Traitors Hate

Greetings all,
So Traitors Hate.  GW Surprised a lot of us with a new Chaos supplement that actually was specific to chaos space marines and not Chaos daemons.  I was at wargamescon when the rumors started to hit.  Of course you dont believe these things until your buddies start sending you pics of the cover of the supplement with Kharn on it.  To say I was excited is an understatement.  Finally GW was going to release something for us long "suffering" chaos space marine players to at least be able to compete with the other armies in the game.  For once, we are finally going to get a Chaos "decurion" and not just a series of formations like we got from the Crimson Slaughter and Black Legion books.  So what did I think about it you may ask?  When I started hearing about the contents I will admit I wasnt thrilled.  Everything seemed just Meh but once I got the book in my greedy little hands, it did something that I didnt anticpate.  It excited the crap out of me.  The formations were good, not great but good.  It allowed us to take out our old models off of the shelf and once again bring them on to the desktop.  These formations really were built with a dark mech/iron warriors frame of mind as we finally got a way to run an army of Oblits, an army of tanks, or an army of daemon engines.  Warpsmiths appear to be the common denominator in these formations which depending on if you ask the internet, just plain sucks.  I fortunately am not one of those naysayers, I love the unit and always bring one or two in my Dark Mech armies.  The fomations also give me something for my nightlords; the raptor talon being just amazing for them.  The core choices appear pretty good as well with the Chaos Warband being one that I cant wait to try as it makes all units ob sec.  Due to this book, I am again putting down my admech, (lol, i know) and working on my Nightlords to get them up to snuff with the new formations.  I also want to see how I can incorporate my Dark Mech with this new book along with the daemon engine pack formation from the black legion book as that is one of my favorites.  Below are my favorites from the book  -

In no particular order

1.  Raptor Talon - We finally get a formation that makes both raptors and most of all warp talons into something that could do well when taken.  The big thing of course is the fact that on deepstriking, you can charge.  This is a huge boon and something not to be overlooked.  The fact that the formation also contains a lord could make this a hard hitting formation.  The fear bonus is just that a bonus that will only come into effect again a 3rd of the armies that you face.

2.  Hellforge Pack -  Another daemon engine formation but one that actually allows you to take up to 5 engines and allows the hellbrute.  The bonuses such as making one engine the alpha engine and giving them a 4+ invul to allowing daemonforge to be used more than once is pretty good.  The warpsmith as the tax is ok, he can repair the engines if need be and adds a fighty character to a unit.  I just wish that it also gave the bonues of allowing an engine to use the warpsmith's BS or WS just like the daemon engine pack but i guess you cant have it all.

3.  Cult of destruction - Finally we get a formation for oblits.  The bonus of allowing the unit to shoot twice is very good but somewhat limiting by the Oblits rules of having to use a different weapon every turn.  If this allowed them to shoot whatever weapon twice, this formation would be amazing.  The other amazing thing of course is the fact that you can take up to 5 units of oblits.  if the formation granted fearless to them or allowed Multilators the abilty to run and this formation would move from good to great.

4.  Terminator Annillilation Force - Just like with the Oblits, we get a terminator only formation of a Chaos lord and 3-5 squads of termies.  This is something I wanted for a while now as it allows me to create a super elite army with tough as nails units.  I know that for a lot of folks, terminators are really subpar but their ability to fight in both the shooting and assault phase makes them very flexible.  Their ability to be armed with anti-tank and anti-troop weapons also helps and a 2+ save is nothing to sniff at.  Their best ability however is their ability to deepstrike which combined with the formations targetted for annillilation rule makes the formation a great choice.

If anything this book really brought out the excitement of using your old chaos armies.  Sure this book doesnt make them top tier but at the very least gives chaos players more options and hopefully will aid in encouraging more old chaos players to dig out their old armies.  

Fun with Ad Mech

Hi guys, ok so yes I havent been following my own advice with trying to get an article done weekly, My bad for sure.  At the end of the day as always I blame work and life in general.  Its been almost 5 weeks since my last post and in that time I got a Rogue Trader tourney in and a couple of small games in as well.  LVO 2017 is fast approaching and the plan this year is to bring the glory of my chaos armies, my Nightlords.  Our resident Nightlords teammate wont be making LVO next year and so I will be playing the Nightlords in his place.  The Dark Mech is fun but the army especially in the narrative format suffers from being a little slow or shall i say being too balanced.  With the team aspect, its more beneficial to build armies that cater to one style of play and help coordinate with your team.  But enough of that, the title of my post is havjng fun with ad mech and so I want to talk about my experience with playing my new ad mech army. 
When GW dropped the ad mech as a playable army I was extatic.  Finally I can play a fully realized ad mech army with its own unique units, rules, etc.  I am hoping that the next step will be for GW to release Dark Mech which will be fantastic.  I started collecting my ad mech army over the course of 8 months starting small and eventually collecting enough to run a war convocation.  I havent built the full war con just yet focusing on building my kastellan robots, kataphron destroyers, tech preist dominus, infiltrators, and skittarii rangers and vanguard.  Along with my knight atrapos I was able to have enough to field a nice little 1850 list for a Rogue tournament in my local area which was first major outing with the army and wow was it fun.  The army plays like no other with tough units that can put the hurt on units.  In one game just a unit of 3 kataphron destroyers put like 15 wounds on a blood thirster and took him out like a chump before he could do any thing.  I ended up going 1-1-1 which was ok but my lost was to a space marine battle company with his ob sec I really couldnt compete.  I killed a lot of his army but all he needed to do was have scoring units in the right places and since the mission was objectives there was nothing I could have done.

I plan on bringing the same army for the next Rogue Tournament which will be in a couple of days.  I am hoping that with the experience that the first tourney provided me as well as the couple of practice games im able to get in, I will have a better outing.  Speed seems to be a weakness though and with the ITC, a fast army will help in winning the all important maelstrom missions.  I love the Knight Atrapo but I might downgrade him to just a standard knight warden so that I can possibly fit either another Kastellan robot squad or a squad or squads of infiltrators.  These units will hopefully allow me to flood the field with more units and have a better chance of winning some objectives.   We shall see however..

The eve of battle...

Sup guys, so here I am in Austin Texas attending my first war games con.  Long ways from my native California but I couldnt pass up another opportunity to meet up with my team again and see an old friend.  I met up with the organizers of the 40k narrative event, said Hi and begged them to allow me to register so as I could get some more sleep which they okayed (whew).  The flight was pretty uneventful and marks the first time that I have flown to an actual 40k event.  The event promises to be full of surprises and fun which is all I want in an event of this size.  I kind of wish we were allowed to take at least an 1850 list but we were limited to just 1500 points which for my army limits my choices some what.  I do love playing at 1500 points though and I won't be the only one that will be limited.  It appears our enemies for this run will be a group of space marines with an allied Tau force.  I have a lot of experience playing against both so hopefully that will help me with my games tomorrow.  Tau in smaller point games can be downright deadly as they can bring a lot of killy power compared to most other armies.  This is what I will be looking out for tomorrow as Tau can make us all have a bad day.  I was able to sneak a peak at the tables and they look amazing.  I can wait for our games to begin and hopefully we can be 3-0 after this con.  Next up will be the LVO and for me I will be dusting off an old army of mine, one that slowly but surely I have been adding to them and re-basing them.  One that by tomorrow, I will have their primarch in hand thanks to my friend. Ave Dominus Nox....

Been a while...

Hello everybody, it's been a very long time since my last post.  I could say that life has got in the way, work, etc which in a way is true but really when I started this painting blog I wanted to make a commitment of doing an article at least once a week.  I am going to try again as by writing I am able to keep myself inspired to paint and to bounce ideas, to keep track of my projects and have a way to better store my ideas.  In a little over a week, I once again will be joining my team, the hounds of abbadon for another trek through narrative 40k at wargames con.  Again I am busting out my Dark Mech CSM list but this time I added in 2 units of CSM in rhinos and a termicide unit with combi-meltas.   For the first time I will be taking a CSM formation, the daemon engine pack to finally see if slugging out 8 strength 8 shots at BS 5 will be worth it.  This formation is right up my armies alley as it allows me to really bring the engines without limiting my army to much with regards to heavy support choices.  Since we are limited to 1500 at wargames con, I had to sacrifice my knight as the group has decided to ban super heavy vehicles unless your primary army was made of just knights.  This sucks but I can see the reason.  The list I am taking is pretty straight forward -

Daemon Engine Pack -
Warpsmith
Forge fiend with dual hades autocannons
Maulerfiend with Lasher Tendrils

Crimson Slaughter CAD

Sorcerer of nurgle with palaquin  (Arch Magos)
2 CSM squads in Rhinos
Heldrake with baleflamer
Termicide squad with combi meltas
3 man squad of Obliterators of Nurgle
Maulerfiend with Lasher Tendrils

The list is pretty similar to what I take normally with the addition of CSM squads instead of useless cultists and a Termicide squad which I nicknamed the Forge guard as I heavily modified the unit to make them look more Dark Mechanicus like.  I was thinking of maybe taking the chosen of Abaddon formation to take the full unit of terminators with a sorcerer lord attached.  By doing this however I would need to drop the daemon engine pack which right now with our 1500 limit would limit my army's shooting power.  I still got a couple of days to think about this as adding more warp charges sounds really appealing.  I'm sure no matter what I decide to take, I will have a fun time with the guys.  For the glory of Chaos!!!

the road to the LVO 2016....

Sup guys,
Again, true life has gotten in the way of my hobby.  Work has been absolutely killing me since mid-November and of course a little game called Fallout 4 was released around the same time.  I have had to focus a little bit on my hobby which of course painting is taking center stage.  I have little time to get actual games in which worries me as the LVO is rapidly approaching and I need to get some practice in.  I have been able to go to the local GW a couple of times as my club has been on holiday from playing 40K lately which has helped.  The guys at the GW store are great players and I have seen first hand the power of forgeworld units and unrestricted 40K.  For all of those people stating that the new Tau are not 1st tier, sorry to disappoint you but they are.  I played several games against them, 1 player using 2 storm surges and 1 player using what I would call a fluffy list but using the Hunter Contingent detachment and both were tough games.  The game against the 2 storm surges I tied with my dark mech by not making any big mistakes.  The game would have been mine if it wasnt for the 2 storm surges.  I had nothing in my list to take those out short of mass assaults with Maulerfiends or long range lascanon shots with my oblits.  The game against the Tau Hunter Contingent wasnt even a game, I tried out my Khorne Daemonkin army against it with some minor changes and by the end of the 2nd turn, I was done to 2 units.  This list was super surprising as my opponent's list focused on tau firewarrior shooting.  I mean the guy only had like 4 suits, 2 crisis suits, 1 riptide (you heard me 1!!!), and a ghost keel.  This list I sorely underestimated and it showed with how badly I did. I talked to my opponent after and he shared his thoughts on the list which opened up a lot to how I might change my Tau army going forward. 

So after all that, lets talk about this post, the preparation for LVO 2016.  As stated in an earlier post this year, I have already picked up my tickets for the LVO's narrative game.  This event will kickoff with an awesome cocktail hour killteam and will continue with 3 days of narrative gaming.  So what am I bringing you might ask, I'm sticking with my dark mechanicus themed chaos space marine army, pretty much keeping the same list that I brought to the last LVO however I am adding in an additional Maulerfiend, a new mechanicus themed Oblit squad, and a new Chaos Knight.  During the last LVO, we were allowed come the apocolypse allies and so I took an imperial knight that I put together 2 weeks before the event.  The knight pretty much played as his own man as I couldnt cast any support powers on him or interact with him with my other units however he was definitely an allstar, tying me the final game against an eldar army that was really blowing me out of the water.  With the changes by the LVO vote to allow forgeworld experimental rules in, chaos knights are now allowed and thus I can finally bring a knight that is actually a lord of war for my army.  Once forge world released the Ceratus Knight Atropo, I couldnt resist and pulled the trigger and ordered one as this knight really captures that "Dark Mechanicus" theme that I was looking for.  The kit is quite extraordinary, it goes together quite well but there is a lot of "pre-work" that needs to be done in order to get it ready for it to be built.  Flash and mold release was all over the pieces, some pieces worse than other but nothing really ridiculous.  By taking the time to prepare the model, you shouldnt have any issues with it.  Once I got it cleaned and flash free, the model took me about 4 sessions to put together as I decided to also magnetize 3 parts of the model, the 2 gun ports/arms and the torso to make it easier to travel with and offer some more pose-ability.  All I need now is to get some primer on it and then the painting process can begin.  My dark Mech themed obliterator squad I finished around November and have already seen table action.  Basically I ordered a squad of mechcanicum Mirmodons as they would fit the style of army I have and go hand in hand with my Arch Magos.   These models were fun to put together the only challenging piece were the bending of their external cables using hot water.  The pic above is of my army for this year's event.  I am hoping like last year, it will cause some surprises as my list is very heavy in daemon engines.