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...