40K Escalation League Week 2 game

Sorry for not posting in a while, life has been very hectic lately. The 2nd phase started 3 weeks ago however I couldnt make it to the FLGS due to my wife being super sick with the Flu and other issues that came up. I took this opportunity to fine tune my list and to get some more painting done. I opted to change out my list in favor of dropping out 1 squad of horrors and adding in a squad of fiends of slaanesh to give more anti-tank ability as well as giving me another fast unit to chase down those speedy opponents. So my 750 pts list looks like the following -
Total Roster Cost: 749
 HQ: Herald of Tzeentch 1 Herald of Tzeentch, DGT: Master of Sorcery, Bolt of Tzeentch, Chariot of Tzeentch
Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne 3 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, Instrument of Chaos
Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne 3 Bloodcrushers of Khorne
Elite: Fiends of Slaanesh 4 Fiends of Slaanesh
Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 8 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 1 The Changeling
Troops: Daemonettes of Slaanesh 9 Daemonettes of Slaanesh

I played my game against an Eldar shooty list that included both a fire prism, a small squad of Dark Reapers which I havent seen in a while, a striking scorpion squad, an Autruch, a squad of pathfinders, and 2 squads of dire avengers. I won first turn but opted to go second. My opponent setup his pathfinders away from his army in terrain (shocker) and moved his units up. His pathfinders were isolated, I dropped my horrors, my 2 blood crusher squads, and my herald around them and had the horrors open up on the pathfinders. My opponent thinking his 2+ save would save him didnt know what to say when I told him to make 18 saves. He lost 3 of the pathfinders making the squad pretty useless with just 2 guys remaining. My Herald took a shot at the fire prism and with luck on my hand, rolled 2 6's in a roll to destroy it!! I told my opponent that this was just a lucky shot as I had glanced it, he failed his cover save, and I rolled 2 sixs due to the halo fields. It didnt matter at this point as he was really discouraged and so the game was mine. His striking scorpions actually did some damage and took out one of my blood crusher squads and his squad of dark reapers were a bane to me as they kept putting wound upon wound on my units. We decided to call it on turn 5 as all he had left was his dark reapers and their was no way for him to come back as he was down 7 to 1 in kill points. The addition of the fiends really improved my list; having such a fast unit that hits as hard as they do really set my list apart. In the coming weeks, I might want to add the other squad of horrors to give me more shooting as my list has changed to a more close combat oriented list which might prove to be difficult to play once we get to the higher point values. Anti-tank is definitely a must for me as I mentioned in my earlier posts, I might go with minimum squads of horrors with bolt and another deamon prince with bolt to provide me with the anti-tank I will need.

Chaos Space Marine Rumors for 6th ed.

For those who cant seem to get on Tasty Tastes' website (Blood of Kittens)due to it crashing and all, I was able to get ahold of the Chaos Space Marine rumors that he posted. I listed these below -Troop Choices will be Chaos Space Marines and Cultists -All Cult Marines are Elites No new Special Characters -Special Characters will unlock Cult Marines as troops (Kharn for Berserkers and so on) -Typhus makes Cultists into Zombies -Chaos Dreadnaught is removed and replaced with a new unit (like how pariahs were replaced with Lychguard) -CSM now get a Flyer a Mechanical Chaos Dragon (model is done will be part of initial release) -Lesser and Greater Demons are gone -Spawn replaced by “Fell Beast” I feel like I am missing something… Oh yeah… Almost Forgot... Rules for Traitor Guard are in! Now for some of my thoughts, to be completely honest with you with out him posting any of the wargear or other options which he says he will do at a later time, this codex seems more like he put it as a clean up of the old book. I dont think they will replace the Chaos Dreadnaught, I mean that would be mean the end of Forgeworlds awesome Dreads and completely goes against the rumors for the starter box which claims that a chaos dread will be in the box. Flying Mechanical Dragon, ah no, that sounds pretty wierd, I guess if Grey Knights got the Dreadknight Chaos needs a mechanical beast for him to slay... lol. Deamons gone, this one I hope isnt true as I was hoping that Daemons out of the Daemon codex would be in the book so this rumor I hope is false. In terms of the cult troops being elite, this is definitely a throw back to the 3.5 codex where special characters or marked lords opened the cult marines into troops, this one definitely sounds plausible. Traitor guard rules are pure win in my book and one of the rumors I hope to be true. Tasty Taste, thanks again for the rumors!!

hate-mongers, Doom and Gloom, End of World as we know it

So today as I was doing my daily rounds of looking at rumors, at my blog rolls, listening to podcast, etc, and I come across a certain blog article that just for the lack of better term, irritated me. Here this self professed prophet of 40K talking about doom and gloom for 40K, that 6th edition will be the deathknell for the game and as proof, he points to 8th edition Fantasy as a presedent. Look buddy, 6th edition isn't even out, why not wait for it and I don't know, play some games and then make you decision if the game is going to hell or not. Instead this Talking Head points the finger at the people running the major tourneys like Adepticon, Nova, etc and tells them that instead of writing faqs to help with speeding up game play (helping with answering contenous rules, etc.)to rewrite an entire new game of 40K. He accuses them of being little Napoleons that the only rules they seem to be faqing are the ones they got screwed over by when they played. I guess the idea of writing a faq to help with running the tournament to fix loop holes that GW has yet to correct isnt enough for him. Game designers no matter how talented they are always going to have detractors who just hate what they do. 40K as it stands definitely has its issues, especially for competitive play but I always take the side of why I play the game, fun. I remember someone saying that 40K isn't made for competitive play and I have to agree, its not. Its a beer and pretzels game, always has been, always will. 40K prophet, its people like you that ruin the game for me, you dont like the game, play another one its as simple as that. Warmachine or FOW definitely have rule systems that are more geared toward competitive play. You want to improve 40K, why not get together with other like minded people and start something for competitive play? Why not write a codex for your favorite army and submit it to the Codex Project to have it play tested by the community? All in all, instead of complaining and bitching, why not do something constructive? Stop being such a buzzkill dude...

40K Escalation League - Week 2

As I have 2 weeks to decide on what I want to do for the 2nd phase of the league, I am still trying to decide on what changes I can make to my list. As of right now, I am thinking of taking the following -
HQ - Herald of Tzeentch
Chariot, Bolt, Master of Sorcery

Elite - (3) Bloodcrushers
Fury of Khorne

Elite - (3) Bloodcrushers
Fury of Khorne

Troops - (8) Horrors of Tzeentch
Changling

Troops - (8) Horrors of Tzeentch

Troops - (10) Daemonettes of Slaanesh

So basically I am adding another squad of bloodcrushers and another unit of horrors to my 500 point list to get it to 750. I might still need to tweak some of the points but bottom line this is what the list will look like. I plan on testing this list in the next couple of days or so to see how it handles the other lists in the league.

I think the biggest weakness I see is the lack of long range anti-tank; I only have one model with the ability to fire a long range anti-tank shot and in some of my early test games testing the 500 pts list, I fell victim to not being able to take out vehicles reliably.

As the point cost goes up, this is going to continue to be a huge problem especially once the AV 14's start popping out (Landraiders). For the next sequences of the league, I will probably switch out to minimum squads of Horrors with bolt and deamon princes for now, I might try out screamers once we get to the 1250 or 1500 point range. Now for some updated pics, I have finished the first blood crushers squad, my first horror squad, my herald, and 2 squads of daemonettes. I also finished building my 2nd bloodcrusher squad which includes my conversion of Skulltaker riding a juggernaut. Let me know what you guys think...