bad news

Due to imminent life emergencies I may not be doing any gaming for a few months.   This makes me sad.

Dark Angels

So there are pics from the new white dwarf floating about with the new dark angels in them.

Once I picked myself off the floor from laughter, heres a brief opinion.

Belial - boring
Asmodai - good to see you buddy
Land Speeder vengeance - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!  Are gw gunning for worst miniature ever or something?  Has an impressive looking plasma cannon type thing though.  Begging for conversion work done to it.
Ravenwing Dark talon - Stormtalon...with wings!! Looks alright
Deathwing command - Good
Deathwing knights - I like. Rumoured to have two wounds, "yay"
Ravenwing knights - Awesome.  Rumoured to have two wounds, an actual yay.  They are going be broken as all hell...like nob bikers.  With plasma guns, probably insanely point costed.

I am sorely tempted by Ravenwing. and they haven't touched Sammael thank god.

Pics here http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dark-angels-pics-leaked-codex-and-more.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Faeit212+%28Faeit+212%29

Monsterpocalypse

Darren forgot, but still got a game in...sort of.

If anything, it's hammered in how god awfully shite I am at teaching.

But still, there was interest shown.  if only Privateer hadn't killed it off.   Shall try again next week after reminding Darren, possibly everyday next week if need be, he shall not forget..  And maybe some more will show interest, I can't remember who else had figures.  It's a great game.

Also there's a trailer for Pacific Rim.  Which could so be a monsterpocalypse movie.  But it isn't.  It has the voice of Glados (portal) as the mech's AI, which is genius.


I wonder whats happening with the MonPoc movie.  Apparently the lack of news is because of movie development secrets or some nonsense, who knows.

imperial guard vs chaos marines

So me vs Marko's Chaos Marines we shall call this the battle of the sponge.  Almost everything had an invulnerable save.  Rather annoyingly it was the kill points mission and as always I had over double the number of kill points to give up as my opponent.

Turn 1 I lost my commander to a khorne champion on juggernaut.

Turn 2 I did however obliterate a unit of berzerkers after forcing them out the rhino..  The only unit without a invulnerable took 18 plasma wounds.  One guy survived as they were in cover, but it did bring up the issue of vehicles nowadays.  You can't assault after getting out one, including when you got out because your ride was destroyed.  An assault unit in a rhino is looking at a turn 3 combat at the earliest, not a great idea.  Although it does get them across the board sharpish.

After that was a sad affair.  Took my entire army to deal with a unit of thousand sons.  And the last guy ate the combined shooting from 3 units.

I now hate obliterators.  They just cannot be killed, especially with a 4+ invulnerable.  I killed everything in Marko's army except these guys.  I was unlucky to consistently miss with my lascannons/plasma gun, but still.

End result was 12-6.  He had first blood (My commander) and Warlord and line breaker from one of the thrice damned obliterators in my deployment zone.  Plus a number of units. 

Stupid invulnerable saves.   Had a normal Leman Russ,  that was a waste.  Would of been better of with a demolisher.  Other than was a surprisingly solid list.

Skaven/Goblins vs Ogres/High elves

Rather entertaining game.  Though it was the godawful watchtower.
From memory we were facing 9 ogres, 4 mournfangs, firebelly, couple of sabretusks and the horrible ogre cannon.  On the high elves side there was a mage, 2 units of maybe 12 archers, 10 swordmasters, bolt thrower and 5 dragon princes.

We had a Grey Seer, Warlok Enginner with rocket, 2 units of 20 slaves, 5 jezzails, 6 gutter runners, Doomwheel, Warp Lightning Cannon, 60 goblins with spears and 5 bosses, another unit of 40 with hand weapon/shield, mangler squig and doom diver.


So I put a unit in the slaves in the tower at the start.  maybe they could take someone with them if the tower was tkaen.  They did not.  So we had 9 ogres in there for the most part. after turn 1

So highlights.

Turn 1 shooting. Ratling gun exploded, doom diver exploded.

Turn 2.  many clanrat deaths.  Grey Seer cast cracks call on the watchtower, destroying it and 6 of the ogres inside.  Doomwheel attempted to shoot, but misfired.  It went out of control, plowing through 2 fanatics.  It killed them, but took a wound from them.  So went out of control again impacting a goblin unit and killing a few of them. yay for doomwheels.

Turn 3 the Grey Seer left the tattered remnants of the clanrats and joined the large goblin unit.  Attempted cracks call on the mournfangs, and they passed 3/3 inititive tests at inititive 2!!  Doomwheel killed the ogre mage (and general)

Turn 4  Mournfangs charged the goblins.  Grey seer took 2 wounds.  A couple of bosses died as did many goblins.  But the gobbos held.  Cannon killed the elf mage (and general)

Turn 5 the mournfags were a slain by the goblins (yay!!)  my grey seer had skitterleaped out the unit with a miscast, he lost 2 levels.  Cannon misfired killing 3 jezzails who fled.

 Turn 6 The dragon princes charged the small goblin unit, winning and mowing them down.  Goblins charged the swordmasters.  Which was a drawn combat.  jezzails rallied.  And that was it, end of game due to time.

We each had units in contact with the ruins of the tower. So a draw there.  So it was down to victory points which we didn't really have time for.

We had left the large unit of goblins, 2 big bosses, the warboss and the mangler.  Skaven had the grey seer, my cannon and the jezzails.  But we also had 200 victory points from the slain generals.

They high elves were completely intact, less the mage.  The ogres had the ogre block alive, and the cannon.

So was probably a draw in victory points.

Trenches

Oh dear.  just watched an unboxing of GW's wall of matrys trench abomination.

I was hoping the walls and floor were seperate, so at least the trench walls could be easily salvaged into a proper board of some sort.
 
But alas, they are not.  they are one piece.  Can still get a saw out I suppose, or you know not bother.

Ground level trenches are bat shit retarded.  Like someone built a wall (This is a good idea) then built another wall right behind them (WHY?!)

Skaven and Goblins vs Daemons and Brettonians

Richard was Gobbos, Simon Brettonians, marko Daemons, me Skaven. I could argue tired, but alas.  Game I played tonight was incredibly dissapointing not because of the result - a loss, but because of severely poor play on my part.

had my gutter runner scouts that forgot move/shoot there primary target.  Warlock engineer who skitterleaped for his shooting, and forgot to shoot ...FOR three turns!!

But the mission was the awful blood and glory mission.

And it as didn't go well for the goblins.  The fanatics killed the juggernauts that triggered them, and nothing else.  Pump wagon fell short of it's target, and was then mowed down by the mangler, that killed zero knights and and  a lot of bowmen.  And the rest were paniced by trebuchet fire, and mowed down by bloodletters.  Could of been different had my gutter runners got to engage the warmachines.

For my part, Grey Seer eventually erased 32 bloodletters by himself, and surviving the miscasts which was nice.  Cannon did well, got a new found apprecation for it.  Killed pretty much all of one unit of knights.  Doomwheel whiffed.  Moved forward then was run down by a knight unit.  Jezzails were jezzails, did ok.  Tried the ratling gun.  Would of been good, but Marko passed all his wards the one time it fired.
 As it was the Unit that killed the doomwheel, swept round and mowed down all the guns (doomdiver, jezzails, and the cannon) and by that time the goblins were dead.  $ bloodletters charged my clanrats who fled.  I didn;t fancy my chances.  Sadly didnt rally, and thats the game.  Was only my general left.

Could of been better, and a lot worse.  Simons mage had the dwellers below, but never got it cast.

But as I said dissapointed in myself.  EDIT.  Not to say I didn't enjoy the game, I did.  Was a large-ish (2000 point) Fantasy game with the allied armies.  And was a blast.

Also played some games of Race for the Galaxy vs Steve.  One game was close, second I got trounced.  He pulled almost every military related card going for an impressive score of  102.

Magic

So I didn't have a game of 40k tonight.  Muffin never showed up, he needs a slap.

So sitting around I was loaned Magic decks.  many thanks to Chris and Warren for that.  I tried a few, did my best.

But afterwards I feel I don't like Magic anymore.  It wasn't really that fun.  Wonder when that happened.

Space Marines

So Dark Angel rumours have them getting some new flyer, and I can't see why.

They just seem to be adding things to chapters for no good reason other than that they can.  99% of space marines are equipped to the same guidelines.  With Dark Ang4els it's doubly so, they are very very standard beyond their first two companies and the inner circle.  Can't see any reason for them to be getting this stuff.  Be even worse if they do get Sternguard/Vanguard since they are first company veterans and the deathwing NEVER fights in power armour.  Was bad enough in the Blood Angel codex who got a ton of new units for no good reason,   But it is a Matt Ward book, he's done far worse.

 I guess it's good for the game to make them different, but do wish they would stop destroying established fluff to do it.  Or maybe it's just a side effect of them having so many space marine codexes.

Tonights battles

So my league game vs mark was a very very close game, with the horrible blood and glory mission.

Highlights

The saga of the soulgrinder. My doomwheel charged into it, taking 5 wounds of it with shooting. Sadly the doomwheel whiffed in combat, and was run down. It then charged my slaves, who fled in terror. A second charge had them off the table. it then attempted to go after my grey seer and fire a grape shot. It misfired and died :D

The saga of the grey seer. 3 turns of rolling not above 5 for magic left him somewhat impotent. Eventually my army was in tatters, from the brokenness of flamers. He had taken a wound from combat with one of the flamer units. And his unit was left facing down a lot of bloodletters. So he did what any Grey Seer would do, he skitterleaped away abandoning the clanrats to their fate. A fifth turn he killed all the bloodletters with the curse. If I had transmuted one more model, I would of had skulltaker dead, and the game won. He took a wound from the miscast. But he was alive, and spent the rest of the game skitterleaping to stay away from the flamers.
 The saga of skulltaker. Skulltaker charged into my clanrats, and started his slaughter. Not enough for them to flee though. They won the the next round of combat, making skulltaker lose wounds from instability. Eventually turn 6 my static resolution of 3 was enough to draw vs skulltaker. Won by one with my musician and he lost his final wound to instability, winning me the game.  Was also Marko's biggest mistake.  He could of charged his flamers into the combat, guaranteeing a win.  But did not.

Was a flukey victory.

Played a second game vs Brians ogres which can only be classed as a massacre.
 Took a different list featuring plague monks, who won me the battle with a degree of luck.
The turning point was my plague monks were able to charge his main unit of ogres (Who were
whithered so toughness 3). Doing 11 wounds on the charge and loosing 4. A good result. The ogres fled and were run down.
The luck game into play from the fact the mournfangs were close enough to panic from the unit being destroyed in close combat. Which they did, never to return.

Killed the mammoth thing with my doomwheel, as it was tied up by slaves. Leaving My entire army less 4 plague monks, my plague priest and a few slaves going after one ogre mage. Called it there.

Plague monks are lethal vs things with little armour.

Imperial noble

Not a great experiment. His clothes are way too fiddly, so did my best with how I paint. Camera flash doesn't help, but this silly winter weather doesn't allow for much natural light.

At least I won't make the silly mistake of purity seal on him.

Oh purity seal

Why is thou so crap. May have to strip my chaos dude and the wardancer, they've gone all frosty

Chaos Warrior

Super happy with this one. Did it all metal, so was super easy. Horns look good, everything just looks good. Base is a bit shit, may just rip him off and try again with that.

Funny thing about the chaos warrior. He may well have tattoos proclaiming his pact with chaos, or worse, mutations and the such like. So he must keep himself concealed, always keeping his armour on to hide his life choice from the party who be would less than understanding. The armour though doesn't seem to really hide the fact he follows chaos.

He also so funny to play. He can be powerhouse, cleaving monsters in two with ease. He can also become increasingly mutated becoming stronger but leaving him with no way to resupply as the towns and villages become hostile to the inhuman warrior. The gods may even shatter his mind, leaving him insane or a jibbering wreck. And if he's very (un)lucky he may just get turned into chaos spawn, ending his career right then.

Project Quest

Well Wardancer pretty much done.



And next up wil be this chappy

Vs Ogres

Rather dull match.

Anyway he had
Butcher, level 2
8 Ogres, I think ironguts
2 mournfang
Giant
5 Sabretusks

I took my usual, Grey seer, doomrocket, bsb, 80 slaves, 24 clanrats, 5 jezzails, 6 gutter runners Doomrocket

Was battle for the pass and rhere we go

Turn one, I skitterleap my engineer to the Ogre flank intending to put a nice big template in the middle of the ogre unit.  It over shoots ("4" 6's for range!!) and hits the sabretucks, who panic never to return.  Also fired my slings at the ogres, doing a wound.  Doomwheel suffled forward, and failed to restrain shooting, misfired though, taking a single str 6 hit.
Ogres turned to face the gutter runners.  A little shuffling and not much else happened.

I charged the ogres (mistake)  lost badly.  Grey Seer skitterleaped himself over to the rear of the ironguts, loosing a wound to miscast.  Taking the general away from the slaves, bad idea.  He failed to cast any damage spells on the ogres.  Ogre turn was the ironguts reforming and more shuffling.  Giant made towards my Grey Seer.

Grey Seer skitterleaped himself back to safety.  Doomwheel again misfired, and zoomed across the front of my battleline.  Mournfangs amde a cautious advance on my flank

Turn 4 stuff started happening.  Doomwheel shuffled the correct way, and misfired again.  But it gained a d6" of extra movement for the rest of the battle.  One of my slaves reformed to meet the mournfangs, could not sadly get out of their charge arc.  In the ogre turn the slaves were charged by the mournfangs, loosing many but the slaves held.

Turn 5 I moved to try and block the giant from reaching my clanrats.  More dead slaves, but they held.  Doomwheel finally did something, launching 3 str 10 bolts at the ironguts, killing two.  Giant charged the unengaged slave unit.

Turn 6 seeing as it was last turn, my clanrats charged into the mournfangs.  Attempted to skitterleap my general put of it, but it was scrolled.  He lost another wound in combat, but survived overall (phew)  I managed to win the combat by 1, the mournfangs fled.  In the ohre turn, giant beat the slaves, but due the my pursuit of the mournfangs, my general was out of range.  They fled -  exploding, but the giant survived.  And with that the game was over.

I lost 108 points of Gutter Runners, 45 point engineer and an 82 point slave unit.
This is guestimation of points, but I killed the mournfangs (130 points) and the Sabretusks (105 points) also had the mournfang standard (25 points)

So 245 to 270, a draw.

The start of the battle was basically the two armies staring at each other.  Either of us could of been much braver.  Had I kept my gutter runners back, would of prob won, but alas.  They would been an effective flanking unit for anyone who threatened me, such as the mournfangs or the giant..  Foolishly I went for the ironguts though, which was where the points were. I did however keep i'd guess 400 points of ogres out the battle.  Shame I did not ever beat the Giant in combat, but thunderstomp hurts.

Side project: Project Quest

First little guy Ive set up to do in this super, what is actually an overly ambitous, project.

It's bad photo, bad camera and curently mostly black model to not match.  Looking forward to finishing this guy.  Should of undercoated white, but I've had such terrible trouble with that.  I'm a very lazy painter, and any missed parts with a black undercoat just show up as shadow.  With a white base, missed bits how up as glaring white spots that are obvious mistakes.  But on the other hand mastering white would make it a much better painter.  Regardless, This guys is going to finish up with a overly bright scheme as befits his Wardancer role.  Troubled as to how to paint the blades.  It's my belief Wood Elves despise metal.  And not 100% on what colours to do him in.  Greens obviously, but don't want just green.  Check out the super amateur flagstone sculpting.  Hope to get a look at the wood elf book for inspiration at some point.

Interesting rules query

Recently been brought up could an Eldar Farseer target a unit in a vehicle with guide/fortune.  Common sense, and the 5th edition rules say no.

Current edition when you look at it is a tad murkier.  Under the rules for psykers, all powers, unless otherwise stated, need line of sight.  "This means that a psyker embarked on a transport can only target himself, his vehicle or another unit embarked on the same vehicle as the psyker.  Similiarly, a psyker outside a transport cannot target a unit embarked on a within one."

This has important implications.  The only protection a unit has embarked on a transport is the fact they cannot be seen by anyone.  There is no explicit protection provided by the transport rules.

Eldar powers don't need line of sight, as per their codex.  This means Farseers can target units in vehicles.  Although this doesn't work for fortune/guide as they both need the target to have a model within 6" of the psyker, which a unit in a transport will not have.  A Farseer can however hide in a transport and provide buffs to units outside the vehicle.  He can also doom an enemy unit inside a transport.

It has wider reaching implications.  Grey Knight Purgation squads can shoot at things outside their line of sight, so they can in theory shoot at guys in transports.  Also Hive Guard can do much the same, and since vehicle interiors do not implicity provide a cover save you might not even get a cover save from them.

Again common sense says this is all moot, but there it is.  I expect this to be FAQ'd at some point.  I haven't seen this brought up anywhere else, maybe I'm missing something, but it's how I see it.

Gaming Ettiquette.

Well some of it.

One thing I've noticed is who rolls wounds inflicted on your own side.

My perosnal view is if something of mine does something, I roll wounds.

For example, in Fantasy if my mage blows himself up with half his unit, I roll to wound the unit.  or if my doomwheel tries to fry itself, I roll them aswell.  or if in 40k if I manage to scatter blasts to my unit, I roll them as again it's my unit doing it.


If a 40k vehicle blows up, whoever blew it up rolls.  So if like 2 of my units, and 1 of my enemies is in range of my tank exploding from enemy shooting, that enemy rolls to wound them all.

Some seem to think that they should roll wounds for anything that is killing the other team, which seems kind of odd to me.

but as ever i'm far too timid to say anything.  Maybe it is just me.

Skaven vs Dark elves

So me with
Grey Seer
BSB
Warlock Engineer with Rocket
22 Clanrats, shields. full command
40 slaves
41 slaves
6 jezzails
6 Gutter Runners with poison, slings.
Doomwheel

Against Joels Dark Elves, which of the top of my head was
lvl 2 Sorceress with Death magic.
20 spearmean
10 crossbows
5 Harpies
and Black guard I believe, 20 of them.
Hydra

Managed to get that awful Dawn Attack mission, with the random deployment.  Which was probably 30% the reason I lost.  I deployed first and  had my clanrat bunker on my right flank on their own, facing off across against most of the dark elves (everything bar the hydra was threatening them).  Had Jezzails and slaves in the centre. And the other slaves and the doomwheel left flank.  Doomwheel at least had the speed to get the middle, but the slaves were out of the battle entirely.

Joel managed to roll a 6 and get first turn.  Which was everything making a bee line towards my clanrats and the somewhat doomed grey seer.  had spears approaching front, and black guard advancing towards my flank.  Fortuantly survived the magic phase, only loosing a single wound on my grey seer.
My turn 1 was attempting to consildate my army together.  Could not move my clanrats as it would of meant giving up a turn of magic.  Both slaves attempted swift reforms, but without the generals leadership could not manage it.  Fancied my chances at wiping out the spearelves and the darn sorceress and so cast Curse of the horned rat on them.  Only killing 12 though.  No miscast fortuantly.
Jezzails killed a harpy.  Attempted the doomrocket, but it fell short.
Turn 2 harpies charged the jezzails, who killed 1 in stand and shoot reaction.  Crossbows bunkered in a building.  And everything advanced towards my poor clanrats.  Grey Seer again survived the magic phase.  In a suprising turn of events, lost 2 jezzails to combat, but they killed 4 in return.  The harpies fled.  My turn 2 failed to cast the dreaded thirteenth, but plagued the black guard, killing 9.  Jezzails took 2 wounds off the hydra.
Turn 3 the harpies continued fleeing, through the hydra which also paniced and fled.  Black guard failed their charge.  My Grey Seer succumbed to the death magic at last.  Lost a couple of clanrats to shooting.  and jezzails were finished.  I attempted to charge the spears, who fled.  Gutter runners did a wound to the hydra with slings, yay poison.
Turn 4 black guard charged the clanrats which really was the end of the game.  It was a flank charge.  Attempted to at least get some kills with my bsb.  Then proceeded to fail my break test loosing a standard, and my bsb.  Worth noting that this unit of black guard spent the rest of the game hiding from slaves!!  Doomwheel lost wounds to magic, and out of control put it in combat with the spears, result!  Also of note the sorceress died to miscast.  Doomwheel won combat, mowing down the elves.  I attempted to get the wheel towards the black guard.  It fired it's lightning at the crossbows, misfiring taking 6 str 6 hits.  Goodbye doomwheel.  Did another wound to the hydra.  In hindsight, should of charged it, alas.
Turn 5 the Hydra rallied. and killed 2 gutter runners with it's breath. only str 2!  It charged and ate a gutter runner, but they were able to finish it off.

That was basically it.    It could of been a lot closer.  As it was, the deployment really did make it hard for me.  My clanrats had to stand where they were so the Grey Seer could cast.  Always so scared with my Grey Seer.  I should of marched towards the spears turn 1, but hey, hindsight.  Grey seer was pretty much trapped in his clanrat unit.  I could of possibly skitterleaped him out but nowhere to go really.  Whilst it may have saved his points, I would of still lost the unit and the bsb to the black guard.  And he would of been effectively neutered.  Skaven magic is horribily short ranged. I also had plague and the dreaded thirteenth which are two far too tasty spells to not cast. leaving me with no dice to cast skitterleap anyway.

Didn't tally VP.  But I had lost everything bar 2 gutter runners, and one slave unit.  More importantly, the black guard had my bsb and a standard claimed.  I had no standards.  Dark elf casualties were the sorceress, the spear unit, the harpies and the hydra.

Was great fun though, against the grain is always a challenge.

Reinforcements have arrived!!

My DV box turned up today (finally)

Stunning chaos minis.  The DA chars are cool. The tactical marines have scuplted symbols which sort of blend into the shoulderpad rims.

Sadly my captain has a broken wing on his helm that snapped off when clipping the helm from the sprue.  Way too solid a join on a flimsy part.

Looking forward to adding some marine ally goodness to my guard.

Ooh FAQ's

so things i took note of as it affects me.

Valkyries/Vendettas received the same clarification as the BA stormraven.  you can get out if you move over 6".  would of been nice if they added specifically if you could get out if zooming.  it then goes on in the rulebook faq that you you can use the rule to get out of a locked velocity flyer.  which only happens if zooming.  So by that we can infer that you can get out a zooming valkyrie/stormraven, hurray.

If you get out a shaken/stunned transport, you are still shaken in your next shooting phase, neat.

Leman Russ are Heavy vehicles.  All the ones with ordnance are worse than they were under 5th.  Everything else is unnaffected. Meh.

Also if your transport is destroyed, unless it was an assault vehicle, you cannot assault in your next assault phase.  So if I blow up your rhino with my melta squad, I'm safe from assault for a turn  thats nice.

An Aegis line has to be in one uninterupted line :(

Interestingly the Guard faq says the scout rule on the valkyrie has no effect...but what about outflanking? bad gw.  And they didn't remove scout from it.  This is super sloppy.

Also a change that hasn't affected me at all, paladins, nob squads and wolf guard units are no lomger characters!  But ones that are leading units are, as it should be.

Some other notes.

Mawlocs are not mega sharks.  they cannot burst out the ground and eat planes.

Banshee now have power swords.  At least axes made them a viable suicide unit vs 2+ armour.

Can shoot flying monsters down with markerlights, thats funny.

Vs Ogre Kingdoms

So i took my currently standard list of Grey Seer, Battle standard, Engineer with rocket, 34 clanrats with full command, 2 units of slaves with musicians, 6 gutter runners, Doomwheel and warplightning cannon.

Against ogre kingdoms, which to memory had 2 units of 3 yhetees, 2 units of 6 bulls, a level 3 butcher and 3 mournfag cavalry.

I won turn one, and didn't do much.   Put a wound on a ogre with the warp lightning cannon.  Doomwheel managed to restrain itself from shooting some slaves.  Skitterleaped my engineer over to the ogre flank and did 2 wounds with it.  Ogres advanced, with no shooting and no magic.

Turn 2 wither was dispelled and failed to cast plague.  manauvered some units to try and block charges, which didn't quite work.  Doomwheel shot at a Yehtee unit, killing two of them with str 8 shots, they panicked and fled into the path of one of the bull units, but later rallied.  The Butchers unit attempted to charge my slaves, but failed.  The other yehtee unit charged my clanrat block, killing 3 of them, and knocking two wounds of my grey seer.   I was able to win combat however, but wasn't able to catch them.

Turn 3 I reformed a slave unit to face the mournfangs on my flank charged my slaves into the butcher unit, and the doomwheel hit the same ogre unit in the flank.  Was able to kill all except the butcher and one ogre, who lost combat and fled, pursued by the doomwheel, which made contact with the other ogre bulls.  next turn it won vs the ogres and they were run down.  The lone yehtee survivor from doomwheel incident charged my clanrats killing my grey seer, and was slain in turn.  Mournfangs made contact with the slaves, butchering them and they fled.

Game was called there.  It was three mournfangs vs nearly all my army.  odds are I couldn't of done much vs the cavalry.  but on the other and would taken a lot for them to catch all my units.

Grey seer not really worth it vs ogres.  He's fragile, and the spells are a bit hit and miss vs ogres. A warlord would be a much sturdier general. and try to win by numbers.

Doomwheel was an absolute star, it's shooting attack does d6 wounds, which is golden vs ogres.

Also apparently going by some stats floating around, I'M SECOND!!   mind you it's only been going two weeks, which has me at 2 wins one loss I guess.

And tonights outcome

If there's one thing you can say about the Grey Knight codex, it probably has better shooting than any other book.  Maybe not better guns in some cases, but still.


Anyway I had an infantry platoon with 3 squads with autocannons, 3 lascannons, platooon command with flamers.  Creed with medi pack, astropath, Officer of the fleet and snipers.  5 stormtroopers.  Marbo, Veteran squad with plasma.  Veterans with melta.  Valkyrie, Leman russ with heavy bolters, Leman Russ Demolisher with Multi Meltas.  leman Russ executioner with Plasma sponsons.  And an aegis line with quad gun,

Against a bunch of henchmen with MONKEYS!!  Some highlights of the monkey madness, one of the unit had 48" range heavy bolters, and Coteaz had a psychic power that meant i got no cover save from them :(  oh and we both had aegis line

We were playing The Emperors Will with hammer and anvil deployment.  My objective was sabotaged which I completely forgot about after turn one.  Richards was +1 cover saves, which on a bolstered ruin, meant that anyone holding it had a 2+ cover save.

Turn one I did seize the initiative, but Coteaz stopped that forcing me to reroll.  The inquisition Land Raider moved up 12" and the flat out a further 6" right in front of my lines.  A variety of shooting bounced of the aegis line.  for my part, I took a hull point from the land raider and not a lot else.  Again the Aegis line absorbing a lot of fire.  The two

Turn two no reserves arrived for the inquisition.  The deathcult assassins disembarked from the land raider and tore into the squad manning the quad gun.  I had my Kasrkins, Marbo arrive and my platoon command was outflanking thanks to Creed also showed up.  Kasrkins teleported next to the Land Raider and reduced it to mere debris,  too late to save my lines though.  Marbo showed up in the ruin that had been bolstered by a techmarine.  The command squad showed up next to Coteaz's unit, intending to flame them to death.  Unfortunately I did not realise that Coteaz's unit would get a free shot against these units.   Marbo lost a wound, and the chimera was blown up. (FIRST BLOOD!)  The command squad within pinned.  Marbos demo charge did nothing to the squad in the ruin thanks a 2+ cover.

Turn three saw the calidus show up and reduce half my infantry platoon's brains into goo with the neural shredder.  Lost my executioner to the deathcult, and the demolisher was destroyed by the stormraven. Also lost a lascannon team.  Marbo was denied his cover save by psychic trickery and died.  3 of the command squad died the survivors fleeing, never making it of the board, but they would be taking no further part in the battle. I also lost the battlecannon from my Leman Russ.  On my turn however I was able to kill the deathcult assassins with whats was left of my infantry platoon, and Creeds command squad finished of the calidus.  Finally a Lascannon from my Leman Russ finished of a techmarine hovering in my lines. My Valkyrie showed up, the veterans inside and the transport unable to affect the stormraven.

Turn Four the occupants of the StormRaven disembarked.  The Arco Flaggelents going for my melta Vets, and the dreadnought making a move for my kasrkin loitering in the midfield.  The valkyrie was shot out the sky by the stormraven, the machine spirt bringing it's bolters to bear on my command squad felling Creed (WARLORD!)  And the Arco Flaggelents made short work of the veterans, they did manage to kill a couple though.  Bastonne survived combat, but broke and ran, and was cut down.  A henchmen unit of psykers tried to fry the sole survivor of the command squad, the astropath.  However they rolled double 1, the entire unit wiped out by the predations of the warp.  to add insult the astropath made his deny the witch.   I also lost my final leman russ to the crack shooting of the vindicare.

Turn Five  The flaggalents did not make into combat.  I lost some more guardsman to inquistorial heavy bolters.  The dreadnought failed to charge the kasrkin, it did fell 2 of them with assault cannon fire however.   The vindicare with a lack of targets gunned down one of the fleeing flamer guys. The meagre remaons of my army consolidated towards the objective.  The remaining kasrkins failed to penetrate the dreadnought, and a heroic charge resulted in a dead kasrkin, and me failing to scratch it's armoured sarcophagus with a krak grenade.  The survivor turned to flee and was slaughtered by the mighty machine.

And with that the game ended.
We each had our own objectives.  However Richard had First blood, Slay the Warlord and a unit in my deployment zone.  Final Score 6-3

Man of the match.  Aegis Defence Lines :D

And the aftermath

Was a fairly solid victory for the guard.  12vp to 4vp.
Was playing The Scouring which is the 6 objectives of varying values.  By chance I had 8 of the 15 vp's in or near my deployment zone.

Marines went first, doing little due to range.  My first turn I took a couple of hull points of a rhino.  I did have a pinned infantry unit from sniper fire though.

Second turn again very innefectual shooting by themarines.  And the plane did not show up.  My second turn marbo showed up, his demo charge scattered, took two marines out and their rhino was wrecked.  Kasrkins deepstruck behind the predator and reduced it to slag, losing a melta gun in the explosion.  An incredible round of shooting from the lascannon team took three hull points from the land raider.  And I wrecked the other rhino

Turn three Marbo suffered the full wrath of the 8 marine survivors who blazed away in venegance for their fallen comrades.  He did not survive.  Lost another Kasrkin to the scouts. And the stormtalon arrived.  The Quad gun blazed away to no effect.  The stormtalon open fired on the squad manning the quad gun, felling the autocannon team and another trooper.  The Lascannon team was incinerated by the land raider redeemer cannons.  For my part I killed the scouts and generally panicked at the land raider near my lines.  To which I could do little.  Also it turns out you can throw grenades at flyers, so my brave trooper made a mighty throw and actually hit the Stormtalon, but did nothing to it.

Turn four the stormtalon flew off the board.  Land raider toasted a few guys, but the terminators did not disembark.  Very little else left to do anything.  My turn was also quiet..  One of my infantry squads made to claim another objective.  I killed the plasma gun and the heavy bolter guy from the marines in the backfield. My command quad hid, ready to ambush the tactical marines advancing on them.

Turn five saw the return of the stormtalon, which was blasted out the sky by 2 glancing, and 2 penetratings from the quad gun.  Finally wrecked the land raider with a leman russ lascannon.  The terminators were out and I had little left to shoot at them :(

Turn 6 the terminators made mincemeat of an infantry squad.  I managed to kill three of them with shooting, consolidated towards the mid field objective, and killed the final tactical squad in my deployment zone.

Turn 7 the terminators made towards my deployment zone.

Final score -
Imperial Guard =  Objectives - 4,1,3,2 First blood and Linebreaker = 12
Space Marines = Objectives- 3 and  Linebreaker = 4

Observations,  Aegis lines are ridiculous good value.  Since vehicles only need 25% cover, pretty much anything can get a cover save behind it, 4+ cover as well.  And the skyfire gun can (and did) wipe out a flyer in a single salvo.
Placing objectives after choosing deployment zones is silly.  Sure I was lucky with what objectives I had, but my gunline didn't even have to move from behind the Aegis line.  A perfect set up.


I don't like to critisize, but I fell Colin could of been a bit more aggresive with the Land Raider.  A drive right towards my lines (I had no melta there and had horrendous difficulty getting rid of it as it was)  would of probably wiped me out, but there ya go.

Colin also has a pretty amazing setup at his gaff.  It's a pleasure to play there , and he's a fine opponent I wish I had remembered my camera.

Because Guard don't do subtle

Heres what I'm taking tonight.  No valkyrie melta vets for a change.  Colin may or may not get the advantage by seeing this beforehand.  But like the title says.

Test

Photos show how crap my ten minute work is, but still the colour works I think.

I have an Aegis defence line

Hurray.

Went to GW Cambridge today.  Wasn't much Dark Vengeance there, just the ability to pre order it.  But it's always fun to go to gw and gawp at the scenery and mini's on display.

Picked up some paint to resume some old projects, and also have an Aegis line and quad gun.  Ever useful.

Matt's Imperial Guard house rules.

From now on I shall be doing the following for the sake of sensibility, and my sanity.

My command HQ shall be taking Kasrkin bodyguards.  Because it makes sense, even if not supported by rules for these elite to be guarding the commander.  And gives a reason to use the models, which are awesome.  Stormtroopers however are not.

This will bump the HQ base price from 50 to 80 (a slight premium considering they don't get deep strike or special ops).  For this they get Krak Grenades, Carapace armour, Hotshot lasgun and Hotshot laspistol.   Any veteran may replace his lasgun or laspistol with a power weapon for 10 points. They may not take a heavy weapon though.   But retain all other options.
The commander does not get the hotshot guns however.

Troops in valkyries/vendettas may disembark even if it is zooming, but they must do so by deep strike as per the grav chute instertion.  I'd say the same for stormravens aswell.

Leman Russ tanks that were stationary or moved at combat speed may always fire their turret weapon, which won't affect what other weapons it may normally fire, even if ordnance.  Note that you still can't snap shot blasts, so shaken/stunned is going to shut down the big guns.  But can only cruise at d6+6"

Atillery also doesn't generally make sense, but they are still potent.  I don't use them, so can't think of a way to fix them.

I won!!

I did make an adjustment to my list.  Took a demolisher instead of an executioner, and dropped the sniper rifles, taking 2 plama guns instead.

And turned out I got a choice of Grey Knights or Space Wolves.  I went for the grey knights.  And we were playing the relic.  From memory I was facing  Draigo, 6 paladins.  I think they had 1+ psycannon,  a terminator squad with thawn.  5 Interceptors with incinerator.  Purgation squad with psycannons and dreadknight with gatling gun and psycannon.

Some things that went well.


Good fortune 1....seized the initative!!  Always nice to get a round of shooting before people start eating you.
Good fortune 2...draigo died volley one.  Leman Russ demolisher put 14 ap2 hits on Draigos Paladin squad.  Draigo took 7 demolisher rounds on his storm shield, but was felled (First Blood+Slay the Warlord)
Good fortune 3..  Only 4 terminators from the 2 squads survived.

After that it generally was a case of whoever could do so marched toward the relic sitting on top of a skyshield landing pad.

2 more volleys of demolisher fire saw the end of the paladins, and only  terminator and Justicar Thawn were still alive from the terminator squad.  I had a infantry squad up there, and turn three saw my valkyrie arrive, and my melta veterans dropped of turn 4.  At this point justicar Thawn had the relic.  But he had a demo charge and melta guns thrown at him, killing the terminator and thawn.  Unfortuantly I could not get the objective to pick it up.  (difficult terrain and bad run rolls)
Marbo showed up and killed an interceptor squad. also worth noting the calidus showed up and made a mess of bastonnes squad (just him and a shotgun left)  They fled but rallied next turn, the result being they were back exactly where they were.
Justicar thawn stood back up and picked up the objective.

And then died

And then got back up and picked up the relic.

And then died.

Thankfully turn 6 he did not stand up, and I finally had a free turn to claim the objective.  Bastonnes veteran squad picked it up, and next turn ate psycannon fire.
 At this point was very little to shoot, so just made a bee line with all my units towards the otherside of the board for linebreaker.  And I was able to kill of the nuisance purgation squad.

Turn 7 again I picked up the objective with my Platoon command squad.  Thawn stood back up, killed the guy with the relic, and then punched the rst of the squad in the face.  He then got a power fist reply. 
 
No one had the objective, but I had all three secondaries for a win.

Star unit?  Leman Russ Demolisher.  It made well over it's points back, killing a great many paladins and terminators.
Most usless unit?  Possibly hellhound.  Had I known I would be against marines wouldn't of took it.  But also the chimeras killed a grand total of nothing.  But they are pretty rapid in 6th, being able to go 18" a turn. helps a great deal for linebreaker.
I was also against a very elite army that did not have anywhere near the numbers to deal with the number of threats I had, plus the opening volley was devastating to them.  Losing almost half the terminators.

For this weeks ritual slaughter of humanity

We have Counts as Creed, and 4 sniper rifles.  Who happen to be ratling models.  Go go ratling bodyguards.  They have a Chimera.

Guardsman Marbo.

Infantry platoon
Command squad has 4 flamers, power fist and a chimera with hull heavy flamer.

Infantry squad with grenade launcher and autocannon.
Infantry squad with grenade launcher and autocannon.
Infantry squad with grenade launcher and autocannon.
Heavy weapons squad with lascannons.

Veteran squad with 3 plasma guns and a chimera

Veteran squad with 3 melta guns, demolitions, and sergeant bastonne.
In a valkyrie, with rocket pods and sponsons.

Hellhound

Leman russ with heavy bolters

Leman russ executioner with plasma sponsons and lascannon.

I expect Dark Eldar, so the plasma is prob wasted, but could be useful. Just point and shoot is the plan, as ever.

woe is me

I much prefer fantasy to the current iteration of 40k.

In terms of the background for them, i'd say It's even.  I like them both.   The grimdark of 40k is interesting, but the fantasy realm just works by itself.  Although they do seem to be trying to turn that into grimdark as well, which I would rather they wouldn't.  the galaxy is a big place, and it's fine that everythings going to shit.  But the warhammer world is much smaller.  Can't have the entire world be deadly, how can anyone ever survive.


but back to the point of this post, I wish i could play morwe fantasy games, but only really have ~1200 viable points, and I would much rather play bigger games.  hence I'm mostly playing 40k.  Although hopefully when everyones got to grips with 6th, can convince people to play 5th, or even 4th.  4th being better than 5th imo.


BUT NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD AS 2ND!!

But yeah, would rather being playing fantasy :(  Need monies!!

new 40k starter

There are some pics of the minis from the new starter box, and omg the miniatures are awesome.

http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/leaked-starter-set-pics.html

Malifaux

The more I read about this, the more ovely excited I get about.

message ends.


Ok so more.  the miniatures are great, Weird west is great, steampunk is great.  This is great.  Allegedly has great fluff, and the chracters rules are designed for their fluff, so they can all do the crazy stuff they do in stories.  From what i have read the fluff does appeal to me.

And has weird combat system, where you use a deck of cards (a standard card deck, + jokers) to dertermine your combat results, but you also have a hand which you can use to cheat fate and replace your drawn card.  Sounds somewhat interesting.

the force organisation chart

Is designed to be a limiting factor obviously.  And to stop you bringing overly stupid amounts of powerful elite units.  Which it does an ok job of.  And you can get realtively large armies without filling everyslot.  I don't think any army is overly limited at 2000 points.  Theres always a slot empty, and it's doing it's job, forcing to you to balance your list somewhat.  Unlike at say <1500 3="3" and="and" codex="codex" elites="elites" every="every" heavy="heavy" is="is" just="just" mim.="mim." of="of" one="one" or="or" p="p" stakes="stakes" strongest="strongest" the="the" troop="troop" two="two" when="when" wherever="wherever">
It's always been suggested in the 3 rulebooks prior to have second detatchment at above 2500, as yes it can be difficult to get that high in some cases.

And then GW go and ruin it by letting you take a second chart at 2000 points.  They may as well just delete the chart altogether.

How to not play blood and glory

1. put your battle standard and general in one unit.
2. Cast a spell with irresistable force, killing the general and half the unit.
3. Unit runs of table, leaving me with 0 standards and a lost game.

Yup, although I did take a bunch of crazed lunatics with the dreaded thirteenth, which was the spell I miscast on.  And actually killed the entire unit with it unit, netting me 17 clanrats.

Roleplay

Nothing to do with miniatures, but it is gaming.
So, Colin Brett is recruiting for his 40k roleplay. Dark heresy or rogue trader. And he seems to want me.

No idea why.  Whilst I have a great interest in the setting, I am failure as rpg player.  I can barely communicate for myself, let alone any imaginary character.  Tried 3-4 times before.  one was just terrible when I was at school, one was at college when I was throroughly miserable anyway and can barely remember it.  Tried a session of rogue trader before, was throroughly useless, and a warhammer fantasy roleplay, which I was again probably useless and was extremely uncomforable with.

So I now have no interest in roleplay at all.  I can imagine events, and settings, but can I imagine what a person would do in any situation?  Nah.

6th edition game

So...

Transports.  the ones that were a problem (rhinos/razorbacks/chimeras) are still ok.  You still have your box to hide in.  And whilst the vehicle can't go cruising and get out, the guys inside can still get out 6".  Fast transports, aren't actually functionally faster than a normal transport.  A bit pointless.

Hull points, did not affect me.  Sure I was auto destroyed by Mephiston and his str 10 power, he was still one shotting them with his penetratings anyway.  Not as bad as I thought.  My Valkyrie for example, only suffered one pen and a glancing.  Normally this would of resulted in  prob being immobilised, or losing weapons.  But it went on.  nothing else recieved glancings.  I guess because I didn't have my usual selection of easuily stopped av 12.

Challenges, I got to to tie up Mephiston for 4 player turns,  hah.  Any lesser character would of had a real problem with my feel no pain.   But then again, no character should go into combat on his own, as he could not refuse.  They are not too bad, flavorfull...but totally not neccasary.

Sniper rifles are still pointless, although I did kill the power fist in the death company.

Missions are great.  random terrain. meh.  pages and pages of terrain.meh.. Speaking of which


The rulebook is still a mess.  No special rule is in it's right place, and putting them all in one section did not help, as there are still a gazillion pages to flick through.  Why the hell do I have flick back and forth between 30 pages to see what independent characters can do.  And there is still too much uneccasary bumph.

Wound allocation is fine  And much faster in my opinion.  Although not versus vehicle squadrons it seems.  Rolled my saves, grabbed that many models, who were all at the front so just scooped them up.

And it went badly

Was a massacre to be honest.  I lost everything except the valkyrie, which had 1 hull point remaining.

Killed all the blood angels, except Mephiston, 1 guy with a missile launcher and a heavy bolter devastator squad in some ruins.  I think two termies survived also.

I was against mephiston, a large unit of assault termies with sanguinary priest.  1 Devastator squad with missiles.  1 devastator squad with heavy bolters. Three 5 man assault squads with various upgrades.  And a 30 man unit of death company with boltguns.

So what happened?  We had the relic mission, that was sitting on top of a hill, right in the open.  Anyone who went near it was mercelessly gunned down.

I have just now realised we forgot Night fight, meh.

Turn one saw a failure of shooting.  killed a couple of death company, a lucky ordnance barrage from the master of ordance took out half the missile launchers.  Only thing of note.  Demolisher totally failed to kill anything.  Assault squad jumped onto the objective.  My infantry platoon took some heavy fire from heavy bolters.  They had formed a combined unit.  Kasrkins were toast from Bolter fire.  Good job useless carapace armour. (first blood)

Valkyrie and marbo showed up.  Marbo rolled 4 1's to wound the termies with his demo charge, only killing two.   Massed fire killed the squad with the objective.  And most of a second squad was almost taken out, leaving one survivor.   Mephiston made short work of the demolisher.  Marbo was gunned down by an assault squad.

Valkyrie flew onto the objective, letting the veterans out, who promptly scattered losing a guy and winding up miles from the relic.  Killed many more death company with the leman russ.  The veterans from the chimera took a frag missile to their tight deep strike formation, killing all but three. Termies killed the chimera, and I lost most of the platoon command from the explosion.  Two assault squads assaulted the Valkyrie, it survived with a remaining hull point and stunned (extra armour took it to shaken)  Mephiston charged into my command squad.  Cheesiness happened as my advisors one by one challenged Mephiston to a duel.  Holding him up for four combats.  First up was the astropath who was massacred by the librarian, the squad held. 

Executioner took out all the assault marines near the objective.  At the very least, that was all the blood angel scoring units destroyed.  The officer of the fleet was the next to be killed by Mephiston  Death company took their toll with their bolters, gunning down most of the a veteran squad with little bother.  Sanguinary priest split from the termies.  The preist charged the remains of my platoon commnad, and was killed by overwatch flamers.  The termies assaulted my Infantry platoon (which was down to two autocannons)  which they swiftly destroyed.  Master of Ordnance was lost to the rampaging librarian.

What was left of my units made a desperate advance for the objective.  The death comapny were all killed by this point, never making it to cc.   4 men made it to the hill.  Only to die.  Mephiston destroyed the command squad.  And then promtly made for the leman russ which stood no chance.  Whilst the termies took out the executioner. 

 I was left at this point with my valkyrie, my lascannons teams (about to be eaten by the librarian)  and a single veteran with plasma gun.  Lascannon shots into Mephistion resulted in 1 hit, and 1 to wound :(  Killed a couple of terminators with the valkyrie.  Plasma dude ran towards the objective, to no avail.  He was charged by the terminators, attempted overwatch resulted in his gun metling, killing him and my hope for victory.  Overwatch fire at mephiston from the lascannons again got a hit, but a 1 to wound.


I think looking back It would of gone a lot different if I had gone second.  Most of my guns were out of range turn one anyway.  And it would of allowed me to make a last turn grab for the objective without taking fire.

So this evening

I've got a game vs Jon. And this is what i'm taking

Doesn't look all that impressive laid out.

c'est la vie.

Using Creed for giggles. 2 veteran squads with plasma. 1 veteran squad with melta in valkyrie. Infantry platoon with grenades and autocannons. Lascannon squad. Platoon command has flamers, in a heavy flamer chimera. 5 Kasrkin with meltas. A trio of russes (Standard, executioner and demolisher) and good old Marbo.

Going against Blood Angels, gonna get butchered most likely. But at least not everythings in a metal box!

Hoped to get the demolisher painted, never got round to it. And the executioner turret is unpainted, as I cannot for the life of me find the one I had before. Erksome.

this is interesting

http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/faeit-212-exclusive-40k-design-studio.html

Key point - from the talk with Phil Kelly
"It does seem to be a consensus amongst GW staff that 2nd was a great edition in many ways (although obviously broken in others)."  Hell Yeah!!

productive week

Hurrah.

Almost done all of the 11 plague censer bearers I have.  Just got to finish of the details, knifes etc.

Painted some Kasrkins.  8 done, and started on 5 more lasgun dudes. Shame they are far too pricey for a str 3 gun.

Also making progress on my psychic choir.  Totally unhappy with them, red was  a bad choice.  but alas, cba starting over.  These have been sitting in progress for months.

Tax man is giving me some money back, so hopefully can bulk out my rats sometime in the following weeks.

Editions

I have to laugh at the rants people have about editions. 

With 6th edition, GW have gone for a much more cinematic approach.  Whether it's mighty heroes slogging it out, or infantry having to advance over (what would be) their fallen comrades bodies.  It all paints a nice picture.

But this isn't a rant about 6th.  But plenty of people are doing just that..

And I wonder why the answer is, don't play it?  I certainly don't plan to.  It's not for me.  And it's the same for every game system out there.

As a secondary thought...

I really really want to paint some realm of battle boards and other fitting terrain.

Stupid lack of money.

6th

I'm not a huge fan of 5th edition 40k.  I just play because I love the 40k universe.   Part of this dislike is because of the immense hate I had for 3rd as young 'un, to the stage I stopped playing for 6-7 years.  Came back in the book end of 4th and I warmed back up to it.  And it remains my second favorite edition (behind 2nd).  Had lots of flavour in the rulebook, and this was when GW were still having a bit of fun.  Still had the horrid armor save system, but at least cover wasn't as prevalent.

Then a long came 5th.  Sure we gained some cool stuff (blast, run).   Biggest loss was all the, I dunno, flavour of the old book.  And it seems less tactical that 4th was with regards to terrain.  And of course the codexes are getting worse and worse (Space Undead are proper dead to me at this point).  Or maybe i'm just becoming jaded with old age.
 
But anyway 6th.  managed to make it through most of the rulebook, so thoughts.

Move.. seems a lot faster.  All units can potentially assault 12", and almost all vehicles can go 18".
Add to that that moving doesn't limit you're firing so much (Rapid fire unnaffected, heavy can still shoot at bs1 etc) makes the game far more mobile.  A good thing.
Shooting...possibly deadlier.  Cover saves have been reduced, except for ruins.  not to sure about that, ruins usually annoy me more than anything else for a multitude of reasons.  Making them better than other cover?  sigh.  Wound allocation.  YAY for this.
 Vehicles...can't really say how hull points affect vehicles.  Will have to see in a game.  Kinda sucks that a Leman Russ is hitting on 6's if it fires the battle cannon.  On the other hand, it can prob fire everything.  Except you can rarely fire everything usually due to los on one sponson.  Also poor hydras, hitting non flyers on 6's :(  And flyers.  Hurrah for more rules, that I don't see a point in.  Hilariously, if a Stormraven (or any flyer, but pointing out space marines flaws is funnier)  zooms and you immobilise it, whoevers inside can never get out unless the flyer is wrecked :D

And thats as far as I read. got thoroughly bored of it.  Having to flick back and forth to see what all these key words were.


In fact this book is full of special rules I don't see a point in.  Pages upon pages of them.  Power axes, eh?  Impact hits...what?  The shitty random terrain rules from fantasy...who cares?  Allies...cheese!!  Fortifications...BUY OUR CRAP!!  psychic powers...the list goes on.

What we have here is 5th edition, with more things to remember, and less to care about.  Pass.

Farewell 40k...unless it's second edition ;)  which has millions of flaws, and op heroes.  But at least it has it's feet firmly planted in the have fun zone.

I think I may pick up my painting skills.  I still love 40k, and will gladly buy models but never to play.

A tactics post.

So the 1000 point list I drew up.  Possibly a power list. who of thought.  Here I shall analyse my choices.

Grey Seer.  is cheese at any level.  Although he is naked at 1000 points.  Skaven magic can be devastating.  With access to the Dread thirteenth, 4d6 casualties is murder to the smaller units at this level. And the all improtant skitterleap.
Warlock engineer with doomrocket.  Ok this unit is god awfully broken.  Skitterleap him along the enemy flank and fire the rocket.  You will hit something, and it rarely misfires on 4 dice.  A large str 5 template kills things nicely.  All for 45 points.
Battle standard bearer.  No skaven should be without this.

24 clanrats.  Would of loved a weapon team, but alas, out of points.  Perhaps in future I will leave the engineer at home and take a warpfire thrower.  just a bunker for my characters.
2 units of slaves.  Thees are pretty cheesy in 8th edition.  8 ranks for anyone to chew through is a tall order.  Sure they never win, but they do stick around for ages at ld 9, steadfast for the most part, with a bsb reroll.

6 gutter runners.  Not sure these are worth their points.  but they are good war machine hunters.  With poisoned slings.  they are usually BS 4, with long range+moved+multiple shots = hitting on 6's, which auto wound :D

Doomwheel.  Star unit.  I didn't realise how hard is it to deal with.  Definetly a keeper.
Cannon. I had great luck with this thing.  Should probably look after it more.  Both games it got eaten. 

I was lucky both games.  Nothing misfired at all in Mikes game.  Only bad thing to happen was my miscast dreaded thirteenth.  And the seer only lost one level from it.

Was slightly less lucky v Jon.  Should of protected the cannon more.  But it's pretty hard to stop Eagles as they just fly over anything that gets in the way

Skaveny battles

Took 80 slaves (2x units of 40), 24 clanrats, BSB, Grey Seer, Eneginner + doomrocket,  Doomwheel,Warp lightning cannon And 6 gutter runners to a party.  Heres what happened.

Vs daemons.  Was nasty.  Mr doomrocket was skitterleaped and took half a a massive unit of bloodletters with the rocket.  10 were lost to the curse of the horned rat the turn after.  leaving 7.
Doomwheel took a mauling from flesh hounds, but took them out eventually with 2 wounds remaining
 The remains of the bloodletters were tied up by slaves, which they killed a lot of, until broken by a doomwheel flank charge (and a brave engineer rear charge).
Bloodrushers took the long way round away from the Doomwheel. Attempting to get round the back of the skaven blocks.  Clantrats made a wise march as far as they could get away from them.  A charge from slaves + doomwheel made short work of the bloodcrushers.
Result was somewhat a massacre.  Wiped out the daemons, lost 50 or so slaves.  No shooting did not help the daemons.  And the doomrocket cheese was horrendous.  He gets man of the match.  Did not expect to win, it's a horribly efficient list at murdering things.  Was pleasently surprides how everything worked.

Againts high elves, was slightly worse.  Lost one of my slaves turn one.  Managed to teleport the doomrocket again, killed a bunch of archers.
Giant Eagle ate the cannon.  Swordmasters did all sort of nasty to my doomwheel.  Which spent the rest of the game misfriring to 1 d6 movement and killing gutter runners. It did see off the swordmasters though.  The doomwheel was probably victim to my statement it had never rolled below strength 6 on it's shots (which was true at that point)
Dragon Princes charged into combat, and  I could not shift the knights with a clanrat flank charge.  eventually the princes won combat and my rats fled.  Grey Seer miscast skitterleap so he teleported behind the archers and blew up.  He was dragged the realm of chaos, but took a bunch of archers with him.
By the end of it, a single knight, and a mage was vs doomwheel.  Called it there, was turn 6 and My 150 point doomwheel was worth no way near a unit of dragon princes, plus a wounded mage.  I lost probably half my army to the horrid phoenix spell.

Skaven can be cheesy - when everything works. :D

vs Grey Knights

Was rescue.  Unfortuantly it turned out to be much closer to Aven than it was to me.

Didn't go too badly at the start.  Once the objective was found any unit that picked it up, was swiftly struck down.  Unfortuantly once the terminators picked it up, it was taking a little longer to kill them.

Didn't help that every single vehicle I had was immobilised, meaning if I wanted to win I had to get out, which was death.  And it was, everyone died.

Had I got another turn, a round of shooting could of killed the last of the terminators, forcing a draw.  But alas.

Systems

After a recent debate been thinking about all the miniature game systems that exist.  I only really play GW fantasy and 40k. Mostly because I adore the fluff.  And well it's the easiest to get into to.

I also love(d) Necromunda.  Fantastic skirmish game.

But enough of the gw love.  Games that have at least interested me enough to mroe than glance.

Warmachine/Hordes.  Pretty big in the states I hear.  Rules look ok, and the warjack are suitably big and menacing.
Malifaux.  Weird west, we do love it.  I'm not completly sold on it though.
     Wryd  also do Puppet Wars.  hex based which makes me wary, but puppets!!!
Dropzone Commander.   Has fantastic miniatures.  Seem a lot like Epic 40k. Which I never really played,  but people love it.  Seems to all be from one guy, is that good or bad?
 Uncharted Seas.   I flat out love the fluff for this naval affair.  Hate the game though.
Anima Tactics.  Anime inspired mini's, consider me sold.

Does Monsterpocalypse count?  Love(d) that one aswell.  Although I will admit it does have a little bit of too many abilites syndrome.

Fun list

Because I was bored 1750.

Company command - Creed/Kell, astropath, officer of the fleet, vox, medi pack and a melta gun.
6 Ratlings!!
Marbo
Veterans - bastonne, 3 melta, shotguns
Valkyrie -  Multilaser, rocket pods, sponsons.
Infantry Platoon
 command - 4 flamers, bolt pistol
 2 x squad, with grenade launchers, vox
 3 x squad with plasma gun/lascannon, vox
Hellhound
Leman Russ with heavy bolters
Leman Russ Demolisher, lascannon, plasma sponsons

Not one of these choice is especially good.  Espcially the command squd, 330 points of total ineffectiveness.  it does LOOK like a command squad though,  Commander with his advisors and a special weapon as protection.  And voxes!!  Pointless, but Cadians are relatively high tech and would use them.  And maybe not totally pointless with creed giving 4 orders a turn.  And some bods, with which to give orders to.  2 of which will be saddled with the task of running across the battlefield to claim objectives.  Good luck to them.  And some tank firepower, just because.

Need to get some voxes, sure there are some somewhere from back when they were good.   And an opponent.

Can't win if you roll 1's

That's the truth.   Objective was to destroy all the buildings, of which there 5

Firestorm...did nothing
Stratagem was s10 hit on all the buildings, did nothing.

First round of shooting... many shaken results, one destroyed building
Lost some tanks
Second turn slightly less shaken.  One more destroyed building.
Third turn all went a bit wrong.
Guys had to get out of  immobilised death trap tanks to get in melta range   Blew up another 2 buildings,  guys were in the open so went for assault, which never quite worked.  Was my last worthwhile option and left me no melta left.  Lost their with two more to destroy.

Need to rill a lot less 1's . didn't roll above 3 on hardly any damage rolls.  Destroyed many lascannon emplacements.

Battles!!

Yes plural

Vs versus Tau, kill points.  Turns out I can be outshot a great deal.  Also broadsides > tanks.  Stupid cover.  Lost 9 kill points to 5.

Also played a friendly game versus Richard.  Was slightly unbalanced. To be fair his army was very all round.  But couldn't do much versus me.  There was also some atrocious rolls.  If it could go wrong, it did for the Eldar.
Won turn one, and the roll off for objective placement of the 3 objectives.  And if theirs anything guard can do, it's defend versus anyone walking across the board.  And I had two of the objectives right next to me. 
Turn one saw me annihilate the seer council, who unfortunately had not got fortune yet.  The farseer survived with a single wound to die later to volume of fire. More misfortune when my vanquisher pure sniped a wave serpent out the sky behind ruins.  Also Hellhounds > rangers.  Who only really survived the onslaught due to be on two levels of  a ruin.  They did immobilise the tank in return with an extremely well placed sniper rifle shot.
The rest of the game saw the falcons try to snipe what that could behind cover, but I don't think they hit anything all game.  Manage to immobilise a chimera on terrain, So some guys had to get out to to claim the objective.  Banshees attempted to reach them from their immobilised wave serpent, but rolled a 2 for running, not quite making it.  Game ended there.  2-1 Guard, yay.

What i've painted

An old internet buddy thought about starting 40k, so mid discussion I figred I would take a (bad) photo of what I have. So took everything that I've actually painted and took the photo.

Ta da!!

Rules

Been having fun arguing on a internet forum about 40k rules.

The 40k rulebook is full of holes. I'm not really one to pick at this, but if someone ask a question or brings up a point, I do get an urge to be correct.
You can tell people what happens, and they will refuse to listen. They seem to what to stick to their interpretation because it makes sense. But the 40k rules have a fair amount of abstraction involved. Stuff often makes no sense.

The more you look into 40k rules, the more absurd it becomes. I'm glad I don't tend to question stuff that much in games unless I really beleive I am right, or am totally unsure (which is when I am most dangerous at makign a fool of one self). Or at least I hope I don't question that much. If I do, I apologise to everyone who I do it to.

The internet, populated by idiots since 1970 whenever it was.

Vs Grey Knights

Was a draw, knew it would be that or a loss.

Singular objective basically meant I would have to kill every single Grey Knight pretty much to get a win. But on the other hand, all was needed by either side was to get one unit in the ruin and was a draw.

Won the roll of and was faced with a hard choice, wanted to go second, but only one quarter offered LoS into the ruins so had to pick my deployment zone. From there just shot as best I could. hellhounds were useless. Only targets in the table turn one was the stormraven and a vindicare. Vindicare didn't stand much chance.
Immobilsied and dropped the multi melta from the stormraven turn two, a nice result. Other highlights include throwing plasma at terminators, always feels good.
Turn 6 I just drove a tank into the ruin, and was able to get a squad in there as well. Another silliness of the rules, move 12", Disembark, then ran 6". 18" of movement from a guardsman. Simon could of of maybe dislodged everybody but couldn't in the end. And it was a draw.

Simon seemed very worried about my tank line, and as it turns out, Grey Knights really have limited options versus AV. Was rather shocked. Only lost 4 vehicles in the end.

Psychology

My army has a lot of guns. People seem terrified of this. And they cry out for more cover on the table.

Fun fact I have hardly killed anything with my tanks. Only games which I did any damge were v Dan (Who sat in the open) and Aven (who I mostly killed with plasma guns from the standard guys)

Unfortuantly this fear of guns is working totally against me.

Necrons

So necrons.

Flicked through the codex, it's god awful. Turn off number one
Model range is a bit meh. Some of them look good, but you see a necron army and everything looks the same, meh.
BoL's battle report this week has necrons and barley managed to get through, was complelety non interesting to me.

Their are armies that do nothing for me, but none as badly as the current iteration of Necrons, and I loved the old ones.
Wonder if I can get away with not every playing v necrons ever again and having them totally not part of my 40k universe.

update 2

Yeah I beat Aven, but not going to make a big deal. Aven was declared the winner and so be it, he has chance of topping the table, I do not. I know I won and thats enough for me.

My army was a pretty good counter to Aven's Dark eldar. Aside from 7 or so dark lances and haywire grenades, he could do nothing to my tanks. Helped that the dark lances failed just 90% of their shots Although as usual the silly fragility of vehicles was on display as pretty much everything spent the game shaken, and just about everything lost it's turret.
Leman russ Kill tally, one flyer, one of my own chimeras, awesome.

Not a fan of Annihilation. Stand and shoot, a tad boring, but then thats guard I guess.

Update

loss, but it was planetstrike so cba with it

Loss, but think it may have actually been a draw thinking back, but cba to argue it. Was just a bad call to tally what was left I think. but meh.

Deffo lost 7

Killed:
Flyer
Talos
2 squads of I know not.
2 squads of jetbikes

And I think his HQ was in one of the I know nots, so 7. And I beleive I killed a wyches unit. But not really knowing the army or his list, can't really say and it's all cloudy.

Tired now. Tired but obsessing and can't sleep. Would be easier if I could see Aven's list. Put my mind at rest. And I really do have better(worse?) things to worry about

Victory

A win. Lost 1 chimera, a hellhound and some turrets.

What can I say, mission suited me so very well. Got to put 6 melta guns right on top of the far objectives. And had open shots to most of the battle. Hellhounds have been useless throughout, ho hum.

For Dan's part, he was in a foul mood most of the game. Dark Lances were extremely inaffectual. Either not hitting or rolling 3 for pen. Highlight was when his lord through a big template of doom of some sort, missing and blowing up one of own squads, Though I did not make much of it. Would of prob made his temper worse. At the end he handed me the win turn 4 and stormed of out :(

Guard vs cover and 2 multi meltas

Pretty much all that happened.

The sisters never moved, not once, and why would they, a plethora of 3+ cover for them. And the two multi meltas, and an exorcist pretty much got one kill point a turn. Was on average putting 15 or so wounds on the two big sisters units every single turn, and over half of them survived the battle. Admittedly I should of prob stayed back and fired, but wanted to get as many shots as I could as I knew things weren't going to die.

Lost 7-3, did kill Saint Celestine, moral victory.

Negativity

Went to sleep at 1, awake at 5, wtf body, wtf.

Anyway last post was overly negative, and it really wasn't supposed to be. the game I had vs james wasn;t fun, maybe that was it. Although the mission v Joel was horribly against me and it was a massacre, I still enjoyed it, Joels list had none of the asshattery I expect nowdays. Such as invulnerable deathstars (well unless you count Eldrad...) or those annoying abilities that do stuff that remove things from the table in sweeps (I hear Necrons are full of this)

On another day, with a different mission, maybe a standard game. Would of prob done a lot a better and would really to like to play that game, hmm.

First game

Versus Joels Eldar, and I lost quite badly, although there really wasn't anything I could do.

His objective was to kill my commander and then it was down to Kill points. If he rusvuved I won regardless.

So what happened is I had to put down three units further han 12" from any table edge, inc my commander. Joel then did the same but within 12" of any table edge. No matter what happened I would be within 12" of 2 wraithguard units. Fate was sealed from then. The two vet squads was annihlated. Then turn after the commanders chimera snuffed it, because for some fucked reason Tanks cannot outrun infantry. He did survive a hail of scatter laser fire though when the war walkers turned up, making 5/5 armour saves. So after turn 2 I was 5kp vs 0.

I got two units from reserve, that killed two walkers. turn after two wraithlords showed up and slagged my two reserves, again nothing I could of done. Wraithguard massacred my commander. I was now 8 for nothing, and my only shot at victory was for me to kill everything. Everything being 2 untouched wraithguard units and 2 wraithlords. And one wave serpent and dire avengers

Got a vet squad turn 3, that basically showed up out of range of everything, and moved towards the wave serpent, And my leman russ squad. Whiffed with their shooting vs the wraithlord, which then proceeded to kill one.

turn 4 I got nothing from reserve.

Turn 5 Joel parked his wave serpent in front of the entire remnants of my army. game was already lost, but to rub salt in the wound, 3 meltas, a demolisher cannon, lascannon and the hellhound cannon, did no damage to the wave serpent. And then the game ended. Joel lost 2 war walkers. I lost everything, bar 1 vet squad, the demolisher and a hellhound. 9kp to 0.

So was pretty much a massacre, only reason I had 3 units at the end is because they appeared on a table edge with no one on it on the very last turn.

If I could of kept range, or started with everything, maybe had a chance, but the forced deployment and piecemeal slaughter of my forces as they arrived. Nope could not win.

And then played a slamm game vs James. Lost because I could not hit shot for one, and secondly because he had an earthshaker and a lascannon firing beween a tiny gap between two buildings. Such bullshit when people do that. It's akin to a game I played vs dark elves once, where there was a perhaps half inch between two of my regiments, with one behind them which then got fired upon by a crap load of bolthrowers. through that tiny gap.

Gw does FAQS, confuses the world. Collective sighs abound.

Just about everyone got updated at the beginning of the month.

So now questions abound regarding Dawn of War deployment.
Deploy up to 1 hq unit, and two troops units. Unit being a single body. So transports count as a unit. makes sense...sort of. As an aside, space marines can screw themselves by combat squading? Breaking down one unit will consume both your 2 troops allowance,
But anyway, Imperial Guard Infantry Platoons have been FAQ'd to count as one unit for deployment. So this to means that I can stick down 1800+ points of platoon as one one of my units. And then another 1800 as my second. Since chimeras are bought as part of the platoon, I do believe they count to be included.

This is huge. Arguments abound as it outright sticks it fingers up at the rulebook.
oh internets, argue yourself cold.
They also show a general lack of consistency with this batch, along the lines of "We love space marines, Xenos can go F themselves"

Boards

Seriously considering getting myself a sheet of ply and some other bits of wood and building a board, well two if you consider it would be two 4x4's

Would need to borrow a drill...
and some skills...
and would be better if i had a table to put it on.
meh details

The reasoning? Thought about painting some terrain, but would ideally need a table to match the terrain to. Well when I say terrain, I mean 4 ruin pieces that need basing.