Digital Weapons Game 1 - on video

Courtesy of Spaceman/The False Emperor Youtube channel, you now have the chance to view game 1 as seen here on video! It's all in russian but nonetheless. In other words, I guess I can now say I'm internet famous...

Why I'm retiring my guard army

Warning: long wall of text with no pictures

Prologue:

The context of this comes after getting my worst tournament result ever with my supposedly best tournament guard army yet. So what went wrong?

The Problem

It's the same problem every time. Models and the fact that I don't own the right ones. I'm handicapping myself because when I need to play full wysiwyg and full paint I'm effectively forced to make choices I would not otherwise. 

All the extra powerswords, plasma pistols, etc add up. And added to this I don't have all the best models. Looking at the judge's list who had to step in to play ringer at the last second, he managed to squeeze in 6 vendettas, 6 chimeras and also 2-3 pieces of artillery, as well as the full array of plasma and melts vets to fill those up.

Why can't I do the same? Well I only have 2 vendettas... And 2 chimeras. I'm not planning to buy any new tanks because I already have spent my money on 3 russes... I'm not going to suddenly buy 4 vendettas or 4 chimeras in one go... I mean it's not like I'm meant to be starting a whole new army here. And while I could take the same number of veterans, it's kind of pointless if they don have anything to transport them.

The death of the blob

Perhaps power weapon blobs are not, but since I don't run them this isn't about them in particular. Guardsmen have a dilemma. Heavy weapons are good, but easily killed. Stick them in a squad of 10 expendable bodies and you've got the protection but are paying at least 60 points for just 1 useful shot. This is too expensive. 

Also when you blob up there is another problem. I opposed this idea for a long time but now I see its merit. In order to maximise the utility of these one gun squads you combine them to gain the benefit of orders for all of them in one go. The problem is that a mephiston, daemon prince or anything else that can kill 5+ guardsmen in combat comes along and then you're leadership 5 or less, get caught and have just lost 20-40 men in one assault phase. Commissars do not really help actually as canny opponents can kill off a sergeant or two before assault so then the commissar helps to delay the combat for one turn, then is killed in a challenge and the enemy is free again in their own turn.

The good news

Well there is a new guard codex rumoured to be on the horizon and because I've been motivated to paint my guard I'll have a whole army of already painted models to use when the new book hits. Perhaps if I'm still into 40k by then I may be tempted to pick up some new models.

For now it's back to tau and space marines, as well as starting my dark eldar.

Headquarters : Free online army builder

Just thought I'd share this as I realised I haven't yet. While the site that's developed it is fully in Russian, the actual army builder is 100% in english. It's great, quick and even has a few options for printing/sending your lists. It does have the occasional glitch or mistake but other than that it's great! It's also recently had a massive overhaul and has all the latest army rules including the new tau.

Link

New daemon codex

Gw have hit a new low... No wonder the daemon codex digital version takes up so much space - at the end of it there's a whole catalogue section with advertising for everything... It also advertises the psyker app throughout the book every single time psychic powers are mentioned...

In other news, screamers are still good, flamers are bad and everything is a psyker. ( all according to Paul) Fateweaver has also become pretty awesome with level 4 mastery and knowing 8 powers altogether (1 one from all the disciplines, except telekinesis, and knows all of the change discipline)

eBay tau

Finished my mocks and this has arrived in perfect time. Stripping one tetra, but both have a small bit missing and bases but were cheap. The 3 battlesuits I managed to net for the price of 1 new one and are in great condition, even the undercoat isn't too thick.

Also been thinking about lists for an 1500, 1000 and even 2000 pt tournaments which are comi up when I go to Russia end of march beginning of April, might post them later.

That's all for now.

Winning combinations in 6th - Part 1: stand and shoot

This is the first part of probably about three where in an attempt to get some content on the blog I am going to talk about what I've learnt.

With the introduction of fortifications, going all out shooting in your army can be pretty lethal, but why?

First of all you have the chance to take a defence line, making all of your units more durable. You have probably the most advantageous piece of terrain in your deployment zone - so why bother moving?

Then there's the fact that your opponent, unless they are an equally shoots army, has to move across the board to get to you, getting blasted to smithereens by your long range firepower along the way. If used to good effect, a "shooty" army may basically have 2-3 more turns of action than an assault one. Quite compelling evidence that shooting is king in 6th.

2012 - Year in Review and Looking ahead

A bit late for this, but another year has come and gone and while there's been a decrease in the number of blog posts, in my opinion the posts were more substantial. I almost managed getting a post a week, so for this year I'm aiming for about 54 blog posts.

Unfortunately it's my GCSE year so blogging time will be hard to get, not to mention hobby time, so having set the above aim, realistically I'm probably not going to have much content on here till march/april and then after that till the summer. If I do post, it may have to become filler content, but I'll try to keep things interesting. With the help of some of the people who are meant to be my co-authors... this year could become more productive for the blog as a whole.

Having said that I'm still going to set myself the following goals:

- Attend at least 3 tournaments this year (got a head start cos I've already been to one!)
- Build 1500 pts of Dark Eldar - hopefully this will be a nicely converted army. I've essentially now had 2 or 2 1/2 armies to practice so I want this to be up to a good standard. I've also persuaded myself that this will probably be my last army that I'm going to buy, despite the temptation of all the other good things out there now
- Paint 1000 points of Dark Eldar, this may be quite hard but then I might have time later this year
- Paint some of the terrain which still hasn't been painted
- Finish the game board with flock and skulls/any missed details - shouldn't be too hard
- Work on my SM/Tau army
- Learn how to play doubles better/attend a doubles tournament

Now, let's take a look at the goals from last year and how I did (I actually haven't looked at them for the whole year until now lol):

The Viability of MSU in 6th ed

First things first, all around the internet people have claimed that MSU is now dead, I however, don't think this is necessarily the case.

The aim of the game - basic concept

5 out of 6 of the missions in the rulebook are objective based. There are two ways to handle this when making a list. Either take lots of units (not necessarily small) or take a few durable units AND have sufficient hitting power to knock out enemy scorers. This is where it gets problematic, as most codexes do not allow you to have the ability to have both a lot of units and durable units.

There comes the issue that when you kit out your army with many units, they are often FORCED to be small due to points restrictions, needing other stuff in your list, etc... Meanwhile durable/strong units are often priced accordingly and so you can only take a few.

Where MSU comes in

If you've managed to crack a list which has multiple scoring units, that's durable and works for you then congratulations, for the rest of us, this is where MSU is still viable. Some people would say that in 6th edition you definitely need at least 6 troops from 1500 pts up, (and preferably more as the points increase). I'll be more conservative and say that for 1500 you definitely need 4.

When you take less than this, as soon as one unit is gone - you're effectively screwed. Also it should be taken into account that objectives can be contested/denied, so basically:

the more troops you take = the more objective-grabbing chances you get = the more likely you are to actually hold onto those objectives.

I have seen quite a few players simply take 2 larger squads of troops and then kit out their army into wall of death. The problem with this is that I don't even need to kill the whole squad. Just shoot off 25% and they're gone. This is where fearless troops come into good use, however, it is still just 2 squads. Since they're large squads, you're probably spending quite a few points on them and all you have are 2 chances to capture. In a 5 objective game, I can just let you take your 2 and then easily hold onto 3 of my own, or even just get one and contest your 2.

Dark Eldar First List and Initial Thoughts

Dark Eldar are an army that I've had my eye on for some time now, but the story of how I manage to buy a full force starts not that long ago, when I was starting to realise that my guard aren't really working in terms of playstyle for me, that my Space Marines had taken a back-burner and that my small collection of Tau would probably not be ressurected even if the promised codex did come out which we've been waiting for due to rumours for almost 2 years now...

So, essentially, when GW came out with the megaforces, I was quite intrigued as I'd had some interest in necrons but looking at people's opinions of the contents I wasn't too impressed, however, I was potentially going to buy the megaforce and start necrons. But then I had a little ponder, and realised that GW had realeased megaforces before, and since I wouldn't be able to make an army that I necessarily liked from the necron box, maybe I should just take a look at other armies. And voila, here you go, a dark eldar megaforce pops up on my google search. I look at the contents and like what I see. I compare it with the other potential competitor to be my new army - i.e. tyranids - and the decision ways down strongly with the dark kin, who not only have a megaforce to kickstart me, but also I won't have to paint as many figures, and I get to play a super-fast shooty but also possibly assaulty force.

By the way I had also looked at daemons, as they would offer a completely new way to play compared to my other more or less point-and-shoot style armies, being fully assault, but then I thought that since it's the new best thing, it will soon be replaced by another new best thing and won't appeal to me as much in the long-term.

So with that I've now got a dark eldar megaforce and lots of stuff off ebay (10 kabalite warriors, 15 hellions, succubus, bits to make trueborn, 5 venoms and a razorwing). I proceeded to think about lists and do research on colour schemes. After some initial lists using what I have, I then asked for a second opinion on Imperius Dominatus and the new edited army will be as follows (for 1500 with lots to use to scale up):

Baron Santhonyx
Haemonculus

5 wyches with haywire in Venom with splinter cannon

5 wyches with haywire in Venom with splinter cannon

5 wyches with haywire in Venom with splinter cannon

10 kabalite warriors with blaster and splinter cannon in Raider (probably with disintegrator cannon)

12 hellions

6 Reavers with 2 heat lances and cluster caltrops

Ravager with Flickerfield and Night shield

Ravager with Flickerfield and Night shield

Void Raven Bomber (I'll start by probably using a razorwing but I've been informed that this is better)

In terms of colourschemes I'd like to emulate the classic dark eldar scheme (as seen on the box) but failing that (which is quite probable) perhaps just a similar-style one with a greenish/bluish tint and red accents but we'll see after some tests. (although I also like the idea of a purpley army) Basing will be urban/snow so that I can a) make and b) use the same display board for both my guard and DE. 

On a related note, my holidays have now officially started so I hope to at least get some of these built over the next few weeks, although I'll probably initially be making my Tau/Ultramarine combo as that needs less stuff to be finished, so if there are any upcoming tournaments I'll be able to go with something I like, rather than my now about-to-be retired guard - at least until I figure out what I'm doing with them. Plus if I do the cloaked veterans I'll need a lot of time for the conversion work, as I would like to do them properly, rather than just cobble together a rushed effort.

Space Marines with Tau allies list

Ok so time to put away the guard (at least until I decide what I'm going to change... although there are a few cheeky daemon allies ideas going round the interwebz, and while I'm tempted I really shouldn't be buying new models since I've just acquired a large load of dark eldar - army list later) and dust off the space marines and more specifically my tau.

The tau are going to need a repaint and some weapon changes but at least I have all of this except for 1 single broadside which I can always buy.

So the original idea I was having for SM in 6th was to continue with my sternguard flying around the field accompanied by a gated librarian, but after a few lists that I didn't really like I tried to experiment with bikes and then realised that they cost loads of points. I then attempted to make a hybrid bike and tac marine list to be similar to the one I faced in Offence 6th, and it didn't really look so threatening.

After my last tournament I finally know what I'm doing or at least I hope so...

Librarian (null zone and another power which I'm not decided on yet but suggestions are welcome)

Assault terminators with thunderhammers and stormshields

Tactical Squad with Multi-melta, meltagun, combi-melta, powerfist, rhino
Tactical Squad with missile launcher (might switch for a plasmacannon) and plasmagun, rhino

Stormtalon with typhoon missile launcher and assault cannon

Stormtalon with typhoon missile launcher and assault cannon

Thunderfire cannon

Allies:

Shas'o with cyclic ion blaster (will switch to twin/single missile pod if cheaper but don't have codex on me), plasma rifle, and shield thing that gives him an invuln (plan to probs change)

3 crisis suits with plasma rifle, missile pod and target lock (thing that lets them shoot both, one might get multi-tracker or whatever lets it shoot a different unit)

6 firewarriors (honestly as many as fit, if points allow in the end would take 2 squads)

3 Broadsides

Fortification: Aegis Defence line

This list is in the region of 1750 pts, but I haven't really managed to include everything I want but it's the best one I've managed to make so far in my opinion. While I would love to add a land raider, a quad gun, some pathfinders and a few autocannon dreads - I can save that for higher points values.

Now to explain everything...

1750 Orks vs Chaos Space Marines Proxy Madness

Mission: Emperor's will, Deployment: Diagonal 

Paul can't be bothered to do this batrep so from now on it'll be from me as far as I remember (Dimitry): 

Coach-wars continue as not all the orks fit onto the table so the reserve pile mounts up.

Ilya's list is several 30 man squads of orks each with a power klaw nob and three rokkit launchers. The terminators are nobs I think.

On Paul's side there's:

Typhus

2x Hellbrute with multi-melta and powerfist

2x 5 man plague marine squad with 2x meltagun
2x 5 man plague marine squad with 2x plasmagun
Plague Zombies x16 (proxied as guardsmen)

2x Maulerfiend (flying stands)
Defiler (drop pod)

n.b. for this battle each paint counted as an ork.

Paul's recently renovated dreadnought strides into battle (as a hellbrute)

Imperial Guard in 6th list change ideas

As you probably know if you read this blog, my IG haven't been doing very well despite some very interesting, close-fought games, resulting in a in a 6th ed w/d/l record of 1/3/5 so far, which quite frankly isn't very good. Especially if you compare it to my 5th ed record of 7/2/4.

My win/loss now therefore is 0.2 compared to the 1.75 in 5th, so I've been thinking about how to change this. As you may or may not know I follow Ailaros and he's been thinking about using conscripts in 6th and how they work. While I had considered this idea when first making my army in 5th ed, I can't really bring myself to make models that are basically recyclable cannon fodder. I do have 30 spare guardsmen lying around not yet assembled, but I think I'd much rather build veterans rather than conscripts. Not only are they more useful, but the conversion possibilities are lot better. My third option is something I've been thinking about for a while and that is adding a small outflanking blob with either meltaguns or flamers.

A few pre-Offence 6th ed wips

Here's a few painting wips from before the tournament. As I said before I had actually finished my painting my whole 1500 guard force but I don't have pics of that. Here's some other progress though...

I found these in my Independent Stockist in Russia, they were Resin and I thought that althought they were a bit piratey, if I added to them they could be more grimdark.

I had tidy up some air bubbles with liquid greenstuff. Some of the crates were worsethan others...

GW Psychic Powers App Launched

Just some quick news... it seems gw are really starting to take digital products seriously, coming out with an app that is just limited to ipad and is actually useful! The perks include:

- having all the psychic powers from all the races to choose from
- Being able to randomly generate psychic powers from the rulebook
- Having the mastery levels of all the psykers in the game
- Keeping track of psykers and which powers they have
- And even being able to take a photo of your psyker and use that to remind you which psyker has which powers

After seeing all this I was extremely excited, as are you probably, so I decided to have a look at the price. And then my jaw dropped... £7.99 for this !?!?!? Seriously WTF GW?

So maybe it's not such a great thing after all, and added to the price is that apparently (according to a reviewer) they don't have any/some of the codex powers... which is a big minus. Perhaps I won't be getting this one after all...

GW and Pricing - Rant about Dark Vengeance

One thing that's caught while browsing the vast interwebs is people complaining about GW "breaking the $100 price barrier" for a starter set with the about to be released dark vengeance... Really? You're already spending a lot more money on non-starter set models (which are a lot better in terms of quality, poseability, detail, etc) and probably have no interest in the actual starter set and yet you're complaining? Come on - this is an EXPENSIVE hobby after all. The worst thing is that all the people complain and then go and buy the product nevertheless... How is this showing GW that they are wrong to be pricing so high? The only thing ranting on the internet does is annoy people who have to read through loads of blog posts which are full of complaints. I highly doubt that ANYONE in GW even looks at any of the online community or there would have been loads of 'purged' posts which infringe on their copyright.

I haven't even started to mention that it's an 100 DOLLAR barrier... so for english people they have broken what - the £50 barrier??!? Really? What about other countries? The statement obviously doesn't apply, although I do not deny it is high price compared to what it was before, yet can we really put a value to the increase in quality of the miniatures in the box? Couldn't gw be claiming some increase for the newer, better rules that come in the box too? (which could have also been why the full rulebook costs more aswell).

Psychic powers: initial thoughts on divination

Please note: This post was written a while ago (i.e. almost a month ago) before any games of 6th had been played - still while my general opinion may have changed, I still think that telepathy is the best psychic lore, for reasons I may later disclose, although on 3++ they have already done a pretty good review of all the lores now

This may actually end up as a bit of a rant, but you have been warned. What I really don't get is why people all over the Internet say that divination is the best psychic discipline. Ok so your primaris power lets ONE unit re-roll it's to hit rolls... yeah great, because I mean thats so worthwhile to take a psyker such as a space marine librarian for over 100 points just to do that?! Really?

Then we have the powers which are generated randomly. Let's take a look:

Foreboding: while giving you full BS on overwatch is nice, it's very situational and to be honest if thats what you're using psykers for, you're probably wasting your points

Forewarning: this is actually not bad, however in some situations and armies it can be a bit pointless (I.e. where all/most of the army already has the same/better invulnerable save or vehicle heavy armie)- still, this is possibly the best power here

Misfortune: re-rolling successful saves, well that's cool unless you're Eldar and already have pretty much the same power and even if you're not it's rather underwhelming if that's the only effect you're psyker has on the game

Perfect timing: the psyker and unit ignore cover, hmm interesting - great if you're planning to have your  psyker standing near a bunch of plasma guns, not so great if its a ton of lasguns...

6th ed. SM digital codex review part 2

Ok, so now for one of two posts which should have been posted ages ago...

I've been reading through my Space Marine codex and thought that I'd discuss some more of the things that I've noticed. First of all, as I said before old mistakes have been corrected, which is great, but there are still plenty of typos (well yeah, not plenty but still quite a few), ok maybe it's nothing major but for such an expensive product which is mostly made up of lifting text from other sources this in my opinion is simply not good enough.

However it's not all negative. There is a significant amount of new artwork in COLOUR and also some older images which used to be black and white have also been given to us in colour. Examples of this are the tech,arise entry and the stormtalon.

We are also given some new space marine colour schemes and given some more information about existing chapters (its not a lot but at least its something that gives them a little character), which is nice especially if GW continue to add to these, one or two examples below.

IG army display

Back to posting again (had a few problems with blogger + a lack of time to type), and here is my whole 1750 pts IG army which is very nearly finished. Will be posting some painting progress, batreps and more as I experiment with them in 6e. Pics have been taken with my 'good' camera so feel free to open them in new tabs and zoom in and such.

Terrain: Fence done and Gameboard WIP

Thanks to Aurelius legion for inspiring me to actually make and paint this piece of terrain which had been lying around somewhere in the cupboard for a few years now. As you may I know I dusted off this kit from my independent stockist which consisted of a base, mesh and the plastic pole things, assembled it and spiced it up a little.

Now it is (well they are, there are two) painted and ready for use.

My Gameboard (pic after the jump)is has also progressed very far with 4 board sections basically finished (I just need to paint the skulls, granted there are loads of them) and 2 primed and ready to get painted and flocked when I get back.

IG painting progress

I know it's been rather quiet around here but I have been busy. Was going to go to a "goodbye-to-5th"  doubles tournament with Paul but it got cancelled last minute... However because of this incentive I finished one of the veteran squads, built one and finished building another chimera and painted both.

Also I got bases for the space hulk termies and built some terrain. The terrain was just some old stuff that I got from my independent stockist a long long time ago but I spiced it up a little. Oh and Paul tried to strip some models, he might let you know how that went later - not well I gather.