tourney later this year. So now I can focus on other stuff (such as Warmachine which my buddy and I just got into among other things).

But either way, here they all are, with redone bases and a bad attitude...

A couple of things to note.
1) The Ogyrns now have official GW bases, so I won't get docked for that!
2) Yes that is a commisar all his lonesome. He will be leading the 3 squads of infantry with attached Autocannons. You will also notice there is only 1 vox between the three of them for that reason.
3) The mortars are there in the pic as well as a partial squad that was left over. I wanted them to be in the picture just 'cause they still look awesome.
4) That squad under the Vendetta is a grenadier veteran unit as you can see from its 3 meltaguns and pack 'o explosives (that little guy single handedly took out a Chaos Soul Grinder back at my last tourney)
5) Why battlegroup Ptolemy? Well, he was one of Alexander's Generals who took over Egypt after Alexander's death. He fought in the desert and prevailed, so I figured why not name my commander after him. Besides, Ghengis Khan didn't seem to fit a guy with a comb-over...

Part 4: Mid-Zilla Tacitca!

2011-04-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

After running through the first 3 Tactica articles I find myself at the most challenging one. The reason I say this is because this section of the book is by far the most flawed and for that reason I personally would only run this type of list as a "for fun" list. Let me explain.

Basically, back in 3rd ed NOBODY took Warriors, Zoanthropes, Raveners, etc. for one simple reason: they got destroyed by instant death weapons. The second someone showed up with a Leman Russ or a devastator squad with missile launchers you could basically just kiss those squads goodbye. So fast forward to 4th ed where Phil Kelly and Andy Chambers understood that in order to make one of the most iconic units in the Tyranid Codex (Warriors) useful again they needed to do something about being able to instant kill these creatures so they gave everything within Synapse range eternal warrior. While I admit that might have been too far for 5th ed, something along those lines were needed for the current codex (either making them cheaper or giving them toughness 5 and two wounds). For some unknown reason though it feels like Mr Crudace never actually looked back at the older Tyranid books to see what worked and what didn’t and decided that a complete re-write (for the 4th codex in a row) was in order and reverted back to 3rd ed, and like 3rd ed you very rarely see these creatures anymore.

It’s a shame when you think about it though. Some of my favorite units through the years have been the Mid-Zilla type creatures like the ones I listed above. I love my Raveners, even now, easily one of my fav units in the books. I really want to love Warriors too, but alas they are just way too expensive for what they do and they also suffered the single biggest nerf in the codex, yes, even bigger than Carnifexs. What was that nerf you ask? Deathspitters. Turning them into a devourer (we already have THREE other ones in this book btw – MC Devourers, Stinger Salvo, and Devourers all 18’ range, str 4-6 and Assault 3-6 with almost no AP) was such a massive mistake for the most iconic gun in the codex which has ALWAYS been a single shot blast weapon (since it shoots beetles that EXPLODE...so how that equals multi shot I will never know lol).

With all that being said I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to make this list work. While it is probably the least competitive route to take in the 5th book I think it could be incredibly fun, and depending on what kind of match up you get it can also be incredibly tough to deal with.

The first thing to do is take a quick look at which units fit this type of army the best:

HQ
- Tyranid Prime
- Parasite of Mortex
- Hive Tyrant (will explain)

Elites
- Lictors
- Deathleaper
- Zoanthropes
- Hive Guard
- Pyrovores (you know they had to show up in a least one list :P )
- Venomthropes

Troops
- Tyranid Warriors
- Termagants
- Hormagaunts
- Genestealers
- Spore Pod

Fast Attack
- Raveners
- Shrikes
- Gargoyles

Heavy Support
- Biovores

Unit Overview:

Tyranid Warrior/Shrike Primer: Like the Hive Tyrant, these guys have so many ways to just eat up points and give you nothing back in return. If you want to run this unit then you really need to focus what their battlefield role is. There are two main routes to take these guys:

1) Shooty Warriors: The first option is making them “shooty” warriors. The main function of these guys is objective grabbing, with a small amount of harassment and covering fire. When running “shooty” warriors you really want to strip them down to the basics. What this means is giving them NOTHING in the way of upgrades. Give them the standard scything talons and deathspitters, that’s it. What is vastly more important then upgrades for this way of running them is numbers. I would say a min of 6 is needed, but 9 is preferred. The last two things that I would do is add a shooty prime (Dual Boneswords, Deathspitters, Regenration) and give them a barbed strangler. Now you have 27 x str 5, BS 4 shots and a large blast template. It will cost you a lot of points but it might actually do something.

2) Close Combat Warriors: In my opinion this is the option to take every last time. Warriors naturally are just so much better in combat then they are at shooting. If you do go this route then there are two ways of running them.

The first is with one of the two bonesword options. I personally just do Lashwhips, Boneswords and Toxin Sacs. They are pricey (they each cost the same as a regular Land Speeder) but if they hit home they pretty much erase anything that isn’t an assault terminator, and even then depending on their numbers can do quite a number on them too. This type of Warrior/Shrike I would normally keep the numbers to 4-5 strong (for both regular warriors and shrikes).

The second option is a unit with scything talons, rending claws and toxin sacs. I do really like this option as a cheaper alternative as you have just so many wounds and so many attacks, all re-rolling wounds against T4 or lower. You can also really threaten vehicles, not to mention they are almost 20 points cheaper per guy then one with boneswords/lashwhips so you can get a full unit of 9 for the same price a unit of 6 cost with the lash whips. People also greatly under estimate just how powerful this unit really is and how long it takes to get rid of it if you aren’t equipped to fight them, which is another big bonus of this route.

Tyranid Prime: I have gone over this guy a couple times in other articles so far in regards to where to put him. Basically, like the other type of lists arming him with a Bonesword option is 100% a must. I normally just give him dual boneswords and adrenal glands and call it a day. He is just as good as a Hive Tyrant on the charge and costs literally half as much and is an independent character. As far as where to put him you have some options with this type of list. At a first glance the most obvious would be with Warriors. This is true except the only time you really want to put him with that squad is if they are “shooty” Warriors to take advantage of his BS4 (which makes the deathspitters go from HORRIBLE to just ‘okay’). The other options would be with some of the elite units like Venomthropes, Zoanthropes, Pyrovores and Hive Guard to help protect your ‘specialist units’. The last option would be to throw him in a huge unit of Termagants. All of a sudden this guy has 20-30 wounds to go through to help get him into combat.

Parasite of Mortex: For this list I like to think of this guy as your Tyranid Prime with wings (why can’t Tyranid Primes take wings anyways?). He is the only option to lead your Shrikes into battle. Another amazing use for him, like I mentioned in the Horde Tactica, is to have him lead your Gargoyles. Like the Prime in a Termagant unit they act as an escort to help him get where he needs to go.

Hive Tyrant: The only Monstrous Creature I have included in this list, and he is here for only one reason and that is Hive Commander. One thing I do love doing is getting a full unit of 9 warriors with nothing but rending claws, scything talons and toxin sacs and outflanking them with this ability. It allows you to put an incredibly heavy hitting combat squad potentially into your enemy’s ranks. Great fun.

Lictors/Deathleaper: Like the All Reserve list these guys work very well in this type of list. The big thing is to use them as a distraction, normally being placed near heavy support options in your enemy’s deployment zone. Doing this helps take the heat off of the main bulk of your army.

Hive Guard/Zoanthropes: Same as all the other lists, just there to deal with Transports and Battle Tanks respectively. Putting the Zoans in a pod for this list is 100% personal preference, but since most of the time you WON’T have Hive Commander it will be a bit of a gamble. Since you wont have much in the way of Monstrous Creatures to help you deal with tanks, I would do my best to use all my elite slots here (or one of each, maxed out, at the very least)

Pyrovores: First off, let me just say I am not suggesting you take these guys. These guys were never play tested. It’s obvious just looking at the entry that they are just biovores (probably the worst hand to hand combat unit in the book) with a heavy flamer and a power weapon. You can have some fun with them though, mainly in the form of throwing them in a pod and deepstriking them into the enemy’s lines. You really want to get them stuck in with hopes of exploding, although if the person you are facing has any concept of what they do, they will probably just rapid fire them to death with little effort. What I am saying here is only take them in casual games and just try to have as much fun with our mega throwaway unit as possible.

Venomthropes: Exact same tactic as in the horde armies. Just throw your Prime in the middle of the squad since you will have nothing in the army to block line of sight.

Termagants/Hormagaunts: These units are basically just use to screen your units of toughness 4 creatures. Like the Nidzilla article I also use them as a buffer to absorb those initial charges from elite CC units. Nothing will ruin this army’s day like a juicy unit of Assault Terminators getting into your midst.

Genestealers: I have included these guys as they are Toughness 4. Just set them up with toxin sacs and you are good to go. Due to general lack of Hive Commander you will find infiltrating them will probably be the best option.

Raveners: Ah, Raveners, how I love thee. In this blogger’s opinion the only way to go is just give them rending claws. I find guns on these guys is a complete waste due to the fact that you will always be fleeting, so you will never get a chance to shoot. For this type of list I would always take this squad in a unit size of 6-9 (6 being my fav size so far). A unit of 9 though gets 45 WS 5, Init 5 attacks on the charge, re-rolling 1’s to hit and rending. It really packs a punch and has 27 wounds to boot!

Gargoyles: Run them with your shrikes as a mobile cover unit. I would still take both upgrades always just in case they ever do make it into combat as they can still be very deadly once they get there. Plus seeing a huge winged flank for this type of army would be fantastic.

Biovores: With this type of list a Biorvore unit could be really good. Fairly cheap, great range and can help suppress those problem units like devastators or units that you will be want to be charging in a turn or two.

Sample List:

HQ
Tyranid Prime – Dual Boneswords, Deathspitter, Regeneration (shooty warriors)
Tyranid Prime – Scything Talons, Bonesword/Lashwhip (CC warriors), Regeneration

Elites
Hive Guard (3)
Zoanthropes (3) – Mycetic Spore
Lictors (3)

Troops
Tyranid Warriors (6) – Scything Talons, Deathspitters x 5, Barbed Strangler
Tyranid Warriors (6) – Scything Talons, Rending Claws, Toxin Sacs
Termagants (18)

Fast Attack
Raveners (6) – Scything Talons, Rending Claws

1500pts on the dot

As you can see this army has 29 multi wound models equaling 75 x toughness 4 wounds. I focused on having some smaller units, each with a bit of combat punch to them since both warriors units each have a prime tailored to what the unit does and you also have the Raveners. I also included the Zoanthropes in a pod as well as Lictors to help add a bit of a “distraction” element to the army.

Tactics:

In my mind there are pretty much two ways of running a “Mid-Zilla” type army.

1) MSU (multiple small units): This is more or less the sample list I posted above. You have a decent number of smaller units each tailored to one specific job to complete and multiple threats to the enemy. With this type of army it is really important to have units like the Lictors and Zoanthropes coming in from alternate deployments to help distract from the main bulk of your army.

With the sample list above I have one unit that is designed to camp my home objective (my shooty warriors) while the rest of the army is designed to hit the enemy with multiple waves. I have my Lictors, Zoanthropes and Raveners there for the initial wave followed up by the Combat Warriors and the Termagants for the secondary wave/objective scorers. This list also plays on the Target Saturation game that most Nid armies use to their advantage. You present choices of shooting the semi-deadly stuff up in their faces right away, or shoot at the warrior squads that need quite a bit more firepower to deal with. The last bonus for this type of army over the second type is it has quite a bit of flexibility in how your units operate on the field and you can hit quite a few targets all at once.

2) MLU (multiple large units): With this type of Mid-Zilla list you will have most of your units tied up into large blocks. While your unit count goes way down in this list (as does your flexibility), each unit is considerably tougher due to their size. You have some huge blocks of units, normally consisting of 27-30 wounds each, all incredibly powerful if they actually get there.

The main advantage to this playstyle is that you give up very few kill points. People have to really focus firing each unit in order to actually deal with it. This type of army really starts coming into its own once you start playing larger games, as you can fit in a couple of these large units, and then add in some of the supporting units as well. Dealing with 9 deep striking Raveners and 9 outflanking combat warriors that all come in on the same flank on the same turn can be super tough (and those two units are only about 600ish points for 54 wounds). If you manage to get through one squad, then the other will really hit home. Chances are though, if you don’t have a huge amount of instant killing weapons you wont be able to deal with either of them.

Playing a Mid-Zilla type army can be really fun, as a lot of the more interesting units in the book are in that group. I personally think that the toughness 4 creatures on their own in their current form will be incredibly challenging to play just due to the current meta game. Virtually every army you see on the battlefield today is a parking lot packing weapons designed to kill parking lots, which spells doom for this type of list.

Even though I think there are quite a few major problems with the current form of the Tyranid Codex (which I am sure everyone is sick to death talking about lol) there are a couple of things it does really well. The main thing is the fact that there are now so many ways to play this army to both have fun and still be competitive, which is a HUGE improvement over the last couple of books. If you are willing to really play test out units and not just play the standard internet lists you can make something really different and unique. My main goal with these 4 articles is to get people thinking about those playstyles and how to combine them into something that works for them instead of just taking as many Hive Guard and Tyrannofexs as possible.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this articles as much as I have had writing them and as always, if you have any questions/comments/suggestions please feel free to ask in the comments section.

Part 3: Horde Tactica!

2011-04-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

After playing my last couple of Tournaments and casual games with a completely stripped down Nidzilla or All Reserve army I figured it was time to tackle the most Iconic Nid build of them all…the HORDE! This one has really taken me a while and a complete shift in thinking to finally get the hang of and I think now that I have started playing it I am finding it a pretty fun and refreshing way of doing things (I can’t believe as a Nid player I am actually saying playing a Horde is a refreshing way of doing things lol).

The obvious main focus on this type of list is your little dudes doing a bunch of the work instead of your big guys which will only be there for support. Now, the big question is “How to make all the pieces work together?” I think this style of play, more than any other requires synergy from your army. Both the “All Reserve” and “Nidzilla” type armies are fairly self-contained. A Trygon will kill the crap out of a unit of marines regardless of what else is there while a horde of little guys will need some buffs and help making it across the field to actually do some damage.

First thing I want to do is post a “sample” sort of "for fun" list of what I have been running for my Horde list and then break down what the essentials for making this work as there are a lot of subtle little things that I am sure many will question when they see it. So here it goes!

HQ
Tyranid Prime – Dual Bone Swords, Adrenal Glands

Elites
Venomthropes (2) – (Tyranid Prime goes here)
Hive Guard (3)
Hive Guard (3)

Troops
Termagants (20)
Tervigon – Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, Catalyst, Cluster Spines
Hormagaunts (20) – Toxin Sacs
Genestealers (7+Broodlord) – Toxin Sacs

Fast Attack
Gargoyles (20) – Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs
Harpy – Twin Linked Venom Cannon

Heavy Support
Carnifex – Dual MC Devs
Carnifex – Dual MC Devs

Total Points: 1847

Here is a quick breakdown of the list and how everything works:

Tyranid Prime + Venomthropes: This is the one that I have been thinking about the longest and have done the most testing. The Venomthropes are the single most important unit in the book to make this list work. The fact they give everything a 5+ cover save completely changes the dynamic of the force. The biggest issues involving them and the thing I have put the most thought into is: “How do I make sure this unit isn’t turned to paste turn 1?” Putting the Prime in here greatly increases this unit's survivability. The reason for that is because he can eat all those missile launcher shots that would otherwise kill these guys and you can start doing stuff with wound allocation. The point is to put as many wounds as you can on him. Another awesome thing about this unit is they are actually decent in hand to hand, specifically assassinating characters. The ‘thropes make anything they touch initiative 1 so you can freely get in those str 6 bonesword attacks (on the charge) before pretty much anything goes. Another nice thing is this unit can hold it's own against hordes as well due to the fact that the Venomthropes have toxic miasma (so anything in base to base has to take a toughness test or take a wound) and you also wound most things in the game on a 2+ with a re-roll (2+ poison at str 4).

Their biggest asset though is the massive buff they give your army. Obviously the 5+ cover save on shooting is huge. The other massive benefit is how they change assaults when you get assaulted. Everything that assaults you has to take a Dangerous Terrain roll and your units count as having Defensive Grenades. I played an ork player over the weekend who charged my lowly 11 Termagants (free unit from the Tervigon) with 20 ‘Ard Boyz. He initially had 80 attacks but after you take into account the dangerous terrain roll (he lost 6 guys) and the grenades it brought the attacks down to 42. So just having the Venomthropes there literally cut his damage output in half. When you have a unit of 3 with the Prime you can also spread it over a much larger area effecting as many units as possible (always place the Prime in the middle to help spread their influence). The last amazing thing with this unit is it allows you to play in any Terrain environment. Draw a table at a tourney with little to no terrain? Who cares! Just place your gaunts as a screen and set up your Venomthropes near them and now your entire army gets cover and you don’t have to make difficult terrain rolls!

Hive Guard + Zoanthropes: Obviously these units are just there for anti tank and I included the Zoans for extra synapse as well as the fire support. Since I don’t have Hive Commander I really don’t want to have anything that starts in reserve hence the lack of a pod. The strength of this list is having a massive amount of targets from turn one while everything marches forward and the Zoans are no exception. These guys will eat up A LOT of the first couple turns anti tank because people are terrified of their Lance shots. So if they go 2 rounds taking missile launchers in the face instead of the rest of the army then they have succeeded in their job.

Termagants: These guys are the back bone of this army. You will notice I didn’t just buy the 10 to get the Tervigon in the list (although a min of 20+ is better). The reason for that is you want a decent sized shield up from turn 1 that you can use to give the rest of your army a 4+ cover save. The tactic I really like using is actually casting catalyst on these guys on turn 1. Now you have a unit that is about as resilient as marines giving the rest of your army a cover save. The larger the starting squad size the better. Their other main role is acting as a shield against assaults from other armies. You want those assault termies hitting these guys then countering with all your fast assault troops.

Another thing I really want to try is making a squad of 20 with devourers to go with these guys. I think they would do very well in this list as they can pump out so many shots. Just walk them forward, shoot something into the ground, wait for them to assault you so they have to take dangerous terrain rolls, you get defensive grenades and then you get to roll for counter assault with leadership 10 because of the Tervigon.

Tervigon: Horde list pretty much = Tervigon. With the way I have my army set up I have two main tactics that I enjoy using with these units depending on what is needed.

The first main tactic I employ with this list since I have Venomthropes in my army is to try and draw people into assaulting the Termagants with their assault units. The main reason for this is what I outlined in the Termagant entry and that is my units now have Counter Assault on LD 10, Defensive Grenades and the enemy have to take Dangerous Terrain Rolls. So I basically remove all the benefits of charging for the enemy while applying almost all the benefits of charging for my own unit as well as taking out some guys because of the Dangerous Terrain rolls. The other major bonus is that you have drawn them close to the main bulk of your army which completely primes that squad for a counter charge.

The second main tactic I use is being able to go on the offensive when needed since I have added Adrenal Glands to the Tervigon. Just make sure you run your Tervigon instead of shoot so he stays within 6" of your Termagants when you charge. It makes your Gants Init 5 and str 4 on the charge with Toxin Sacs so you re-roll wounds against T4 and lower which is super handy and greatly increases your damage output. Another really nice thing about having both buffs is after your main unit is in combat the extra squads that the Tervigon creates to help counter assault will also benefit as well. It turns your super cheap screening squad into something that you can use to do a considerable amount of damage.

Hormagaunts: I really enjoy having these guys in my armies. They are my answer to Assault Terminators, Thunder Wolf Calv, etc. Using their really high initiative and with toxin sacs means you can put a huge amount of wounds on whatever it is you charge. I love their speed as well. Rolling 3d6 for difficult terrain and fleet is also great. These guys combined with the Gargoyles are your heavy hitting counter assault units. As far as upgrades go I ALWAYS take Toxin Sacs and if you have left over points then take Adrenal Glands. In my opinion bare Hormagaunts are a complete waste of time. So take them and upgrade them or just leave them at home.

Genestealers: With this list I almost always infiltrate them (again, typically no Hive Commander). I like putting them on an objective outside of my deployment zone to start applying pressure before the game begins or use them as a counter assault unit. My normal set up is taking between 8-10 Stealers with toxin sacs and a Broodlord. They do amazing damage and have great utility with the Broodlord. Another great way to run them is totally naked and at maxed size (so 20). The unit comes in at 280pts and really fits the theme of the army well and can do a stupid amount of damage (60 rending attacks on the charge at Init 6, WS 6 is nothing to sneeze at). Regardless of how you arm/run them they are just a fun unit lol.

Gargoyles: This unit is made for this list. They have amazing speed are super cheap and can screen your larger models like the Carnifex’s and Tervigon or when mixed with Termagants can just flat out block LOS to your Venomthropes. This unit is so good the only reason I am not maxing the unit out is because I only own 20 of them currently lol. The biggest bit of advice I can give is ALWAYS take both upgrades. At only 1 point each there is no reason not to and it just makes them incredible. Another amazing combo with these guys is mixing them with a Hive Tyrant with Old Adversary. If you can paroxysm a unit first you now hit on 3's with a re-roll...then wound on 4's with a re-roll. Also, any "6's" to hit auto wound which means on T4 or lower you put out an incredible amount of wounds.

Harpy: Oh, Harpies. I have such a love-hate relationship with these guys. They are incredibly over priced, I would even go as far to say the most overpriced unit in the book, and are way too fragile for what you pay. That being said I feel they fit this list very well. They provide long range “stun” support (with the Venom Cannon) which in turn helps your army get across the table (I have literally NEVER missed with the main gun in about 7 games). The fact that they have wings so are somewhat fast is great too and helps keep them out of trouble. I also like the two templates plus the spore mines they can put down. Mostly it does a decent job in this list as a support creature. Another nice thing about them is you can use them for multi charges on high initiative units (since anything the harpy charges cuts their init in half) to allow your creatures time to get their attacks in first.

Carnifex: I have been using these guys more and more lately and have been having huge success with them. There are a couple of reasons why I am taking them in this list over Trygons and Mawlocs. First off they are small and can reliably get a 4+ cover save (but get the standard 5+ of the Venomthropes regardless). Secondly, it give this army some decent mid-range fire support which I find really helps. In this type of list I always arm mine with Dual MC Devourers. It makes them good (no great) at everything and they are a constant threat. You can take out light to medium tanks at range and you still have 4 base attacks to deal with things in CC not to mention being Str 9. These guys have been the stars of my list the last bunch of games I have taken them in. They have done everything from mashing Mega Nobz into a fine paste in CC to gunning down units of Space Marines at range.

Units that work that aren’t in my list:

- Parasite of Mortex: Oddly, this guy fits in very well. You put him with the Gargoyles so he kind of functions like a Broodlord. He also will start pumping out bases of Rippers when you get in CC which will help add to the “Horde”. Another nice thing is he gives you that forward Synapse to help keep everything moving.

- Hive Tyrant: Certain builds of Hive Tyrants are 100% made for this list. A Hive Tyrant with something like a Venom Cannon or 1-2 sets of MC Devourers and Old Adversary with some guard make all those little critters just incredible. These guys just improve everyone around them as well as giving some fire support for the rest of the army. Only reason it isn't in the above list is just because I was going for something a bit off the wall.

- Biovores: These guys can add some serious fire support to help soften up enemy hordes. With that said in all honesty these would be one of the last things I take just because your hordes have such large damage potential.

- Trygons: Like all Tyranid lists Trygons are always a welcome addition. Used pretty much the exact same as in the Nidzilla list. Your big heavy hitter.

- Tyrannofex: Again, like in the Nidzilla list just included for extra fire support/suppression of tanks. One nice thing in this list is you can get him that 5+ cover save from the Venomthrope and you can guard him with all your little bugs.

Tactics:

The main thing with this army is how you initially set everything up. I typically set everything up around the Venomthrope unit to maximize my cover saves. I set up the Tervigon behind the Termagants and try to shield the entire army with my Termgants (ie to give everything a “cover save”). Similar to my Nidzilla list I tend to “bookend” my army with the two Carnifex’s to help protect me from deep striking dreads and other edge threats. I will almost always set the army outside of cover with the exception of the Tervigon (or other MCs) just to make sure he doesn’t get shot at so I can max out my movement.

After the main set up it’s all about marching the army across the board, trying to pop transports along the way as well as suppress battle tanks with the Harpy. The key point is to use the Tervigon to try and keep that shield of Termagants going. This is incredibly important for 2 reasons. 1) Gives you the 4+ cover save for your army, and more importantly 2) Protects you from nasty assaults and gives you the counter assault (which is where this army wins). The biggest thing to keep in mind is to make sure you are MORE than 12” away from Transports (specifically Land Raiders and Stormravens) otherwise they will drive through your Termagant wall, forcing them to move out of the way with tank shock and then deliver those assault troops right into the heart of your army.

The main focus is getting units out of their transports, absorbing them into the “Termagant” wall then counter assaulting/shooting them with units like the Gargoyles, Hormagaunts and Stealers. It is such a simple technique but it is amazing how effective it can be, especially against angry armies like Blood Angels and Orks. One last nice thing about how this army is set up is how balanced it is. Unlike ultra “focused” armies like Nidzilla and the Reserve Bomb this list really doesn’t have a specific weakness and there is definitely something to be said for that.

This is pretty much the most straight forward way you can play Tyranids. It is all about setting up your units in ways where they can support each other in kind of a “web of synergy”. While it is by far the least sneaky way of playing Tyranids something about it just feels “right”. I gotta say I love setting up this army seeing a bunch of big squads of bugs, with some middle sized bugs and a couple of large bugs supporting them. Just looks awesome on the field and is just incredibly fun to play. As always please ask any questions or post any comments in the comments section and I will be more then happy to answer them. Happy Hunting!

Great Devourer Comes to March Madness!

2011-03-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I was able to attend a tournament for the first time this year. It was a smaller tourney (only 16 players) that had a bunch of my friends going, so it promised to be a good time (and it didn’t disappoint). The day was split up into 3 games, with missions from the main rule book all with “secondary” and “tertiary” missions that add up to a lot of points (10pts for the main objective, 7pts for secondary and 4 for the tertiary). To also spice it up even more there were “Secret” objectives that were also worth 4pts so a possible 25pts total per game (although it was almost impossible to get it all, which was good). One really interesting thing though is that Marines only made up HALF of the players! There were 2 Demons, 2 Eldar, 2 Orks a Tau player and a Tyranid player (aka me!). **Disclaimer! My Phone died right before the first game so all I had was my iPhone so I applogize in advance for the horrible pics :( *

Here is the list I took:

The Tyranid Army:

HQ
The Swarmlord + 2 Tyrant Guard

Elites
Zoanthropes (3) – Mycetic Spore
Hive Guard (2)
Ymgarls (10)

Troops
Termagants (15)
Tervigon – Catalyst, Toxin Sacs, Cluster Spines

Heavy Support
Carnifex Brood (2) – Dual MC Devourers
Trygon – Adrenal Glands

1800pts on the dot

I had two goals for this tournament, even above that of winning any games or prizes. 1) Fire a full salvo with the Carnifex’s every game and 2) Get into a meaningful combat with the Swarmlord just once!

Game 1: GRUDGE MATCH! Tyranids vs. Space Marines! - Objectives

The first game everyone was able to issue a challenge to someone else in the tourney. I issued the challenge to my friend Scott West and his super tough Space Marine army (he went 6-0 at the last major event here in Calgary). The mission was 5 objectives, with kill points being secondary. My secret mission was “Kill all Fast Attack” and Scott had none so I automatically picked that one up (ah thank you!). Here is Scott’s list:

HQ :
Master of the Forge

Elites :
Assault Termies (5) – Thunder Hammer/Storm Shields, Land Raider Redeemer
2 x Iron Clad Dreads in pods

Troops
Tact Squad (10) – Plasma Cannon, Melta Gun, Sarge with Power Fist (I think)
Tact Squad (10) – Plasma Cannon, Melta Gun, Sarge w/ Power Fist – Drop Pod

Heavy Support
3 x Dakka Dread (due to master of the forge)

Hi Points:

- Trygon charged the first Ironclad and got SEVEN penetrating hits, blowing it smithereens then charged the Land Raider, got 1 hit (due to needing “6’s” to hit), penetrated and rolled a “6” for damage, blowing it to bits (then got shot to crap lol)
- Dakka Fexes gunned down a 10 man tact squad then blew up a dread in CC
- Zoans wiped out a 10 man Tact Squad that was out in the open in one turn with warp blast (got all 3 hits with the blast templates)

Low Points:
- Only one I can think of is my Ymgarls rolling like crap to get out of difficult terrain to make a charge on the Terminators

Final result: Victory for the Tyranids. I achieved almost all my objectives. Scored the main (objectives), secondary (Kill Points) and my secret. Scott was an awesome guy to play against and until my Fexes hit is main battle line holding the objective it could have been really close. Also, he was just WAY too timid with his assault Termies, which I think ended up costing him the game (maybe just too timid in general).

Game 2: Tyranids vs. Space Marines! – Kill Points

This game was against my friend Kevin Kent. We have met many a time in battle during tournaments and he always gives a tough game and this was no different. The mission was Kill points with the secondary being two objectives with the deployment of Spear head. The terrain was somewhat sparse on this table and he had the second shootiest list in the tourney. I reserved my Carnifexs and Trygon as they would be just shot to crap and I was hoping to get him to focus on killing the Swarmlord, who I was going to present as a major threat to him (ie running him down the middle). There was a piece of terrain in the middle which I chose to have my Ymgarls charge out of. My Secret Objective was making sure my Tervigon didn’t die…which he didn’t. Kevin’s List:

HQ
Master of the Forge – Conversion Beamer, 2 Gun Servitors w/ Plasma Cannons

Elites
3 x Dakka Dreads (dual Twin Linked AC)

Troops
Tact Squad (5) – Razorback, twin Las
Tact Squad (5) – Razorback, twin Las
Tact Squad (5) – Razorback, twin assault cannon

Fast Attack:
Land Speeder Tornado – Multi Melta, Heavy Flamer
Land Speeder Typhoon – Multi Melta
Attack Bikes (3) – Multi Meltas

Heavy Support
2 x Devastators (5) – 4 x Missile Launchers
Thunder Fire Cannon

High Points:

- My Swarmlord was a complete beast. He literally took almost 5 full rounds of shooting from most of the army. It was madness. He also earned me 3 kill points in the process.
- Trygon popped up, gunned down 2 remaining devastators from one squad, charged in and killed the master of the forge and the thunder fire cannon, awesome stuff.
- My lowly Termagants managed to immobilize the one razorback with their Fleshborers RIGHT before the Swarmlord charged making it so all his attacks auto hit then surrounded the tank to force an emergency embarkment which meant the unit inside was auto-pinned.
- My Carnifex unit were stars again in this game. They killed a unit of marines on the objective after blowing up their transport with their Devourers. Good stuff.

Low Points:

- I 100% botched my Ymgarls. I had a choice between the attack bikes in the open or his devastator gun line in cover. I chose the gun line since they were doing so much damage and completely screwed the difficult terrain roll. This one thing alone cost me the win in this game
- My rolling was starting to slip. He shot his last unit that could shoot at my Trygon (which was a Dakka Dread) and wounded the Trygon 3 times and I failed all 3 armor saves on a 3+ which ended up tying the game.
- Those attack bikes went on to kill my zoanthropes and contest one of the objectives (so in essence they cost me 11 points)

Final Result: Tie. Despite the complete pounding I took to the mountain of firepower Kevin had I still managed to do just enough damage to pull out the tie. I focused on the transports and the small marine squads as they were an easy 6 KP. This was one of the most fun games I have had in a tourney and Kevin is just an awesome guy to play against.

Game 3: Tyranids vs. Eldar – Capture and Control

Ah, my old nemisis…Jason Hall and the Eldar. The mission was Capture and Control (aka Hurry up and “Tie”) with Dawn of War as the deployment. The tertiary objective was “Hold Everything In Reserve” so I figured “Why not, the Swarmlord gives me +1 to my reserve rolls”. OH MAN! Was THAT a mistake haha. I was anxious to see if the “Eldar Curse” was still alive (ie. Every game I have against Eldar they roll amazing and I roll so poorly). Good to see it was! I had just the most horrendous rolling I have ever had in my life this game. I am not kidding or trying to hide behind this an excuse. I mean it was to the point of being comical how bad it was. The Secret Objective was to NOT kill Jason’s Falcon. Jokes on you Eldar! I COULDN’T KILL ANYTHING! Lol. Before I go into more detail here is Jason’s list (easily my fav elder list I have seen):

HQ
Yriel
Eldrad
Warlocks (8) – 3 Spears, 4 Destructors, 1 Enhance, 1 Embolden – Wave Serpent – Scatter lasers, Spirit Stones

Elites
Fire Dragons (5)

Troops
Dire Avengers (10) – Bladestorm, Dual Kats – Wave Serpent – Bright lance, Spirit Stones
2 x Guardian Jetbikes (3) – Shuriken Cannons

Heavy Support
Falcon – Holo Fields, Spirit Stones, Eldar missile launcher
2 x War Walker Squadron (3) – Dual Scatter Lasers (so 48 str 6 shots a turn lol)

High Points:

- I didn’t get tabled. You might laugh reading this but I am serious. I am SO LUCKY there wasn’t a turn 7 because at that point all I had left was a unit of 10 Termagants on the objective and a single Hive Guard.
- My Carnifex’s saved the game again. I managed to get one halfway up the field and I gunned down his one jetbike squad (only did one unsaved wound on 12 twin linked str 6 shots lol). The Jetbikes that were holding his objective broke right off the table (rolled an 11 for his leadership test and then 15 or something for their fall back)

Low Points:
- Oh man, how can I even put this into words? Well, let me try!
- I managed to get only half of my army onto the board from reserves when rolling on a 3+. The stuff that DID come in I really didn’t want in (ie Ymgarls and the Zoans since I went first and nothing was on the board at this point)
- His first round of shooting had one unit of War Walkers do 9 wounds to Ymgarls in cover (4+) which I failed 7 of the 9 armor saves. Then I took one more wound from the jet bikes and failed that too (so 8 failed on 10 rolls).
- Zoans got turned into mulch from the Dire Avengers Bladestorming
- Turn 3 I had to make 4 reserve rolls on a 2+ and failed 3 of them. The only thing that came in was my Termagants. My Trygon, Carnifexs AND Hive Guard all failed the roll.
- No less than 5 times during the game I was required to make 4 x 3+ armor saves and failed ALL of them. Literally every time the war walkers opened up I lost a Monstrous Creature.
- I had to make 3 cover saves on 3 termagants who went to ground…and rolled 3 x 1’s

Final Result: Tie. HOW I managed to tie I will never know. The only thing I COULD do this game was just focus on the objective and hope that I get the small amount of luck needed to kill his troops. I think Jason was too focused on all the secondary objectives (including the secret) that he lost sight of the overall objective. Despite having the worst rolling game of my 40k career I still had fun. I knew what kind of game I was in for after the first round of shooting so I had nothing else I could do but laugh. We joked around a lot as he just murdered the shit out of me.

Final Tournament Result: First Overall. To say I was surprised that I won first overall is an understatement. I was already starting to head over to get my gear when the Tournament Organizer read out my name for first place. I think the only way I would have been more surprised is if I woke up the next morning with my head sewn to the carpet lol. One thing of note that I found out later is my games were against the top 4 players ONLY. I played the 2nd Place finisher (Kevin Kent), 3rd Place (Jason Hall) and 4th Place (Scott West). So it was a VERY tough and brutal path to top place lol.

Final Thoughts:

The Tournament: Overall it was a pretty fun day. I really lucked out by the fact that I only had to play friends and they were all awesome to play against (was genuinely difficult to figure out a best sport). It was the tournament organizer’s first time running an event and it did show. Things took quite a while to get going and all the score cards weren’t clear as to what things were out of etc. Despite those couple of hick ups the day went very well, all games ended before time and the prize support was huge for the size of event. Another really sweet thing was the Terrain was great. All the sections with trees actually blocked line of sight and there was great coverage on all the tables.

The Nid List: After 8 tournaments with this army, 5 Best Overalls and 3 Best Painted, I have to say it is time to retire these guys for the for-seeable future. The number 1 thing I found is that I NEED a change in play style. As far as the list goes I don’t think I would take the Swarmlord again. He literally did NOTHING that a normal Tyrant couldn’t do for 100pts less. Heck, a Tyrant with Armored Shell would have been infinitely better for this tourney as volume of fire killed him 2 out of the 3 games. I won’t be doing any tournaments until my Dark Eldar are ready so that might not be till the later half of this year as the wife is due in July.

As Far as my two goals went I did manage to fire the Carnifex’s every game and they did something awesome every game. The surprising thing is that they were consistently the best unit in the army, despite what math-hammer and the internet says. That being said 2 more Trygons would have been much more powerful. As for the Swarmlord he got into combat with an Ironclad dred and 2 x 5 Man Marine squads..that’s it. Sigh lol. BENCHED!