First 6th ed Tournament

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HQ: Skulltaker  140 + DS: Juggernaut of Khorne 35

Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne  = 5 * 40

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne = 10 * 16

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

New 40K Starter set Chaos leaked pics..

Thank you Faeit2012 and the posters on Warseer, etc who got us these pics. All I gotta say is OMG!!!! That Hellbrute is just amazing and the Chosen Chaos Marines look great as well. Someone on Faeit's blog mentioned that the chosen look like something out of the space marine video game and they are definitely right on that one. The Cultists look amazing as well. The Chaos lord looks ok, he just seems kind of static in the pose that they gave him, I will definitely with hold judgement on it until I see a better pic. Thank you GW for yet again taking my money. This along with the new Chaos dex and Forgeworld doing the hersey means I will be broke and my wife will be pissed... lol

6th edition and Tau.

Whats up everybody? I played several more games in the last couple of weeks to get more of a feel of this edition. I have to say, so far i am loving it, the changes for the most part are all good. In my latest game I used my Tau in a 1500 point game against a Grey Knight Draigo wing. We decided to play an objective game as it would have been an auto win for him if we did kill points. We rolled 3 objectives and decided against the mysterious objectives or terrain just to keep the game going. I rolled inspiring leadership for my warlord trait and my opponent got the scoring warlord trait which meant that Dragio himself was now scoring. Firewarriors not to mention crisis suits have greatly benefited from 6th edition as I could now keep on the move and out range my opponents army. Dragio wing in 6th edition is still devastating especially with the divination school but I must admit what really makes it extremely annoying is the fact that all paladins are considered characters. Unless your packing strength 8 or higher and in abundance, big paladin squads with an Apothocary are just gross when it comes to absorbing small arms fire. For 3 straight turns I shot my entire 1500 pts of Tau into my opponents 10 man squad and I was lucky to get a wound through. Look out sirs, combined with a 2 up save, combined with Feel no pain means a lot of rolls before a wound gets put on a model. My friend rolled unbelievable amounts of 5 up feel no pain which pretty much negatived all of my AP2 plasma shots. With only 3 rail guns (3 separate squads), he would put the one wound I caused on Draigo who due to him being eternal warrior, still gets his feel no pain. The Tau are definitely more mobile now, finally playing more like their fluff and against slower opponents can run circles around them. They aren't Eldar but a heck of lot faster then they were in both 4th and 5th. Wound allocations on squads made up of characters is one of the only downsides I see with 6th so far. The fact that you cant maneuver your squads to avoid the tank as your opponent could call a look out sir from any character means you will be spending most of your game just trying to kill the unit off.

I will continue to use the Tau and will be adding more broadsides and ditching the hammerhead just to get more railguns on the field. Im tempted to try out stealthsuits as well as they have become the eldar pathfinders of the Tau army. With a little terrain and the new changes to Stealth field generators, these guys will be hard to dislodge, I just wish the range of the burst cannons was longer...

More 6th edition thoughts..

Well its been a couple of weeks now with the new edition of 40K, I am still in the process of digesting the rules, making changes to my army lists, and best of all just having fun playing it. Part of the fun of a new edition is creating new lists with your existing armies as the rules might have made something better or something worse. In the case of my Chaos Space Marines, I have to say I just love how some of these rules actually improved the army. This last weekend, I was finally able to play a larger point game, 2000 pts in a large team game. As this was my first large game of 6th, I decided to go with my Thousand Sons with some allied Chaos Daemons (Fateweaver and a squad of Pink Horrors with the changling). As I really love some of the new psychic powers, and lets face it, the Chaos powers are really not any good anymore I decided to go with Ahriman so that I could generate 3 powers with him. Upon multiple readings of both the rule book and the chaos marine faq and the codex, I discovered that my aspiring sorcerers are all mastery level 2 (mark of tzenntch allows you to cast 2 powers) however since I could only "buy" one power for them in the codex, I could only generate 1 power for them (which sucks). Not to bad as I could cast level 2 spells and if I roll a level 1 spell, could still use my force weapon in close combat. Not to mention that on average, I would be getting a 5+ deny the witch roll unless the enemy psycher is level 1 which would make it a 4+; about time my expensive aspiring sorcerers count for something. I had Ahriman roll on the Telepathy chart as I really loved the invisibility ability I got during my last game and rolled a 6 for Hallaucation.

This power is unbelievable, it effectively shuts down an enemy unit with in 24 inches (basically they cant move, run, shoot, assault or hit in CC)if you roll between a 2-4 and since its a malediction, it auto-hits. Even though you need to roll for this, I have to say, this does seem a little OP for me. I casted this several times to the annoyance of one of my opponents as it allowed Ahriman and his squad of thousand sons to punch through a huge squad of scrabs and munch on a big squad of immortals and the Stormlord. I love the power but I feel that GW might need to nerf it a little bit like maybe allowing you to shut down a single phase or maybe having to roll to hit it or limiting it to just the player turn and not the entire game turn. It is a level 2 power so you would need a level 2 character to cast it so it does limit it in a way but most armies can get level 2 psykers. If I was lucky and generated this power along all of my squads, I could see this starting fights in a competitve atmosphere like a tournament or with WAAC opponents. Then again, maybe its a blessing against WAAC players... lol. I also ran a Daemon prince in order to have 2 flying monstrous creatures and the new vector strikes ability. As a whole, I love the idea of running flying monstrous creatures that are hard to shoot at and can hit units with their strikes and still shoot any weapons. What I dont like is how the rule reads in regards to being hit and taking grounded tests.

The rule specifically says that Flying MC's take the test if they are "hit", so I can have say a las pistol ground my MC just by hitting it. This in fact happened to me and so my Daemon prince was then lit up by 2 squads of plasma and melta toting Vet squads in Chimeras and he promptly died before doing anything. We had a discussion on this and we might house rule to say that the shot needs to wound the MC before a grounded test needs to be taken. I really hope that GW Faqs this as huge blob squads or units with a high rate of fire can knock MC's out of the sky with a single 6 rolled. I know the entry also mentions a Jink move so maybe if you are hit you are to roll your jink save and then if you fail your roll your grounded test but the rule doesnt say that. Fateweaver is fine, if I fail the grounded test he just takes his 3 up invul save but what about MC's with no invul save or a 5+ one? That just kills Nids as they dont even have an invul save to start with. Also, whats the deal of making it a strength 9 with no armor saves allowed?

The next army I would like to try is my Tau as I feel 6th really gave them a boost compared to the other older armies out there. With the differences in rapid fire, assault moves for jetpack toting troopers, the Tau are finally a highly movable force capable of laying down tons of fire while redeploying if an enemy gets too close. I will just need to finish painting the army.