Completed Thousand Sons Rubrics

Hello everybody,

So I wanted to post pics of my completed squad of rubric marines.  I am currently working on a squad of Tzaangors in which I am using more airbrush for them then I did for the rubrics in terms of getting their skin painted in different shades of blue-grey.  The plan moving forward is finish these tzanngors and then move over to doing my exhaulted sorcerers or Rubric terminators next.  I really want to get this army done as I am excited about my next project in which I might cheat on my Thousand Sons and start it.  Truth be told, I cant stand painting Tzaangors, I really dont know why but I think it has to do with the fact that I have never painted anything like them before since i painted up a daemon army many years ago.

The Daemon army was quite easy as I used just washes on them except for my daementtes in which i used an airbrush for their skin and then used washes on their armor and claws.  I keep telling myself that I cant start my new army until I get this one done but now I am like, if i get done with these tzaangors, then i can cheat and start building them.  We shall see however.  Let me know your thoughts on these.

WIP Thousand Sons Rubric Marines

What is up everybody?  Hoping everybody is keeping safe from this Corona Virus outbreak.  If you would have asked me a couple of weeks ago that the US would be in total shut down due to the corona virus, I would have laughed at you.  But here we are hunkered down in our homes trying to keep safe.  The only good thing about this is the time we have with our familes and our hobby.  No more excuses everybody, we need to get cracking and get some models painted.  So I wanted to share this quick post on my work in progress Thousand Sons.  So with the Coronoa Virus situation going around, a lot of us are getting more and more hobby time and I for one want to take advantage of the situation.  These past few days my wife and I have enjoyed playing some old school Xbox live games, watching Netflix, playing video games, and getting some more hobby time in.  I am finally able to concentrate on my 2020 army now, the Thousand Sons.  About 2 years ago for Christmas, I was gifted by my wife several of the new Thousand Sons kits.  

I have always been a Thousand Sons fan since back in the 3.5 codex days and have a sizeable old Thousand Sons army.  Once the new kits started coming out, i instantly fell in love with this and decided to make the hard decision of replacing my old rubric marines with these new kits.  I plan on keeping these old ones and maybe use them for bigger games after i rebase them.  I am planning on keeping my custom made sorcerer to go along my new exalted sorcerers and of course my old Ahriman metal model to go along the new Ahriman model.  

I plan on running a heavy character army for all that smiting spam goodness but will be taking several units of rubrics instead of cheap Tzaangors.  Dont get me wrong, Tzaangors will have a place in my army and I will still be bringing a 20 man unit.  For their cost, they are pretty good and make a mockery of cultists.  I have already started working on my first 10 Tzanngors and have already built my 3 exulated sorcerers.  Those models are just amazing, the amount of bits you get allows you to build truely unique characters for your army.  Once I get some paint on them I will show those off next.  Until next time.

The Dark Mech Continues...

Greeting all,
So in this post I wanted to continue going into my dark mech again.  i got to tell you all, i have been having so much fun with the army that at this point I dont care what people tell me.  The community I play in is all in with the ITC and so most games are played using their missions and even so I dont care.  I have played 3 games now and all 3 were great games with fun opponents, all 3 i actually pulled wins out of against space marines and blood angels which is pretty crazy considering how overpowered they are at the moment but I have to tell you, all were close games and if I made a big mistake, i would have lost them.  The power of the army has got to be the "base" of my army which centers around the Master of Possessions and both the infernal power and cursed earth psyhic powers.  Around her I have 2 forgefiends with hades autocannons and 2 units of 2 obliterators.  Giving her the daemonsmith warlord trait adds to the magic causing exploding 6's on all daemon units that are 6 inches away from her.  This has caught a lot of my opponents by surprise as now you got forgefiends even with their crappy BS getting some additional hits on even average rolls.  Now the key is getting both psychic powers off as having 1 fail really knocks down the power of their firing.  Now dont get me wrong, even with one power, the 2 forgefiends are still pretty potent and it was evident in my games when i could only get 1 power off.  What i did notice however is that infernal power seems to be the key power, rerolling 1s on hits and wounds is very good.  Dont get started on the oblits, these guys are amazing and with the master of possessions even better.  Their only issue is the lack of range, if they just had a 30 inch range or even 36 inches, these guys would be more of an autotake.  In my 2000 pt list, i take 3 units, a 3 man unit and 2 two man units that I deepstrike with a cheap termi lord for the re-rolls of 1 on hits.  These guys allow me to reach out and touch anybody on the board and helps keeps my opponents honest.  

Now lets talk about the units im disappointed with, im going to start a little controversy but the first is the Lord Discordant.  I absolutely love this model, love the potential it has but unless im running more than 2, they will never get to the opponent.  I run 1 and that is probably my issue but wow, unless i run it as Alpha legion, its not going to get anywhere before dying.  I love the model so i will keep running it along with 2 maulerfiends which is the second unit that I just really want to love.  I run 2 and just like the lord discordant, they just die without doing anything.  I really wish they increased the movement speed of it to 12 like it used to have to match the disco lord and maybe give it 14 wounds like a defiler but i still think it wont be enough.  What I will try to do is to run 3 with 2 rhinos full of berserkers and a heldrake basically a threat overload list to see if that works better.  So far they havent done much but again, because i love the models, i still want to continue to run them.  I might switch out the list to include some Chaos wardogs to see with their increased speed and resilence, i can get the rest of the army to hit home.  i did have some success my last game with the Lord Discordant by keeping him close to home against another daemon engine army that was running 3 vemon crawlers with a lord discordant so almost a mirror match however he was also running a mini possessed bomb with all the characters and so his shooting was pretty limited.  I definitely outgunned him and it showed as I had him tabled by top of turn 5.  In this game the Lord Discordant buffed my forgefiends betting them to fire their 16 strength 8 ap 1 shots with better accuracy combined with the Master of Possessions daemonsmith warlord trait and his infernal power spell.  I used the maulerfiends as blockers and by turn 3 rushed them and the lord discordant to kill off the remaining vemon crawlers and his lord discordant and they also helped in mopping up the possessed bomb.  Fun game and it taught me that maybe not charging headlong into the enemy especially since im only running one of them might be a good idea sometimes.  Pics are of a small game I had (1000 pts ) in which I ran a spearhead detachment made up of the following models

++ Spearhead Detachment +1CP (Chaos - Chaos Space Marines) [60 PL, -2CP, 1,000pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Legion: Iron Warriors

+ Stratagems [-2CP] +

Field Commander [-1CP]

Specialist Detachment [-1CP]: Soulforged Pack [-1CP]

+ HQ [14 PL, 248pts] +

Lord Discordant on Helstalker [9 PL, 160pts]: Autocannon [10pts], Mark of Slaanesh, Master of the Soulforges

. Helstalker: Techno-virus injector

Master of Possession [5 PL, 88pts]: 2. Daemonsmith, Cursed Earth, Force stave [8pts], Infernal Power, Mark of Slaanesh, Warlord

+ Heavy Support [46 PL, 752pts] +

Forgefiend [8 PL, 128pts]: 2x Hades autocannons [40pts], Daemon jaws [8pts], Mark of Slaanesh

Maulerfiend [7 PL, 122pts]: Lasher tendrils [12pts], Mark of Khorne

Maulerfiend [7 PL, 122pts]: Lasher tendrils [12pts], Mark of Khorne

Obliterators [12 PL, 190pts]: Mark of Slaanesh, 2x Obliterator [12 PL, 190pts]

Obliterators [12 PL, 190pts]: Mark of Slaanesh, 2x Obliterator [12 PL, 190pts]

++ Total: [60 PL, -2CP, 1,000pts] ++

Super elite army at a 1000 pts, but it was super fun to run and something I wouldnt mind running more of.  I absolutely love small games as they force you to make hard decisions, games are fast, and it allows you to test out unit/units quickly before you try them in larger games.

Greetings Not from LVO 2020

Hello everybody, so this is going to be my pity party, due to unforseen circumstances, I will not be attending LVO this year.  To say that I wasnt excited to go would be an understatement, I was totally ready to go and had finished painting the last units for my Dark Mechanicus which was going to make their triumphant return this year from a 2 year hiatus.  But alas they will not, all the hard work I put in wasnt wasted as I needed to get them done by it does feel a little like a waste of time.  The list I was going to bring had the following -

HQs - Lord Discordant, Chaos Lord, Hellwright, and Master of Possessions

Elites - 5 man terminator Melta squad, Helbrute

Troops - 15 Chaos space marines, 30 cultists

Flyer- Heldrake

Heavy - 2 Maulerfiends, 2 Forgefiends, 4 Obliterators

Additional support would come in a Chaos Knight detachment of an Atrapo and 3 Wardogs in case somebody wanted to bring along a super heavy detachment to play against.  The list would provide me with a fun flexible force full of theme and able to take on all non tournament list comers.. lol.  Of course even with the updates that Chaos got, Daemon engines are just sub par in the meta right now.  The lower point cost does make it more affordable to take them and so I can spam them a little bit, the one exception to this is the Heldrake which now being a heck of a lot cheaper makes it very tempting to take with its ability to tie up key units in the early game.  I did a list with wardogs that made me having 6 tough units rushing an opponents line along with a heldrake giving me a chance that at least 3 units will make it to cause havoc in their lines. 

Maybe next year I will bring the same army as right now im in the middle of painting up my updated Thousand Sons army.  I have been dying to finish updating this army that my lovely wife bought me a couple of years ago at Christmas.  So we shall see, until next time I will keep an eye on updates coming from the event hoping that they have a fantastic turnout and everybody has a fantastic time.

WIP in progress - Iron Warriors Warband - Dark Mechanicus

Sup guys, 

So here is my next update for models that are WIP.  They are almost done and I am happy with the result thus far.  These models are for my so called Dark Mechanicus army, an army that i started back in 6th edition comprised of as many daemon engines as possible.  I decided to build this after i saw the first warpsmith model and forgefiend models and yes even though they were really not great in game, i loved the models so much that i purchased 3 more and got the idea of doing an army of these.  Back in those days since we didnt have any specific legion rules, I decided to paint them in a paint scheme that I had started back in 5th for a small space wolves army.  Enter 6th edition with the introduction of more daemon engines which i fell in love with with their unique designs as well as the warpsmith model that I decided to start a chaos dark mechanicus army and used the same paint scheme since its something i had never seen before.  I used the army extensively in 6th and 7th and even won a tournament or too with it.  I'm proud to say that I have also won 2 painting competitions with it and I jokingly mused to one of my buddies that I can sell this army as a painting award winning...lol.  I was quite humbled by the experience to be honest as I didnt think the scheme was all that ground breaking but I will take it.  Below are the pics of my almost done Lord Discordant and done 4 obliterators.  

This pic was snapped during a recent game with them.  It was a fun 3 player game with one objective in the middle that was the only way you could score.  The game ended with the Sister's player taking it all but not before my Dark Mech took a huge toll on both his army and our Death Guard opponent.  

Here my Oblits and Forgefiend under the command of my Master of Possessions maintain a steady stream of fire on both my opponents.  I really love how the Master of Possessions buffs all daemon engine and daemon unit with her spells, she is now an auto take in all of my dark mech armies.  Let me know what you guys think.

Faith and Fury

Sup guys, so today I wanted to get started on chatting about Faith and Fury and how it relates specifically to the Nightlords legion.  I'm just going to straight out and say it, it's about freaking time!! These new rules are fluffy as fuck and are game winning.  Now of course this means that everybody and their mother will be running a detachment of Nightlords now but that is ok, the 8th Legion welcomes all.  I can also take solice in the fact that my patience and loyalty has been rewarded finally.  I cant be accused of being a bandwagoner as I have been playing the army since the days of the famed 3.5 codex.  As I stated before, the rules in Faith and Fury bring a heck of alot of flavor to the 8th legion.  I just wish that it also gave you access to additional rules when you run an entire Nightlords army similar to what space marines are getting.  What it does give is a toolbox of tricks that a Nightlords Commander can use to effectively shut down armies and allow the rest of the army to get where they need to be in order to claim objectives, get into assault, etc.  I had a great player once tell me that GW made Chaos armies to be good at assault which you see with the amount of strats and warlord traits that focus on making your army better in close combat.  The new Nightlords strats really emphasize this but do it in a fluffy way that really brings the flavor of the Nightlords out.  I have just played a couple of games now with Faith and Fury and I can say that they make a huge difference to how I play it.  Now my focus is on getting as much command points as possible to fuel the army which I wish was easier for Chaos as things are so expensive at the moment.  I know that with Chapter Approved this will help a little but really other than cultist spam, Chaos Space Marines really dont have enough units that are cheap enough to say run multiple battalions without sacrificing something.  Lets go over the meat here, the Stratagems

1.  In Midnight Clad - Same as before and as useful as before.  -1 to hit against an infantry unit is just great.  I usually combo this with another -1 with Miasma of Pestanlence to provide a heavy hitting unit such as a termi squad.

2.  We Have Come for You - Wow is this awesome, Nightlords finally got the ability to tie up an infantry unit after charging them.  This is huge, i cant stress how important and game changing this is as you can effectively shut down an opponents shooting phase in a turn.  Where i do see the limit of this strat is the fact that you cant lock down vehicles, that would have been amazing but a little over powered if you ask me.  I did face an opponent with a lot of dreads and this strat really didnt come into play

3.  Vox Scream - Another game changer strat, the ability to shut down auras is crazy good.  It is a little expensive at 2 but i do reconginze the need to have it at that cost.  The fact that you can use any Nightlord unit is what makes this crazy good.  I use a Fire raptor with this since it can be anywhere on the board at a moments notice but can see use of a heldrake as well for a cheap alternative.

4.  From the Night - this can be a such great Stratagem if it didnt require you to be on terrain.  I see the point as this is to mimic Nightlords coming out of the shadows but unless you have a lot of terrain on your table, might not come into play.  giving you 2+ on your charge roll and giving you +1 to hit in melee is really good. 

5.  Prey on the Weak - Ok so I am going to mini rant here.  There was several outlets out there that said that this Strat wasnt worth it or was super situational.  Are you kidding me, this one I have found to be one of the most useful of all the new Strats.  In every single one of my games i have used this more than even We Have Come for you or even Vox scream.  This on a fire raptor or leviathon Dread (both with leadership 9 by the way) as well as havoc squads makes this amazing. Think of it as another Prescience giving you a plus +1 to hit that you can have on another unit, couple that with Veterans of the long war and it can be devastating.  and of course Nightlords drop leadership so it really comes into its own in Melee.

6.  Raptor Strike - Nightlords get to act like Blood Angels now, at the cost of  1 CP, you get to charge 3D6.  Simple yet very effective, really good on a warp talon squad giving you the ability to shut down over watch to multiple units and then being able to tie them down in combat with We have come for you.

7.  Hit and Run - Another great one, the ability to fall back and charge another unit in your turn is amazing.  Something to help in tieing up key opponents during the fight phase which can also be game breaking. 

8.  Flay them Alive - Another fluffy choice which is way more conditional than Prey on the Weak but one that can all but guarantee a unit to lose models with careful Nightlord unit placement.  the key of course is to cause multiple units to have to take moral checks causing opponents to have to choose who they want to save.

As you can see these strats bring a lot of flavor to your Nightlord armies and is something I have been waiting for a long time.   The one critisim i have is of course the army being very CP intensive.  This forces the player to have to take multiple battalions or try for a a brigade which in some cases causes you to focus on just some key units.  Chapter Approved definitely helps with this but I really wish that some of these were just inate Nightlord abilites.  I mean how cool would it have been if you auto tied up infantry units in CC if the opponent loses a leadership roll or you get 2+ on charges if you charge out of a ruin?  Something to think about for sure.

On the rebound...

Hello everybody,

So again i am going to start up my old blog.  Its been what a year almost since i posted, i have numerous drafts of posts which i never completed and so i decided to just delete these old ones and start over so to speak.  So the purpose of this blog is to track what I have painted, share some pics of my work in progress and discuss thoughts on 40k and other games in general including video games.  Work has been cray busy but I have finally changed roles and hopefully will have more time to both hobby and play some games.  Recently I joined an RPG club and actually have been playing lots of RPG's, meeting new friends and experiencing new games that i would have never would have tried.  I have been part of a gaming club as well giving me numerous opportunites to play 40K and other miniature games.  So lets start with what I have been painting and what i have completed over the last 4 months.

- 10 New Nightlord Raptors

- Nightlord Jump Pack Lord

- Nightlord Terminator Lord

- Nightlord Havocs 

- Nightlord Leviathon

As you can see, I have been adding a lot to my Nightlord's army, adding in Models to bolster my current force.  I really hope that Chapter approved drops the points of regular CSM's, Warp Talons, and raptors.  Dont get me started on the new Faith and Fury book, that will definitely add some much needed omph to chaos space marines to hopefully get them closer to the power level of normal marines.   Hope you like the the pics.  This is hopefully going to keep me on track as well as track my hobby progress. 

Next up on the agenda is 4 of the new Obliterators, 1 Lord Discordant, and a Brass Scorpion.  These i might need to get done as i wanted to take them to LVO next year which is coming up really fast.   

I told myself that i wanted to use my dark mechanicus army next however with the new book, my Nightlords will become even more fun to play. 

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.

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.  

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.

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...

Games Workshop and why I love you so...

Sup guys.. Right on the heels of my last post regarding Khorne Daemonkin, I wanted to go ahead and start talking about something else that I believe Games Workshop is doing right.  After many years and wishes, GW has finally graced us with the presence of an actual adeptus mechanicus army complete with multiple codexes and several different kits that not only look awesome but actually fit the motif for mechanicus.  About a year ago, several internet celebs actually spoke about GW bringing out several mini armies complete with their own codexes and mini's.  When I first heard of this I thought that this was more wish listing but now after seeing Harliquins first, Skittarri and now Mechanicus cult, we are seeing that these rumors are actually coming true.  As you guys know, I am a huge mechanicus fan and these new kits and rules are a dream come true.  Yes I prefer a Dark bent to my mechanicum forces as evident by my "dark mechanicus" themed army but now we actually have rules and kits to actually play mechanicum forces.  Everything that has come out thus far have been amazing except for the old school robots which I am still deciding on if I like them or not.  With Skitarri we got the common mech foot soldier with the vanguard and ranger kits, a "stalker" tank, and some elite units that fit the theme so well that they seem as if they were always part of the 40K "model" universe.  This week we see the release of the cult mechanicus which included more troop choices, some more melee units with the electro-priests, and finally an HQ unit with the Dominus.  Of all of the new models I have to admit that my favorites are the Stygian walkers, the rangers, and the new Dominus.  The Dominus just reeks mechanicus with his many limbs, power ax, and servo skulls attached to him.  I am definitely going to be picking him up as soon as I can, paint him up in my dark mechanicus colors and have him join my arch magos in my dark mech army as either another warpsmith or sorcerer.  With the great rules and models however I do have some complaints.  My number one as you have probably guessed is what happened to the chaos love with these new units?  We all know that the dark mechancius exists and GW should have allowed chaos players to take any of these mechanicus models as battle brothers or at least as allies of convenience.  A new army list that allows you to take daemon engines as heavy support along with a dominus or warpsmith as your HQ would have been amazing.  For now all of us chaos players can do is to take them as count as and try to fit them in our armies after we have chaosified them a bit.  My second complaint is whats the deal with bringing out 2 books for these releases?  All of these units could have been put into the same book thus eliminating the need to have to wait for each book to come out or forcing us to have to carry 2 books every time we decide to play the army, of course the big compliant is more of a money one as even though these books are cheaper than full sized codexes, your still shelling out almost 70 bucks to just start playing the army.

I do have hope in forgeworld though, last week at their open day event we saw a chaos knight shown.  It appears to be an upgrade kit to the standard GW knight kit like their Magera kit that came out a couple of months ago.  From the early pictures, the kit looks pretty detailed and will look great in any chaos army.  Of course their are many out there that converted our knights to have a more chaos feel to them and with this release means is that we will finally get rules for chaos knights.  I am really hoping we dont have to wait for an imperial armor book for these rules however and they release the rules as a free download similar to what they have done with several of their kits.  

In the world of 30K, I am awaiting the arrival of the Dark Mechanicus.  They have already graced us with a Dark Mechanicus character kit which I absolutately love built and painted for my dark mech army but what I am really waiting for is models for the rank and file.  Dark Mech troops, possessed Thanators, etc as well as the rules to use any of the daemon engines that we have models for already such as maulerfiends, forgefiends, etc.  As I stated earlier, GW we would be happy with you just allowing all new mechancius units to be taken in Chaos armies as battle brothers.  This would go a long way to rejuevenate chaos for a lot of players and make people like me extremely happy.

My LVO Experience

Hey guys, what's up? Well I just got back from the 2nd annual Las Vegas Open and all I could say is it was awesome!!  The 2nd Las Vegas Open was promised to be bigger, it was.  It was promised to have more variety, and it did!!  This year, the Con changed venue to the Flamingo Hilton in order to accommodate a much bigger turn out.  The 40K championships, the flagship event drew 256 players making it the biggest 40K event in the country.  As I stated in an earlier post, I decided to do something different this year, the 40K championship was great last year however I wanted to try out the friendly as I am after all a fluff nut.
The friendly was an easy going 4 round tourney where players were encouraged to bring out the very best in sportsmanship, painting, and themed armies.  I went in expecting to have a good time and boy did I ever.  I played 4 great opponents with beautiful armies and great attitudes making each round a pleasure to play.  Gone was the stress of playing in a no holds barred tournament with crazy combinations and people getting upset over anything, in was playing 40K the way it's supposed to be experienced, laid back with a lot of laughs, no stress, but still playing to win and with alcohol.  Priority was placed on the experience itself, of playing a game with your buddy and making sure that both of you are having the best time possible.   Now don't get me wrong, I do like competitive 40K and will probably go back to playing in regular tournaments however this experience is why I love playing 40K, to be able to tell a story that both players enjoy.  The timing of the games was another plus, starting at 11am and ending at 7pm which gave you ample time to enjoy Vegas with your significant other (which my wife loved).   The relax attitude of the TOs was also great as well as beautiful beer girls selling us adult beverages and in some cases outstanding deals with the purchase of a beer was wonderful (I ended up getting a starter box for Drop Zone Commander for buying 2 beers!!).  The only negative that I will report is that I wish players were matched up just like a normal tourney instead of shaking the hand of a player you have never played and playing him.  Also I wished they had 2nd and 3rd place prizes to go along with best general.  The tourney also mentioned teams of players based on factions such as imperial vs. Chaos which was never a factor in the tourney.  This would have added a lot as it would have made the games we play tell a story with multiple arcs based on the winners and losers.  Other than these minor quibs, the tourney was a blast and something I will gladly come back next year to play in.



After all of that how did I do?  Well I actually did surprisingly.  I took a list that was more theme then substance however also packed a wallop if you were not prepared for it.  It was extremely skewed in that it contained nothing but armor and only 1 unit that contained wounds.  This definitely surprised a lot of my opponents who was looking at people taking lots of infantry and some of my opponents actually prepared for it.  In the end I went 3-0-1, undefeated and tied my 4th game where a win would have guaranteed me winning or at least tying the event.  All in all a very good outing for the Dark Mechanicus and a very well run Con/Tourney by Frontline Gaming.  Well done Gentlemen and here's to more successful events for you guys.

An A+

The LVO and me

Sup guys.. Well the time has come for the LVO once again.  The LVO last year was my first major tournament and I had a blast.  Not only did it run smoothly but the timing of the events was almost perfect.  The fact that most of my games started at noon meant that I could party the night before and get some time to sleep in.  It also helped that I stayed in the same hotel that the event was run at so I didnt have to huff it to the event from a different hotel carrying my army with me.  For this year I decided that I wanted to do something different.  I wanted to go ahead and try my hand at playing the team tourney but alas I received confirmation from Reece himself that there wasn't going to be one this time around which is a bummer.   In keeping with me wanting to do something different, I decided to sign up for the 40k friendly event.  The 40k friendly is a 2000 point relaxed environment tourney where they are allowing unlimited CADS and unbound armies to allow players to build great themed armies.  Of course all lists need to be vetted ahead of time to keep the armies somewhat balanced and fun for all.  The format sounds pretty interesting if you ask me and plays to the fluff bunny in me that loves creating themed lists.  For this I am thinking of bringing the full might of the dark mechanicum complete with 2 Magos (chaos sorcerers), a warpsmith to do on site repairs, and as many daemon engines as possible.  Since the list format could be unbound, I am thinking of taking one of the hell brute formations as well.  I am still trying to finalize the list but below is something of an idea that I am thinking about. 

+++ New Dark Mech Unbound LVO list v.2 with Imp Knight (1998pts) +++

++ Chaos Space Marines: Supplement - Crimson Slaughter (2014) (Unbound Army (Faction)) (1323pts) ++

+ No Battle Role (HQ)+

Sorcerer 2x Additional Mastery Level, Daemonheart, Mark of Nurgle, Melta bombs, Palanquin of Nurgle, Sigil of corruption
····Rules: Champion of Chaos, Independent Character, Psyker
····Power Armour [Bolt Pistol, Force Weapon]
····Profiles:
········Sorcerer: Unit Type:Infantry (Character)|WS:5|BS:4|S:4|T:4|W:2|I:4|A:2|Ld:10|Save:3+
········Daemonheart: Description:May not be taken by a Daemon Prince. Daemonheart confers a 2+ Armour Save and the It Will Not Die special rule.

Sorcerer [2x Additional Mastery Level, The Balestar of Mannon]
····Rules: Champion of Chaos, Independent Character, Psyker
····Power Armour [Bolt Pistol, Force Weapon]
····Profiles:
········Sorcerer: Unit Type:Infantry (Character)|WS:5|BS:4|S:4|T:4|W:2|I:4|A:2|Ld:10|Save:3+
········The Balestar of Mannon: Description:Chaos Sorcerer only. The bearer of the Balestar of Mannon can choose to generate powers from the Divination discipline, and re-rolls failed Psychic tests. However, neither he nor any unit he has joined can benefit from any modifiers to Deny the Witch rolls for the bearer being a Psyker.

Warpsmith [Bolt Pistol, Gift of mutation, Power Axe]
····Rules: Champion of Chaos, Independent Character, Master of Mechanisms, Shatter Defences
····Profiles:
········Warpsmith: Unit Type:Infantry|WS:4|BS:5|S:4|T:4|W:2|I:4|A:2|Ld:10|Save:2+

+ No Battle Role (Fast Attack)

Heldrake [Baleflamer]
····Rules: Daemon, Daemonforge, It Will Not Die, Meteroric Descent
····Profiles:
········Heldrake: BS:3|Front:12|Side:12|Rear:10|HP:3|Type:Vehicle (Flyer, Hover)
········Daemonic possession: Description:

+ No Battle Role (Heavy Support) +

Forgefiend [Hades Autocannon]
····Rules: Daemon, Daemonforge, Fleet, It Will Not Die
····Profiles:
········Forgefiend: WS:3|BS:3|S:6|Front:12|Side:12|Rear:10|I:3|A:2|HP:3|Type:
········Daemonic possession: Description:

Maulerfiend [Lasher tendrils]
····Rules: Daemon, Daemonforge, Fleet, It Will Not Die, Move Through Cover, Siege Crawler
····Profiles:
········Maulerfiend: WS:3|BS:3|S:6|Front:12|Side:12|Rear:10|I:3|A:2|HP:3|Type:
········Daemonic possession: Description:

Maulerfiend[Lasher tendrils]
····Rules: Daemon, Daemonforge, Fleet, It Will Not Die, Move Through Cover, Siege Crawler
····Profiles:
········Maulerfiend: WS:3|BS:3|S:6|Front:12|Side:12|Rear:10|I:3|A:2|HP:3|Type:
········Daemonic possession: Description:

Obliterators[Mark of Nurgle, 3x Obliterator]
····Rules: Bulky, Daemon, Deep Strike, Obliterator Weapons, Slow and Purposeful
····Profiles:
········Obliterator: Unit Type:Infantry|WS:4|BS:4|S:4|T:4|W:2|I:4|A:2|Ld:8|Save:2+

++ Imperial Knights: Codex (2014) (Formation Detachment)

········Knight Paladin: WS:4|BS:4|S:10|Front:13|Side:12|Rear:12|I:4|A:3|HP:6|Type:Vehicle (Super-heavy Walker)
········Ion Shield: Description:Grants a 4+ Invulnerable Save against all shooting hits from one facing (chosen at the start of the opponent's shooting phase).
········Heavy Stubber: Range:36"|Strength:4|AP:6|Type:Heavy 3
········Rapid-Fire Battle Cannon: Range:72"|Strength:8|AP:3|Type:Ordnance 2, Large Blast
········Reaper Chainsword: Range:-|Strength:D|AP:2|Type:Melee

+ Formation

Formation: Mayhem Pack
····Rules: It Will Not Die, Mayhem from the Maelstrom, Tormented Terrors
····Helbrute [Multi-melta, Power fist]
········Rules: Crazed
····Helbrute [Multi-melta, Power fist]
········Rules: Crazed
····Helbrute [Multi-melta, Power fist]

Let me know what you guys think.  I'm sure I won't be winning the event but at least I will have a lot of fun which is the spirit of this event.  

Crimson Slaughter.. a test drive

Hey guys, yesterday I got a chance to test drive the Crimson Slaughter supplement in a team tournament with a buddy of mine.  The tournament was held at our local flgs that had teams of 2 going up against each other in 2000 pts game.  Each player had a 1000 point army that followed normal force organization rules and any army could ally with any army so even the nids were included. Now each 1000 point army couldnt take any allies or detachments but were allowed to have 1 forgeworld unit.  So simple right, who would take cheesy lists in such a small points total?  I guess that it where I was wrong, along the 10 teams, we had a triple heldrake list, dual riptides team, a junior nid skyblight list without the scoring gargoyles (just taking the normal list).  The Crimson Slaughter would have a high mountain to climb to come out on top.  My team-mate and I took lists that had separate themes, mine consisted of my Dark Mechanicus army with 1 heldrake, 2 maulerfiends, and 1 forgefiend with the awesome ecto-plasma cannons (all 3 for most awesomeness, you guys know im kidding right, i have only taken this model once and it wasnt worth the 200 point price tag yet I wanted to have fun so why not?  To close out the list I took a sorcerer with the divinition artifact and hoped for forewarning to give 1 of my 20 man cultists the 4up invul save.  My buddy went with a full nurgle spawn unit to accompany his beater lord with the 2 up save armor, the sword of relentless, the slaughterers horns, and a bike.  He also took 2 small units of plague marines with dual melta and dual plasma in Rhinos, a heldrake, and 1 obliterator as he had some points left over.

Game 1 - Vs. Triple Heldrake CSM and Dual Riptide Tau
Wow were we expecting a much tamer tournament.  When my buddy and I pulled up to our first table, we were amazed at what we saw.  We knew that this would be a challenge for Chaos and hopefully the Crimson Slaughter would have the extra tools to weather the challenge.  We got first turn which allowed my forgefiend to take out the tau player's markerlight support which pretty much took him out of the game as his dice rolls were pretty terrible.  Having giant squads of cultists that I spreadout to avoid the incoming heldrake fire coupled with the toughness of my buddy's plague marines helped us win this game.  Of course the crimson slaughter relics really came into their own with my divinition sorcerer getting forewarning thus giving my cultists a 4 up invul save to getting my forgefiend to re-roll scatter rolls, my buddy' beater lord getting into combat and making a ton of 2 up saves and getting AP 2 on his sword, he rolled the CSM players troops units and even took out a buff comander and riptide.  Divinition really came into its own in this game and along with the 2 up save, helped us win this game by concentrating on troop choices.

Game 2 - Vs. Nob Bikers Orks and Riptide Tau
Ok so this list would have been crazy good last edition but I am here to tell you that Nob bikers fully tooled up with a warboss and doc are still pretty good.  Backed up with 3 big gun artillery pieces and my cultists are dead meat.  The Tau player took 1 Riptide with a buff commander, 4 minimal firewarrior squads, longstrike, couple of piranhas and  a couple of broadsides. We rolled Nightfight and so we decided to let them go first as it was an objective game and deployment was vanguard strike.  Of course they blew up the only thing that could threaten them, the forgefiend as long strike one shotted it.  Again my buddy's beater lord with his 2 up save did very well, we actually ended up assaulting the nob biker squad with a maulerfiend, his beater lord, and the spawn and ended up rolling up the squad by winning combat on the 2nd round and causing them to run and get run down by the lord.  My other Maulerfiend took on the mega armored orks that came out of a destroyed battle wagon (compliments of the oblit) and ended up killing all 4 however he was immobilized and so pretty much as useless the rest of the game.  We ended up tabling them as my other mauler finished off the riptide and buff commander (gotta love lasher tendrils as the riptide was just hitting me with 1 attack) and my buddy's plague marines claimed 2 objectives.  Fear actually came into its own as the ork player failed key fear tests that allowed us to roll his depleted hammer units.  My sorcerer didn't do much here, he actually ran off the table with his cultist squad due to the pounding they were getting from the grot bigguns.

 Game 3 - Vs. Tyranid Mini Skyblight list and Thunderfire cannons space marines
Ok so here we were on the top table for all the marbles.  So far as this tournament was based on battle points we were ahead as we got full points for the 2nd game and almost full points for the first game.  Our opponents were players we had played before and lost too during another tourney and so this would be our revenge game.  In a 1000 points, 4 flying monstrous creatures giving you instant pressure backed up by 2 thunderfire cannons is no joke.  The nid player was also running 2 squads of biovores, a warrior squad, and a ripper squad.  The space marine player brought 3 full squads of tac marines in rhinos and so they would be the ones focusing on scoring.  The biovores and thunderfire cannons really brought the hurt on my cultists and if wasnt for me taking 20 man squads, i would have lost all of my scoring units.  My friends spawn unit along with a maulerfiend held up 3 monstrous creatures for 4 turns affectively keeping them out of the game.  My friends plague marines did the damage along with the 2 heldrakes and we ended up tying them.  Nobody had the primary and so it came down to kill points and secondary objectives. My divination sorcerer did nothing this game as he spent the entire game trying to avoid barrage weapons.  My friends lord died to instant death at the hands of a hive tyrant.  So it can be said that the crimson slaughter supplement had no bearing in this game, it came down to units that is available to all chaos armies.

So how did the crimson slaughter fare?  The new options definitely came into play with a couple of our games while in the third it was a nonfactor.  I still think the book is viable but only more play testing will say for sure.  This along with the black legion supplement at the very least open up more options for the chaos player that make the army fun to play.