Daemons Update

Hi guys, Paul speaking. Long time no see yo. Basically the latest thing I've been up to is getting these Vargeists to use as Daemon prince stand ins upon my brother's suggestion. I actually really like them, they're way more awesome and detailed than the normal dps.

Also I finally got a chance to play the flying circus at a recent tournament with be'lakor, fate and 2 dps alongside a bunch of plagues making up my 1500 points. Was a lot of fun but unfortunately I got a dickhead of an opponent in game 1 who attempted to claim that buildings in 40k can't be more than 3 storeys high and in the last game there was a crap table house rule that meant that psychic tests peril on any doubles which meant that all my dps effectively committed suicide.

I probably should really start posting on here more often or I'll get in all sorts of trouble...

I'm going to eat you, you foul creature

Ait boss

Also here's a video of game 2 from the tournament I mentioned.

Digital weapons v1 game 3

Game 3 - vs Necrons:

(Apparently this is a copy and paste of his list)

HQ - Imotekh the Stormlord(Royal Court: - Cryptek + chronometron (40 pts) - Cryptek + voltaic staff (25 pts) - Cryptek + abyssal staff + veil of darkness (60 its)) [350pt] 
HQ - Overlord(warscythe, sempiternal weave, resurrection orb, mindshackle scarabs, phase shifter) [205pt] 
Troops - Immortals x7(gauss blasters) [119pt] 
Troops - Warriors x 6(Night Scythe (Dedicated Transport)) [178pt] 
Troops - Warriors x5(Night Scythe (dedicated transport)) [165pt] 
Heavy support - Annihilation Barge(tesla cannon) [90pt] 
Heavy support - Annihilation Barge(tesla cannon) [90pt] 
Heavy support - Annihilation Barge(tesla cannon) [90pt] 
Fast attack - Canoptek Wraiths x6() [210pt] 

Mission is 6 objectives, fast attack scores, but doesn't give up points. Each player places a 3, 2 and 1 - pointer, the values of which are revealed upon a unit coming within 3" of them. Deployment is vanguard strike. I'm not sure who gets to pick sides, may have been me. I try to keep my objectives close together around the landing pad. He wins the roll-off for first turn and takes it, claiming that he's already been nearly wiped by one tau player in round 1 and that this will be a quick game... I'm not so sure. He redeploys his barges several times, finally settling on placing them as far forward as possible. His massive immortal squad with all the lords and crypteks is behind the main ruin in his dz.

1850 - Marines + Tau

Just been thinking of a list something along these lines... not sure what chapter tactics to use though, and perhaps it might be better to swap tau to primary... but then we'd be looking at a very different list so...

Nicely formatted version of the list can be found here.

2000 points doubles list + army painting update

Updated painting on lots of my marines. Close-ups following the tournament. Format will be single foc, one player counts as the allied detachment. Interesting to see how much my painting has improved over the last 5-6 years (these bikers were some of my first models). Also tried a bit of quite unsuccessful freehand on my second rhino and got it painted up.

For those interested, the list can be found here: http://hq-builder.com/shared/526586bd028dbb14c131cbb6

Doubles tournament: torks

Another tournament has come and gone. This report is going to be a very short one, because basically all that there is to be learnt is that I have a very hard time squaring up to Daemons. I was in a team with Ilya and this is the list we settled on after a lot of discussion and beating Paul's daemons in a 2500 point practice match. Paul was also present, playing solo and he placed 7th out of 14.

Torks:

This tournament used the allies template so one player was the captain with the warlord and the other the ally. All rules of allies applied.

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.

Guardsmen PIP

Just a quick update to how where I've got to. Not sure about marbo's missile, but I want it to stand out without being too bright or introducing too many new colours... So in sort of semi happy with it so far. Still got to do skin and faces, imperial eagles and the off bits and bobs. Oh and stripes on some of the bases.

Tau 1500pts

Finally have a 1500 pt tau list that I'm happy with, that doesn't include a costly farsight bomb. Note that two squads of pathfinders + a few extra bits may be replaced by two tetras, should I feel like it.

http://hq-builder.com/shared/51b0c458028dbb274ecc02b8

Some lists...

Hi guys, been really busy lately unfortunately. Was actually planning to go to either clash of the titans or war of the roses, but due to certain circumstances I will almost certainly not be able to. The good thing is that I get to concentrate on exams and don't have to worry about painting anything, so the next proper content will in fact be as expecting in july... long time off that.

Meanwhile, here are some ideas that I've been mulling over. I'll just put up a few lists and give my thoughts, so feel free to skip this lol.

Just for reference here are brief descriptions of the lists below:
List 1: 1500 pts Vanilla skies
List 2: Competitive DE 1500 pts
List 3: IG 1500 pts (evolution of my list)
List 4: Farsight blob tau 2000 pts

Tau Troops: Breakdown

Despite almost abandoning my tau, I've seen the light and perhaps will even be joining the greater good and not getting rid of my existing tau. To this end I have even now bolstered my forces with not one, but two riptides.

Today, I want to look at troop choices for tau. You have two: kroot and firewarriors.

Firewarriors:

Relatively cheap for what they do, however that's when you have squads of six, go up to 12 and you can have the same number of kroot for almost half the points. Also these guys either want to be hiding somewhere, in which case you're probably investing in a defence line, or in a devilfish so they can come out of reserve, which brings up the costs. They do have supporting fire, and can take a markerlight though.

Kroot:

Cheaper than firewarriors, and have a lot more options about how to deploy/appear on the board. Infiltrating is always good even if to just keep your enemy guessing. Outflank coupled with the xv8 special system for auto-coming from a board edge within 6 and you can give your opponent a nasty surprise. Also kroot benefit greatly from forests, and actually can still act as an effective sacrifice unit and even hold their own in combat against some enemies (especially orks and guard). The problem is that they have shorter range, but given how close they can pop up to the enemy, this isn't always going to be a problem.

Conclusion:

So which is better? I'm not sure really, sort of leaning towards the kroot, but it seems like it would be a good idea to have at least one maxed out squad of firewarriors in a tau army or two min sized ones, especially in a gun-line type army. However kroot, may see more action with my tau in the future.

As side note... Why am I planning to play tau again?? I mean I hate gunline armies... Oh well, at least the riptides will be fun, as will the farsight/shadowsun deathstar that I may have to invest in for larger point games... Euurrghh - too much new shiny stuff.

Ultramarines Army-Wide painting update and 2k list

2000 point tournament coming up on Sunday (single FOC), decided to break out my marines and give them a go. Am going to play a list of what I have painted plus one or two things that I knew I'd be excited about painting. So with that in mind no more tactical squads and so I had to take scouts. Was originally going to take tau allies, but between the new codex and not being able to fit in a worthwhile detachment I decided to stick to pure marines.

Before (minus the second half-painted pod and unfinished talon)

 Borrowed a drop pod off of Paul and the above was what I was likely to use.

Thunder fire cannon assembled

No prep today so managed to add this little piece of artillery to my ultramarine armoury which will now finally allow them to be somewhat competitive.

Finecast upon initial glance had no problems but on closer inspection there were a few air bubbles, nothin major, the worst being on the techmarine's shoulderpad which I'll either tidy up later or leave as battle damage. Also a few bits needed warming up in hot water and bending into shape, namely the two halves of the cannon which did not actually fit together at first. Also one of the detail bits of the cannon was quite badly warped and too fragile to bend back into shape so the solution was leaving it off.

At the moment I have a guard and a space marine list made for an upcoming 1500 pt tournament. Would really like to bring out the ultrasmurfs as apart front he practice match against daemons I haven't played them since the middle of 5th. However that means that I'll have like 2 days to paint the cannon and a rhino since I don't want to get 0 just for having something unpainted which is why guard might be the better, but more boring option.

My tau would be great: unpainted as they are / part painted but I need my tetras and unfortunately forge world is not allowed unless you're fully painted for this one...

Also since when do gw use white boxes for direct orders rather than the proper ones with the pretty pictures on the front???

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)

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.

My Chaos Daemons

So you've probably seen that I have a new army from battle and tournament reports. In this post I'll talk about some of my thoughts that went into my Chaos Daemon army.

I'll start off by sharing my list for 1500 points:

HQ
Fateweaver

Troops
5x Plague Bearers with icon
5x Plague Bearers with icon
5x Plague Bearers

Elites
3x Flamers of Tzentch
3x Flamers of Tzentch
3x Flamers of Tzentch

Fast Attack
4x Screamers of Tzentch
4x Screamers of Tzentch

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince with Wings, MoT, Breath of Chaos, Daemonic Gaze, Soul Devourer, Master of Sorcery
Daemon Prince with Wings, MoT, Breath of Chaos, Daemonic Gaze, Soul Devourer, Master of Sorcery


I kept asking myself whether it was worth a whole, pocket-busting 333 points for just one character with only 3 wounds, toughness 5 etc... Well it certainly is! Imagine yourself facing just a rather ugly Plague Bearer with your Land Raider swarming with lascannons. You take three shots: all hit and wound. Your opponent saves one 5+. You start screaming with pleasure but then Fateweaver comes to the rescue, giving the Plague Bearer a re-roll. Your opponent saves that. Then you say that at least you killed one. But then your opponent says, "No, Mamma Mia. I still has ze feel no painz!" And he then saves that, laughing his head off!

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):

1250 point IG list

I've got an 1250 pt tournament coming up, and I really wanted to use my Space Marines. However, after a lot of fiddling I just couldn't come up with anything that worked, so I began to despair and dread the speed-building that I'd have to get through in order to get a force of dark eldar ready.

But then I was worried about the 20 points I'd lose for not having a painted army and realised that my guard would probably be able to scale down.

So this is the list idea that I've come up with. It's good because I've just finished painting everything (including a display board for it all) apart from the defence line:

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...