Firewarrior spam test drive

Sup guys, been an age since I posted, sorry about that but with the holidays now in full swing and me getting a new job/position and work which includes a ton of traveling, life has been hectic.  I want to talk about my experience with using the Tau list that I posted about.   Basically the list revolves around spamming strength 5 guns everywhere from running 4 full squads of firewarriors to 2 squads of stealth suits.  For heavy support, 2 squads of broadsides.   I also included 2 remora stealth drones and with their updated rules are really good for their price point.  These added in more strength 5 guns to the list as will as 2 additional marker lights.  A couple of weeks back I was finally able to take the list out for a test run in a couple of games and really liked how the list performed.  My first game was in a 2000 point league against an eldar with necron allies (yup you heard that right) list that included a wraithknight,  2 mini jetseer squads, 2 night scythes,  necron overlord in a douche canoe, and I want to say a couple of Annie barges.  My opponent definitely had an edge on me however through useful application of fire warrior firepower I was able to kill off all of his units threatening my side of the board and using my lone commander battlesuit and riptide to contest the objectives that he didn't have obsec units on.  Needless to say I lost 3 of my 4 firewarrior units but that last one was able to claim an objective on my opponents side due to laying low behind some line of sight blocking terrain and running them the last 2 turns to claim the objective.  I ended up winning the game but it was definitely close with that last firewarrior squad netting me the win with a lucky run roll.  It was a close game but it did show me that my list at least had some legs to stand on.  My second game was during my clubs game day.  I played against a great opponent who was running iron hands space marines with bikes,  centurion dev squad, chapter master of doom on a bike, and a couple of dreads.  First priority in this game was to get rid of the fast movers.  He brilliantly placed the chapter master in front to tank wounds however unless a model has 6 to 8 wounds, I don't care if you have a 2 up save, if I make you take 60 armor saves, you are going to lose the model.  That is exactly what happened as I had 3 full units of fire warriors using the storm of iron power from the ethereal to obliterate both the chapter master and the bike squad.  I then went after his mobile scoring units leaving just the centurions and a devastator squad left which I shot at all game but he kept making his pesky armor and cover saves.   We got to turn 5 before we called it by the score of 10 to 3 in favor of the Tau.   Well the army does have legs to stand on but I can definitely see some of the weak spots.  Blast template heavy armies will absolutely destroy the linchpin which is the ethereal so I might want to add another one to at least make it a little bit harder for my opponents.   I will need to play the list more to see if it's something I will stick with.  As I am a gamer with ADD, in my pics you will see my first squad of crisis suits for my far sight enclave army.   I wanted to have a low model count army that I could take with me during my business trips that is easy to carry with me on planes.  Currently I have about 1000 points which travels wonderful in a small malifaux bag I had sitting around.  The army includes 6 crisis suits, a commander, a riptide, 3 broadsides, and marker drones.  The army has been fun to use even though I have lost more games with it then won.  I hope to finish it in time for next trip and might had several more units to bring it up to 1500 pts.

Concept Tau list - Fire warrior Spam

As my luck would have it, I found myself listening to the latest Independent Characters podcast show of force show talking about everybody's favorite blue aliens, the Tau.   The show was great as the guys dove into the background, sample lists, and themes of the army.   After listening to the show, I was inspired to pick up my Tau once again and have a go at finally completing the paint job that I started over 2 years ago.  My Tau army was my 3rd army that I started.  Back in 4th edition, I had completed about 1500 points worth of models but have since recently bought many of the new models and some more crisis suits as I wanted to build a far sight enclave army.  Listening to the show gave me some ideas that with little effort I would be able to run a list that is different than what you typically see out there.  The list would put a focus on spamming strength 5 shooting, namely firewarriors,  4 maxed out squads complete with EMP grenades to deal with any vehicles, 2 6 man stealth suit squads all with burst cannons, etc.  Rounding out these 6 squads would be 3 missile sides, skyway,  marker drone squadron, and since I own them, 2 Remora stealth drones.  The complete list is below.

+++ New Tau Firewarrior spam list (1849pts) +++

Selections:

Tau Empire: Codex (2013) v19 (Primary Detachment) Selections:

+ HQ + (225pts)

    * Commander (170pts)
        (Independent Character, Supporting Fire, Very Bulky)
        Crisis battlesuit, Drone controller, 2x Missile pod, Neuroweb System Jammer, Onager Gauntlet, Stimulant injector, XV8-02 Crisis 'Iridium' Battlesuit

    * Ethereal (55pts)
        (Failure is Not An Option, Independent Character, Invocation of the Elements, Stubborn)
        Blacksun filter

+ Elites + (396pts)

    * Stealth Team (198pts)
        (Infiltrate, Supporting Fire)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)

    * Stealth Team (198pts)
        (Infiltrate, Supporting Fire)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)
        * Stealth Shas'ui
            Advanced targeting system, Burst cannon, Stealth battlesuit (Shrouded, Stealth)

+ Troops + (528pts)

    * Fire Warrior Team (132pts)
        (Supporting Fire)
        EMP grenades, 12x Fire Warrior Shas'la with pulse rifle, Photon grenades

    * Fire Warrior Team (132pts)
        (Supporting Fire)
        EMP grenades, 12x Fire Warrior Shas'la with pulse rifle, Photon grenades

    * Fire Warrior Team (132pts)
        (Supporting Fire)
        EMP grenades, 12x Fire Warrior Shas'la with pulse rifle, Photon grenades

    * Fire Warrior Team (132pts)
        (Supporting Fire)
        EMP grenades, 12x Fire Warrior Shas'la with pulse rifle, Photon grenades

+ Fast Attack + (264pts)

    * Drone Squadron (84pts)
        (Supporting Fire)
        * 6x Marker Drone
            6x Markerlight

    * DX-6 'Remora' Drone Fighter Squadron [FW] (90pts)
        * DX-6 'Remora'
            (Deep Strike, Shrouded)
            Blacksun filter (Night Vision), Networked markerlight, 2x Seeker Missile, Twin-linked long-barelled burst cannon

    * DX-6 'Remora' Drone Fighter Squadron [FW] (90pts)
        * DX-6 'Remora'
            (Deep Strike, Shrouded)
            Blacksun filter (Night Vision), Networked markerlight, 2x Seeker Missile, Twin-linked long-barelled burst cannon

+ Heavy Support + (436pts)

    * Sky Ray Missile Defense Gunship (130pts)
        Disruption pod, 2x Networked markerlight, 6x Seeker missile, Twin-linked smart missile system, Velocity tracker

    * XV88 Broadside Team (204pts)
        (Extremely Bulky, Supporting Fire)
        * Broadside Shas'ui
            Broadside battlesuit, Early warning override, Seeker missile, Twin-linked high-yield missile pod, Twin-linked smart missile system
        * Broadside Shas'ui
            Broadside battlesuit, Early warning override, Seeker missile, Twin-linked high-yield missile pod, Twin-linked smart missile system
        * 4x Missile Drone
            4x Missile pod

    * XV88 Broadside Team (102pts)
        (Extremely Bulky, Supporting Fire)
        * Broadside Shas'ui
            Broadside battlesuit, Early warning override, Seeker missile, Twin-linked high-yield missile pod, Twin-linked smart missile system
        * 2x Missile Drone
            2x Missile pod

Yup, no crisis suits other than the commander and no riptides.   It's a purely built list to maximize strength 5 shooting.  Pics are of my almost completed Riptide.  And yes, wont be using it with this list... lol.  Let me know what you guys think.

The psychic phase - Fail or Win?

Hey hows it going guys.  So this week I wanted to talk on the subject of the Psychic phase in 7th edition.  Before sharing my thoughts, I wanted to research both the good and the bad of the phase as this is the biggest change of 7th.  No longer do players have to remember when to cast psychic powers, no more "hey do you mind if I cast this now" , no more remembering that these powers are done before movement, in the shooting, assault, etc.  All powers are done in this phase which definitely makes things a little easier.  Having played several games both with a psychic dependant and non dependant army the phase bring a nice sub game to the game.  However thoughts of psychic powers being cast almost automatic like in 5th or 6th edition are sadly mistaken.  The way psychic powers are cast now make it a little hard to count on in this edition.  Even for psychic heavy armies you can not count on getting every power up every turn.  Yes psycher heavy armies will have it easier by flinging more dice to get the powers off however the more dice they throw the more perils of the warp chances come up.  In this edition, any rolls of double 6 on successful or failed casts result in perils of the warp.   It doesn't take a genius to surmise that the more dice you throw at a power, the more 6's will come up.  This makes it a gamble that if you really want a power to go off, the more chances that a perils result will come up.  Is this a fair trade off for armies that have few psychers or no psychers?   If the player is rolling hot then no, hot dice will always win no matter what.  But let's take it from an average dice thrower.  Not every spell that you need up will always be on no matter how many dice you throw at it.  Which leads me to my first conclusion.  I believe that armies that are not so relient on powers going off will be the ones best off in this edition.  Armies that are extremely relient with powers going off will have their days but will not be so consistent in the winners column.   Armies that can do both will be even better off.  I conducted some experimenting with both a psycher heavy, power dependant army and one that wasn't dependant (just one psycher,  random).  In playing several games, I found that the army that wasn't dependant on getting powers off was consistently winning turns and thus games (scoring more points) than the army that was heavily dependant on getting powers off.  The nature of the psychic phase in 7th edition lends itself to be more fickle if you will then in past editions which I guess is GW's way of balancing out psycher heavy armies.  I guess they didn't count on having somebody with hot dice or armies that can get tons of warp dice to throw at powers by creating more psychers.   All in all though I think GW did something good here.  Giving players a phase to cast all of their powers makes it easier to remember, makes psychic powers a cleaner aspect of the game.  Limiting power dice or even making it that summoned units could only give you at max 1 more power dice would make this phase a genuine winner.

On deck today is my finished Belakor the dark master.  I basically copied the paint scheme from GW as I thought the scheme looked great and was easy to replicate.  I plan on running him with my dark mech army to add in more psychic support or even with my Thousand sons to add in a little more punch. 

Space Wolves again...and Grey Knights??!!

Sup guys.  Wow have the releases been hopping lately from GW.  This last weekend we saw the release of the new Space Wolves codex and coming up on the heels of its release the rumors are telling us that Grey Knights are next.  Rumor no more as various websites and 40K talking heads have confirmed the rumor not to mention a buddy of mine just shot me a pic of next weeks White Dwarf with you guessed it, Grey Knights on the cover.  So before I start with this whole Grey Knights mess, I wanted to give my first impressions of the Space Puppy book.  On first impression the book is great.  It manages to keep a lot of the flavor of the old dex and bring the costs in line with other newer space marine books.  Instead of the beefed up chapter master, they get the beefed up thunderwolf lord with access to runic armor and storm shield at a points discount.  Not just that but thunderwolf cavalry are now cheaper and thus easier to take in lists that will not sacrifice a lot making them perfect bodyguards for your lords.  The new flyer is also very good with the transport one being the true winner allowing you to take 16 models or 8 terminators and still providing great supporting fire once the cargo has been delivered.  The new murderface Dread has great rules and wont cost you an arm and a leg to use.  I can only hope when blood angels are redone they get a special dread too.  The supplement just improves on the rules and gives you the type of flexibility that I as a CSM player can only dream about.  You want to run 6 wolflords, go for it.  You want to run a scout army, do it.  Space Wolves always get great books and this is no exception.  Yes grey hunters got nerfed a bit but you have to realize that they were way under costed compared to other marines (hint, hint CSM).  They were brought in line with other imperial marines and for the most part the strength of the codex and supplement really hides this short coming.  About the only bad thing I would say about the space wolves release is the Grimnar santa sled.  I don't know if someone at GW is hooked on history channels Vikings but making a chariot look like a mini viking longship complete with shields on the side is just horrible.   Overall though the pups got a pair of great books. 

And now Grey Knights??  Wow what a surprise this was.  Right on the heels of the Space Wolves release we get codex Grey Knights.  No models for this release just updated rules which is ok in my book.  There are several armies that need to be updated and a quick rules update to an army that already has great models is good for the hobby.  Release new models with white dwarf rules and your good to go.  Now as expected the grey knights are indeed getting the nerf treatment with the rules leak that I have seen so far.  Removing all inquisition models, most of the special characters and rules, changing psycannons to salvo weapons, losing psybolt ammo are few of the nerfs that are coming.  Along with this a price reduction on all models and some new items including a force weapon gun, awesome formation and maybe the calls of this book sucks could be premature.  We only have a couple of days left until the book is released and so everything will be confirmed. 

Pics are of my almost complete Storm Raven for my blood angels/space marines.  I am hoping to get this army done by October.

2nd 7th ed game and beyond...

Hey guys, well I finished playing my 2nd and 3rd game of 7th and in a word I am inspired.  7th edition has been everything that I wanted giving me my share of laughs, technicality, and most important fun.  Playing in a league definitely helps with this as playing at my buddy's house has its advantages namely alcohol, but also food, and a form of comradre that cant be replicated at a gamestore so easily.  With every wargame, its the community of friends that will determine the success of a game in an area.  With the closing of the gamestore that I played 40K at, games came hard to come by.  In relation warmahordes had a huge explosion of players lately and so I stared playing that as my way of getting my wargaming fun in.  Warmahordes is a tremendous game and something I will play more of whenever I get a chance as I have a great gaming group and thus never longing for a game.  But 40k for a couple of months was a dying game in my area which was sad for me.  So definitely I feel lucky that I have found a league to get my 40k fix.  In my next series of games I did find units that were allstars and that vehicles are still susceptible to be glanced out if you do throw several medium to high strength shots, (looking at you Tau/Necrons).  The definite allstar that I have seen are chariots especially the Catacomb command barge aka the douche canoe (thank you 11th company for a great name).  The fact that it has a 2+ 3++ in the shooting phase, can get up due to everliving, make it a very formidable unit.  The fact that right now it can sweep zooming fliers is a little over the top.  Hopefully this will get faqed soon as I do find this a little game breaking. 

So in my 2nd game I faced the wrath of the Necrons which is one of the older armies that have stayed as one of the top armies in these early days of 7th edition.  They have great transports, somewhat resilient troops, high leadership, and above all great shooting.  Having an entire army full of AV 13 vehicles facing you is pretty tough especially if you are not prepared for it.  On top of that 2 douche canoes that are no slouches in close combat makes for a great army.  The game was a great one in an atmosphere of great friends, good beer, and awesome homemade salsa.  It was close but in the end the Necrons defeated my 3 Juggerlord CC list 5-4 in an emperor's will, vanguard strike game.  The game was definitely going my opponent's way until about turn 3 when the power of the 3 juggerlords became apparent.  Huge disappointment in my CSM squads due to yet again morale issues.  They didnt get sweep due to necron lords having low initiative but really, a 20 man unit should be able to put down a necron lord in a command barge.  They did snapshot a necron flyer down though which was cool and I had 2 csm that were left from a 12 man unit melta bomb an annihilation barge to death before getting shot down by a warrior unit next turn.  The game was close and I still could have pulled it off if the game ended on turn 5 or 7.  Alas it ended on turn 6 and with it the juggerlords lost their first game of 7th edition.  The juggerlords still proved to me that close combat is still viable as long as you have great terrain and amongst all at least one line blocking terrain piece.

1st Game Completed.. and loving it...

Hi guys,
Well I finally got the opportunity to play my first game of 7th edition.  It has been a long time as with most things real life got in the way and so delayed my ability to get a game in.  The closing of my local FLGS didnt help matters and the local other store seems more content with boycotting GW games and embracing warmahordes.  Dont get me wrong, warmahordes is great fun and have since started playing it with great gusto however 40K will always be my first love.  A good friend of mine that I had lost touch with got in touch with me and invited me to join their gaming club's summer league and I am glad that I did as my first games of 40K 7th edition has been great fun.  For this opportunity, I took my LVO list as I wanted to see how resilient vehicles have become with the 5 daemon engines i was bringing.  He took a Draigowing list consisting of a big squad of paladins, stormraven full of DCAs, 3 psybacks loaded with acolytes, Coatez, and a beefed up dreadknight.  The game began with me thinking that I would be giving up first blood with my opponent killing one of my rhinos and yet I didn't.  Even though my opponent put 2 hullpoints of damage on it including a natural roll of 6 I didn't lose the Rhino.  The fact that he needed a 7 to destroy and used a weapon that was wp4 meant that my little rhino not only survived but allowed the squad within to put the hurt on the dreadknight that had failed to kill it.  My maulerfiends also survived the fusillade that hit them as my opponent didnt have a lot of ap2, ap1 weaponary.  What did I take from this, that going forward I and i'm sure the 40k community as a whole will be bringing a lot more ap2, ap1 weapons.  Lascannons will again be in vogue as will meltaguns, meltabombs, etc.  Will we see the return of the MSU armies?  Not necessarily but they will definitely make a comeback in this edition.  What you will see is armies that have great troop units with cheap transports such as space marines, IG, and maybe even CSM.  Drop pod armies with Objective secured will be quite powerful as opponents will need to destroy not only the troops but also the pod themselves to stop them from scoring.  This edition will definitively change how the meta plays making armies more varied.  I am just hoping that GW hurries up and updates armies as some of the older books are really stating to show their age.

On the painting table like I stated in my last post, I am building a Blood Angel drop pod army.  I am going for an army that can be played as either a codex space marine army as well as a blood angel army.  Pics are of my tact squad.  Let me what you think.  

40K in the era of 7th edition

Sorry for taking forever to update my blog, real life and trying to get a game in using the new rules have caused this enormous delay in me updating.   So after reading numerous blogs,listening to a lot of podcasts, you would think that the release of 7th edition was the death knell of 40K.  Before i start with "guys its only been out for several weeks now" I want to remind everybody that the calls of the end of 40K has happened with the last 3 editions but some how after several months of playing everybody starts to calm down and just plays the game with the knowledge that GW didnt blow it.  Now dont get wrong, i think a huge opportunity was missed here with GW missing the boat on several items that really need to be in all honesty, nerfed.  2 plus re-rollables, no cover save rules, etc. A lot could have been done to make this the best edition out there.

Some positives that I have seen so far, several of the universal rules have been tightened up or improved on, charging through terrain only reducing your move by 2 inches, malestorm objectives if done right sound like a lot of fun.  The new psychic phase sounds like a blast however I can see where this might become cumbersome if you are playing a psycher heavy army.  To the naysayers that this new phase is terrible I say give it a shot.  In my opinion, it is a heck of a lot harder to get psychic powers off, its no longer the near automatic action that its been for the past 2 editions.  Now players need to choose what powers they really need to get off and throw enough dice to make sure it goes off.  Will psycher heavy armies dominate this phase?  Of course they will and they should as they are a psychic army.  Before anybody starts complaining weigh the actual numbers.  In order to get a power off such as the current red headed step child, Summoning, you need to harness 3 warp charges.  Now you can try to just roll 3 dice but chances are that the power will not go off.  Yes you might have hot dice sometimes but chances are the power will not go off.  So far this might be my favorite edition yet.  I will be playing my first game of 7th in the next couple of days as my league starts, I will let you guys know how it goes...

On the painting table at the moment is 2 tact squads, 1 storm raven, and 1 drop pod.  Pics will be coming soon.

7th Edition 40K

Wow was this ever a surprise after hearing all of the hooplah that 6th edition would be here to stay.  I guess all of the issues that 6th edition had going along with all of the negative publicity 40k has been getting from the internet community finally got GW to listen to its fan base and release an update to its cash cow. In truth, 6th edition has been a great edition.  All 6th edition books at the beginning were balanced.  The problem started with the release of Tau and Eldar as GW through everything out and reversed course with the balance of the game.  Sure there are several issues with the rules but really the death knell of the edition came with these 2 books.  I'm sorry but when players who never looked at Tau before started bringing along grey plastic riptides to the table, I knew that something was going on.  And then Eldar hit, and with it wave serpents and battle bro shenanigans.  This to me brought about the end of the edition.  What about dataslates you may ask?  Well these weren't so bad until you got the tau and 2nd Nid one.  I like many hobbyists eagerly await the changes that are coming with 7th if and only if they heeded the players warnings and  actually try to bring some balance to the game.  Some of the early rumors such as changing up the allies chart, new psychic phase, etc. Sound pretty good.  Unbound of course sounds ridiculous but the in game benefits that a battleforge army gives you might be enough to offset the advantages that comes with  being able to take anything.  I guess in less then a week we will find out for sure if this was just purely a money grab by a company that lost a lot of money last year or the beginning of a mindset of a company that takes the criticism and responds by providing the gamers and fans what they want, a fun and balanced game for all.

And the hobbying continues

Whats up guys?  So I have decided to move forward with building my next army.  After doing some clean up, I found a surplus of models that were just collecting dust or new in the box or blister pack.  Among these models were 5 completely built drop pods, 2 storm ravens, 20 death company armed with ccw and bolt pistols, 2 furioso dreds, and 30 tact marines.  Well what to do?  It would be a shame to just get rid of these models and so I decided to go ahead and paint up a dual purpose army that could be run as either a codex space marine drop pod army or a blood angels army.  In order to do this, I plan on painting the army a little differently using colors that dont match any established chapter so that I could run them as my own chapter.  Of course everything will be what you see is what you get so anybody playing me will not have any issues with recognizing what each unit is.  I am first going to concentrate on the blood angel side as these models are already built an all I need is an HQ to lead them.  I will probably start with a reclusiarch as a cheap HQ or librarian which i might be able to build using some spare parts.  30 tact marines will fulfill my troops selection with dedicated drop pods and the 2 furioso dreads with magma cutters, melta guns will provide some cc and anti tank punch.   For the codex space marines part, it will still be a drop pod/storm raven army as its base but I will be adding a beater chapter master, 1 or 2 thunderfire cannons and will be using the red hunters chapter tactics as next to the ultra marines I find the most flexable.   Not going to add bikes in as my Nightlords army will be my biker army.  Pics are my works in progress of the 2 10 man tact squads.  I am hoping that by next post, I will have some more updates for the army.

Giant Robots in 40k??!!

Hey guys, so whats with the title you ask?  Imperial Knights of course and what a surprise GW pulled on the community.  The Knights have been out for over 2 months and still I'm amazed on how great the model looks and what they bring to the game.  The Knights of course  could be seen as their attempt to fix the meta.  I dont think that is the reason these were released, GW just wanted to release a model and a concept that would sell well as well as to get a reaction from those old veterans who have nothing good to say bout GW.  They definitely hit it out of the park with this model and the concept of an army of super heavies is rather interesting.  Now with everything looking good why is the release getting such a backlash from certain circles.  The D weapon of course that the Knight is armed with but GW made this D weapon a little more acceptable.  By making it a CCW weapon and giving it more "conventional" ranged weapons, the Knight is seen as not that game breaking.  What else did GW do to make it less broken?  By giving it a high points cost and only giving it 6 hull points, the knight is far from being invincible.  Will some armies struggle against 1,2, or 3 of them.  Of course they will but by adding in such a unit and making it available to all imperial armies and some Xenos, it changes the meta and forces even those death star armies to bring something to combat it as its one of the few things that will counter such armies.  Death star players will have to use points on countering such monsters which might cut down on us seeing the same lists over and over again or at least limit the options said player has to spend on the deathstar itself.  Will it be a dramatic change to the meta?  Probably not but at the very least players will have another option to use against these lists. 

Now I do have some complaints about the release.

1.  The fact that the army consists of one model and yet this justified a full codex release?  I would have thought that the codex itself would have at least several models for players to use to fill their army.  The codex basically just gives players access to 2 models, what about the lancer, etc?  Yes we know that Forgeworld is releasing the lancer and what a kit it is but what about rules for it?  Since its a Forgeworld model, now we need to deal with players or tournys that will only allow it.  GW should have just included it in the codex and told us that it would be released later.  The Imperial Knight codex in my opinion could have been an ebook just like the legion of the damned book, a 20 to 30 page supplement for 16 bucks and not full book price. 

2.  What about Chaos Space Marines Knights?  Geez this really bugs the crap out of me as I am primarily a CSM player and a Knight would have helped the army tremendously.  The abilities of the Knight would fill in some of the weaknesses of the army and also help it fight against the deathstars.  I have a dark mech army and would have loved to add one or two of these beasties to my army.  I guess the rumor is that Forgeworld will be creating these but just like the lancer, since its forgeworld it will "exist" in tourneys that allow them.  I just hope we dont get a separate codex for these guys and its handled through a simple supplement download and not a full codex release.  Now dont get me wrong, you give me more options in Chaos Knights and then I wont mind a full codex release. 

So in conclusion, Imperial Knights, I give them a big thumbs up!!  Its a release that came out of nowhere, is a fantastic looking model, and will hopefully change the meta a bit. 

Crimson Slaughter.. a test drive

Hey guys, yesterday I got a chance to test drive the Crimson Slaughter supplement in a team tournament with a buddy of mine.  The tournament was held at our local flgs that had teams of 2 going up against each other in 2000 pts game.  Each player had a 1000 point army that followed normal force organization rules and any army could ally with any army so even the nids were included. Now each 1000 point army couldnt take any allies or detachments but were allowed to have 1 forgeworld unit.  So simple right, who would take cheesy lists in such a small points total?  I guess that it where I was wrong, along the 10 teams, we had a triple heldrake list, dual riptides team, a junior nid skyblight list without the scoring gargoyles (just taking the normal list).  The Crimson Slaughter would have a high mountain to climb to come out on top.  My team-mate and I took lists that had separate themes, mine consisted of my Dark Mechanicus army with 1 heldrake, 2 maulerfiends, and 1 forgefiend with the awesome ecto-plasma cannons (all 3 for most awesomeness, you guys know im kidding right, i have only taken this model once and it wasnt worth the 200 point price tag yet I wanted to have fun so why not?  To close out the list I took a sorcerer with the divinition artifact and hoped for forewarning to give 1 of my 20 man cultists the 4up invul save.  My buddy went with a full nurgle spawn unit to accompany his beater lord with the 2 up save armor, the sword of relentless, the slaughterers horns, and a bike.  He also took 2 small units of plague marines with dual melta and dual plasma in Rhinos, a heldrake, and 1 obliterator as he had some points left over.

Game 1 - Vs. Triple Heldrake CSM and Dual Riptide Tau
Wow were we expecting a much tamer tournament.  When my buddy and I pulled up to our first table, we were amazed at what we saw.  We knew that this would be a challenge for Chaos and hopefully the Crimson Slaughter would have the extra tools to weather the challenge.  We got first turn which allowed my forgefiend to take out the tau player's markerlight support which pretty much took him out of the game as his dice rolls were pretty terrible.  Having giant squads of cultists that I spreadout to avoid the incoming heldrake fire coupled with the toughness of my buddy's plague marines helped us win this game.  Of course the crimson slaughter relics really came into their own with my divinition sorcerer getting forewarning thus giving my cultists a 4 up invul save to getting my forgefiend to re-roll scatter rolls, my buddy' beater lord getting into combat and making a ton of 2 up saves and getting AP 2 on his sword, he rolled the CSM players troops units and even took out a buff comander and riptide.  Divinition really came into its own in this game and along with the 2 up save, helped us win this game by concentrating on troop choices.

Game 2 - Vs. Nob Bikers Orks and Riptide Tau
Ok so this list would have been crazy good last edition but I am here to tell you that Nob bikers fully tooled up with a warboss and doc are still pretty good.  Backed up with 3 big gun artillery pieces and my cultists are dead meat.  The Tau player took 1 Riptide with a buff commander, 4 minimal firewarrior squads, longstrike, couple of piranhas and  a couple of broadsides. We rolled Nightfight and so we decided to let them go first as it was an objective game and deployment was vanguard strike.  Of course they blew up the only thing that could threaten them, the forgefiend as long strike one shotted it.  Again my buddy's beater lord with his 2 up save did very well, we actually ended up assaulting the nob biker squad with a maulerfiend, his beater lord, and the spawn and ended up rolling up the squad by winning combat on the 2nd round and causing them to run and get run down by the lord.  My other Maulerfiend took on the mega armored orks that came out of a destroyed battle wagon (compliments of the oblit) and ended up killing all 4 however he was immobilized and so pretty much as useless the rest of the game.  We ended up tabling them as my other mauler finished off the riptide and buff commander (gotta love lasher tendrils as the riptide was just hitting me with 1 attack) and my buddy's plague marines claimed 2 objectives.  Fear actually came into its own as the ork player failed key fear tests that allowed us to roll his depleted hammer units.  My sorcerer didn't do much here, he actually ran off the table with his cultist squad due to the pounding they were getting from the grot bigguns.

 Game 3 - Vs. Tyranid Mini Skyblight list and Thunderfire cannons space marines
Ok so here we were on the top table for all the marbles.  So far as this tournament was based on battle points we were ahead as we got full points for the 2nd game and almost full points for the first game.  Our opponents were players we had played before and lost too during another tourney and so this would be our revenge game.  In a 1000 points, 4 flying monstrous creatures giving you instant pressure backed up by 2 thunderfire cannons is no joke.  The nid player was also running 2 squads of biovores, a warrior squad, and a ripper squad.  The space marine player brought 3 full squads of tac marines in rhinos and so they would be the ones focusing on scoring.  The biovores and thunderfire cannons really brought the hurt on my cultists and if wasnt for me taking 20 man squads, i would have lost all of my scoring units.  My friends spawn unit along with a maulerfiend held up 3 monstrous creatures for 4 turns affectively keeping them out of the game.  My friends plague marines did the damage along with the 2 heldrakes and we ended up tying them.  Nobody had the primary and so it came down to kill points and secondary objectives. My divination sorcerer did nothing this game as he spent the entire game trying to avoid barrage weapons.  My friends lord died to instant death at the hands of a hive tyrant.  So it can be said that the crimson slaughter supplement had no bearing in this game, it came down to units that is available to all chaos armies.

So how did the crimson slaughter fare?  The new options definitely came into play with a couple of our games while in the third it was a nonfactor.  I still think the book is viable but only more play testing will say for sure.  This along with the black legion supplement at the very least open up more options for the chaos player that make the army fun to play.

The Crimson Slaughter supplement... Quick Review

Howdy guys, life again has kept me from posting as often as i like but I finally found some time to hopefully keep this blog in a more "updated" state.  Today I want to talk about the new CSM supplement that GW just released, the Crimson Slaughter.  I like many other old school 40k players have a soft spot for the legions.  No matter how many times we complain, bitch, and whine it seems that GW just doesn't get the hint that what we really want is legion rules to better reflect our cherished armies on the table top.  We hold our breath every time a new set of CSM rules are released only to be disappointed by what we get.  This is what happened when the black legion supplement was released and this is evidently happening again with the release of the Crimson Slaughter book.  Now before I go any further let me say this, I actually enjoyed the subtle changes that the black legion book brought to Chaos especially in regards to the new relics and having Chosen as troops without the "Abby" tax.  It also helped the whole morale issue a little by allowing you to take another HQ that could make another unit fearless.  We all know that GW is a model company first or that is what they say anyways so I could see why they went with a Crimson Slaughter book instead of a legion book.  Everybody including me have established chaos armies with little to no need to have to buy anything new.  In order to generate sales, GW needed to bring out something new.  Everybody knows that if GW brought out a supplement for an established legion, the only thing that will sell would be the supplement, i guess they see this as a bad thing.  They want people to try there hand at a new chaos faction and even make it easy for you to do it by providing a new box set that can be combined with the starter box to get a decent Crimson Slaughter army.  The new helbrute kit is just icing on the cake.  Do I agree with this thinking , hell no as I definitely would kill for a Nightlords book, iron warriors book, etc.  Lucky for me we have forgeworld putting out rules for legions in their 30K books so at least i could try to see if an opponent is cool with me running an army with these rules.  Heres hoping that GW will see the light and makes us all happy with legion supplements in the near future.

Ok so after that long winded intro, let me get back to the topic of my post.  I really like the Crimson Slaughter supplement.  Bottom line, GW finally did something right with this one.  Maybe its because it was written by Jeremy Veotok, maybe it was the fact that GW saw that the CSM codex is really lack luster compared to the other books, maybe they are finally listening to their fans, who knows, all I know is the 2 pages of rules that are in the book are great and add a lot of character to the army.  Now the big draw about these supplements is the fluff (as 2 pages of rules isnt worth 50 bucks) and let me tell you, after reading it I almost wanted to go out and start a new Crimson Slaughter army.  It was that good, the story of a noble space marine chapter that falls from grace not just because of their self rightousness and their strict adherence to the codex astartes but also due to an uncaring imperium who plays favorites.  The supplement details their rise as the crimson sabres, how their fall happened as well as details on famous battles they took part in.  Veotok does a great job of detailing this which grabs your attention and keep the story moving.  All in all a good read.  A lot of people buy these supplements for the rules and if you are dropping 50 bucks on books such as these just for that, you are really doing yourself a disservice.  Read the fluff and you wont feel as ripped off.  So lets get started with the rules.  Again we are treated with 2-3 pages of rules however these for the most part are very good.  Even the warlord traits are good with the best being the one that grants your warlord shrouded or crusader which also goes to the squad they are in.  The relics are definitely game changing such as giving access to a 2 up save piece of armor, a power sword that goes to ap2 if you kill 3 models in combat to even an artifact that turns your hq into a possessed character.  The gem of course is a piece of war gear that grants one sorcerer access to the divination table.  I don't need to tell you how good this is, giving divination to chaos without the need of allying in daemons is pure win, game changing even.  Will this make it a top tier army, probably not but it does give you more options to possibly make chaos a good army to take to a tourney and not feel like you are wasting your time.  For those of us waiting for a legion book, there is nothing stopping us from using this book to better represent our legions on the table top.  Nightlords, Thousand sons, etc can be represented pretty well with this book, all units causing fear, divination access not bad.  The real winner here though is Word-Bearers, possessed as troops and even the ability to run a possessed chaos lord?  Relic for dark apostles that grants zealot to all units within 6 inches of the relic?  Whats not to love here.  Guys if this is any indication on future chaos supplements, than i am truly excited for the future.  I just hope we dont have to wait long on the fabled veterans of the long war book...

The Las Vegas Open.... through the eyes of a first time tourny goer

Hey guys, been a long time since I posted last, almost over a month now.  Life as been extremely busy with business travel, birthdays, married life, etc.  I have also been busy with painting up the last elements of my army for the Las Vegas Open which thank God I got done with a week before the event.  But enough of my lack of posts for the last month, this post like the title suggests is all about my experiences at the LVO.
This as with many of my fellow wargamers at the event was my first major tournament and by major I mean an event where there was over 50 games playing in it.  The 40K championships was a 3-day event which started on Friday and ended on Sunday.  It was 5 games, 3 played on Friday, 2 on Saturday and a single elimination "2nd" tourney to crown the overall champs on Sunday.  Going into the event, I didnt have any illusion of making it to Sunday's best overall.  My "goal" was to have fun and in having no expectations of "winning", I believe I achieved this.  Reece, Frankie and the guys over at Frontline Gaming need to be congratulated and thanked for putting on a great event.  The event ran smoothly, started on time (for the most part) and was run with professionalism and efficiency.  Having the games starting at 12:30pm instead of 9am or earlier also helped in keeping the event running on time.  I never felt rushed and most importantly except for my first game ended on time with plenty of time to spare.  My first game even though it didn't end on time still went to turn 5 so we at least got in 5 turns.  The terrain was top notch with 2 line of site blocking terrain pieces as well as some small propaganda posters that also provided some line of sight blockage for troops or small vehicles. 


Lets talk about the Mega Mats now, these giant "mouse pads" are in a word, awesome!!  The high resolution "pictured" surface is simply awe-inspiring and paired great with the terrain on hand.  I wish I had the funds to pick one up as they were selling the "used" ones for 15 bucks less the normal price but I was lucky that 2 of my buddies that went with me picked up a total of 3 of them so I will get the chance to actually play on these in the future.  Pictures cant do justice to these mats, these definitely need to be seen in person in order to appreciate how cool these are.  I do see these being something of a standard at major tournaments as it adds a great deal of "realism" to the terrain, quite easy to setup, and easy to store.  On to the list i brought, now after a lot of tinkering, practicing, re adjusting, etc I decided to go with my dark mech army that I have been playing for the last year as its an army that I really comfortable playing. It is a CSM list but I wanted to try a couple of tricks with it to see if I caught some players off guard with it.  The list is as follows.

1750 Pts - Codex: Black Legion Roster - 1750 pts. LVO Final List #2

HQ: Huron Blackheart
 
Troops: Chosen (10)
8 Chosen, Veterans of the Long War, Power Axe x1,  Melta gun x3
1 Chosen Champion, W/Melta Bombs, Combi-Meltagun    
1 Chaos Rhino, Dirge Caster 5
Troops: Chosen (10)
8 Chosen,Veterans of the Long War 2 + Power Axe x1
Plasma gun x3    
1 Chosen Champion,
1 Chaos Rhino, Dirge Caster
Troops: Chaos Cultists (11)
10 Chaos Cultists
  1 Cultist Champion
Fast Attack: Heldrake
   Baleflammer
Fast Attack: Heldrake
   Baleflammer
Heavy Support: Maulerfiend
 2x Lasher Tendrils
Heavy Support: Maulerfiend
(2x Lasher Tendrils)
HQ: Warpsmith (1)
   1 Burning Brand of Skalathrax [Chaos]
Troops: Chaos Cultists (10)
1 Cultist Champion [Chaos]
Heavy Support: Havocs (7)   6 Havocs (Heavy) [Chaos],
Missile Launcher x1, Lascannon x3
      1 Aspiring Champion [Chaos]
So the list started with the idea of infiltrating 1-3 units to go along with 2 Maulerfiends and create instant pressure.  I got the idea of using a warpsmith as another meltagun that gave me other benefits including dual flamers with the burning brand to give the squad he is in some assault overwatch protection and a 2 up save to tank wounds would be very cool.  Normal CSM are ok but to really bring the pain in this all or nothing list, I really needed to gamble. This being in Las Vegas and all, and me being the gambler that I am I went for broke and decided to go with Black Legion Chosen.  Why you ask, the fact that I can bring 5 special weapons per squad meant that an infiltrating unit that can bring 4 melta guns etc is going to hurt.  I also made the chosen champ expendable and gave just another chosen the power ax so the special weapon could be hidden in assault and not stuck in dumb challenges.  Add in the warpsmith and my melta squad was rocking a total of 5 melta shots.  The dual heldrakes do what they do and the hope of these is that they come in as a pair on turn 2 to cause even more pressure.  I thought about taking an ageis with a comm relay but couldn't find the points as I really wanted to keep my 4 troop choices.  If i had to do it again i definitely would take it as in most of my games I only got one drake to come in and in my 3rd game, i lost due to the fact that my 2nd heldrake didn't come in until turn 4.  I will get into a little detail on my games in my next post.  All in all a great time, i highly recommend going to this next year and i am definitely coming back.

On my painting station..

Hey guys, todays post is going to focus on what I am currently working on as well as more comments on the state of 40K.  I havent been able to post pics in my last 2 posts and so wanted to give you guys an idea on what I have completed and what I am currently working on.  Right now the order of the day is to complete my army list for the Las Vegas open.  In the last couple of weeks I have completed building and painting a maulerfiend, Huron Bleakheart, and a couple of more troops.  I still need to paint up a melta gunner, 2 rhinos, and build 2 40mm objective counters.  In the middle of all this, I have also gone full boat with updating my Tau army.  I received several tau models for Christmas and got to building them right away.  This was the first time I actually modified the crisis suit models by repositioning legs and arms but also magnetized all of their weapons to give me flexibility in their weapon loadouts.  My new commander I also magnetized as I wanted to have the ability to run him with fusion blades and still be able to switch him out and use him with dual missile launchers, plasma rifles, etc.  I plan on focusing on finishing my farsight enclave and as crazy as it sounds finish a drop pod blood angel army. 

Why a Blood Angel army?  Why not? It also doesn't hurt that I have a lot of blood angel models just sitting around.  I have thought about selling them but dont have the heart to as i did spend a lot of time putting them together.  I especially spent a huge amount of time on my death company and 2 furioso dreads with putting them all on custom bases that i made out of broken floor tile and textured resin putty.  I also have 2 Storm ravens just sitting around and 5 drop pods that I have accumulated over the past 3 Christmas.  
Its time to go against the meta and build a terrible army... lol.  Hopefully per the rumors these guys will get a new updated book this year.  


Ok some more thoughts on the state of 40k. The nid book has definitely about as much nerd rage or even more then when the chaos space marine book hit.  
My initial thoughts of the book is that all thoughts on running your old 5th edition list should be thrown out the window.  This book needs and most be played differently then what people are used to.  
Synapse is now an important element of the game and needs to take precedent in your list building unlike before.  Unless your bringing a nid airforce, forget about just going at it with just one flying hive tyrant.  they are too expensive and very easy to kill unless you are running 3- 4 other buddies with him to fly around with.   my thoughts are that walking tyrants with tyrant guard, tyranid primes in big squads of gaunts is what you will be seeing on the tables.   gone will be the 3-4 tervigons, in will be venomthropes and biovores.  i still need to digest the book further before i say the book sucks.  hmmm, i do have a lot of nids laying around maybe now i will give them a shot as we have very little nid players in our group.  let me know your thought guys, are the nids the weakest book in 6th edition or are they the sleeper hit.