Playing the game for fun...

Over the course of my 40k "career" the one thing i have tried to do is to keep the game fun. Edition after edition, codex after codex I try to play the game to make it fun for both me and my opponent. Throughout the years, I have kept using my chaos space marine armies and have had some of my funniest games with them even when I lost. In this age of competitive gamers, I tried to keep to my fluffy armies as best as I could however I did feel the need to create one competitive army, (my space wolves) and though they are fun to use with all of the dogs and the 3 beatstick wolf lords, its still not as fun as my Chaos armies. I guess I'm just a victim of being a fluffy player, building lists per the fluff or based on how the model looks. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned the Chaos army that a White Dwarf editor had built and painted. It had some of the worst units known in the Chaos codex much less 40K, things like possessed and summoned daemons, to a defiler. I'm sure that this guy didn't have a winning record but he just loved how his army looked. I feel that I am the same way, and in a way I believe that I will continue to play the game this way. I just hope that GW will eventually come to the realization that the cooler a model looks, the cooler their rules need to be, that and here's hoping that Possessed space marines and Thousand Sons are actually competitive in their next interpretation.

coming attractions...

With the coming of the new year, opportunities present itself. My lovely wife graced me with 3 storm ravens and what I refer to as a cheater dreadnought for my budding Death Company army for Christmas. When GW first released the storm raven, I admit, i really hated the model, it just looked like a jet plane out of metal slug, you know chibbi style. After seeing the kit up close I actually grew to like it and was inspired to start a fun army based around 3 of them and all death company models. I actually bought a Astrath the Grim model when he first came out as I wanted to use him for a Nightlords conversion but decided against it. I am glad I did as it meant that i didn't have to pick up another one when I got the idea to start this army. Seeing that I also have a budding Draigowing Grey Knights army as well I have decided that I wanted to make the storm ravens dual purpose so I am planning to paint them in a dark grey scheme with magnetized emblems. The kits themselves were really straightforward to put together as GW for once put a decent how to manual in the box. In fact all of their new stuff that I have gotten have had decent manuals so kudos GW. The kit comes with all of the options that the storm raven can use such as all of the weapon options for the turret weapon as well as the nose weapon mount. Below is the list that I'm building, let me know what you guys think.

New 2000 pts Death Company Air Cav

Total Roster Cost: 2000

HQ: Astorath the Grim (1#, 220 pts)
1 Astorath the Grim, 220 pts

HQ: Reclusiarch in Power Armour (1#, 150 pts)
1 Reclusiarch in Power Armour, 150 pts = (base cost 130 + Melta Bombs 5 + Infernus Pistol 15)

Troops: Tactical Squad (10#, 170 pts)
9 Tactical Squad, 147 pts = 9 * 16 (base cost 16) + Sergeant 26
1 Sergeant, 23 pts

Troops: Death Company (10#, 260 pts)
1 Death Company, 0 pts
1 Death Company, 50 pts = (base cost 20 + Thunder Hammer 30)
7 Death Company, 140 pts = 7 * 20
2 Death Company, 70 pts = 2 * 35 (base cost 20 + Power Weapon 15)

Troops: Death Company (10#, 260 pts)
1 Death Company, 0 pts
1 Death Company, 50 pts = (base cost 20 + Thunder Hammer 30)
7 Death Company, 140 pts = 7 * 20
2 Death Company, 70 pts = 2 * 35 (base cost 20 + Power Weapon 15)

Troops: Death Company Dreadnought (1#, 125 pts)
1 Death Company Dreadnought, 125 pts

Troops: Death Company Dreadnought (1#, 125 pts)
1 Death Company Dreadnought, 125 pts

Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship (1#, 230 pts)
1 Stormraven Gunship, 230 pts = (base cost 200) + Hurricane Bolters (each side) 30

Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship (1#, 230 pts)
1 Stormraven Gunship, 230 pts = (base cost 200) + Hurricane Bolters (each side) 30

Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship (1#, 230 pts)
1 Stormraven Gunship, 230 pts = (base cost 200) + Hurricane Bolters (each side) 30

I eventually want to go with Gabriel Seth as my other HQ just for the fact that nobody takes him and to add some more anti-vehicle other then the Storm Ravens and some infernus pistols. I dont know about you but an HQ who swings a strength 8 weapon at initiative with rending is nothing to sneeze at. That and the ability to auto-hit anything in base to base will make it so even vehicles will have a need to fear the death company even on foot.

Tournament Time..

Sorry for not posting in a while, lets just say that life got in the way along with holidays and work just being plain busy. Three weeks ago saw our local flgs hold its its first 40k tournament since the last manager had left. The tourney was being run by one of the local players who in all honesty did a great job and kept the tourney running smoothly. The tounament was 1250 points per army and used standard book missions. Simple, to the point and a heck of a lot of fun. I know that I have said this before, but I just love the smaller points games in 40K. I hate games that last more then then 2 hours or longer, which smaller point games remeady really well. In fact if I had my choice, I would rather get in 2-3 smaller games during a day instead of playing 1 large game lasting hours and hours. This tournament gave me the benefit of giving me the ability of playing 3 games and lasting only 1 and half to 2 hours. I took my Dark Wolves as I wanted to try to play an all drop pod army and instead of taking wolf lords like I normally do with this army, I decided to take just 1 "cheap" rune priest. By doing this, it allowed me to take over 40 models!! I love playing Marine armies but due to their nature as an elite army, I am usually out numbered. By putting so many models in the list at such a low point list meant that I might actually out number some of my opponents. My first opponent was against Necrons played by my buddy. This would be the 2nd time I would be facing him and just like our last game, the game was too close to call. I made 2 mistakes which in hindsight cost me the game, he definitely outplayed me by deploying all in 1 quarter,not giving me the opportunity to isolate his army with my drop pods. I dropped extremely aggressive wanting to jaws his big 20 man unit but ended up due to scattering back a bit only able to hit 4 models with JAWS. Contrary to popular belief, necrons if they fail their initiative roll still get their reanimation protocols roll as they get this no matter what. I hope they keep this ability as JAWS can really put the hurt on this army. Our game ended on turn 5 with me pulling a tie, he had gotten one of my grey hunter squads to leave their objective by assaulting with scrabs. He was holding one objective and contested my other one so it came down to this assault. I won the assault and rolled well enough to consolidate back onto my objective thus tying the game.

My second game was against a dark eldar player I have never played before. This guy was a blast to play and like my necron buddy just likes to have fun. This game we drew dawn of war and capture and control, he deployed Lelith and a squad of bloodbrides in their raider and thats it. I thought he made a mistake as my whole army would then target this unit but between my flub rolls and he making flicker field saves, it literally came down to my dreadknought blowing it up after 2 grey hunter squads failed to do anything. Of course he brought out the rest of his army and i had one squad of greyhunters and their drop pod annihilated off the table. His 3 ravagers did flub their rolls against my dread and were only able to destroy an arm and shake it. I concentrated on all of his skimmers with my rune priest being the MVP killing 3 transports with living lightning. In the end he was able only to contest his objective which i had captured with me holding my objective thus winning the game 1-0.

With a major win and a tie, I was placing pretty good but definitely not in contention for 1st as we had a player who had won his last 2 games. I was definitely placing in the top 5 which I was pretty happy with. My last game I faced a grey knights army, which other then the imperial guard army would be the army I feared the most. If it came down to objectives, i would definitely have an edge, if it came down to kill points and it would be game over for me. As I prepare myself for the game I hear the dreaded words, kill points. With my opponent only having 6 kill points and me rocking 13, 5 of which are easy kill points, all my opponent had to do was reserve everything, come out,kill some drop pods and hide. That is exactly what he did.

I dropped all of my pods on his table edge close enough to rapid fire any squads that came on but far enough to not be charged by him. He wisely deployed on the other side and his bad reserve rolls for the 2nd turn actually helped him win the game as all of my pods came in by turn 2. He just focused on shooting up 1 squad with his dreads, had his evasor Assassin kill one squad, and then shot up some pods. I knew it was over so I even charged a squad of terminators with my 3 thunderwolf calvary and they got murdered. In the end my opponent won 6 to 2. All in all I went 1/1/1, not bad for not doing a tournament in a while, I should have gone 2/1 but my mistakes in my first game really robbed me of a victory. Super fun and I cant wait for the next one!! I might even consider running one myself.

Initial thoughts on Necrons....

I had the pleasure of playing my buddy's Necron army this last week and I must say that they seem like a lot of fun to play. My initial thoughts is that the Necrons got a fun balanced codex, couple this with some night fighting shenanigans and they got the potential of really putting the hurt on long range shooting. Im not going to say that this is an easy army to play, in fact this army is on par with Tau and dark eldar; in short a finesse army. You make a mistake and it might prove your undoing but play it well and you can crush the competition.

The combinations that this codex allows players to do is just amazing. Like the Space Wolves and the Dark Eldar, you can go with multiple combinations of units, build that great synergy to win games. Things like using the Stormlord and cypteks to cause nightfight and then remove it, to spiders "pooping" out more scrabs, to running kind of like a Necron Havoc squad in a Ghost ark with 4 crypteks, players have limitless options. Assault is still a big weakness to this army so players will need to learn how to avoid it if possible until they know that the assault will go in their favor. We played an 1850 points game with table quarter deployment and killpoints. I won first turn and so deployed my dark wolves in one quarter while my friend deployed in the opposite quarter. To say that my long fang squads sucked is an understatement, fact is they really didnt do anything for 3 full turns thanks to the stormlord and night fighting. The use of him and crypteks with solar pulse means that if a player wants too, they can take advantage of night fighting for most of the game. Wraiths are awesome for tying up squads with their 3+ invulnerable save and 2 wounds.

He had a squad tie up 2 of my grey hunter squads for 2 turns which prevented me from destroying one of his ghost arks. Speaking of ghost arks, the fact that they can "bring back" warriors every movement phase makes them just awesome and in my opinion a must have for any army. In the end I ended up winning the game 6-5 so it was close. Pics are from our game which lasted to turn 5. If it went on one more turn, I might have beaten him by maybe 2-3 more points as my 3 Thunderlords were close to his 20 man blob squad of warriors, the stormlord, and another Ghost ark. Still would have been close and in the end it was a great game!!

On another note, I am thinking of maybe suspending the campaign until after the holidays as right now its really hard for people to make it down to the store to get some games in. As of right now, the Forces of disorder are winning the 3rd phase by a score of 2 to 0. What I plan on doing is starting the campaign back up after the holidays, giving the 3rd phase 2 weeks before moving to the 4th phase.