The Las Vegas Open.... through the eyes of a first time tourny goer

Hey guys, been a long time since I posted last, almost over a month now.  Life as been extremely busy with business travel, birthdays, married life, etc.  I have also been busy with painting up the last elements of my army for the Las Vegas Open which thank God I got done with a week before the event.  But enough of my lack of posts for the last month, this post like the title suggests is all about my experiences at the LVO.
This as with many of my fellow wargamers at the event was my first major tournament and by major I mean an event where there was over 50 games playing in it.  The 40K championships was a 3-day event which started on Friday and ended on Sunday.  It was 5 games, 3 played on Friday, 2 on Saturday and a single elimination "2nd" tourney to crown the overall champs on Sunday.  Going into the event, I didnt have any illusion of making it to Sunday's best overall.  My "goal" was to have fun and in having no expectations of "winning", I believe I achieved this.  Reece, Frankie and the guys over at Frontline Gaming need to be congratulated and thanked for putting on a great event.  The event ran smoothly, started on time (for the most part) and was run with professionalism and efficiency.  Having the games starting at 12:30pm instead of 9am or earlier also helped in keeping the event running on time.  I never felt rushed and most importantly except for my first game ended on time with plenty of time to spare.  My first game even though it didn't end on time still went to turn 5 so we at least got in 5 turns.  The terrain was top notch with 2 line of site blocking terrain pieces as well as some small propaganda posters that also provided some line of sight blockage for troops or small vehicles. 


Lets talk about the Mega Mats now, these giant "mouse pads" are in a word, awesome!!  The high resolution "pictured" surface is simply awe-inspiring and paired great with the terrain on hand.  I wish I had the funds to pick one up as they were selling the "used" ones for 15 bucks less the normal price but I was lucky that 2 of my buddies that went with me picked up a total of 3 of them so I will get the chance to actually play on these in the future.  Pictures cant do justice to these mats, these definitely need to be seen in person in order to appreciate how cool these are.  I do see these being something of a standard at major tournaments as it adds a great deal of "realism" to the terrain, quite easy to setup, and easy to store.  On to the list i brought, now after a lot of tinkering, practicing, re adjusting, etc I decided to go with my dark mech army that I have been playing for the last year as its an army that I really comfortable playing. It is a CSM list but I wanted to try a couple of tricks with it to see if I caught some players off guard with it.  The list is as follows.

1750 Pts - Codex: Black Legion Roster - 1750 pts. LVO Final List #2

HQ: Huron Blackheart
 
Troops: Chosen (10)
8 Chosen, Veterans of the Long War, Power Axe x1,  Melta gun x3
1 Chosen Champion, W/Melta Bombs, Combi-Meltagun    
1 Chaos Rhino, Dirge Caster 5
Troops: Chosen (10)
8 Chosen,Veterans of the Long War 2 + Power Axe x1
Plasma gun x3    
1 Chosen Champion,
1 Chaos Rhino, Dirge Caster
Troops: Chaos Cultists (11)
10 Chaos Cultists
  1 Cultist Champion
Fast Attack: Heldrake
   Baleflammer
Fast Attack: Heldrake
   Baleflammer
Heavy Support: Maulerfiend
 2x Lasher Tendrils
Heavy Support: Maulerfiend
(2x Lasher Tendrils)
HQ: Warpsmith (1)
   1 Burning Brand of Skalathrax [Chaos]
Troops: Chaos Cultists (10)
1 Cultist Champion [Chaos]
Heavy Support: Havocs (7)   6 Havocs (Heavy) [Chaos],
Missile Launcher x1, Lascannon x3
      1 Aspiring Champion [Chaos]
So the list started with the idea of infiltrating 1-3 units to go along with 2 Maulerfiends and create instant pressure.  I got the idea of using a warpsmith as another meltagun that gave me other benefits including dual flamers with the burning brand to give the squad he is in some assault overwatch protection and a 2 up save to tank wounds would be very cool.  Normal CSM are ok but to really bring the pain in this all or nothing list, I really needed to gamble. This being in Las Vegas and all, and me being the gambler that I am I went for broke and decided to go with Black Legion Chosen.  Why you ask, the fact that I can bring 5 special weapons per squad meant that an infiltrating unit that can bring 4 melta guns etc is going to hurt.  I also made the chosen champ expendable and gave just another chosen the power ax so the special weapon could be hidden in assault and not stuck in dumb challenges.  Add in the warpsmith and my melta squad was rocking a total of 5 melta shots.  The dual heldrakes do what they do and the hope of these is that they come in as a pair on turn 2 to cause even more pressure.  I thought about taking an ageis with a comm relay but couldn't find the points as I really wanted to keep my 4 troop choices.  If i had to do it again i definitely would take it as in most of my games I only got one drake to come in and in my 3rd game, i lost due to the fact that my 2nd heldrake didn't come in until turn 4.  I will get into a little detail on my games in my next post.  All in all a great time, i highly recommend going to this next year and i am definitely coming back.

On my painting station..

Hey guys, todays post is going to focus on what I am currently working on as well as more comments on the state of 40K.  I havent been able to post pics in my last 2 posts and so wanted to give you guys an idea on what I have completed and what I am currently working on.  Right now the order of the day is to complete my army list for the Las Vegas open.  In the last couple of weeks I have completed building and painting a maulerfiend, Huron Bleakheart, and a couple of more troops.  I still need to paint up a melta gunner, 2 rhinos, and build 2 40mm objective counters.  In the middle of all this, I have also gone full boat with updating my Tau army.  I received several tau models for Christmas and got to building them right away.  This was the first time I actually modified the crisis suit models by repositioning legs and arms but also magnetized all of their weapons to give me flexibility in their weapon loadouts.  My new commander I also magnetized as I wanted to have the ability to run him with fusion blades and still be able to switch him out and use him with dual missile launchers, plasma rifles, etc.  I plan on focusing on finishing my farsight enclave and as crazy as it sounds finish a drop pod blood angel army. 

Why a Blood Angel army?  Why not? It also doesn't hurt that I have a lot of blood angel models just sitting around.  I have thought about selling them but dont have the heart to as i did spend a lot of time putting them together.  I especially spent a huge amount of time on my death company and 2 furioso dreads with putting them all on custom bases that i made out of broken floor tile and textured resin putty.  I also have 2 Storm ravens just sitting around and 5 drop pods that I have accumulated over the past 3 Christmas.  
Its time to go against the meta and build a terrible army... lol.  Hopefully per the rumors these guys will get a new updated book this year.  


Ok some more thoughts on the state of 40k. The nid book has definitely about as much nerd rage or even more then when the chaos space marine book hit.  
My initial thoughts of the book is that all thoughts on running your old 5th edition list should be thrown out the window.  This book needs and most be played differently then what people are used to.  
Synapse is now an important element of the game and needs to take precedent in your list building unlike before.  Unless your bringing a nid airforce, forget about just going at it with just one flying hive tyrant.  they are too expensive and very easy to kill unless you are running 3- 4 other buddies with him to fly around with.   my thoughts are that walking tyrants with tyrant guard, tyranid primes in big squads of gaunts is what you will be seeing on the tables.   gone will be the 3-4 tervigons, in will be venomthropes and biovores.  i still need to digest the book further before i say the book sucks.  hmmm, i do have a lot of nids laying around maybe now i will give them a shot as we have very little nid players in our group.  let me know your thought guys, are the nids the weakest book in 6th edition or are they the sleeper hit.  

Dataslates, Formations, and the day 40K died..to the competitive set....

Howdy guys.  40K as we know it is going through some tremendous changes at the moment.  No more are we privy to waiting long periods of time waiting for updates, army updates, etc, the advent of 6th edition brought with it updates and changes that we have never experienced before.  To some of us, 6th edition has heralded a golden age to 40K with armies getting updated with much more frequency, updates to the game in the form of codex supplements, etc.  To others, 6th edition has brought the death knell to 40K.  These vocal minority, usually from the competitive side of things are sounding the alarm that 40K is now d-e-a-d, dead, that balance has been thrown out the window in favor of profits.  Well I wont deny that GW is in the business of making money, a lot of money and from the stand point of being a publicly traded company, they do have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits.  Some of the Dataslates, GW's newest digital updates/changes definitely are guilty of this by providing special rules and updates to their holiday bundles.  Of course some of these updates/changes have been one-sided, one just needs to look at the Tau Hunter Cadre dataslate and see that by running this Tau "formation", you get tank hunters and preferred enemy space marines for free.  40K as it stands, as it always stood since my beginning of my 40K "career" has never been balanced; in one edition or another, one faction would be favored over another while another one is nerfed to unplayability.  The examples are there, CSM 3.5, Tyranids 4th edition, Grey Knights 5th edition, Eldar 4th and 6th edition, the list goes on and on. So whats my point?  The fact is GW is giving us players something great, and that is options, options to play the game we love how we want.  Last week GW dropped one of the biggest changes to their core game rules with Stronghold Assault and Escalation.  Now usually, these wouldnt be an issue, since they are after all a supplement like a Battle Missions or Planet Strike.  The difference though is that GW in black and white states that this can be used in normal games of 40K .  That alone is cause for alarm in the competitive scene.  I mean how can we crown a champion when all a person needs to do is pay their 500 bucks for their revenant to add to an already over powered book?  What if people add in their Tau formation to this.  Oh the humanity!!! How do we handle the power gaming maddness??!!  We need to ban units or comp tournaments oh no.  Now hold on there, lets take a step back, really how different is this then before?  I mean didn't we ban forgeworld from most of our tournaments?  Isn't terrain already setup for players when the BRB asks that we take turns in placing the terrain.  Do we not run different mission types then those from the book as the ones in the book are perceived as being unbalanced?  The list is of items that need consideration is a little longer now but the answer remains the same, just allow what you want.  Allow what the players want.  Offer different types of tourneys, ones that stick to just using the BRB and supplements, to anything goes gladiator type games.  In the end, play the game how you want to play it.  And this is the beauty of our hobby my friends, choice. 

New Mini dexes and Supplemental codexes

Sup everybody. Today i am here to talk about the fruition of some of the rumors that were hinted at last year and during the first months of 6th edition and that is the coming of mini dexes.  With GW pulling the curtain up on their next project, codex Inquisition the rumors that we would see mini dexes or allies dexes come out seem to have been verified.  I have to tell you this is just an exciting time to be playing 40k as this along with the codex supplements  opens up a lot of options for us gamers.  Will there be codex creep with these new books ?  Hopefully not but what I do wish for is new models to be released along side these new books.  Take in point the new sisters book.  What a golden opportunity GW lost to make more money by the release of new sisters models.  This could have been an easy release with just 2 new boxes, say one for 10 sisters and one 5 sister box with all heavy weapon options to make retributor squads, maybe a clamshell HQ model?  Im sure the new book is selling but think of how more it would have sold with just a couple of new model releases....  There have been rumors for years now that new plastic sisters have already been worked on so whats the hold up?  Which brings me to the inquisition codex.  Wow was this a surprise release, nobody in the world saw this coming.  Will this be a full army?  The codex says you can run it as one but the real strength lies with its ability to ally with any other imperial army or combination.  Of course once the book dropped and once everybody got a chance to read it all everybody will be allying  in is Coetez  or the cheap inquisitor with the 3 servo skulls.  Now making it just another ally choice would be fine.  The fact that this an additional org slot which then still allows you to ally in another army normally is a little over the top.  I am happy though that it specifically says that xenos armies are excluded from being battle brothers as this would have really been insufferable.. lol.. ok so not that bad.  What does it really mean really in the overall scheme?  Nothing just that armies that resolve around infiltrating or scouting (looking at you White Scars) might feel a little invalidated.  Here's  hoping that the next digital codex keeps bringing the options... just hope that its not that broken...