Nightlords Campaign - The first games

With the campaign in full swing at my local GW, it was time to test out my list. The first opponent I drew was an imperial guard player. His list contained a Commissar lord as his campaign champion (HQ), veterans in chimera's with melta guns (2), 1 squad of penal legionaires, 2 scout walkers with missile launchers, a squad of snipers, and the heavy hitters, 2 leman battle tanks, a executioner and a normal Leman russ with Lascannon and Heavy bolter sponsons. My first game was going to be a very difficult one as I really only had melta guns to deal with armor 14 tanks. Lucky for me I rolled pretty high for my bonus points and was able to squeeze in a 7 man chosen squad with 2 melta guns.

The table we picked also helped me out a bit as it was full of city terrain, a heck of lot more then your typical 40K game which allowed me to infiltrate the Chosen squad with in 15 inches of his tanks and out of line of sight. I ended up barely winning the game and claiming his campaign champion which gave my champion plus 1+ attack. The MVP's of this game was definitely the chosen which assaulted his scout walkers and pretty much blocked the advance of his Leman Russes for most of the game. The unit that performed the worst was unfortunately my terminator squad. They came on way too late in the game (turn 5 as my reserve rolls were horrible) and though they contested my opponents objective for about a turn, were promptly shot to death by his penal legion and his executioner tank.

For my next series of games, I decided to change up the list and dropped the terminators. Instead since I had access to all 3 of my elite slots due to the rules, I decided to go with an all infiltrating army, basically to play up the Nightlords fluff of being a terror army, an army that utilizes the ambush. I dropped the terminators in favor of 2 full 10 man chosen squads, complete with an aspiring champ with powerfist and 2 melta guns. The plan moving forward was to infiltrate the squads and use them as my vanguard units with my scoring units only being 2 5 man squads in Rhinos. In my next 2 games these units performed just stellar, tying my next game against another imperial guard player (losing by the secondary condition of kill points) and wining against a blood angel player.

I ended up killing the blood angels campaign champion with my Raptor squad (a squad I got with bonus points)who got scout as a veteran ability due to taking down the blood angels champion. Now if Raptors had scout or infiltrate all the time, you would definitely see more of them run. In my next game against a Tau opponent these guys outflanked, took out the 15man Kroot squad screening some piranhas,helped take out 1 piranha, and killed 1 12 man firewarrior squad before getting gunned down. I lost the scouting ability as the squad was lost but they did prove to me that Raptors with the ability to outflank would be very awesome indeed.

Something to think about GW if you wanted to sell lots of Raptor models to Nightlords players when the new Chaos Dex comes out.. So far I'm 3 and 1 in this campaign, surprising to me considering the amount of "new" dex's people are using. But then again the guy winning the campaign so far is 5-0 and is playing Tau. Maybe there is something to the idea of people knowing their armies and how they will always trounce the Codex jumpers....

The Fun of Gaming...

Well its been about 3 weeks since starting up with my Thousand Sons army again. So far its been pretty good.. I have played about 5 games with me winning 3 games and losing 2. One of the games that I lost was very close which could have gone either way. It was a kill points game and losing Artimus (count as Kharn) in the early parts of the game due to splitting him off from a squad and having him overkill a squad of Grey Hunters leaving him open for a melta gun shot to the face I think cost me the game. If I would have kept him in his squad, I could have killed the grey hunter squad, and then the other one. The game ended 7-6; was a terrific game and not once did I feel that I was getting slaughtered by a newer codex. Of course the player I played is top notch, and loves running lists with his space wolves differently then everybody else, I'm sure if he was running a missile spam list I would have been tabled.

In the next weeks or so, I am hoping to face off against the newer power builds to see how my list really stacks up. This might force me to go to bigger Tournaments to face them which I do plan on doing more of this year.
Our local GW will be running a campaign starting at 1250 where non-named characters will actually accrue experience and be able to "buy" abilities; again I might go with the Thousand Sons but due to the 1250pt limit, I would be seriously limited. I read the rules that the organizer put out and it looks to be top notch. With every game comes points that players can spend to "unlock" other Force Orgs; you begin with the required 1 HQ, 2 troops and just 1 of everything else but can unlock more choices by spending points.

You can also spend points on getting more points for you army up to 1500pts. Its 5 bucks to get in and all of the money goes toward prize support. I'm about 70% done on painting my third squad of Thousand Sons to add to my army in order to replace the Nightlords squad I have been using; these guys I might start running as Chosen and have them outflank in their rhino for some melta gun love which always helps. Pics are of the 3rd squad about 70% done.

The Return of the Thousand Sons...

With my possessed Rhino all but done I am ready this weekend to take out my Pre-heresy Thousand Sons for a drive once again. My next step is to make my army completely thousand sons as I am still using a squad of Nightlords for my third troops selection. I bought a Thousand Sons army off of a friend of mine that use to be the local GW manager. Alas he was transferred over to another store but at one of the last days he was at my local store, he held a Bizarre Bazaar. The army contained 2 squads of Thousand Sons, 4 of the metal sorcerer models, a landraider, 2 rhinos, Ahriman, and a lascannon Pred, all for 40 bucks. Since this was his first try at painting models, he warned me about how rough the paint job was.

He was right on that but the models were complete, and 40 bucks is freaking cheap for all of that; nothing a little simple green cant fix and with these models helped round out my collection. In addition to the 3rd squad, I will be including a Rhino for them which means forgeworld doors for it to match my other rhinos. This is the expensive part but I love how my other ones look with these doors. My local Battle Bunker is really far however during my work week, I do work close to it 3 days a week. I could probably make my way out there during a lunch break again but we shall see, I might just order them or even place them on my Christmas list. At the least this will allow me to paint up the squad for it.

This past Saturday my Thousand Sons had the pleasure to putting the hurt on the Emperor's finest, the Grey Knights. I played a very good player who though was playing a less the competitive army, still gave me a good game. Gearing my Thousand Sons for CC, they actually did very well against Grey Knight Terminators.

Gearing up the Aspiring Sorcerers with Warp time and including an IC in the squad actually makes them pretty survivable in CC especially when one of the IC's is Kharn. The game did go to turn 6 with me contesting his objective with a Rhino but again if used right the Grey Knights could be a very potent force.

Maybe not against some of the newer 'dexes but definitely against some of the older ones. Pics are of the army, on my next post I will list the army list, go over each unit, and go over the paint scheme that I used. Until next time

continuing on the path of Chaos...

After reading the last White Dwarf (October 2010), I am inspired now to try to play my pure Thousand Sons list again. Yeah, yeah, my Chaos space wolves are fun to play and all but I really wanted to get them more painted before taking them out again. I am annoyed with taking a mostly black primer filled army, though I have my HQ's and 25 marines done, I still have the rest of the blood claws squad, my rune priest, my 2 long fangs squad, my 20 dogs, and my dread to do. In the last White Dwarf, one of the editors talked about building his Word Bearers army.

Here is this guy who read some black library books and decided to take what he considered a "fluffy" Word Bearers army for as he put it, he wanted to bring some of their villiany to the tabletop. As we all know, running a Chaos Army nowadays is more something about the hobby then wanting to be competitive. Yes there are still competitive builds out their, but usually they involve a lash and spamming of oblits. Among the units that he used was a Daemon Prince, Possessed, and summon daemons. Many of the units in his army are considered some of the worst in the game and not very competitive yet this guy wanted to build an army that appealed to him and it shows. Of course some people will say that this is GW's attempt at trying to sell more spawn models, or possessed, etc but truth be told, these latest chaos models are some of the best looking that GW has released for Chaos. Their rules might not be up to par but I am a victim of wanting to play with models that I like the look of. The paint job is very good, not heavy metal good but definitely on par with some of the armies I've seen in my area. I really loved the way he brought his possessed and daemon prince together by giving them the same color of skin and incorporating possessed bits on his aspiring champs in his CSM squads. His vehicles were very well done, so good that I copied the way he did his rhinos, I built and am starting to paint a rhino just like his. My possessed squad needed a rhino and with my spare parts I created a rhino "worthy" to ferry my possessed around.

My possessed "gunner" i created with some spare possessed bits and gave him a plasma gun/pistol that I plan on using as a count as combi-plasma. I really didnt want to cut up a chaos terminator combi-melta for this and I have plenty of plasma pistol arms laying around that I decided to use that instead. The tentacles i got from spare spawn bits which I will paint to match the skin of my possessed squad to follow their theme. I am also going to build a new daemon prince following the white dwarf example and will be painting his skin exactly like the possessed to tie the too units together. I will continue to paint my space wolves as well hoping to possibly getting the 15 man blood claws squad done in the next week and a half.

Lately our local space wolf player has begun to play his wolves similar to mine which will provide me with great practice on how to take out this type of build. As if I didn't want to try something else I am also playing my Tau again. I have played about 3 games with them so far since I shelved them almost a year ago.. I just wanted to see how bad it is to play this army. So far I can honestly say that yes they need an update but I am 2-1 with them and the change of game has been really fun. I will post more info on my Tau army in my next post. Pics are of my pre-heresy Thousand sons Rhinos and my Possessed about 80% done.