First 6th ed Tournament

 Hey guys, sorry that I havent posted in a while, life and work as really been taking its toll on me. I'm still painting figs and in fact got into warmachine a little more over the course of the last 2 months and actually painted up my first battlegroup. Pics I will save for another post as this is all about my experiences at my first 6th edition 40K tournament. I was eager to try my hand at a tourney, starting out at a lower point costed one to test my knowledge of the game but to my surprise, my first experience was at 2000 pts. In addition to the 2000pts, the tournament also required that your army take an ally. So in deciding to do this tournament, I opted to do a last hoorah for the chaos codex. I wanted to go with an army that was completely painted even though it wasnt necessary. My Thousand Sons army is fully painted however I wanted to go with an army that was entirely out of the box and one I never used before. Once I heard that they were giving out an award for best painted, I decided to go with a fluffy Khrone based army based around large squads of marines with a couple of havoc squads for support. For my allies in keeping with the Khrone theme, I decided to take a hard hitting Herald of Khorne on a juggernaut with a bloodcrusher retinue and some bloodletters to make the allies legal. Not just any Herald but the almighty Skulltaker which I had finished converting for an escalation league I had a couple of months ago. The army came in at 1990 so i took melta bombs for the 2 lords to get me to 2000 pts. Below is the list in detail. As you can see, the army contains no vehicles. I usually take at least 2 rhinos in all of my lists, in 6th however i have found that rhinos give up easy first blood points and so i decided to go with none.

HQ: Chaos Lord  = (base cost 90 + Juggernaut of Khorne 30 + Melta Bombs 5 + Mark of Khorne 10 + Daemon Weapon 40)

HQ: Chaos Lord = (base cost 90 + Juggernaut of Khorne 30 + Melta Bombs 5 + Mark of Khorne 10 + Daemon Weapon 40)

Troops: Khorne Berzerkers 9 Khorne Berzerkers = 9 * 21 (base cost 21) + Plasma Pistol x2 30 1 Skull Champion , 51 pts = (base cost 36 + Power Axe 15)

Troops: Chaos Space Marines  = 11 * 15 (base cost 15) + Icon of Khorne 30 + Meltagun x1 10 + Plasma gun x1 15 1 Aspiring Champion , 45 pts = (base cost 30 + Power Sword 15)

Troops: Chaos Space Marines  = 11 * 15 (base cost 15) + Icon of Khorne 30 + Meltagun x1 10 + Plasma gun x1 15 1 Aspiring Champion , 45 pts = (base cost 30 + Power Axe 15)

Heavy Support: Chaos Havocs  = 5 * 15 (base cost 15) + Missile Launcher x3 60

Heavy Support: Chaos Havocs  = 5 * 15 (base cost 15) + Lascannon x3 105

HQ: Skulltaker  140 + DS: Juggernaut of Khorne 35

Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne  = 5 * 40

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne = 10 * 16

The army would definitely suffer in open ground which is what I expected which is why i took large squads of troops to mitigate this a little.  I knew that I would facing my share of Guard and indeed there were a lot of Guard players.  Necrons were also heavily represented including several with multiple fliers.  To say that the my list did well is an understatement, I actually went undefeated in my 3 games, tying the first game and winning my last 2 games. Unfortunately with it being a battle points tournament, I ended up in the middle of the pack as I didn't blow out my opponents. The overall winner tabled 2 of his opponents with a Necron Flyer list so there was no way I could place. I did accomplish my goal however by winning best painted, surprised as there were several different armies that we painted very well but hell, I will take it... lol. Pics are of the army itself, I went with a dark grey with dark blue details similar to the pre-heresy world eaters colors. I hate painting white so that was definitely out of the question so I went with a light grey shaded with a black wash. Let me know what you guys think.

Tournament Time..

Sorry for not posting in a while, lets just say that life got in the way along with holidays and work just being plain busy. Three weeks ago saw our local flgs hold its its first 40k tournament since the last manager had left. The tourney was being run by one of the local players who in all honesty did a great job and kept the tourney running smoothly. The tounament was 1250 points per army and used standard book missions. Simple, to the point and a heck of a lot of fun. I know that I have said this before, but I just love the smaller points games in 40K. I hate games that last more then then 2 hours or longer, which smaller point games remeady really well. In fact if I had my choice, I would rather get in 2-3 smaller games during a day instead of playing 1 large game lasting hours and hours. This tournament gave me the benefit of giving me the ability of playing 3 games and lasting only 1 and half to 2 hours. I took my Dark Wolves as I wanted to try to play an all drop pod army and instead of taking wolf lords like I normally do with this army, I decided to take just 1 "cheap" rune priest. By doing this, it allowed me to take over 40 models!! I love playing Marine armies but due to their nature as an elite army, I am usually out numbered. By putting so many models in the list at such a low point list meant that I might actually out number some of my opponents. My first opponent was against Necrons played by my buddy. This would be the 2nd time I would be facing him and just like our last game, the game was too close to call. I made 2 mistakes which in hindsight cost me the game, he definitely outplayed me by deploying all in 1 quarter,not giving me the opportunity to isolate his army with my drop pods. I dropped extremely aggressive wanting to jaws his big 20 man unit but ended up due to scattering back a bit only able to hit 4 models with JAWS. Contrary to popular belief, necrons if they fail their initiative roll still get their reanimation protocols roll as they get this no matter what. I hope they keep this ability as JAWS can really put the hurt on this army. Our game ended on turn 5 with me pulling a tie, he had gotten one of my grey hunter squads to leave their objective by assaulting with scrabs. He was holding one objective and contested my other one so it came down to this assault. I won the assault and rolled well enough to consolidate back onto my objective thus tying the game.

My second game was against a dark eldar player I have never played before. This guy was a blast to play and like my necron buddy just likes to have fun. This game we drew dawn of war and capture and control, he deployed Lelith and a squad of bloodbrides in their raider and thats it. I thought he made a mistake as my whole army would then target this unit but between my flub rolls and he making flicker field saves, it literally came down to my dreadknought blowing it up after 2 grey hunter squads failed to do anything. Of course he brought out the rest of his army and i had one squad of greyhunters and their drop pod annihilated off the table. His 3 ravagers did flub their rolls against my dread and were only able to destroy an arm and shake it. I concentrated on all of his skimmers with my rune priest being the MVP killing 3 transports with living lightning. In the end he was able only to contest his objective which i had captured with me holding my objective thus winning the game 1-0.

With a major win and a tie, I was placing pretty good but definitely not in contention for 1st as we had a player who had won his last 2 games. I was definitely placing in the top 5 which I was pretty happy with. My last game I faced a grey knights army, which other then the imperial guard army would be the army I feared the most. If it came down to objectives, i would definitely have an edge, if it came down to kill points and it would be game over for me. As I prepare myself for the game I hear the dreaded words, kill points. With my opponent only having 6 kill points and me rocking 13, 5 of which are easy kill points, all my opponent had to do was reserve everything, come out,kill some drop pods and hide. That is exactly what he did.

I dropped all of my pods on his table edge close enough to rapid fire any squads that came on but far enough to not be charged by him. He wisely deployed on the other side and his bad reserve rolls for the 2nd turn actually helped him win the game as all of my pods came in by turn 2. He just focused on shooting up 1 squad with his dreads, had his evasor Assassin kill one squad, and then shot up some pods. I knew it was over so I even charged a squad of terminators with my 3 thunderwolf calvary and they got murdered. In the end my opponent won 6 to 2. All in all I went 1/1/1, not bad for not doing a tournament in a while, I should have gone 2/1 but my mistakes in my first game really robbed me of a victory. Super fun and I cant wait for the next one!! I might even consider running one myself.

Tournament Time...

2 Saturdays ago marked our local GW's Single elimination tournament. A 2000 points win at all costs tournament in which a loss means your out. The TO of this tournament did the same setup when he did the kill team tournament that he ran a couple of months ago. I wasn't expecting this type of setup, I at least wanted to be guaranteed 3 games and me being so new with my army, I wasn't expecting to win it. What I can say is that I prepared for Kill points and pitched battle as the TO told us that the tourney would be using these setups and my army was very stingy in the kill point department with my opponents needing to kill squads to give up one and only having 1 vehicle which was my venerable Dred. My list consisted of the following -
Wolf Lord on Jugger...ah thunderwolf with frost weapon, belt of russ, runic armor, bolt pistol
Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf with Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield, runic armor
Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf with Frost weapon, Storm Shield, runic armor, and saga of the wolfkin
All 3 had 2 wolf body guards and joined a 14 Wolf squad
Rune Priest with Murderous Hurricane and living lightning
Blood claw pack (13) with power weapon
2 Grey hunter packs with power weapon, plasma gun, melta gun
Venerable Dred with Assault Cannon
2 Long Fang squads, 1 with 3 missile launchers and 2 Plasma Cannons, 1 with 3 Lascannons and 2 heavy bolters.

My First game was against an Ork player. Again all I can say is OMG!!! My opponent brought a tough list with 2 15 ork commando units, one led by Snikrot. I gave him first turn as I wanted to see what he was going to do and I wanted to deploy my Long Fangs in the best position that I could. He deployed his hammer unit of Nobs with his warboss in the center of the table. This was the unit that I need to make disappear as I know the power of the unit. Big mistake my opponent did was not to deploy them in his battle wagon opting instead to have them go on foot. He put his big unit of burnas in the wagon which I immobilized in turn 2 thus causing my opponent to have to footslog it.

After taking out his nob squad and then the unit of 3 killer kans, the rest was clean up. The only threat my opponent had was his 2 commando squads which didnt come in until turn 3 and were thus left with taking out just a long fang squad that I let him have. My Wolf lords performed exactly like they had in my last 2 games, just destroying everything they touched. By turn 4, my opponent conceited the game and I scored a mighty 8 kill points and he scored 1. Another victory for my chaos space wolves.

Next game was against the guy who ended up winning the tourny who played a blood angel army that amongst my opponents would be the toughest I would face. The game was pretty even with both of us having a very good hammer unit that if used properly could change the outcome of the game. I started very strong by killing 1 of his Baal Preds and stunning his landraider. He responded by taking out my blood claws and a grey hunter unit with my rune priest. This was just dumb, as he lost 3 jump troops including his Sang priest due to murderous hurricane. My opponent just rolled incredible and I just rolled horribly. This one assault squad accounted for both my Grey Hunters squad and would have kept going if I didn't split one of my lords from my hammer unit to deal with them.

I wasn't the only one rolling badly, my opponent actually ended up immobilizing his landraider and his other Baal Pred. Even though I had lost 3 of my units, it still was a close game until I made a huge mistake. I didn't account for the 2 inches that a unit gets for disembarking from a vehicle, that 2 inches gave my opponent's death company and chaplain to reach one of my lords dogs as I had broke from cover trying to assault another one of his assault units which I couldn't reach due to a bad fleet roll. After the assault phase was done, I had lost all of my dogs as he got his death company and his assault squad in assault with me and put 2 wounds on my 2 lords. My lords fought back and cut down almost half of both huge squads but were eventually brought down. If my 3rd lord was still in the unit, the assault would have definitely gone my way. The game went on until turn 6 with me almost tying it but again due to a low fleet roll, couldn't get to his last baal pred with my remaining Wolf Lord. I lost 7 to 6. Ah well, it was a good game but it goes to show that my army is not unbeatable. Its definitely a hard list and one that is fun to play. It was a great tournament and even though I didn't win I was awarded a Black Library book and an audio book. Pics are of my almost finished Thunderlords and 5 of my 15 Bloodclaws.

Test 2...

Well I got the chance this Wednesday to try out my army once again before the big tournament. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my lovely wife allowed me to purchase 2 6 by 2 tables which when put together form a nice 6x4 gaming table, of course after I lay down my battlemat and some terrain. As our living space is limited, the only place to play confortably is in our patio and as the temperature had dropped significantly would be nice to play outside after work. Wednesdays is our weekly gaming/painting meet between my wife and my best friend to talk strategy, paint some models, and play some games. We rarely play 40K until our weekly Saturday club meetings at our FLGS so this was definitely a chance I couldnt pass up. My friend is also going to be in the tournament and will be taking a tough as nails Chaos list. This list consists of 2 squads of terminators, a chaos terminator lord, deamon prince, and a greater daemon. Along with these hard hitting units he is also bringing with him oblits, a defiler, landraider, and vindicator. I love this list as having all of these options makes it hard for an opponent to know what to shoot at first I mean do I go after the defiler, the vindicator, the daemon prince, or the landraider; not to mention the rhinos full of chaos space marines and chosen. This is where long fangs just shine, with their ability to split fire I could potential take out 3-4 vehicles a turn or put a lot of wounds on a daemon prince. My friend deployed first with his most hard hitting units in the center getting ready for the charge. I deployed my super unit in the center to soak up some damage with my long fangs squad deployed on each side of my deployment area (we were playing kill points/pitched battle like the tourney).

My Grey hunters were also deployed in this way along with my blood claws and Dread. What we both didnt expect was that I would steal the initiative and take out his defiler and vindi in the first turn!! My super unit did what they do best and took out some rhinos, the land raider, and some terminators. His daemon prince actually did pretty well against my lords actually killing one of them and killing all of my dogs. This I expected as a slaaneshi daemon prince with warp time is still very deadly. By the time turn 5 came around, my friend only had his greater deamon and a rhino filled with 9 chaos marines. I cant say that I should take all the credit as my friend was for the most part rolling pretty bad, especially his reserve rolls with his greater daemon not coming out until turn 5 and his terminator lord with his retinue not coming until turn 4, still my list performed brilliantly and I will definitely go on record with saying that as it stands now, the Space Wolves are without a doubt the strongest codex out there. Now to see how I do in the tournament as I will be facing blood angels and definitely space wolves. Wish me luck...

40K Tourney - Part 3

Today marked the last round of Games-workshop 3 month Tournament. I actually was thinking of not playing this round as I am sure that I am out of contention due to the fact that I lost in the 2nd round, but I decided to be "available" to the manager in case he needed someone to fill in. He actually did ask me if I wanted to play in the tourney, I told him sure as I was bored just looking for an open table. I took a real "dick" list, a chaos dual lash list as my thinking was I would love to play one of the "top" people and knock them out of placing, I guess I was feeling a little jealous to be honest, I should have won the 2nd round game but due to some unlucky dice and the game ending on turn 5, I lost it. This army is made up of my pre-hersey Thousand Sons with some Nightlord "allies"

I took 2 lash sorcerers, 2 squads of Thousand sons in Rhinos, 1 chosen squad with 2 meltas and 2 plasma guns in a Rhino, my infamous suicide terminator squad with 4 combi-plasmas, 1 heavy flamer, 2 power fists, 2 vindicaters, and 2 Oblits. Lash combined with vindicaters and oblits is pretty obvious but thousand sounds with the aspiring sorcerer with Wind of chaos is just plan nasty. I played against a very fluffy eldar Saim-haim (did I spell that right) jetbike list that was made up of all jetbikes, a farseer on a jetbike, and an Auturch on a jetbike. Once I knew that his farseer did not have runes of warding, I knew the game was going to go my way and my way it went. By the end of turn 6, he had a wave serpent, the farseer with a wound, and one jetbike left. Ended up winning the game 9 to 5 kill points. My opponent is a nice guy and he was gracious even in losing. I have known him for a while now but this was the first time I played him in a tournament setting. I hope GW does more of these tournaments, it brings out a lot of players that we get to play against and makes great practice for all of the "paid" tourneys. The Imperial Vox Cast boys will be holding their first tournament later in August, I might want to go to that to meet them and a chance to play in another tournament. Pics are of some of my army that I used, I have yet to take pictures of the whole army. For now, back to painting some more chaos...

40K Tournament - Round 2...

So this past Saturday marked the 2nd round of Games-Workshop 1750 40K tournament. Coming in with a win I really was excited to see who and what army I would be facing. I took the same army as last month (Pre-Hersey Thousand Sons) however I did change it up a bit. I took Artimus the Twisted (count as Kharn) and played with cheaper Thousand Sons units due to victory points killing me the last time. Upon getting there and having the manager roll up my random opponent, I got to play a Space Marine player with a unique hammer unit. After my opponent deployed, I saw that he had put down a landraider crusader with some thunder hammer storm shields termies and a chaplain. Just because I like to be open about my army and after I explained my army to him, I asked if their was anything special regarding the squad. To my surprise I found out that I was facing Lysander, Grey Knight termies, and a Chaplain. I just smiled at my opponent and said, gee glad I asked. I am all about "count as" armies however I hate it when players don't even tell you what a model is unless you ask them. It just seemed that this guy wasn't going to spoil the surprise unless I asked him. First couple of turns went my way or as best as they could based on my horrible dice rolls. My MVP's of last month, my Rhino mounted Havocs with 4 melta guns just became a speed bump for my opponents hammer unit. By turn 5, I was down by 2 kill points and needed that turn 6 to possibly win the game, I had Lysander and his chaplain down to 1 wound and only one grey knight left on the side of the table that my army was at. Alas, It wasn't meant to be, I rolled and got a 2 ending the game. Though my opponent pulled a "cheesy move" in the beginning, through out the game he was a blast to play with and was a gracious winner. At least I beat him in victory points so I got the moral victory... lol. Pics are of some of the units I used in the game, I will upload better pics of the army in my next posts

Tournament Saturday...Saturday..Saturday..

This past Saturday was the start of our local GW's Throne of Skulls Tournament for 40K, (i think thats what they call it anyways). According to the local manager, each round of the tournament will be done every 3rd weekend, each player playing 1 game of 1750pts each on set tables and terrain. A couple of buddies and me arrived at 12pm sharp for the tournament. I took my Thousand Sons Pre-Hersey army along with some Nightlord allies to flesh out a somewhat competitive army. I really dont care for lash princes, they make big targets and I hate putting all my eggs in one basket so to speak that relies on the lashes to win games. I have taken Lash Sorcerers who have worked wonderful combined with Thousand Sons, I didnt want to appear "cheesy" so I decided against it. As I wanted to have fun I took the following list

1750 Pts - Chaos Marines Roster - Tourney List TS/Nightlords Help #7

HQ: Chaos Sorcerer
1 Chaos Sorcerer (Mark of Tzeentch; Warptime; Wind of Chaos)

HQ: Chaos Sorceress
1 Chaos Sorceress of Slaanesh (Mount of Slaanesh; Mark of Slaanesh; Warptime)

Elite: Chaos Terminators
1 Chaos Terminators(Terminator)
6 Terminator (Power Fist x2; Combi-plasma x4; Heavy Flamer x1)

Troops: Thousand Sons
8 Thousand Sons (Rhino)
1 Aspiring Sorcerer (Warptime)
1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

Troops: Thousand Sons
8 Thousand Sons (Rhino)
1 Aspiring Sorcerer (Warptime)
1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

Troops: Chaos Space Marines
9 Chaos Space Marines (Plasmagun x2)
1 Aspiring Champion (Power Fist)

Heavy Support: Obliterators
1 Obliterators

Heavy Support: Obliterators
1 Obliterators

Heavy Support: Havocs
8 Havocs (Meltagun x4; Rhino)
1 Rhino (Dozer Blade; Twin Linked Bolter)

I love Warp Time, especially on a Slaaneshi Sorceress on a steed, she has a whopping 6 attacks on the charge which are all re-rollable and she moves like a beast all that at initiative 6. Not Thunderwolf calvary but the closest I could get with Chaos. My opponent brought a tough as nails Ork Mech army with a ton of vehicles and twin Big Meks, nasty Nob squad, and 2 Battlewagons. The pics are some shots I took with my phone of my game. Needless to say after a hard fought battle I won the battle with 7 kill points to 5, according to my friend, I luck out. My opponent was a great player who made the game an absolute blast which made for a great and fun game. My MVP was the Havocs loaded with 8 marines and 4 melta guns in a Rhino which accounted for almost 4 vehicle kills, 1 truck, 1 war track, and 2 deff dreads. I wonder what Round 2 will bring...