LVO Narrative Bound...

Sup everybody, so we are less than 2 weeks away from the grand daddy of them all (for me anyways) the Las Vegas Open.  This is the 4th year that I will be going as I made everyone since Frontline gaming started these events.  Today's LVO is definitely different from past years, its gotten bigger and better and with GW support now, something that I look forward to year after year.  So this year like last year I will be competing in the narrative event.  This year marks a big difference as the Narrative guys will not be running it, instead it will be run by a group out of my home state of California and by the sounds of it they are bringing their "game world" to LVO and so have plenty of history, characters, etc to bring it to life.  The way I understand it, this group has been playing using the same solar system/game world and so the planet that we will be fighting on has plenty of history that hopefully will make our experience unique and awesome.  I definitely will miss the Narrative guys this year as I always enjoyed their special brand of gaming from the amazing tables that they built to the awesome stories they told.  Here were guys that were really in it for the fun so much in fact that I might make it over to wargamescon this year just to be a part of it and to join my chaos brothers in battle.  I am hoping that some of the hounds make it out this year to LVO but by the sounds of it, I might be the only one that will be showing up.  This year however marks another crazy event, my 2 friends for years will be joining me in the narrative event joining the forces of Chaos.  That will definitely make it a hell of a lot of fun and only wish that the hounds could come out as well to join in the fun.

With regards to painting, I only have 3 raptors to paint as I really want to try out the plasma pistol squad of death.  Depending on how it plays out I am preparing to build another unit of plasma pistol raptors as they are cheap now, being able to shoot in combat and quite easily can put wounds on units thus causing morale tests to be taken at much lower leadership scores.  I am still going full bore on my morale reducing army as I really think that this type of list has a lot of legs.  I really need to build more units with banners of despair as well as to take units that cause units to lose leadership more.  I really want to cause issues with morale even if I only cause 1 or 2 wounds on a unit.  I am dropping Belakor for LVO as we cant take any named characters.  If I can, I am going to try to build a unit of havocs with lascannons as lascannons in 8th are freaking good.  Wish me luck guys.  Pic is from GW's Legion preview of the Nightlords.  some pretty cool simple conversions for sure and ones I might want to copy.

its been an age...

Hello everybody, sorry again for the lack of posts on my blog.  Life has been rather challenging lately with work becoming almost unbearable and life in general becoming more and more busy, busy that something had to give and unfortunately my blog is one of the things that had to suffer.  Mark my words my intention is to post a lot more frequently moving forward as the reason for this blog is as a platform to bounce off ideas as well as to keep track of my painting projects.  The good thing is that I have kept up with my painting duties and over the course of 7 months I have painted a full Ad-Mech Army, added another knight to my knight stable, and painted several units for my Chaos Nightlords army.  I have also been to several 8th edition RTT's where I have learned how much I so love 8th edition over 7th edition.  40K for me lately even in the competitive sense has been so much fun and exciting that I will probably start to play in more competitive games moving forward.  7th edition for me was the edition of the Narrative as playing in narrative games was the only way I found fun games of 40K.  Now I am finding that even though players bring out super tough lists, its still fun to try to beat them with what I bring.  Both my main armies, Chaos Space Marines and Ad Mech now have the tools to deal with practically all armies I have faced.  So with that lets start off my return post with talking about my recent RTT I went to.

The army I wanted to try out was a return to using my Nightlords Chaos space marine army.  With the advent of the new codex, my favorite traitor legion was given a legion trait that to some is close to being useless.  Sure its not Alpha Legions' -1 to hit but being able to reduce leadership by 1 with Nightlords units (up to 3) and then using the morale phase to do your dirty work seemed very interesting to me.  In addition this was super fluffy for my legion of choice, a thinking man's army if you will as positioning of your units is key to getting the most of this legion trait.  The other thing is with the new chaos codex, even if your "fear tactics" don't work out, your army is still good enough and powerful enough to fight any army.  I plan on taking this army to LVO's Narrative event and so wanted to get as much practice with this fear mechanic as much as I could. 

Below is the list I took to the tourney -

[b]++ Outrider Detachment +1CP (Chaos - Chaos Space Marines) [65 PL, 1219pts] ++[/b]

[b]+ Flyer +[/b]

[b]Chaos Fire Raptor Assault Gunship [19 PL, 290pts]:[/b] Hellstrike missiles

. Reaper batteries: 2x Reaper battery

[b]+ No Force Org Slot +[/b]

[b]Legion:[/b] Night Lords

[b]+ HQ +[/b]

[b]Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour [6 PL, 128pts]:[/b] Combi-melta, Mark of Nurgle, Power sword, The Murder Sword

[b]+ Elites +[/b]

[b]Chaos Terminators [28 PL, 486pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle

. Chaos Terminator Champion: Combi-flamer, Power sword

. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe

. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe

. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-melta, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-melta, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-bolter, Power maul
. Terminator: Combi-bolter, Power axe

[b]+ Fast Attack +[/b]

[b]Chaos Spawn [6 PL, 99pts]:[/b] 3x Chaos Spawn, Mark of Nurgle
[b]Raptors [6 PL, 123pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle
. 2x Raptor
. Raptor Champion: Bolt pistol, Power sword
. Raptor w/ special weapon: Meltagun
. Raptor w/ special weapon: Meltagun

[b]Raptors [6 PL, 113pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle

. 2x Raptor

. Raptor Champion: 2x Plasma pistol

. Raptor w/ plasma pistol: Plasma pistol
. Raptor w/ plasma pistol: Plasma pistol
[b]Warp Talons [13 PL, 270pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle

. 9x Warp Talon: 9x Lightning Claw (pair)

. Warp Talon Champion: Lightning Claw (pair)

[b]++ Battalion Detachment +3CP (Chaos - Chaos Space Marines) [17 PL, 250pts] ++[/b]

[b]+ No Force Org Slot +[/b]
[b]Legion:[/b] Night Lords
[b]+ HQ +[/b]
[b]Be'lakor [12 PL, 240pts]:[/b] Death Hex, Infernal Gaze
[b]Sorcerer in Terminator Armour [8 PL, 130pts]:[/b] Combi-bolter, Force sword, Mark of Nurgle, Miasma of Pestilence, Warptime
[b]+ Troops +[/b]
[b]Chaos Cultists [3 PL, 40pts]:[/b] 9x Chaos Cultist w/ Autogun, Mark of Nurgle

. Cultist Champion: Shotgun

[b]Chaos Cultists [3 PL, 40pts]:[/b] 9x Chaos Cultist w/ Autogun, Mark of Nurgle

. Cultist Champion: Shotgun

[b]Chaos Cultists [3 PL, 40pts]:[/b] 9x Chaos Cultist w/ Autogun, No Chaos Mark

. Cultist Champion: Shotgun

[b]++ Total: [113 PL, 1999pts] ++[/b]

Other than the fear mechanic going for it, the army strengths laid with a drop component that I hoped would overwhelm the enemy as my back forces move forward to score objectives.  The spawn would be my throw away unit as Belakor would help out the cultists survive just a little longer with his presence to hopefully discourage enemy units from hitting my back units with the raptors, warp talons and terminators deep striking where I need them most .  Now onto the my 3 games -

Game 1 - Against a Primaris army with the primaris super tank.

Wow what an opponent to face off against my new Nightlords list.  The primaris army was one thing but the Primaris super tank was a thing to behold. The drop tactics coupled with extensive use of Veterans of the long war gave me the Momentum to pin my opponent down on his side of the table.  And then the super tank "spoke" and then I know why that thing is worth 700 plus points.  It downed my fireraptor and killed all of my warp talons in 1 turn.  We then proceeded to smash each other until time was called on Turn 4 and we ended up with  tie.

Game 2 - Against Tyranids.  So this was my first game against the new tyranids book.  Again another great opponent and one who knew what they were doing.  He mixed and matched 3 different hive fleets which gave him the upper hand in the first couple of turns.  I decided not to drop my termies, raptors, and warp talons until Turn 2 (I went second) as I wanted him to spread out a little bit. Once they came in they completely overwhelmed his flank as the concentrated firepower of the termies and raptors coupled with the fire raptor taking out units of the smaller bugs overwhelmed my opponent.  Belakor went toe to toe with the swarmlord and with a lucky deathhex casted on him killed him in one turn.  This was probably the best that Belakor did as in the my other 2 games he really didn't account for much.  He then led the charge with my warptalons providing them with re-rolling 1's on hits as he allows this for friendly daemons and the warptalons are considered daemons.  I ended up winning this game 17 to 16 so close game as he really racked up the secondary mission points as I delayed the arrival of my units from deepstrike.  Really good game and probably the second best game of the day. 

Game 3 - Against Tyranids again.  So my 2nd game against the new tyranids.  This game was completely one sided for me as my Nightlords deepstriking bomb really took the wind out of the sails of my opponent.  He took more of a nidzilla list with lots of big bugs along with 3 flying hive tyrants.  He separated all 3 of them instead of running together which was all I needed to single them out and gun them down.  He was able to assault my fire raptor with one of his hive tyrants and with good rolling put 10 wounds on it.  I then proceeded to fall back with it and gun it down with both the fire raptor and 2 units of cultists who took his last wound.  Other then that his army was slow and I was able to just gun them down before they got to me and rack up points for both the primary and secondary objectives.  We called it by turn 3 as there was really no way for him to come back. 

So I went undefeated with my Nightlords, 2 wins and a Tie but since this was using the new missions from ITC I placed 5th due to points.  The "fear" tactic really didn't come up at all as my opponents were either fearless due to synapse or super high leadership with re-rolls due to my first opponent being a space marine player.  I still don't want to give up on this type of list but might modify it and even drop Belakor as he pretty much stays behind and really doesn't contribute much.  I might go with more longer range fire power in order to have my backfield support my advance units more like the Sicarian battle tank I just finished pictured on the right.  This is really the weakness of the army as once I drop all of my elements if an opponent is ready for it they just have to weather it and hit me back.  Still the army is super fun to play, fluffy and definitely unique in todays local meta.