Nightlords Campaign List #1

So our local GW's Campaign has started last week, as I stated in my last post, I decided to take a Nightlords army, an army which focused on Fast Attack choices...fluffy but not competitive but I really wanted to run something completely different from my opponents and still have some fun. As the point limit is only 1250, I wouldnt be able to take much with my Thousand Sons. I did write up some lists with my Chaos space wolves but again, I really wanted to use an army that nobody would. To my shock, I am the only Chaos Space Marine player in the campaign as there are usually around 2-3 other Chaos players. I decided to try something odd bag, I have always wanted to run Bikes in my army to join my Raptors and thought that this would be the perfect opportunity.

When starting out all armies are allowed only 1 hq, 2 troops, and 1 of everything else. During your first game, you roll for 3 random "properties" which add to your force org. I rolled 3 factories which would allow me to run 3 elites; once you acquire the 4th of the same "property", you may give any unit in that slot a special ability. As I was limited to just 1 fast attack, I went with the bikes to accompany the lord that I would be taking. So without further ado, my Nightlords 1250 Campaign list #1 -

HQ - Valerous Nocturn - Commander of the 13th Nightlords Grand Company
Bike, Daemon Weapon
- My one HQ for this campaign. About a year and a half when the space marine codex came out, I built a chaos lord on a bike as my count as Kossaro Kahn as I wanted to run a complete outflank army. I decided to use him as my Chaos Lord during these series of games. I have run my lord like this before and unless I roll a 1, he is extremely devastating in close combat. I dont put any mark on him as this gives me a strength 5 so I can even go after vehicles if I really wanted to.

Elite - Night lords Terminator squad - (squad of 5)
- In order to help out the bikes as well as my normal squads, I wanted to include an "all rounder" squad that could deep strike anywhere where needed. The good thing about chaos terminators is that the base cost of them is extremely cheap. I wanted to keep the cost down so I am only taking 5, 2 powerfist, 1 reaper autocannon, and 3 normal terminators. As I will have icons on the field, this will make it easier for me to "summon" them on target. I am hoping that they will help out with some anti-tank if need be and if possible to play the part of bait to draw enemy fire while the rest of my army gets in position.

Troops - Nightlords Chaos Marine squad 1-2 (squad of 10 each)
- CSM squads at a base are fairly cheap. They get expensive once you start adding champs and other options so again, I wanted to keep them as inexpensive as possible. Both squads will have 2 melta guns, champs with powerfists, and only one squad will have a Rhino. I wanted to keep both squads at 10 man each in order to help in capturing points and retain my objectives. If I had the points I would give the other squad a Rhino as well, maybe dropping one of the Bikes from my Bike squad would allow me to do this.

Fast Attack - Nightlords CSM Biker squad - (5 in the squad)
- I have wanted to run a bike army for a while now. The new Space marine codex when it first came out made this type of army at least viable with scoring bikes. In the CSM codex, unfortunately Bikers are less then stellar. Yes they have an extra attack but not being scoring and costing almost as much as a rhino each, these guys are just way too expensive. As this is a fun campaign, I wanted to try them anyways so I am running them as bare bones as possible with a champ with a power fist, an icon of khorne to at least make them hit harder, and 1 melta gun for some anti-tank. They will run with my Lord and act as his retinue and act as my quasi-hammer unit.

Heavy Support - Nightlords Havoc squad (8 in the squad)
- In order to provide some support for my army, I decided to pull out my old autocannon havocs. Back in the old Chaos codex, these guys with stealth adept and tank hunters were just too good. Having strength 8 Autocannons against vehicles and being able to pound transports, tanks, etc with 8 shots meant dead vehicles. Though they lost the ability to get veteran skills, 8 strengh 7 shots in a 1250 campaign is nothing to scoff at. These guys can still put the hurt on light transports and even help in mopping up higher toughness infantry squads.

So this is my initial Nightlords Campaign list. As you can see its pretty balanced with a unit showing in each of the force org slots. Before each game, depending on how many "properties" you own, you get to roll dice per property times 6 and add these points as bonus points to your army. If I roll high enough, I plan on adding a basic chosen squad with plasma guns or melta guns to get hopefully an outflank/infiltrate element. I will post pics of the Termies and better pics of my biker lord in my next post. Let me know what you guys think...

Chaos Space Marine.. the RPG...

Talk about awesome News!!! Fantasy Flight games just released details on their next 40K RPG. Called Black Crusade we can finally play as chaos space marines!! Since the release of deathwatch last year I have been hoping that they would finally release a Chaos game. Based on the description, players can play as either humans or CSMS who follow the lure of chaos.. Just think about that, getting the chance to play a Rogue psycher, a Raptor, or even a chosen terminator. I can't wait to see the book as their other products have been nothing short of phenomenal!! I currently own Dark Hersey and the book itself is gorgeous. Even if your not an RPG fan, as a 40K fan you owe it to yourself to pick up these books just to read the fluff and check out the pics.

I actually got into "gaming" playing RPG's. From Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition, to Paranoia, Marvel Super heros, to Vampire the Masquerade, RPG's have always been part of me and luckily for me my wife's life. The really cool thing about playing these 40K RPG's is using one's model collection as a representation of yourself in the game. This just brings the game to "life" just as playing a normal game of 40K does as you can visualize the "action" My friend plans on starting a deathwatch game and I plan to use one of my models as my character. All I know is that I got dibs on Black Crusade. Thank you Fantasy Flight, you made my day today....

Playing the so-called Net list....

Ok, Ok, Ok, so the past few months I have been going on about playing with my pre-hersey Thousand Sons army but lately I got the bug to play my Chaos Space Wolves again, though this army is not completely painted, its about 75% done with only about 20 models left to paint. I am like Bill from the Gamerslounge, I hate playing with an unpainted army. When last I played the army, it had virtually no mech; though its argued I'm playing a so-called net list because of my 3 wolf lords, I have yet to see one played with no mech or drop pods. The 3 wolf list I started playing back before it became all of the rage and due to that rage I found myself not wanting to play it as I hate to be called a power gamer.

The group of friends I play games with are not what you call "power gamers", they are pretty much the beer and pretzel gamer with limited time (only 1 day a week) to indulge in a hobby that they love. I love the atmosphere for this reason as it allows me to take crazy unbalanced lists and still have a good time even though I lose with them. I wanted to try the wolves with drop pods as the times I played with my army, my opponents would concentrate all fire on my wolf lords and by the time they got into combat, they had lost their dog bodyguard and already lost some of their wounds. I figured that by dropping say 2-3 drop pods in turn 1 my opponent would have to concentrate on them thus allowing my wolf lords and my long fangs time to either start taking out vehicles or assaulting squads. In 1750, I could only get about 4 drop pods full of grey hunters so I might try either running cheaper long fangs or cheaper Lords as I want to drop 5 drop pods. We usually play 1750 so that is what I build my lists for.

Last week I played against an Eldar player, playing 1850 points; football (auto tie mission), with spearhead deployment. The eldar player has been using his army for almost 2 years now and has become one of our better players. He runs combination footdar/mech list but for this game he wanted to try something different so he opted for a complete Footdar army complete with 10 Wraithguard.

The game was extremely close and ended in a predicable tie however by all regards, my opponent should have beat me. Was it the power of my codex or my opponent just having bad luck. You want to know what the deal was? I had 2 long fangs squads left, he had practically tabled me and I caused his last scoring unit to run off the table due to the fact my long fangs were able to split fire. No other army has this ability, to be able to do it and for so cheap. I am still trying to learn the army (this being my 5 game with them) but having so close games where I would have lost if I was using any older codex really makes me want GW to finally update all of the codexes to 5th edition. Its no small wonder why Space wolves are so popular. I will probably finish painting the army before I play them again.

Right now as I mentioned in my last post, my local GW is running a month long campaign. I wanted to play chaos as I think my friend will be running his wolves and so I wanted to run something different. I thought about running my Thousand Sons but with a 1250 point limit, I would be really limiting myself in choices. I decided to pull out my old army, my first Chaos army and first army that I had actually finished painting.

I decided to bring out the Nightlords. I will post the list I am running in my next post along with results of my first games with them. It's been about a year since I pulled them out, as this is a fun campaign, it just sounded like fun to use these guys again. Who knows maybe they will surprise everybody like they did when I ran an all raptor kill team during the Kill team tournament we had and actually took 3rd place. Pics are of my Chaos Space wolves, 2 of my Thunder Lords, some dogs, and a grey hunter squad.