The Future of Chaos...

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, with moving into our new home, I have been thinking about the future of chaos and what that will bring. I have been paying a lot of attention to the rumors on BOLS, Warseer, etc. and to be honest, it all sounds good. A lot of the old character seems to be making its way back however I do hope that its not another Grey Knights book. The last thing I want to see is every one and their mother playing chaos, of course this is bound to happen as with every new army; I just dont want players to give me a dirty look when I pull out my chaos army. The biggest hope that I have is that the new chaos codex will bring back the flavor of chaos, to allow for multiple builds instead of just a few, and to bring back the options that the old codex had. My other hope is that GW concentrates on fleshing out the undivided chaos legions along with the god centric ones, like the Alpha Legion, Word Bearers, and my favorite the Nightlords. GW definitely has the resources for writing awesome fluff (tap Black Library authors here GW please!!!) and keep the rule writers to what they do best, writing rules. Black Library has given you years of awesome fluff, filled with characters and villians that could be brought to the table top. Let us chaos players have the options to kit out all kinds of lists, lists that while being fluffy can still kick some serious ass on the table top. So come on GW, bring on Honsu, Talos, etc, bring out shiny new models that we will kill to have, but above all make the codex something to be feared once again.

On another note, I plan on running the following chaos lists in the next weeks or so, basically playing my favorite army for the purposes of having fun. In the case of my Thousand Sons army, I am actually bringing summoned daemons to the mix including a summoned greater daemon. In my last 2 games, the summoned daemons actually helped me win my games by either tearing up guard in CC (ok guard suck in CC but hey) and providing me with a cheap scoring unit. The greater daemon has been a terror, tearing up vehicles and when I played a Nids player, tore through a 5 man warrior squad, killed a genestear squad of 9, and then tied up the hive tyrant with his guard for 2 full turns!! Below is my list -

Total Roster Cost: 1749

HQ: Kharn the Betrayer (1#, 165 pts)
1 Kharn the Betrayer, 165 pts
: Summoned Greater Daemon (1#, 100 pts)
1 Summoned Greater Daemon, 100 pts

Elite: Possessed (10#, 309 pts)
8 Possessed, 238 pts = 8 * 26 (base cost 26) + Icon of Khorne 30
1 Possessed Champion, 36 pts
1 Rhino, 35 pts

: Summoned Lesser Daemon (9#, 117 pts)
9 Summoned Lesser Daemon, 117 pts = 9 * 13

Troops: Thousand Sons (10#, 294 pts)
8 Thousand Sons, 189 pts = 8 * 23 (base cost 23) + Personal Icon 5
1 Aspiring Sorcerer, 70 pts = (base cost 60 + Doombolt 10)
1 Rhino, 35 pts

Troops: Thousand Sons (10#, 289 pts)
8 Thousand Sons, 184 pts = 8 * 23
1 Aspiring Sorcerer, 70 pts = (base cost 60 + Doombolt 10)
1 Rhino, 35 pts

Heavy Support: Obliterators (3#, 225 pts)
3 Obliterators, 225 pts = 3 * 75

Heavy Support: Vindicator (1#, 125 pts)
1 Vindicator, 125 pts

Heavy Support: Vindicator (1#, 125 pts)
1 Vindicator, 125 pts

The Nightlords list I am really excited to try out as I painted up a Nightlords Commander in Terminator armor and have yet to use him. Along with his Lightning claw buddies in a Landraider, these guys make one hell of a hammer. Like my wolf army, I see the benefit of having 2 heavy weapon squads in the backfield to provide supporting fire for my troops. In keeping with my space wolf team, I am running cheap havoc squads with a lascannon and 2 autocannons to give me weight of fire and a lascannon to reach out and take out heavy vehicles. In keeping with the Nightlord theme, I am also running 2 big chosen squads that I will infiltrate all over the board to provide the proper terror tactics to my opponents. This list is below -

Total Roster Cost: 1750

HQ: Chaos Terminator Lord (1#, 145 pts)
1 Chaos Terminator Lord, 145 pts = (base cost 120 + Mark of Khorne 10 + Combi-flamer 5 + Lightning Claw 10)

Elite: Chosen (10#, 240 pts)
9 Chosen, 187 pts = 9 * 18 (base cost 18) + Meltagun 10 + Flamer x1 5 + Meltagun x1 10
1 Aspiring Champion, 53 pts = (base cost 28) + Power Fist 25

Elite: Chosen (10#, 235 pts)
9 Chosen, 182 pts = 9 * 18 (base cost 18) + Meltagun 10 + Meltagun x1 10
1 Aspiring Champion, 53 pts = (base cost 28) + Power Fist 25

Elite: Chaos Terminators (5#, 430 pts)
1 Chaos Terminators, 15 pts + Icon of Slaanesh 15
1 Terminator, 40 pts = (base cost 30) + Power Fist x1 10
3 Terminator Champion, 150 pts = 3 * 40 (base cost 40) + Lightning Claws (pair) x3 30
1 Land Raider, 225 pts = (base cost 220 + Dozer Blade 5)

Troops: Chaos Space Marines (9#, 200 pts)
7 Chaos Space Marines, 120 pts = 7 * 15 (base cost 15) + Plasma gun x1 15
1 Aspiring Champion, 45 pts = (base cost 30 + Power Weapon 15)
1 Rhino, 35 pts

Troops: Chaos Space Marines (9#, 200 pts)
7 Chaos Space Marines, 120 pts = 7 * 15 (base cost 15) + Plasma gun x1 15
1 Aspiring Champion, 45 pts = (base cost 30 + Power Weapon 15)
1 Rhino, 35 pts

Heavy Support: Havocs (5#, 150 pts)
5 Havocs, 150 pts = 5 * 15 (base cost 15) + Autocannon x2 40 + Lascannon x1 35

Heavy Support: Havocs (5#, 150 pts)
5 Havocs, 150 pts = 5 * 15 (base cost 15) + Autocannon x2 40 + Lascannon x1 35

Let me know what you guys think..

40K Campaign - Death Co. test drive..

Sorry for not posting in the last month or so, but real life has gotten in the way, we recently moved to a new house which has taken all of my time. I haven't done anything 40K related be it painting or modeling. A couple of weeks past, the local FLGS manager began a 1750 point 40K campaign in which more then 5 teams will be competing. Each team has a total of 5 per team and any army can be used including Forge world units and army lists. Upon hearing of this I thought that the time had come for me to pull out my newest army, my Death Company Air Cav army. I am taking the following with some changes based on who I will be facing such as switching out one of my chaplains for a librarian for some anti-psychic ability -

1750 Pts - Blood Angels Roster - 1750 pts New Dual leader air strike force

HQ: Astorath the Grim
1 Astorath the Grim

Elite: Chaplain in Power Armour
1 Chaplain in Power Armour

Troops: Death Company (8#)
1 Death Company, 0 pts
1 Death Company,(Thunder Hammer)
6 Death Company
1 Death Company,(Power Weapon)

Troops: Death Company (8#)
1 Death Company, 0 pts
1 Death Company,(Thunder Hammer)
6 Death Company
1 Death Company,(Power Weapon)

Troops: Tactical Squad (10#)
9 Tactical Squad
1 Sergeant

Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship (1#)
1 Stormraven Gunship

Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship (1#)
1 Stormraven Gunship

Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship (1#)
1 Stormraven Gunship

Troops: Death Company Dreadnought (1#)
1 Death Company Dreadnought

Troops: Death Company Dreadnought (1#)
1 Death Company Dreadnought

To say that this army is fun to play is an understatement, I know that if I I have a turn of bad luck, that I will probably lose the game, however with the speed of the storm ravens, I can redeploy quickly and strike any where on the game board. My first game of the campaign was against an imperial guard Death Korp of Kreig army with 6 Leman Russ tanks. To be honest, I thought it was all over even though I got first turn. We rolled table quarter deployment with Kill points. My opponent deployed castled up in the opposite corner with all 6 of his tanks split up into 2 3 tank squadrons. I deployed as close as possible to the center of the board with my tactical squad Storm Raven hanging a little back just to give my opponent another target. Lucky for me he didn't steal the initiative and so I rushed forward with 2 of the Storm Ravens; I still wasn't in range to get the 2 dice for damage as I was about 18 inches out however due to him having his tanks in squadrons even though I managed to roll the lucky 6 to glance with one of my multi-meltas, I rolled a 2 which he could just ignore. My other Storm Raven opened up on a squad of rough riders (These Death Korp riders are freaking sweet models)and I ended up killing all of them which put me in the lead with 1 kill point. His first turn should have been the death of me, he fired all of tanks at both of the storm ravens carrying the death company squads and dreads however due to some hot dice on my part, all he was able to do was stun one raven and shake on. I kept making my 4 ups covers like it was going out of style which just demoralized him. He tried to assault the closest storm raven with his commissar lord and his squad of veterans but due to moving flat out, he needed 6`s to hit and failed to do any damage. Suffice to say that by turn 2, my entire army was in his lines multi-assaulting every thing in my path. By the end of turn 2, i was up by 6 killpoints and my opponent decided to call it as I had managed to kill 4 of his tanks with only losing 4 death company in that turn and pretty much he didn't have any place to go. My next campaign game was against a wolfguard based army led by Grimnar. This game was a lot more challenging as my opponent had a lot of missile launchers and was able to knock out 2 of my storm ravens by turn 2 and had taken off all of the weapons on the 3rd one. His 3 dreads also highlighted a major weakness with my dreads, as they don't have their power fists, if they are assaulted by a rival dread, they will get owned which in fact happened to one of my dreads. This game came down to the wire with me winning the capture and control game by contesting his home objective with my last storm raven. So far the army is a blast to play and I hope to continue to use this army for many games to come, now I have to finish painting it. Lets hope my luck holds up for my future campaign games. Pics are from a GW article that talked about painting the Storm ravens.