Obliteration

Order forces finally managed to take back a keep near Baraak Vaar, so I was able to fly over and grab the gloves for the Obliterator set. On the way I found some interesting pieces about getting chickened:

• Chickens can buy from vendors. So you can always go back and get pieces from keep renown merchants.
• Chickens take no falling damage. So it can be difficult to kill yourself if you want a quick trip back to the warcamp.

Next up I'll need to start looking for pieces to the Devastator Set. And gaining renown so I can wear it.

Third Tier

I officially levelled out of tier two last night. Rank twenty-two was gained while in the Mourkain Temple scenario. I had been running around in the Troll Country RvR lake so when I got back I was immediately chickened. I went on a rampage. Oh yes, that is a dead pidgeon at my feet. None can withstand the might of chaos.

Trying out the new PvP scenarios was fun. I poked my head in on three out of the five, and they were pretty fun. The first one I got into had the sides fighting over a bomb that they then had to place at the enemies base. It reminded me a lot of SOCOM's footbomb missions.

Finally, I was trying to get ahold of the gloves for my obliterator set. I ran all over the place. Turns out you can only buy them from the renown trainers in the tier two zone RvR lakes. Last night all the tier two keeps in the whole world were order controlled so I got nothing. We'll see about tonight.

Area of Effect Spirit

Here we are, one big happy family. It's a picture of me with all my minions. I'm the Gorton's Fisherman looking guy there in the middle, and the rest are my loyal subjects. The picture is a bit out of date, since I have a new staff now, and Umbrella has stepped it up and dyed his armor nuklear orange. When you're trying to work as a team in PvP it turns out that having dyed armor is actually pretty valuable.

I sat myself down and looked through some forums yesterday to see what other people were doing with their Magus buildouts. Formerly I was going all single-target direct damage, with my mastery tree specced to increase the damage this was doing. Turns out most people are doing area of effect damage, speccing to the mastery tree that boosts the skills that do spirit damage. I gave it a shot and there's a huge difference. I can single-handedly take down Champion mobs that would have crushed me before, sometimes even handling two. I also manage to crush large groups.

Working with Umbrella, he can turn on an aura that draws aggro and just run around until he gets a train of eight to ten guys on him. Just bring them back to me and the DoT spam begins. Before we would look at stage one of a public quest and see that we needed to kill fifty guys to get to the next stage. Now we can clear that in around ten minutes.

We muscled through the intro stages of a number of chapter seven and eight quests, and cleared the Chapter 8 PQ "Lurza's Blight." This was a three stage PQ. The first just having you kill a bunch of plague priests and their attendant nurglings. The Train and Pain tactic working great here, as we would mow down at least eight at a time. Stage two had us killing nine Rot Bearers(lvl 17 champs I think). These spawned in groups of three and summoned nurglings that could be killed in one shot, but that would basically be DoTs against you. AoE cleared the little guys right out.

Finally Lurza his/herself shows up, accompanied by three plaguebearers. When fighting her, just concentrate your attacks and ignore the plaguebearers. Any time you kill one another will come right back and as a 17 Hero it will probably take a minute or two before you knock her down.

Of course, the loot from the PQ was worse than what either of us already had. I don't understand why with just two people finishing a PQ in the area where they belong we still ended up with two Lesser Loot Bags. Where's my awesome PQ loot?

Rumble and Grumble

This last tuesday's gaming night I pulled some tanks together and ran an Armored Company list.  Here's the list:

Command Tank: Leman Russ w/various options

Troops: 2xLeman Russ w/various options

Heavy Support: 3xDemolishers w/various options

Fast Attack: 2xHellhounds

Fast Attack: Squad of 2 Sentinels w/Autocannon

Inquisitor Lord w/3 Warrior Henchmen (1 melta, 2 plas)

1 Callidus Assassin

The plan is to pound the enemy line with the tanks, root out squads hiding in cover with the hellhounds, and outflank with the sentinels to get side or rear shots on enemy armor.  The inquisitor lord and his melta/plas followers would hang around the main body of tanks and provide targeted close range fire support to finish off what couldn't be killed by the templates, while the assassin provides a crucial first turn bunch-up of troops in addition to assaulting any targets that might present themselves.

I rolled up against my friend's Dark Angel Deathwing Army.  He was rolling with a Land Raider Crusader, Belial, 3 Terminator squads, 2 Dreadnoughts, and a Devastator Squad with plasma cannons.

We rolled Annhilation, so my lack of scoring units wasn't a factor. As the battle progressed it became a standout example of how vehicles in general, and imperial guard vehicles specifically have been affected by 5th edition. Here are some highlights:

• Defensive Weapons - It's only defensive if its strength four or less.  This means all those heavy bolter sponsons are basically useless.  In fourth when you were forced to move you could just unload with your bolters, now you're stuck to just firing one when you move.
• Close Combat - Vehicles that have AV10 in the rear die in close combat.  It doesn't matter if you moved twelve inches and your opponent hits on a 6.  Any MEQ unit is capable of generating a glancing hit or two, and a squad of terminators is more than capable of putting the hurt on.  Your vehicle might only get glanced, but it's almost a sure thing that you won't be shooting or moving in the next turn, and then the squad that's attacking hits automatically.
• AV14 is king. Even with strength nine and ten weapons there's a good chance you won't destroy your target.  And unlike with Hand-to-Hand your chance to kill a stationary vehicle with shooting doesn't get better.
• Ballistic skill does help your ordinance, but not that much.  Pulling your shot back to center when it scatters is nice, but you're still going to completely miss your target most of the time.

I still think Armored Company is viable in 5th Ed (See post on BellofLostSouls).  However, I thin they need to be treated like a gunline army.  They need some solid counter-assault units that can screen and clear dangerous units that are trying to close with them.  My nomination for this role will be Grey Knights.  Demolishers are just as good as as standard battle tank, and just the same cost, too, so I'd throw in the Seige Doctrine to get those guys as troops. Without pointing it up here's what the modified list would look like:

Command Chimera, 3 Demolishers, Inquisitor w/3 warriors and 3 acolytes with combi/plasma weapons and a Land Raider, Assassin, 2 squads of Grey Knights.  If there are any points left over they would be spent on basilisks, sentinels, and hellhounds.

I'd be curious to try this list out, since I think it could perform well against a variety opponents.

Demonzilla Redux

The Demonzilla's first outing was a dismal failure. The troop selections were the ones to show up first and then the monstrous creatures stayed at home in the warp until turn four. They gave a good show when they showed up, but it was too little too late.

We did manage to get a lower point game in as well. A Lord of Change in a 750 battle is a pretty unbalancing factor.

Tonight will be their second outing, albeit at a lower points value.

We're doing one thousand point team battles. I'll bring a lord of change, the Masque, some bloodletters, daemonettes, horrors and a khorne demon prince. My teammate is running chaos marines and we're going up against ultramarines and dark angels. Even with the points split between us there should be quite a few monstrous creatures on the table.

I think if I had the model, I'd drop the masque, horrors, and khorne demon prince and replace him with a bloodthirster. Which means it might be time to pick up a bloodthirster model. Maybe black friday....

Demonzilla

The plan for tonight's 40K game is to bring 2000 points of monstrous creature heavy demons. I wanted to field an army that let me use my old greater demon models, and that would hopefully play differently than the list that comes out of the army box.

The list:
HQ
Lord of Change We are Legion, Master of Sorcery, Breath of Chaos, Boon of Mutation
Masque
Skulltaker

Troops
10 Bloodletters Icon, Fury of Khorne, Instrument of Chaos
10 Daemonettes Icon, Instrument of Chaos
5 Pink Horrors Icon, Bolt of Tzeentch, Changeling

Heavy Support
Demon Prince Mark of Tzeentch, Iron Hide, Flight, Might, Breath of Chaos, Daemonic Gaze, Master of Sorcery, Bolt of Tzeentch, Boon of Mutation
Demon Prince Mark of Tzeentch, Iron Hide, Flight, Might, Breath of Chaos, Daemonic Gaze, Master of Sorcery, Bolt of Tzeentch, Boon of Mutation
Demon Prince Mark of Khorn, Iron Hide, Flight, Might, Death Strike

3 scoring units, 9 kill points.

It's low on scoring units, but the Bloodletters and Daemonettes are traveling in a reasonably large blocks and plan on getting into hand to hand and winning. The plan is to drop in with the Greater Demon and Demon Princes on the turn one wave, trying to keep them together. They'll have a bunch of shooting attacks that can kill MEQs from 18+ inches away. Turn two they are in melee combat or destroying dangerous, armored vehicles. Moving them in groups means that even if my opponent concentrates fire chances are they won't get all four monstrous creatures. Breath of Chaos templates and three chances to create chaos spawn every turn.
If the chaos gods don't smile upon me and I get the other half of the army on turn one, then their job is to set themselves up for a turn two charge, and bring down the demon princes to support with breath and boon. Also the masque and changeling do what they can to disrupt the opponents movement.
Smaller points versions of this list (750 and 1000) just include the Lord of Change, Bloodletters, and Horrors, adding princes to get to the desired points value.

Public Questing

I was working on finishing out the influence from some earlier chapters, so I went through the stages of a number of public quests in Ostland and Troll Country.

Umbrella and I finished out the Krul'Gor Herd and managed to horn in on Ragash's Last Stand. Krul'Gor Herd is a chapter below where we are, and Ragash is a chapter ahead. With Krul'Gor the two of us were pretty much able to solo the whole thing, and with Ragash there would have been no way to do it all without all the other people who showed up.

We also mucked about with Bells of War (chapter 5) and Griffon Outpost (chapter 7), and while we didn't finish either of those off, we did make it to some of the later stages.

Ragash's Last Stand was a disappointment for me, since I didn't get any loot. Umbrella managed to snag a small bag, but I don't think he got anything from it that was particularly spectacular. I understand that rolling for loot and assigning a bonus based on contribution is a good way to keep people from simply hopping in at the end of a public quest and grabbing a reward without having put the time in. But when I'm there for all the stages of a quest and I still end up with no loot I come away feeling cheated. Especially since that's the only time I'll ever do that quest. As fast as levels go by in this game I'll never end up going back and doing those quests again. Higher level PQs are a different story, since once you hit the level cap there's little else you can do to advance your character except search for better equipment.

Witness Krul'Gor Herd

Here I ended up with the second highest contribution bonus, but sill only barely managed to snag a loot bag. If there had been one less loot bag or one more higher level person helping out I would have gotten nada again. As it was I still ended up getting nothing useful for myself.

Griping aside, I do love some of the public quests. Staged monster fights are a great joy, giving me a sense of discovery and accomplishment as the encounter stages tick by and we, as a group, discover the mechanics of each stage. I'll be logging on tonight and hope to tackle a few more public quests, and maybe even poke my head into the Sacellum Dungeons.

Attika VI - Campaign Week 4

Reports from Attika VI clearly indicate that the chaos incursion has been repulsed. Preliminary reports suggest that despite fierce fighting inside the city walls, casualties were within acceptable parameters. Timely intervention on the part of the Dark Angels and the Sisters Sororitas ensured that most of the holy sites within the city were kept safe.

Pictures can be found here.

For the Raven God

A buddy and I have been playing Warhammer Online for a couple weeks now. He's the tank and I'm a fragile glass cannon of a magus. Together we roam the countryside making trouble for the forces of Order.

For instance, this guy named "Calvus." Don't know who he is or what he's about, but he's in for a world of hurt.

The Defense of Attika VI

In preparation for the final round in our campaign, I've drawn up what I hope will be an army reasonably capable of taking and holding all table objectives.

Since I know we'll be playing objectives, the list is designed around having a lot of men on the table, with a lot of scoring units. Mixed in are some elite units to provide speed bumps that will keep the opposing forces from simply rolling over the objective grabbing portions of the army. There's a distinct lack of heavy support in this thousand point army, and it would be very weak to anything that decided to bring a bunch of monstrous creatures or a bunch of heavy vehicles. Hopefully in one thousand points there wouldn't be many of either of these, and if there were then they would be unable to lay down the amount of weapon fire necessary to knock eighty-seven infantrymen off the table.

There's a troops squad in a vehicle to get to distant objectives quickly and a smattering of weapons capable of destroying light transports. The sentinels are there to provide anti-swarm support, attacking anything that has a strength of 3 with its heavy flamer before charging in and tying them up for the rest of the game.

HQ
Junior Officer w/bolt pistol & power weapon, 2 autocannons

Elite
7 ratlings
5 ogryn
5 Hardened Veterans. Sargeant w/bolt pistol & power weapon, 3 melta guns, Chimera w/Heavy Bolter & Multilaser

Troops
Infanty Platoon
Junior Officer w/bolt pistol & power weapon, 2 plasma guns
Infantry Squad
Infantry Squad
Infantry Squad

20 conscripts

Armored Fist Squad w/flamer and Chimera w/Heavy Bolter & Multilaser

Fast Attack
Sentinel w/Heavy Flamer
Sentinel w/Heavy Flamer


87 infantrymen
2 tank
2 walkers
3 meltas
2 Heavy Bolters
2 Multilasers
2 Plasma Guns
2 Autocannons
5 scoring units, 14 kill points.

Campaign Week 3

Apocalypse

The penultimate week brought Abaddon the Despoiler and a daemonhost to the outskirts of our fair city, where the brave city defenders gave their lives to delay the inevitable breach of the city walls.

More photos with a description of the battle can be found here.

Campaign Week 2

Week two of the campaign sees the chaos forces gaining steam as they take control of the planet's orbital defense laser installation. On another part of the planet the combined might of the imperial guard an dark angels were barely enough to retain control of the imperial manufactorum.

Next week brings an attack on the planet's temple capitol. Everyone is teaming up to play an apocalypse game.

Campaigning

This week saw the start of the campaign for Attika VI. Five people played a number of annhilation games, tallying the kill points to see which side is the winner.


We took a bunch of pictures of the games. They can be found here.

Fiends in Low Places

So after a few months of waiting my bloodletter finally has a few friends to keep him company.

More Painting

I picked up the 40K chaos demons boxed set. This weekend I got the bloodletters put together. I've painted up the first one using the GW painting guide as a rough outline.

It went pretty fast. I'd say about half an hour to an hour for just that guy. Now I just have to get his nine friends done.

Painting Report

It's been a while since there was a picture of something, so here we go
That's fifteen chaos marines. They're mostly painted. There's still some detail work to do on the standard bearer and both the champions, and nothing is based yet. Still. Exciting.

Of Chaos and Cooking

Standard tuesday night protocol found me at Games and Gizmos with a big brood of Chaos. Some buddies are gearing up for a 3000 point tournament at the bellevue bunker, so I added another grand onto the demon bomb army. He's still tweaking so we only played 2750 instead of the full 3000. I don't think it made for a very strong list, and is certainly less bomby than the lower point list.

HQ
Chaos Lord bike, power weapon, meltabombs, mark of tzeentch, personal icon
Demon Prince wings, mark of tzeentch, warptime, wind of chaos
Greater Demon

Elites
(10) Chosen champion w/meltabombs & powerfist, icon of tzeentch, 5+ inv. save, 2 plasma guns, heavy bolter
(6) Terminators mark of tzeentch, 2 chainfists, reaper autocannon

Troops
Thousand Sons 4 marines, sorcerer with doombolt and personal icon mounted in a rhino
Thousand Sons 4 marines, sorcerer with doombolt and personal icon mounted in a rhino
6 Lesser Demons
6 Lesser Demons

Fast Attack
6 bikes champion w/power weapon & meltabombs, icon of tzeentch, plasma gun, melta gun
5 raptors champion w/power weapon & meltabombs, icon of tzeentch, plasma gun, melta gun

Heavy Support
Land Raider havok launcher
Land Raider
Predator twin linked lascannon turret, lascannon sponsons

The additions to the list obviously don't play to the strengths of the army. There are no new icons, and nothing new in the list that gets called in for deep strike. It becomes much more of an assault army with a couple deep strike support elements. What it really needed was two separate squads of terminators an increase in size on the larger squads of thousand sons. Then if points were left over throw in some more summoned demon squads.

Playing things out against my buddy's space marines everything just kind of fell apart. The insult to injury was the terminators scattering the full twelve inches off the table edge in turn four. C'est la vie.

I'll work to correct some defencies, and hopefully get some modeling done so I can finally put combi-plas on all the terms.


After my ignominious defeat, I went home and cooked myself a little dinner. Have a recipe:

Ginger Leeks

Ingredients
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon brown sugar
1 Tablespoon ginger, chopped
2 large leeks, remove the dark green part, slice the rest.
1/2 teaspoon salt
half a tomato, cubed
fresh ground pepper to taste.

Put the butter and brown sugar in a small frying pan over medium heat. Stir occasionally to mix the sugar with the butter and prevent the butter from burning. When butter starts to foam it has reached the right temperature. Reduce the heat to just below medium and add the ginger. Cook for two minutes, until the ginger becomes fragrant. Add the leeks and sprinkle the salt over the top. Stir it around to get the leek slices coated in butter. Increase the heat to just above medium and cook for six or seven minutes, stirring frequently to prevent burning. The leeks will become limp and the rings of the slices will separate. Stir in the tomatoes an cook for another two minutes, just so the tomatoes are heated up. Too much time over heat will cook the tomatoes all the way through, making them mushy. Add fresh ground pepper, stir, and serve.

Super Bomb Bomb

A friend and I did a 1750pt battle for our weekly Tuesday face off. I decided to try out a demon bomb army. I prefer armies with speed, and speed is definitely a requirement for a good demon bomb. I was also keen to test out some mounted Thousand Sons. Here's the list:

HQ
Chaos Lord w/bike, power weapon, meltabombs, mark of tzeentch, personal icon
Greater Demon

Elites
Chosen 9 members, champion with meltabombs & powerfist, icon of Tzeentch, 2 plasma guns
Chaos Terminators 4 champions, icon of Tzeentch, 2 chainfists, reaper autocannon

Troops
Thousand Sons 4 marines, sorcerer with doombolt and personal icon mounted in a rhino
Thousand Sons 4 marines, sorcerer with doombolt and personal icon mounted in a rhino
6 Lesser Demons
6 Lesser Demons

Fast Attack
Bike Squad 5 bikes, champion w/power sword & meltabombs, icon of Tzeentch, plasma gun, meltagun
Raptor Squad 5 members, champion w/meltabombs

My Ultramarine opponent brought a bunch of 5-man tactical squads with heavy weapons, an assault squad led by a jumpy chaplain, a scout squad with sniper rifles and missile launcher, two dreadnoughts (one venerable), a pair of land speeders, a vindicator and two predators with twin-lascannons and heavy bolter sponsons.

All in all it worked really well. The terminators and demons came in half on turn two and half on turn three. The thousand sons held down an entire flank, using the rhinos as mobile pieces of cover, keeping everything but a single target from having line of sight to the thousand sons. And of course that single target was what the thousand sons blew away in the shooting phase. The thousand sons managed to clean up and hold the entire right flank, only taking casualities in the last couple turns of the game when the chaplain and assault marine remnant charged them.

The bomb itself also worked great, bringing extra pressure to bear where it was needed. Lesser demons were more than able to tie up and kill the marines they came up against. The greater demon chewed up a tactical squad and most of the assault squad before being brought down.

By far the most frustrating element of the army for my opponent was the invulnerable save that each and every trooper in my army had. At worst I always had a 5+ save versus anything he could throw at me, and most things had a 4+. Lascannons, assault cannons, power fists and dreadnought weapons mean a lot less when you're still able to roll a 4+ to ignore a hit.

If I had to change anything, it would probably be to fit some lightning claws and a combi-melta on the lord, put some combi-plasma on the terminators, and fill the chosen squad with the maximum number of plasma guns possible.

MVP of the game was the aspiring sorcerer who force-weaponed the jumpy chaplain on my last turn.

The Earth Shakes.

I've recently acquired a couple of Basilisks for my Imperial Guard army. I've been rotating them in when playing against a buddy of mine who runs ultramarines. I've used them in a few games and wanted to write up my thoughts separate from other tacticas.

Firstly, the problem I'm trying to alleviate. Running imperial guard you end up with a lot of troops on the field. A lot. In a recent 1750 pt. game I fielded 56 infantry models, 6 tanks and 2 walkers. This is a lot of models, and even spreading out across the entire six foot length of field my squads end up getting in the way of each other. Solution: Basilisks. For at least the first few turns of the game they can be used as artillery. Not having to move a tank-sized piece of terrain through and across my firing lanes for my infantry and tanks gives me a lot more freedom of mobility. Seriously, it can be challenging to move a land raider, three russ variants, and a handful of chimeras such that each vehicle has a target they can fire at while still leaving room for the infantry firing line to take shots.

This is all in addition to the entirely worthwhile cannon the thing carries. Even better than a Leman Russ Battle Cannon, the Earthshaker has that extra point of strength that makes it twice as likely to penetrate something that has armor fourteen. With an armor penetration of three it picks marines up off the table like nobody's business. It's front armor of twelve means that it is immune to almost all opposing artillery. And it clocks in at at least twenty points less than the cheapest russ configuration.

I'm definitely happy with the performance of the Basilisk. It's never any less accurate than the Russes, its cheaper, more survivable, and is better at taking out vehicles. It's what every imperial tank commander could want.

Wild Cards

A buddy of mine has posted the rules for a role-playing game a few of us worked on a while back. It's a neat little system that puts a lot of narrative power into the hands of the player characters. It's gone through a fair number of revisions, and even one test where it was taught and played to a group of people that had never heard of it.

Frank makes some good points about the flaws of the system, but I think these are surmountable without simply applying patch rules all over the place.

There seems to be a glut of pears right now, so I'm taking advantage. Tonight I made Tofu with Pumpkin Cream Sauce, with a side of salad with warmed pears. Dessert was Pears in Ginger Sauce. All items were delicious.

I do wonder where all the pears are coming from. Its not nearly warm enough or late enough in the season for them to be coming off trees right now. Mexico maybe?

Combat Patrol

Life intruded on the Saturday of the combat patrol tournament, so I didn't get to play in that. On the other hand, I think I'll try to start up a low points campaign with some people I know. That should provide for some amusement and give me impetus to get some more things painted.

Tourney Battle Reports

The 1750 tournament at the Redmond game store has come and gone, and I am overdue for my reports. There was a good turnout but the game started late.

Here's the army I brought:

HQ
Heroic Senior Oficer (power weapon, bolt pistol)
2 plasma guns
Medic
Commissar (power weapon, bolt pistol)

Anti-Tank Squad (2 lascannon, missile launcher)

Inquisitor Lord (power weapon, storm bolter, carapace armor)
2 Heavy Bolter Servitors
2 Acolytes (bolt pistol, carapace armor)

Elites
10 Ratlings

Callidus Assassin

5 Ogryn in Chimera(multi-laser, heavy bolter)

Troops
Platoon 1
Junior Officer(bolt pistol, power weapon)
Infantry Squad 1 (autocannon)
Infantry Squad 2(autocannon)

9 Storm Troopers
Veteran Sargeant (bolt pistol, power weapon)
2 meltaguns
Chimera(multi-laser, heavy bolter)

Heavy Support

Leman Russ Battle Tank (3 heavy bolters)

Leman Russ Battle Tank (3 heavy bolters)

Leman Russ Demolisher (lascannon, 2 plasma cannons)

On to the battles. On to glory

Battle 1 - Mechanized Chaos Marines

Patrick brought three squads of plague marines kitted with plasma guns and mounted in rhinos, and a land raider with Kharn and a squad of berserkers. The mission was hostage rescue. I was defending and had to prevent Patrick from getting to the prisoner and then leading him out of my deployment zone. He deployed fairly uniformly across his starting line, while I assigned the ogryn and storm troopers to hold my left and right flanks respectively, while the rest of my army was tasked with holding the center and protecting the hostage.

The game started pretty well for me. I immediately immobilized his land raider and most of his rhinos, but if I was expecting the rest of the game to continue this way I was in for a rude surprise.

The plague marines made an inexorable advance towards my center line. The imperial guard can usually wear down power armored troops through sheer volume of fire, but Plague Marines with their toughness of five and Feel No Pain simply ignored all my efforts to bring their numbers to a manageable level. In the end I had killed a fair number of the enemy, but my army was killed to a man. Here are some lessons I learned:
1. Careful with your battle cannons. I pulled my assassin off the board after a stray round from a Russ landed on her. Battle cannons are not close fire support weapons.
2. My Ogryn got caught by the berserkers after they fired on the assault target that was supposed to get them away from them. So rather than acting as bait to draw the berserkers closer to my battle cannons, they ended up getting caught by the berserkers while they were high-fiving each other after killing a rhino. Rather than shooting at the rhino they should have held up for the assault phase and used the extra six inches to get themselves to safety.
3. My army needs more counterassault. I think maybe a priest instead of a commissar, and replace the plasma guns and medic with some meltaguns.
4. I was too concerned about the hostage. Instead of clustering my armor in the center I should have set them up on a flank (probably the left where there was lighter resistance). Since the only thing that could harm my armor at range was his land raider. A concentration of fire here would have let me hold down that flank in a couple of turns, while the hostage could have been protected by an infantry picket.

It was a good game, and seeing the plague marines in action was frustrating. They definitely seemed like a unit that basically played themselves. MVP on my army was the inquisitor lord who on the last turn held up the squad escorting the hostage and kept it from leaving my deployment zone.

Battle 2 - Lashing Chaos Army

Ross brought a lash chaos army. There was a demon prince, a sorceror on bike, some noise marines, some chaos marines, a couple of obliterators, a land raider and a couple of spawn squads. The mission was Emissary Escort, where Russ had to get a special character into my deployment zone. He set up a long line with his heavy stuff on my right flank and his lashers and emissary on my left. I piled my armor onto my right flank and lightly held the center. There was a large piece of terrain in the very center of the board that made for very poor diagonal sight lines.

Since the chaos codex came out everyone has been kicking and screaming about Lash of Submission. And I definitely think that it is a powerful, but to really do a lash army you are committing an awful lot of your points to just lashing.

My armor spent a good portion of the game moving up my left flank. I think they were able to start picking targets on turn three. The callidus popped out early, pasted the emissary and spent the rest of the game holding up most of his right flank. The battle tanks had a field day lobbing shells the length of the long table edge and the storm troopers managed to microwave the land raider on the last turn. As I recall, the game was a draw in the end.

Here's my thoughts on Lash having played against it now:
1. Lash allowed my opponent to have a first turn charge with his spawn. Since spawn basically move 2d6 inches with a twelve inch assault, the extra 2d6 from the lash are almost guaranteed to get someone into their assault range on the first turn.
2. Lash could move my units, but moving a sixty point guard squad doesn't hurt me that much. What I think actually hurt me more was that the lash would pin me.
3. His sorceror and demon prince spent most of the game pussyfooting around lashing stuff closer to his spawn. He could have charged his casters into combat also, but then he risks having them tied up and not able to lash.

Game 3 - Imperial Guard Vostroyans

Aaron B brought a beautifully painted Vostroyan army. I won this game, but I'm not interested in a retelling. The mission used escalation rules and Aaron had lost his first two games which made him not care about the game we were playing. It was basically a miserable game. My opponent didn't care about being there, he kept wandering away from the table and bullshitting with his friend who was playing on the table next to us. As it was I spent quite a bit of time just sitting around waiting for him and we were only able to make it to turn four (which is a real problem in an escalation game where a majority of your army is in reserves). It's the first tournament game I haven't been able to play to completion because of time.

The tournament was fun and I definitely got a kick out of my first two games. There's a tournament this Saturday at the Bellevue Bunker but I'll be out of town, so I'm not sure when I'll next be able to play in a tournament. Maybe I'll have my Chaos in order.

More Tournaments

This Saturday sees another tournament on the schedule. This one isn't at the Games Workshop Bunker, but rather the local Redmond game store. It's a 1750 point battle, so I'll basically be able to use everything I've got. It also means I've got a tight painting schedule to get everything in order. I've got five ratlings, five ogryn, a plasma gunner and 3 assorted heavy weapons that need a coat of paint to be rogue trader legal. That means I'm going to have a few late nights.

Also on February 2nd the bunker is doing a combat patrol tournament. I've got some painting to do for that, but it's still a week out and there's only a few models. My plan is to run as a demonhunter army with an inquistor, a small storm trooper squad in a chimera, two death cult assassins and an Eversor. Based on the tactica at Bell of Lost Souls I think it could be at least a fun army to play, if not an effective one. I think it will mainly have problems with any army that moves fast. As long as I've got effective cover I should be able to zip the assassins in and provide covering fire and assault support with the chimera and storm troopers. I'm very interested to see what other armies show up for combat patrol.

Chaos Marines

I've finally started painting my chaos marines. I wanted to go for a mostly white paint job with a nods to the classic yellow and gold thousand sons scheme. I mainly used techniques from the Fly Lords website. I like how using the fine point pen for outlining really makes the whole thing pop. If you look at the larger version you can see how messy the whole thing actually is, but from a distance, at a small scale I think it came out really well. These guys should look great when I have them moving around in a big block.

Tournament Report

I showed up to the Bellevue Bunker around noon and sat around waiting to see if three people wouldn't show up so that I could be moved from wait-list to player. In fact at least ten people didn't show so everyone on the wait list got to play.

I played the list I specced out in the last post with the exception of the Inquisitor Lord since I forgot the WYSIWYG model.

Game 1
The first game was against a black templar player. I don't think I've even ever read through the Black Templar's codex before so I was wholly unprepared. Mike, my opponent, had three blocks of ten marines, a chaplain and emperor's champion, and a razorback/predator (It wasn't painted so I can't remember for sure) with twin linked lascannon turret and heavy bolter sponsons. The mission had something to do with killing a select enemy squad.

So I guess Black Templars have a whole bunch of rules that let them make extra moves. They swept across the battlefield and by turn six had wiped out my entire army. That isn't to say that I didn't give a good accounting of myself. By the end all his squads were below half strength, one squad had only a single member left, and the tank was wreckage. Still, as the first tournament game I'd played in an awfully long time, a massacre didn't have me hopeful for the rest of the day.

Game 2
The second game was against a beautifully painted ultramines army commanded by a pleasant fellow named Timm. It was comprised of a tactical squad, scout squad, devastator squad and command squad all of which had every single option and loadout. We played on a fun ruined city location. The mission was a straightforward cleanse with some sort of extra gravity rule that we both forgot about.

This game went much better. I was generally able to exert overwhelming force on each of his squads individually, taking his army apart piece by piece. I will also admit that the dice were very much in my favor and I think that my tanks scared him because his command squad spent the whole game shooting a single lascannon at the demolisher. In the end I wiped his army off the table and only lost five or six guardsmen.

Game 3
Game three was played against an unpainted ravenwing-centric dark angels army. There was a tactical squad, scout squad, two squads of three bikes, a dreadnought, and the master of the ravenwing in his land speeder. The mission was Suicide Squads where we each had a squad that we wanted to get killed for extra victory points.

This was a total slug fest. The dark angels won the first turn and the bikes and speeder zipped forward to lay waste to my infantry squads. After that there was mainly just a lot of back and forth blasting at each other with my army having a bit more firepower and luck. In the end I had the inquisitor lord, russ, demolisher, immobile chimera and stormtroopers left, and he had half a tactical squad detachment, an immobile dreadnought, and the land speeder. It was a victory for me, but far from a resounding one.


I had fun. In the end my army performed as I predicted it would when I made the army list. Against the hand to hand templars I crumpled, against the straight up vanilla marines I dominated, and where I had to fight against a land speeder with fourteen armor on the front and sides I had a really hard time dealing with it. If I had to do one thousand points again I'd definitely tool up my command squad for close combat so that I could have some sort of response to an assault.

Tourney Preparations

There's 1000pt Rogue Trader tournament playing at a local Games Workshop store this Saturday. I'm hoping to attend and see how rusty my tournament skills are. I've drawn up a list that I hope won't embarrass me too much.

Senior Officer HQ - Medic, Bolter, 2 Plasma Guns
5 Storm troopers - 2 Melta-guns, Chimera w/Multilaser & Heavy Bolter
Infantry Platoon - Junior Officer, 2 Infantry Squads
Inquisitor Lord - Carapace Armor, Storm Bolter, 2 Heavy Bolter Servitors, 2 Acolytes w/Carapace Armor and Bolt Pistols
Callidus Assassin
Demolisher - Lascannon, 2 Plasma Cannons
Leman Russ - 3 Heavy Bolters

My main worries is my lack of counter assault. I can get lucky and have the assassin show up at an opportune time but I'm seriously lacking in hand to hand power. I'm also somewhat worried about going up against another vehicle heave army. The demolisher, russ and storm troopers should be able to handle one tank, but a couple of land raiders will probably send a storm cloud to rain on my parade.

Resomolutions

The office I work in has ten vending machines filled with canned beverages. Everything from fruit juice to water to Coke to Pepsi is available at the push of a button. There were times when I would go through four or five cans in a single day. Sure the cans always all went straight to the recycling bin, but that's still a large energy cost that could be avoided if I just hadn't emptied them at all. And there was often guilt associated with drinking that much soda in a single day. Strangely I never order soda when I'm at a restaurant. There I have self control enough to just stick to water or to order juice or another alternative. It's when I'm sitting in my office that I most crave the comfort that a twelve ounce can of sugary sweetness provides.

This year's resolution is to not drink anything that comes in a can. Not only will this insulate me from the evils of high fructose corn syrup, but it will also reduce the amount of waste that I'm sending to the recycling plant.

This resolution doesn't rule out soda completely. Glass bottles and plastic containers would still be technically in bounds. But by reserving such things only when they are available in specific form I'll end up drinking less of it, which should help my health levels considerably.