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.

40K gaming with your significant other

Sup guys, so a lot of us have significant others who because they love us, tolerate our geeky hobby of playing with man dolls. Some of us actually have significant others who actually enjoy the hobby with us, sharing in our passion for the game, the lore, and the models.  For the rest of us, we have significant others who fall inbetween these extremes, they are not into the hobby as much as we are however occasionally they might enjoy to "dip" their toe into the water so to speak and actually join us in some hobbying.  From painting, modeling, to actually playing games, they join us as in some small measure, they might actually enjoy it, that or they love us so much and see that we need to get a game in and happily offer their help.  My wife falls into this category, she listens to me as I excitely tell her of new releases, of changes to rules, etc.  She provides feedback when I ask it about my painting including bringing me down a peg if I start calling myself the greatest painter ever, etc.  The other night, she asked me If I would be interested in playing a game.  I jumped at the chance as again the more interested I can get her into my hobby, the closer I get her to jump into it with both feet in.  In preparing for the game I decided to focus on the following items to make it enjoyable for her and thus make it enjoyable for me.

1.  Play a small game - The last thing you want is for a game to last 5 hours which will not do you any favors with keeping them interested.  Small games will make it easier for them to grasp the rules and thus keep the game moving.

2.  Keep it simple - You really dont want to overwhelm your significant other with a ton of rules causing not only confusion but an unwilliness to keep playing the game.  Lets be honest, 40K has a steep learning curve, we want our significant other to grasp the basic rules and so feel that they are understanding the game and contributing to your enjoyment as well.  No psychic powers, no flyers, etc for your first game.  Concentrate on the basics of moving, shooting and assaulting.  Slowly introduce rules such as morale, psychic powers, etc once they feel a little confident in the rules.  Keep senarios simple, no malestrom for now, maybe just do kill points for your first few games, etc.

3.  Dont run a tourney list - Ok so this can be interpeted in several different ways.  What I am referring to is to play a list that you would take to a FLGS to play a friendly game, not what you would take to a no holds barred tournament.  This goes without question, the last thing you want to do is to table your significant other by turn 2 using your optimized list.  Tone it down a little bit, run a list that is both fun and capable of being challenging for your significant other.  Since the game as a steep learning curve as we mentioned above, take it easy on them.  If they make a mistake offer them a mulligan.  Dont be a dick, make it enjoyable for the 2 of you and you will be surprised by having them ask to play more games with you.

So how did the game went you may ask?  Not bad, I did get my teeth kicked in as she decided to play my Tau farsight list which does amazing in smaller point games.  I played my dark mech with 2 daemon engines, no psycher support (to keep it simple) 2 blobs of cultists and a warpsmith as my HQ.  She took a commander, 2 squads of suits (one 3, one 2), some marker drones, and a squad of 2 broadsides with missiles.  As you can see, I was outgunned from the start with only a forgefiend as my long range firepower.  He managed to gun down one of the squads of crisis suits early on but then felt the wrath of the broadsides in return.  I wont even mention the maulerfiend who just got gunned down at the beginning of turn 2 by the same squad.  Once those 2 elements were down, it was just a slow death for my cultists and HQ.  Yes the game was a little one sided which was my fault but as it was more of a teaching game, encouraged her to get the rules right and allowed her opportunity to recover from mistakes if she misplaced models, etc.  I took pics of the game which are the pics shown.  All in all, the game was super fun and something that hopefully fosters her desire to play the game more.  Who knows, maybe she will want to start an army...

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. 

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.