7th Edition 40K

Wow was this ever a surprise after hearing all of the hooplah that 6th edition would be here to stay.  I guess all of the issues that 6th edition had going along with all of the negative publicity 40k has been getting from the internet community finally got GW to listen to its fan base and release an update to its cash cow. In truth, 6th edition has been a great edition.  All 6th edition books at the beginning were balanced.  The problem started with the release of Tau and Eldar as GW through everything out and reversed course with the balance of the game.  Sure there are several issues with the rules but really the death knell of the edition came with these 2 books.  I'm sorry but when players who never looked at Tau before started bringing along grey plastic riptides to the table, I knew that something was going on.  And then Eldar hit, and with it wave serpents and battle bro shenanigans.  This to me brought about the end of the edition.  What about dataslates you may ask?  Well these weren't so bad until you got the tau and 2nd Nid one.  I like many hobbyists eagerly await the changes that are coming with 7th if and only if they heeded the players warnings and  actually try to bring some balance to the game.  Some of the early rumors such as changing up the allies chart, new psychic phase, etc. Sound pretty good.  Unbound of course sounds ridiculous but the in game benefits that a battleforge army gives you might be enough to offset the advantages that comes with  being able to take anything.  I guess in less then a week we will find out for sure if this was just purely a money grab by a company that lost a lot of money last year or the beginning of a mindset of a company that takes the criticism and responds by providing the gamers and fans what they want, a fun and balanced game for all.

And the hobbying continues

Whats up guys?  So I have decided to move forward with building my next army.  After doing some clean up, I found a surplus of models that were just collecting dust or new in the box or blister pack.  Among these models were 5 completely built drop pods, 2 storm ravens, 20 death company armed with ccw and bolt pistols, 2 furioso dreds, and 30 tact marines.  Well what to do?  It would be a shame to just get rid of these models and so I decided to go ahead and paint up a dual purpose army that could be run as either a codex space marine drop pod army or a blood angels army.  In order to do this, I plan on painting the army a little differently using colors that dont match any established chapter so that I could run them as my own chapter.  Of course everything will be what you see is what you get so anybody playing me will not have any issues with recognizing what each unit is.  I am first going to concentrate on the blood angel side as these models are already built an all I need is an HQ to lead them.  I will probably start with a reclusiarch as a cheap HQ or librarian which i might be able to build using some spare parts.  30 tact marines will fulfill my troops selection with dedicated drop pods and the 2 furioso dreads with magma cutters, melta guns will provide some cc and anti tank punch.   For the codex space marines part, it will still be a drop pod/storm raven army as its base but I will be adding a beater chapter master, 1 or 2 thunderfire cannons and will be using the red hunters chapter tactics as next to the ultra marines I find the most flexable.   Not going to add bikes in as my Nightlords army will be my biker army.  Pics are my works in progress of the 2 10 man tact squads.  I am hoping that by next post, I will have some more updates for the army.

Giant Robots in 40k??!!

Hey guys, so whats with the title you ask?  Imperial Knights of course and what a surprise GW pulled on the community.  The Knights have been out for over 2 months and still I'm amazed on how great the model looks and what they bring to the game.  The Knights of course  could be seen as their attempt to fix the meta.  I dont think that is the reason these were released, GW just wanted to release a model and a concept that would sell well as well as to get a reaction from those old veterans who have nothing good to say bout GW.  They definitely hit it out of the park with this model and the concept of an army of super heavies is rather interesting.  Now with everything looking good why is the release getting such a backlash from certain circles.  The D weapon of course that the Knight is armed with but GW made this D weapon a little more acceptable.  By making it a CCW weapon and giving it more "conventional" ranged weapons, the Knight is seen as not that game breaking.  What else did GW do to make it less broken?  By giving it a high points cost and only giving it 6 hull points, the knight is far from being invincible.  Will some armies struggle against 1,2, or 3 of them.  Of course they will but by adding in such a unit and making it available to all imperial armies and some Xenos, it changes the meta and forces even those death star armies to bring something to combat it as its one of the few things that will counter such armies.  Death star players will have to use points on countering such monsters which might cut down on us seeing the same lists over and over again or at least limit the options said player has to spend on the deathstar itself.  Will it be a dramatic change to the meta?  Probably not but at the very least players will have another option to use against these lists. 

Now I do have some complaints about the release.

1.  The fact that the army consists of one model and yet this justified a full codex release?  I would have thought that the codex itself would have at least several models for players to use to fill their army.  The codex basically just gives players access to 2 models, what about the lancer, etc?  Yes we know that Forgeworld is releasing the lancer and what a kit it is but what about rules for it?  Since its a Forgeworld model, now we need to deal with players or tournys that will only allow it.  GW should have just included it in the codex and told us that it would be released later.  The Imperial Knight codex in my opinion could have been an ebook just like the legion of the damned book, a 20 to 30 page supplement for 16 bucks and not full book price. 

2.  What about Chaos Space Marines Knights?  Geez this really bugs the crap out of me as I am primarily a CSM player and a Knight would have helped the army tremendously.  The abilities of the Knight would fill in some of the weaknesses of the army and also help it fight against the deathstars.  I have a dark mech army and would have loved to add one or two of these beasties to my army.  I guess the rumor is that Forgeworld will be creating these but just like the lancer, since its forgeworld it will "exist" in tourneys that allow them.  I just hope we dont get a separate codex for these guys and its handled through a simple supplement download and not a full codex release.  Now dont get me wrong, you give me more options in Chaos Knights and then I wont mind a full codex release. 

So in conclusion, Imperial Knights, I give them a big thumbs up!!  Its a release that came out of nowhere, is a fantastic looking model, and will hopefully change the meta a bit. 

Crimson Slaughter.. a test drive

Hey guys, yesterday I got a chance to test drive the Crimson Slaughter supplement in a team tournament with a buddy of mine.  The tournament was held at our local flgs that had teams of 2 going up against each other in 2000 pts game.  Each player had a 1000 point army that followed normal force organization rules and any army could ally with any army so even the nids were included. Now each 1000 point army couldnt take any allies or detachments but were allowed to have 1 forgeworld unit.  So simple right, who would take cheesy lists in such a small points total?  I guess that it where I was wrong, along the 10 teams, we had a triple heldrake list, dual riptides team, a junior nid skyblight list without the scoring gargoyles (just taking the normal list).  The Crimson Slaughter would have a high mountain to climb to come out on top.  My team-mate and I took lists that had separate themes, mine consisted of my Dark Mechanicus army with 1 heldrake, 2 maulerfiends, and 1 forgefiend with the awesome ecto-plasma cannons (all 3 for most awesomeness, you guys know im kidding right, i have only taken this model once and it wasnt worth the 200 point price tag yet I wanted to have fun so why not?  To close out the list I took a sorcerer with the divinition artifact and hoped for forewarning to give 1 of my 20 man cultists the 4up invul save.  My buddy went with a full nurgle spawn unit to accompany his beater lord with the 2 up save armor, the sword of relentless, the slaughterers horns, and a bike.  He also took 2 small units of plague marines with dual melta and dual plasma in Rhinos, a heldrake, and 1 obliterator as he had some points left over.

Game 1 - Vs. Triple Heldrake CSM and Dual Riptide Tau
Wow were we expecting a much tamer tournament.  When my buddy and I pulled up to our first table, we were amazed at what we saw.  We knew that this would be a challenge for Chaos and hopefully the Crimson Slaughter would have the extra tools to weather the challenge.  We got first turn which allowed my forgefiend to take out the tau player's markerlight support which pretty much took him out of the game as his dice rolls were pretty terrible.  Having giant squads of cultists that I spreadout to avoid the incoming heldrake fire coupled with the toughness of my buddy's plague marines helped us win this game.  Of course the crimson slaughter relics really came into their own with my divinition sorcerer getting forewarning thus giving my cultists a 4 up invul save to getting my forgefiend to re-roll scatter rolls, my buddy' beater lord getting into combat and making a ton of 2 up saves and getting AP 2 on his sword, he rolled the CSM players troops units and even took out a buff comander and riptide.  Divinition really came into its own in this game and along with the 2 up save, helped us win this game by concentrating on troop choices.

Game 2 - Vs. Nob Bikers Orks and Riptide Tau
Ok so this list would have been crazy good last edition but I am here to tell you that Nob bikers fully tooled up with a warboss and doc are still pretty good.  Backed up with 3 big gun artillery pieces and my cultists are dead meat.  The Tau player took 1 Riptide with a buff commander, 4 minimal firewarrior squads, longstrike, couple of piranhas and  a couple of broadsides. We rolled Nightfight and so we decided to let them go first as it was an objective game and deployment was vanguard strike.  Of course they blew up the only thing that could threaten them, the forgefiend as long strike one shotted it.  Again my buddy's beater lord with his 2 up save did very well, we actually ended up assaulting the nob biker squad with a maulerfiend, his beater lord, and the spawn and ended up rolling up the squad by winning combat on the 2nd round and causing them to run and get run down by the lord.  My other Maulerfiend took on the mega armored orks that came out of a destroyed battle wagon (compliments of the oblit) and ended up killing all 4 however he was immobilized and so pretty much as useless the rest of the game.  We ended up tabling them as my other mauler finished off the riptide and buff commander (gotta love lasher tendrils as the riptide was just hitting me with 1 attack) and my buddy's plague marines claimed 2 objectives.  Fear actually came into its own as the ork player failed key fear tests that allowed us to roll his depleted hammer units.  My sorcerer didn't do much here, he actually ran off the table with his cultist squad due to the pounding they were getting from the grot bigguns.

 Game 3 - Vs. Tyranid Mini Skyblight list and Thunderfire cannons space marines
Ok so here we were on the top table for all the marbles.  So far as this tournament was based on battle points we were ahead as we got full points for the 2nd game and almost full points for the first game.  Our opponents were players we had played before and lost too during another tourney and so this would be our revenge game.  In a 1000 points, 4 flying monstrous creatures giving you instant pressure backed up by 2 thunderfire cannons is no joke.  The nid player was also running 2 squads of biovores, a warrior squad, and a ripper squad.  The space marine player brought 3 full squads of tac marines in rhinos and so they would be the ones focusing on scoring.  The biovores and thunderfire cannons really brought the hurt on my cultists and if wasnt for me taking 20 man squads, i would have lost all of my scoring units.  My friends spawn unit along with a maulerfiend held up 3 monstrous creatures for 4 turns affectively keeping them out of the game.  My friends plague marines did the damage along with the 2 heldrakes and we ended up tying them.  Nobody had the primary and so it came down to kill points and secondary objectives. My divination sorcerer did nothing this game as he spent the entire game trying to avoid barrage weapons.  My friends lord died to instant death at the hands of a hive tyrant.  So it can be said that the crimson slaughter supplement had no bearing in this game, it came down to units that is available to all chaos armies.

So how did the crimson slaughter fare?  The new options definitely came into play with a couple of our games while in the third it was a nonfactor.  I still think the book is viable but only more play testing will say for sure.  This along with the black legion supplement at the very least open up more options for the chaos player that make the army fun to play.