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 The picture is a bit out of date, since I have a new staff now, and Umbrella has stepped it up and dyed his armor nuklear orange.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.