1500 pts Salamanders vs Blood Angels

Kill points, dawn of war... I helped Ilya make an army list for this and both he and Paul borrowed a few things from my Ultras in order to create their armies.

Salamanders, this was a new take on trying to tackle Paul's Blood Angels:

Captain power sword, storm bolter

Dreadnought missile launcher, twin lascannon

Dreadnought (assault cannon, storm bolter i think) in drop pod

5x Terminators with cyclone missile launcher

5 man Scout squad 4x sniper 1 ml in twin las razorback

10 man tactical squad with multi-melta, meltagun (and maybe powerfist was in this one rather than one below) in rhino with dozer blade

10 man tactical squad with plasma gun, plasma cannon (i think) and powerfist (see above) in drop pod

Land speeder with heavy bolter and typhoon missiles

Land speeder with multi-melta and typhoon missiles

Blood Angels - pretty standard Paul list:

Mephiston
Dante

Furiosio dread in drop pod

Sanguard
Scouts with 4x sniper, 1x ml
10man Tactical Squad (!!!) with lascannon and meltagun and hb razorback

Land speeder with multi-melta

Vindicator

So two armies which are both slightly different to what each player is used to playing and playing against, should be interesting...

Deployment - Paul deployed first... upon my suggestion Ilya semi-castled slightly to one flank, aim was to make the scouts sit uselessly on one side of the field and then get a dread to mop them up in the late game...

note the "camouflaged" combat squadded tacticals in the bastion

New Necrons Thoughts

The interesting thing about this release is that it will probably be the last one before 6th edition, so the codex and how necrons play will probably give some clues about what the game will be like in the future.

First of all though I want to talk about the models. They do look quite cool when not purposefully painted up in tomb-king like colours (blue and brown kind of scheme) - they just look too comical. One more thing to note is that everything has a quite a good background - necrons are no longer so mysterious, we know about their different divisions and we also know more about some of their units. This imo is good.

Image from gw used without permission

Next thing... I'm one of those people who still has an ongoing wd subscription, and ignoring the fact that the batrep in the latest one was a the brand new necron codex vs two relatively old codexes, we see that necrons are an army that has incredibly strong shooting and while is some things are hard to kill in assault (some hq choice i cant remember the name of) or stand up again if you dont wipe them out - assaulting still seems the way to go as tactical squads draw combats against necron lords and dire avengers charge at necrons - seriously DIRE AVENGERS (which may ofc conversely be seen as reckless play but hey)!

What this may mean is that necrons are the height, or nearly at the height as tau are about to be released, of 40k shooty armies and that further on we might be able to expect the game to become a little more cc orientated - just by looking at how best to deal with the crons.

Next point, the wd batrep has an interesting scenario - rumours of fixed game turns have been circulating for a while this just confirms that random game length will most probably be taken away. Objectives still are there - but not random numbers of them as well. Combine fixed no. of objs and necron hqs which count as scoring and you get the idea that there may be more "special" stuff that can claim objectives in the later 6th ed codexes.

Disclaimer!!!! These are all just my ideas having seen some of the rumours on the internet and my interpretation of the scenario in the white dwarf - I am by no means saying that my view is correct, just pointing out some interesting things and saying how they may correspond to future rules.

1750pts SM gated libby list vs BA

Seize ground, table quarters - 3 objectives.

My SM list can be seen here. with the exception of replacing the attack bike with some bling which i cant recall now.

Paul's list was here.

The battfield - Paul setup for once - usually I do it cuz I don't trust the other two to make a balanced/realistic/not crazy table - this time I asked him to keep it moderate (what I mean is like Ilya who will put a bunker in the very corner on each side, barricade each one off with terrain and leave everything else open -facepalm- )

We put down the objectives and the strategic thinking with this is tied in with the next thing. I won the roll of and decided to go first. I could do two things put the objectives on the side with most dense terrain and force him to deploy there - meaning I could drive onto his objectives while he would have trouble deepstriking his reserves - a risky tactic. Or I could also put the objectives in the same place and castle up. I went for the safer option... Deciding to make use of the scouts' outflank rule for once.

Castling up - land raider to clear out stuff that deepstrikes too close and defend/hold the tac squad later in game. Predator to head for a hill and shoot over the battlefield. Everything else is pretty much obvious.

Paul's deployment is as sparse as usual - note the baal counts as a vindicator