Fight Night Report

Pictures from Yesterday's throwdown are here. It went pretty well.

This was our newest player's second game and he's starting to pick up the rules. Abaddon is still a beast in any sort of combat, mowing down wraithlords, wraithguard, and Lords of Change with ease.

Daemons are still fragile, but they work well in a team setting. The thing I've learned most about daemons is that they are insanely good in low point games. At five hundred or seven hundred fifty points they just tear up the opposition. There's almost no stopping them. Once you start moving up the handicap of only having half your force on the table becomes more pronounced. With your opponent getting a turn to react and pour all his firepower into just half your army, you'll feel lucky if you have anything left to make choices with on turn two. Running as part of a team softens the blow quite a bit, since with a teammate you've got three quarters of your combined forces versus all of theirs, which distracts from killing the daemons and helps keep more of them around to cause damage on subsequent turns.

40k Gaming Night

It's the game before our big apocalypse game. Tonight's just a precursor to the carnage we can expect this weekend. We're playing 1500 points and in the interests of going quickly I'm bringing just a few high point cost units.

• Chaos Lord Bike, Mark of Nurgle, Daemon Weapon, meltabombs
• 8 Thousand Sons led by an Aspiring Sorceror w/Wind of Chaos and meltabombs
• 18 Chaos marines w/2 plasma guns and an Icon of Chaos Glory led by an Aspiring Champion w/power fist, combi plas and meltabombs
• 10 Bikers w/mark of nurgle and 2 melta guns led by an Aspiring Champion w/power fist and melta bombs
• Land Raider

It's fairly straightforward with the lord leading the bike charge and the thousand sons in the land raider moving up to kill anything wearing power armor.

Fight Night

It's 40K fight night. The crowd continues to grow. I think last time there were eight people throwing down.

My buddy and I are debuting our Titans tonight. We're going to throw down a minimal (3000 point) Apocalypse game so we can be sure to have a handle on the titan rules before the next group apocalypse game.

I'm still undecided about the Strategic Asset I'm going to use, but here's what I'm bringing model-wise:
Chaos Warhound Titan
Baneblade
Conclave of Chaos
Ahrrimann
Demon Prince w/Wings
Demon Prince w/Wings
Demon Prince w/Wings
Demon Prince w/Wings
3 Terminators w/ 1 powerfist
3 Terminators w/ 1 powerfist
5 chosen w/Icon of Chaos & Lascannon
5 chosen
Possessed Land Raider
5 Lesser Demons
5 Lesser Demons

Titanic Proportions

Are these one and the same? I have eight pages of instructions that tell me they are! The chaos warhound titan from forgeworld has at least 150 pieces to it and an insane amount of detail inside of the model. All the parts are cleaned and on Sunday I'll have time to start removing flash in preparation for getting the legs put together.

Crazy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.