The Awakening of the NDG

I haven't been able to muster the guster for a 40kology post in a long time, but I probably don't have that many readers anyway (not a pity party!). First thing, I HAVE been playing quite a bit, and only with the reawakened Necrones de Guerra. I made a video battle report a week or so ago that was going to be the start of something great, but but windows movie maker sucks a bag of assholes and I don't have the coin for an Apple, so for now that idea is sitting the bench. Also, my camera doesn't take high res video anyway, so nothing lost, etc.

So, the Necrons. This is my new favorite army, for sure. And my Berzerker Blood Angels were the culmination of a 15-year love affair with khorny skulltaking, so that's saying something. Maybe it's the rules, maybe it's the models, maybe it's the fact that only a few people locally are playing Necrons and I started out with a full army on day 1. I've had a fairly even mix of wins and losses but always enjoyed myself. I will note that against strongly competitive army lists, I haven't done so well. But screw those types anyway, who cares. So boring. Here's my favorite units to play:

* The Stormlord - If you've played only one game against the Stormlord, you might think he's either total cheese or a waste of points. If you've played two, you might be more lukewarm about him. In any case, I think he is a great idea for a Necron special character. The nightfighting and lightning can really change up your normal game, are great fluff-wise, and both come in handy against those little-shooting-box armies. And now that they faq'd the chronometron (though I still don't get what "phase" the beginning of the turn is), you're much more likely to keep it going for at least the first two to three turns. And destroying someone's most beloved vehicles before they have a chance to do anything is cracktastic. You know it's bad for you, but what a rush. And it's often more entertaining than devastating for the enemy. The last game I played, lightning wiped out both of Robert's small ratling squads in a single turn. Not a real gamechanger but totally hilarious: the shortest guys on the table!

* Wraiths - These guys are my linebackers. Whatever comes at you, they're likely to either wipe them out or tarpit them until you can move up some more gauss. Since I bumped my original squad of four up to six wraiths, I've only been loving them more. I just run em with 4 or 5 lash whips in there. Well worth the points. Sometimes I'll run a destroyer lord with them, burying him real good in a dense layer of wraithfat, and either charge them all in together or break him out of the squad at the last minute to go carve open some nearby tanks or stragglers. You have to watch out for whole gangs of powerfists, but you can usually see guys like that coming a ways off.

* Annihilation Barge - I magnetized my single barge, so for a while I was running Anrakyr the Traveler in a command barge. I had a lot of fun skimming around firing other people's vehicles at themselves, scything up their other vehicles, or just using that flat-out cover save to be a general pain in the ass to finish off. But after the FAQ took all the fun out of ole Ann-Racky, I switched to the slower, shootier barge species. Short range, but by the time nightfighting has run out, there's plenty of enemy stuff within 24 inches anyway.

* C'tan - Another fun unit that can make for a totally different game with the inevitable writhing worldscape ability. I was running mine with spirit dust for a while, but recently I switched to pyreshards, which I think are better and more S4 dice rolling fun! Stealth and grenades were just not adding that much to the C'tan experience. He usually underperforms in assault, so he usually camps out behind a nearby monolith or pick your targets carefully.

* Scarabs - Ok, ok, scarabs are cool too. I start with six and usually wait until I have Spyder'd them up to ten or twelve to let them off of the scarab leash. Those are really small leashes! Usually I'm totally fine with sacrificing a 90 point unit to take out a charging land raider, and I'm even more fine if they can stick around a little bit longer to annoy something else.

Here's some random pictures from recent games:

Against Brandon's Space Marines:



Against Kings' Mant-ass Warriors:



Against Will's Salamanders:



Against Rob's Dark Eldar:



And another game against Kings' Mant-assers:



Here's a bonus battle report against Kings' guard

Return of the Necrones de Guerra

A while back I bought my buddy Mack's Necron army. They've lain dormant waiting for the new codex and I'm excited to get them back on the battlefield. I took them out for a trial run the other day against Robert's Tzeentch demon army and ended up squeaking out a win, but more importantly, got to really experience how different they feel from other armies, including the Necrons of the previous codex. I had just enough models to put together a classic 2k list, with a modern general:

Imotekh Stormlord
Cryptek - harbinger of despair with nightmare shroud and veil of darkness
Destroyer Lord - warscythe, resurrection orb, semipternal weave
C'tan Shard - worldscape, dust
4 x 10 warriors
4 Wraiths - 4 lash whips
5 Destroyers
8 Scarab Swarms
Tomb Spyder - gloom prism, fabricator claw
Monolith

Robert was running a Lord of Change, 2 Tzeentch heralds on chariots, 3 squads of flamers, 4 squads of horrors including the Changeling, and 2 Tzeentch demon princes. We were playing for 4 objectives with Dawn of War Deployment and I went first. Things looked bleak when the Stormlord's gimmick stopped on the second turn before he had even dropped anything in, and then when he did, he wiped out Imotekh, the cryptek, and the attached warrior squad right away. I had nothing left to do except buckle down and go after the horrors and be prepared to fight for a draw. The destroyers, c'tan, and wraiths were able to take care of that fairly quickly. The warriors went down pretty easily, with the reanimation not having much of a positive effect. Because he didn't have much in the way of heavy strength guns, the monolith survived for quite a while but didn't do all that much damage. I did manage to suck up a few flamers with the door, which was probably the high point of the game. The scarab swarms didn't have any vehicles to eat, but they surprised a unit of flamers that would have otherwise wiped out my last troops unit. One of his chariots was mishapped to a far corner of the board late in the game, while the other one and the Lord of Change raced to push me off my last objective. The surviving wraiths and scarabs and the tomb spyder successfully held them at bay and I won 1-0.

After further consideration, I want to try playing with Nemesor Zandrekh for a while. At 185 points, he is a steal. He has great equipment choices, and for only 5 points above a similarly equipped lord, you're getting his master strategist buff/nerf powers (along with the dubious phased reinforcement ability). I think the nerf part of that ability is the more useful one, though stealth and tank hunters for my own guys will be nice, too. I want to try pairing him with a troop squad and a cryptek with a chronometron and try to keep him and his buds alive for a while. I picked up an annihilation barge that I'm pretty stoked on using. I had to repose and rebase all the models and fix a few broken ones, and since I'm already missing a few arms and legs here and there, I thought I'd go for a complete broke-down, emerging-from-the-swamp look. I'm going to take advantage of their already rusty-looking paint job, somehow incorporate water effects into the bases, and judiciously apply some hanging seaweed-looking goop from their limbs. I eventually want to paint the neon gun tubes, too, since none of the newer models use them and I always thought they looked a little off when light is generally painted on any other 40k miniature, rather than using some kind of effect that depends on the actual physical properties of the miniature.

Lately I'm generally over the competitive approach to 40k. I still prefer 1500-2000 point games with standard missions, but since I barely have enough time as it is to build, paint, and play for fun, I'm not inclined to spend that precious time messing with any kind of spam. If a unit is halfway decent, has a neat effect, and/or just looks cool, I'll include one in my collection; otherwise, I probably won't be motivated enough to paint it.

Wargamescon 2011 GT 7/9/11-7/10/11

After this weekend’s 7-game GT at WarGamesCon, I figured I’d be pretty tired of playing 40k, but I actually feel somewhat invigorated and looking forward to more games. And that’s even after I had a pretty shitty record of 3-4 with 3 donuts. After seeing some of the top table shenanigans, I'm glad I was nowhere near it. To be so supposedly good at the game and then not be able to finish five turns, for shame! The bums lost, Lebowski! The bums lost!

Before I get into it, here’s a slideshow of some cool armies I saw:

I was playing with a slight variation on the list I had won with the week before at Dragon’s Lair. I changed the infernus pistols in my assault squads to meltaguns and used the spare points to give infernus pistols to two of my sanguinary guard.



The Sanguinor
Dante
5 Sanguinary Guard – 2 infernus pistols, 1 powerfist, chapter banner
2 Sanguinary Priests – 2 power weapons, 1 bike, 1 jump pack
Furioso Dreadnought – blood talons
10 Assault Marines – 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist, Rhino
10 Assault Marines – 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist, jump packs
7 Space Marine Bikes – 2 flamers, sergeant with powerfist
Storm Raven – TL lascannon, TL multimelta, extra armor



Game 1 – Imperial Guard
Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary: Seize Ground (5 objectives)
Secondary: Annihilation
Tertiary: Table Quarters

My first opponent Chris was a real nice guy playing with Creed, a couple of melta veteran squads in chimeras, and a couple of 20-man infantry blobs, a lord commissar, normal commissar, priest, and a couple of sergeants with power weapons, and something like 8 autocannon heavy weapon squads. I went first and set up the Sanguinor and my rhino squad halfway up the side of the table with the most objectives. He set up Creed and the infantry squads in rings castled up in the opposite corner. The Stormraven, Furioso, and bike squads charged up one side of the board while my jump pack marines moved up to hang out on objectives behind the rhino marines and Sanguinor. My right side was destroyed pretty early on by a combination of shooting and blob-squad counterassault after a classic front-line sacrifice. I could have played that better and broke left with my bikes and storm raven after the initial push. Also I made the mistake of landing Dante and the Sanguinary Guard in the piece of terrain in front of the left melta vet chimera and the damned priest died to a dangerous terrain test, which reduced their survivability substantially. They destroyed the melta vets but got chewed up pretty badly in return. Dante and the Sanguinor survived to kill plenty of autocannon squads and distract the blob squad towards the backfield. But the key moment happened when he drove up his melta vets on my right side towards the center objective on the next to last turn. They were just in range of my jump pack marines, who destroyed the chimera and survived to stretch over two objectives, while my foot marines stretched out over two objectives and I won 23-7.



Game 2 – Grey Knights
Deployment: Spearhead
Primary: Capture and Control
Secondary: Seize Ground (3 Objectives)
Tertiary: Kill opponent’s least expensive unit

Mike had a Grey Knights army with a grandmaster, a librarian, a big terminator squad, two strike squads with rhinos, three psiflemen, and a stormraven. I set up my rhino marines, jump pack marines, and bikes in my home quarter and moved up to hover behind cover around my C&C objective and a couple of nearby seize ground objectives. I drove my stormraven straight up the middle with the Sanguinor and furioso, and dante deepstruck with a priest and the sanguinary guard on the far right side. I don’t remember exactly everything played out but I do remember rolling very badly the entire game. The bikes and marines on my left took the brunt of his shooting the entire game, and the S8 autocannons negating my FNP but not as badly as I expected. His strike squad rhinos pulled up next to my piece of cover. I pounced with my surviving bikes and jump pack squads but could not break through either rhino with meltaguns or powerfists. My stormraven was brought down by the very first dread to shoot at it, and the furioso was immobilized immediately by his stormraven. The Sanguinor jumped forward and distracted the Grandmaster’s squad, while Dante and the guard took out the small strike squad on the right side fairly easily. If the game had ended on turn 5, I was in place to get the win. As it was, the strike squads jumped out of their rhinos and shredded my left side, while his terminators fought off my right side attack and grabbed a bunch of objectives. We both destroyed each others’ cheapest units, and the game ended with Mike up 30-7.



Game 3: Blood Angels
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Primary: Annihilation
Secondary: Seize Ground (3 Objectives)
Tertiary: Control the highest number of terrain features

Sean was playing a dark angels-marked mephiston/razorspam list with a second librarian, six small assault squads in las/plas razorbacks, two assault cannon/heavy bolter baal predators, and three autocannon/lascannon predators. This game was really just a pain in the ass. For whatever reason, I didn’t get along that well with the guy, and what a boring army to play against. I hung in there for a while and kept the KP even, but eventually Mephiston and all the mech shooting caught up with me and finished off most of my stuff. I lost 30-0.



Game 4: Grey Knights
Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary: Capture and Control
Secondary: Annihilation
Tertiary: Kill the most expensive enemy HQ

For the fourth round of the day, Jon and I were paired up for almost exactly the same matchup we played the week before at the top table at our monthly FLGS tournament. He was playing with Draigo, Coteaz, DCAs and special weapons troopers in a chimera, 2 squads of loadout paladins, 1 nemesis dreadknight, 1 dreadnought, and 2 stormravens. His dreadknight came in early and I was able to melta it to death with Dante’s squad and my jump marines. We zoomed around playing out the dance of the stormravens until I surrounded Draigo’s whip with the Sanguinor, dante, the sanguinary guard, my jump marines, and the bikes, esploded it, and assaulted the passengers with the whole mess. Once again Draigo and his buds went down in the face of all that skull fever. The furioso and foot marines headed for Coteaz’s posse and eventually took them all down. I don’t remember exactly what happened with his second stormraven, paladin squad, and the dreadnought but they either died or were too far from an objective to matter, and I won 30-0.



Game 5: Space Marines
Deployment: Spearhead
Primary: Seize Ground
Secondary: Capture and Control
Tertiary: Have more total units in enemy deployment zone

Will was playing a cool Lysander/Tigurius list (they should make a buddy cop movie… Tigurius would be the uptight one. Lysander would call him “Tiggy,” drive a convertible, and maybe have a drooling great pyrenees) that also had five SS/TH assault terminators, an ironclad in a drop pod, a drop pod of sternguard with flamers and combimeltas, a tac squad in a drop pod, a tac squad in a rhino, a MM/HF landspeeder, and a land raider redeemer. I reserved everything but my rhino assault marines. He dropped down with the ironclad near my rhino and immobilized it, put his other drop pod tac marines on top of a distant objective, and charged full forward with his land raider full of terminators. Second turn Dante dropped in, and the rhino marines ran out to surround him and give them a cover/assault save. I managed to immobilize the ironclad and keep him from assaulting me. Then the sternguard and land speeder dropped in right next to that group and dropped four flamer templates on the sanguinary guard plus a bunch of S6 bolter fire. With feel no pain, I resisted most of the wounds. The landraider pulled up and disgorged the terminators and Lysander. Lysander charged into the surviving berzerkers, but the terminators rolled poorly for difficult terrain and got hung up. Lysander killed all of the foot marines except for the super-sergeant (upgraded by the Sanguinor). On my following turn, the bikes, jump marines, and stormraven came in. The bikes zoomed up on my left, while the jump marines, sanguinary guard, and Dante charged into the assault terminators. The Sanguinor charged Lysander, and the furioso charged the sternguard. It was a perfect storm, highlighted by Dante wiping out the terminators single-handedly in one fell swoop. Lysander hung on for one more assault phase, while the furioso chopped through almost all of the sternguard with no problem. Tigurius and the one surviving melta gated right behind the furioso for a last ditch attempt to hurt him, which failed utterly, and he turned around and chopped them down. The Sanguinor, bikes, and jump marines advanced towards his midfield rhino, popped it, and killed the survivorshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. The game ended with me up two or three objectives to his one, including the capture and control objective. He seemed to think we could tie the tertiary, and who was I to argue, so the final tally was 26-3. Will was a really good sport about the extreme change of fortunes in the match, hope to play him again.

Bonus spectacle: I looked over at the Dude's game next to me, he had some serious Eldar sneakiness going on... and you should see the jetbike/falcon mating dance he had going later on.





Game 6 – Orks
Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary Objective: Annihilation
Secondary Objective: Capture and Control
Tertiary Objective: Highest number of surviving troop units

Winning big my first game of day two sent me up near the top of the B-bracket to play against Richard from Wyoming, who was playing with Ghazgull, a big mek, 5 or 6 megaarmor nobz in a battlewagon, 2 17-18 boy squads in battlewagons, a burna mob in a battlewagon, a deff dred with megablasta, and 12 or so lootas. Thas a lotta battlewagons! And true to form, they came right at me. Dawn of War gave me a bit of a break against the lootas, and I dropped Dante and his buddies into his backfield take care of them. They also distracted the deff dread and the burna’s battlewagon. I waited with everyone else in the corner near my home objective, waiting to break hard left when I got the chance and spread his mobs out a bit. Naturally he called the waaagh when he was close enough and did plenty of damage against the rhino marines and jump marines. The furioso counterattacked against the mob on my right and wiped them out in no time. I had immobilized Ghaz’s battlewagon, so he spent most of the game midfield trying to bring down the stormraven in assault, which I believe he finally did near the end of the game. The megaarmor nobz were his real rock stars though, making something like 237 5+ invulnerable saves and holding out against the bikes, the sanguinor, and the furioso for like four turns of assault. If I had managed to wipe them out in the initial assault (like they damn well should have!), I might have been able to regroup, kill ghaz, and possibly recover my deployment zone from the green tide. Instead the nobz wiped out pretty much everyone. Bastards. The deff dread finished off Dante and friends in his backfield after they had wiped out the lootas and burnas. A brutal game, but basically Richard rolled better, bouncing me back to the bottom of the B-bracket.



Game 7: Dark Angels

Deployment: Dawn of War
Primary Objective: Seize Ground
Secondary Objective: Don't Remember
Tertiary Objective: Destroy most expensive unit

Unfortunately I don't remember my third opponent's name, he was a nice guy from Corpus and I enjoyed talking with him about all the craptastic landmarks in that fair city. His army was tailor made to take mine apart, unfortunately, as all that super-mobile krak missile fire just tore through feel no pain, and I was making shit for cover saves. Also I overextended to the left with the Sanguinor and furioso, and just got played out. Meanwhile, his bikes zipped around and shot me up with plasma guns until there was very little left. I lost 30-0.



A fairly crappy end to a fun weekend. Definitely will go back next year, providing congress raises the debt ceiling and the four horsemen are kept at bay for just a little bit longer. I'll just be waiting out the real age of strife in my bomb shelter...

More skulltakin'

I've played a few more games with the Blood Angels, against my friend Mack's necrons, Brandon's Vulkan marines a couple more times, and then Brandon's tyranids once as well. The necrons went down pretty easily, as they were deployed a little too close and just don't have the firepower to slow the advance of Kharnte's inferno. I won the second matchup against Brandon's marines, and also the subsequent 2500 tie-breaker match. But then against the tyranids I made a couple of key mistakes (using the wrong units to engage genestealers and letting the trygon easily chew his way through the bike squad as well as the sanguinary guard)and lost a 5-objective seize ground game 2-1.

On the modelling front, I made a Sanguinor using the Skulltaker and some old bloodthirster wings, and converted jump packs with old-style tyranid gargoyle wings and a single turbine (to emulate the angel wing jump packs) for my characters and the sanguinary guard.

I was messing around today with the idea of death company and figured out that my entire collection of World Eater models makes a pretty cool 2500 point army exactly, when I use my Sephiro... I mean Astorath... model as a normal jump pack chaplain:

The Sanguinor
Dante
2 Sanguinary Priests - 2 power weapons, 1 with bike, 1 with jump pack
Chaplain - jump pack
Chaplain
Sanguinary Guard - chapter banner, 1 powerfist
9 Death Company - 1 thunder hammer, 2 power weapons
Death Company Dreadnought - blood talons
5 Assault Marines - 1 infernus pistol, sergeant with powerfist, Rhino
5 Assault Marines - 1 infernus pistol, sergeant with powerfist, Rhino
10 Assault Marines - 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist, jump packs
7 Bikes - 2 flamers, sergeant with powerfist
Stormraven - TL multimelta, TL lascannon

Pretty much a direct assault force, either straight up or focused on a particular flank. Ideally either the bike or assault squad sergeant gets the Sanguinor's blessing. The foot chaplain hangs out with the DC contingent in the Deathmobile, which I can imagine leading the charge with the Sanguinor. I'm very curious as to how the DC dread performs - seems like it could be quite a beast with fleet. Dante and the jump chaplain and priest move up with the sanguinary guard, taking cover behind the advancing assault squad and providing them with furious charge and FNP. The rhino marines are the back of the line, sitting on objectives. It's not a hard boyz army, and is definitely vulnerable to psychic attack, but could still be a lot of fun.

Action Report: Berzerkers vs. Space Marines

The Guillotine had their battlefield debut last night against my buddy Brandon's Void Dragon (vanilla) space marines. We rolled for a spearhead killpoints matchup, and I won the roll to go first. I decided to use the list I've described, but to drop a few marines from one assault squad and add in a jump pack chaplain. I joined Dante, the chaplain, and the jump priest to the jump assault squad, and threw the large foot assault squad, foot priest, and furioso in the storm raven. I had decided that I'd deep strike more if I got second turn, but when I got first, I just decided to group everybody together at the front line and go for the throat:



Here was Brandon's list:



Vulkan
5 th/ss terminators
Ironclad dreadnought with 2 missiles
10 sternguard with 3 combiplasmas, 3 combimeltas, fist sergeant, and rhino with hunterkiller
Tactical squad with flamer, multimelta, and TL assault cannon razorback
2 squads of 5 scouts with sniper rifles and missile launchers
Land raider crusader
2 multimelta heavy flamer land speeders
1 heavy bolter assault cannon land speeder
Thunderfire cannon



I moved forward first turn, shot the storm raven at one of the land speeders and stunned and immobilized it. In return, he exploded the storm raven and put a bunch of wounds on the assault squad with the thunderfire. Feel no pain helped, but not all that much. The jump priest died in the initial barrage, too. If I'd have deep struck the assault squad, they would have only had to weather one turn of shooting before getting to assault. As it was, the terminators jumped into them the next turn and wiped out the whole bunch with no trouble at all. Dante needs to stay away from thunder hammers!

We traded punches for the rest of the game. The furioso dropped a second land speeder and a scout squad before getting rended by a land speeder assault cannon. My foot assault squad and the sanguinary guard wiped the terminators with shooting and furious charge, dropped the ironclad with infernus pistols, but were then blown out of the woods by combined shooting from Brandon's whole army. The bikes chopped through one scout squad, then took off across the battlefield to run down one of the combat squaded tac units. The game ended on the 5th turn with Brandon up 9-8. A very bloody game! My MVP was probably the foot priest who enabled his squad and the sanguinary guard to kill the terminators.

Any advice on using the storm raven or deep striking with blood angels in general?

Pre-Primered Guillotine

Pictures as promised of the new gang!

Group shot:


From left: Drahzhad (Astoroth), Lord Grozan and the Skull Brethren (Dante and Sanguinary Guard), and Togg, the Bringer of the Red Mist (Chaplain)


Gragh's Reavers (Bikers):


The 3 Throne Champions (sanguinary priests), with Mortrek the Slaughterer (furioso dreadnought) bringing up the rear:


Turgan's Rain of Blood (jump pack assault marines):


And finally, Raptor One:


Top view of Raptor One:


Bottom view of Raptor One, showing the magnagrapple:

Decollage

I've got nearly all of my counts-as blood angels army together, or at least the first incarnation of it. Once I get my jump packs and last throne axe in the mail, I'll put some pictures up. After further consideration I've decided to use them to represent a specific berzerker warband which I will call The Guillotine. I'm also thinking now the chainfists on the Dreadnought could represent blood talons, with their ability to cut right through several foes with each swing.

The updated counts-as list:

Dante (or Astorath)

Sanguinary Guard - 1 powerfist

3 Sanguinary Priests - 3 power weapons, 1 bike, 1 jump pack

Furioso Dreadnought - heavy flamer, blood talons

10 Assault Marines - 2 inferno pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

10 Assault Marines - 2 inferno pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

10 Assault Marines - 2 inferno pistols, sergeant with powerfist

7 Marine Bikes - 2 flamers, sergeant with powerfist

Storm Raven - TL lascannon, TL multimelta

Led by Lord Grozan, the Guillotine has served with distinction, if not sophistication, in many of Abaddon's Black Crusades. Living only to spill blood for the blood god, they represent a loose coalition of former World Eater legionnaires, the only membership requirement being the ability to keep up with the rest of the band. Over centuries of raids and invasions, the Guillotine has amassed an impressive armory of fast assault tech, ancient and otherwise, that allows them to come to grips with their enemy as quickly as possible.

Lord Grozan was once Captain Keer, a senior World Eater who was among the host sent to hunt down the surviving loyalists on Istvaan V. His archaic bronzed armor, and that of his chosen retinue, can always be seen at the spearhead of any assault, absorbing withering enemy fire as he surges towards the front line. His peerless reputation for tracking and butchering the most senior enemy commander in every engagement sends even the most stalwart heroes skittering for an off-world shuttle.

His only rival in such feats is Mortrek the Slaughterer, who was entombed in his brazen sarcophagus after being very nearly immolated to death at the Battle of Skalathrax. Mortrek is known for his aerial assaults, his bladed limbs hewing a path through the most dense enemy infantry before his massive bulk has even hit the ground.

The most skilled Guillotine champions carry the sinister Axes of the Throne. These wretched fusions of demonic steel and bone from Khorne's skull throne were forcefully pried from the clutches of bloodcrusher champions on the demon world Gora, and their mere presence drives all those nearby into an unstoppable frenzy. The largest and most powerful Throne Axe is Deathsfall, carried into battle by Drazhad the Sunderer, a psychopath of matchless malificence, whose personal tally of skulls inspires all those around him to feats of martial greatness and monumental carnage.

Battle Report:: Imperial Guard vs. Eldar 4/8/11

The ambush elements of the Catachan XIV were dug in along their front line, each man scanning the horizon for any indication of the enemy. It was still dark and despite their sharp, battle-hardened eyes, there had been no contact as of yet. Still, details were hard to pick out in the distance, and the guardsmen could not shake the feeling that they were being watched. When a private from bravo squad's head suddenly exploded without warning, a different feeling entirely surged through the men of the Fighting Fourteenth. Bravo squad hit the dirt while the other units squinted into the darkness, still unable to find a target. An orange glow slowly suffused the skyline and the air in the valley grew palpably warmer, as if heated by the fires of some hellish forge. A horrible alien battlecry pulsed over them - through them - and each man felt the rise of terror in their guts. The Eldar had returned to Tra-El in force and with sinister purpose. Would reinforcements arrive in time to save the failed ambush?

Shaun and I played a 2000 point dawn of war annihilation matchup that turned out to be a blast. I was playing with a command HQ in a chimera with 2 plasma guns and a lascannon, a lord commissar leading 5 ogryns in a chimera, Harker veterans with 3 grenade launchers and an autocannon, an infantry platoon consisting of a command squad with 4 flamers and three grenade launcher/autocannon infantry squads, a missile launcher squad, a mortar squad, a vendetta, 3 scout sentinels, a hellhound, a manticore, a medusa with camo netting, and a leman russ with heavy bolter sponsons and a pintle heavy stubber. Shaun's Eldar consisted of Radeld Ranulth (Eldrad), 5 warlocks including 3 with destructor and 3 with spears and embolden, the Avatar, 6 wraithguard, 2 squads of 8 pathfinders, a squad of 5 dire avengers, 10 warp spiders including an exarch with twin power blades and withdraw, a falcon with a scatter laser, and 3 war walkers with scatter lasers and rocket launchers. I rolled to go first, but Shaun seized the initiative and just like that, the hunters became the hunted!

Turn 1

Shaun moved up the rest of his forces to support the seer council and pathfinders that had started on the board. The pathfinders picked out a guardsman dug in around the bunker and sent the squad to ground. The warp spiders teleport up and form the eldar front line. I also moved up my firing line and tried to put some heat on the warp spiders. A blast from the leman russ drops a single warp spider.



Despite being pinned, sergeant Taylor of bravo squad picks out movement behind the forested hill in the distance and manages to direct ordnance fire. Unfortunately, thick cover reduces the effectiveness of the barrage and only one of the loathsome aliens is brought down.

Turn 2

Radeld and his buddies fortune up the warp spiders and guide the pathfinders. The warp spiders teleport forward and combine fire with the two pathfinder squads, reducing the guard infantry squad to two pinned guardsmen who continue to survive all kinds of fire for another turn. The Avatar and wraithguard kill a couple from the other guard squad. In return, my command HQ lights up the avatar with plas and las fire but inflict only 3 wounds, just short of killing the ancient demon. My missile launchers join them on high ground. The hellhound covers the warp spiders in burning fuel and the manticore drops a single rocket blast on them, but the prescience of their thrice damned farseer allows them to survive relatively unscathed and only one dies. Harker and his squad come wading up the river on my right and pour fire into the spiders as well, but the alien magicks are strong and no further casualties can be inflicted.

Turn 3

The mighty avatar storms the bunker and wipes out the infantry squad there, while Radeld and the seer council approach behind him. My right flank is threatened when war walkers sneak onto the field and tear into the back of the hellhound with rockets and laser fire, causing a catastrophic explosion. Thankfully, noone is near enough to be hurt by the blast. The warp spiders react to the veterans on their own flank and wipe them out in assault after some softening up. I had a big turn as well: the Avatar was finally brought down in a hail of krak missiles, and the command HQ combined with my ordnance to kill more than half of the wraithguard. My sentinels came in on my right and attacked the warwalkers, bringing two down with their multilasers and emu-kicking the last one down in assault. I also finished off the warp spiders with manticore, mortar, and chimera fire, and killed one of the warlocks hanging out with Radeld. In the haste to join the fray, the ogryn's chimera threw a track and got stuck at the base of the hill.

After days of hunting the eldar walkers through the thick forests of Tan-El, the scout sentinels made their way to the front line, stepping gingerly through the smoking wreckage of their prey. Unfortunately, the attack came too late to save their brothers manning the hellhound.

Turn 4

The wraithguard destroy the ogryn chimera, wounding one of the big lugs in the explosion. Radeld and his crew have a big turn and wipe out the command HQ and one missile launcher team with destructor fire and the bale energies of an eldritch storm. The sentinels, chimera, and ogryns return fire and reduce the wraithguard to a single alien ghost zombie. Marbo emerges from his hiding spot atop the wrecked bunker and hurls a demolition charge into the eldar seer council, killing two more of the pointy-eared bastards. Finally, the vendetta emerges on my left flank and hurries towards the eldar firing line, missing a lascannon shot at the falcon on the way.



Marbo lay flat and completely still on the roof of the burned out bunker. Hidden amongst the blackened corpses of his fallen brothers, he watched and waited as the enemy approached. The alien witch was only 6 paces away now. Slowly engaging the primer on his detpack, Marbo flexed his muscles and prepared himself once again to make what was likely to be his last living act.

Turn 5 and 6

As is wont to happen in the late stages of a game, I rushed from the 5th turn into the 6th and forgot to take a picture. Radeld joined the wraithguard in shooting at the ogryns, to little effect, while the destructor warlocks had themselves a little Mar-b-que. The falcon zoomed forward and the dire avengers disembarked on the next turn, lighting up the mortar squad and killing 2 of the 3 teams. Pulse laser fire from the falcon destroyed the leman russ' battlecannon. The lord commissar and ogryns charged into Radeld and the last wraithguard, but the combat was largely a draw over two turns before the game ended. The vendetta brought the platoon command over next to one of the pathfinder squads, and they promptly immolated them on the spot with combined fire from their flamers. Unfortunately, the lascannons on the vendetta could not find their mark on the eldar skimmer across the table. The medusa was of little help as well, only managing to destroy the tank's pulse laser. Having exhausted its missile supply, the manticore rushed forward and flamed the dire avengers to death. Shaun wins the epic match by 3 killpoints!

As the enemy drew near, Commissar Lenck bellowed the signal to attack and his ogryn kill team roared in answer, the lot of them charging forward out of the wreckage of their former transport. Despite outnumbering them two to one (and probably moreso considering the substantial girth of the ogryns), the assault seemed to falter immediately. Lenck himself struggled to engage the enemy witch, but his sword and powerfist could find no mark as the alien always danced sideways or backwards in time to avoid his attacks. Similarly, the punishing blows from the ogryn bashers seemed to have no effect on the eldar wraith construct, their oversized fists glancing harmlessly from the loathsome creature's thick armor. Then, in a flash, the aliens were gone from the battlefield, leaving only the sounds of groaning men and the smell of burning wreckage. The Catachan ambush had failed, and the Fourteenth had suffered significant losses. Could they recover in time to defend the colonies on Tan-El from what would in all likelihood be a future of unending, uncomfortable, and embarrassing eldar butt probes?

DUN DUN DUN

Kharnte Guisada

Khorne Rhino

After some deliberation, I've decided that my champion model would better represent Dante than the Sanguinor, and I'd love to make my Skull Brethren a scoring unit anyway. I'm going to try to find a better model to represent the Exsanguinator. As a side note, I think the marine Khorne Lord would make a good Astorath once you put a jump pack on him.

On a related note, I've ordered a bunch of the MaxMini jumppack bits for all my jump units, as I think they would look cool and I was too lazy to try the pen method, as awesome as those are.

And I've decided that instead of icon bearers, I'm gonna represent my Sanguinary Guard with Berzerker champions bearing those molded skull axes that look so awesome - surely bone carved from the skull throne itself would drive any nearby khorne devotees so mad with bloodthirst as to provoke them into crushing assaults and ignore bodily injury. And even though it adds points and reduces effective range, I've also decided to only use inferno pistols in my assault squads rather than meltaguns, as no self-respecting berzerker would use BOTH hands to shoot at something.

So all that feeds into my new 2k list, which I think would be effective and fun. I'm going to try my damndest to get it done for BOLS... er, Wargamescon:

Kharnte (yuk yuk) - Dante

Skull Brethren - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 2 infernus pistols, 1 powerfist

The Decapitators - 3 Sanguinary Priests, one bike, one jumppack

Mortrek the Slaughterer - Furioso Dreadnought with bloodfists, a heavy flamer, and extra armor

Laghk and the Lacerators - 10 assault marines, 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Nephiragh and the Gorechildren - 10 assault marines, 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Turgan's Rain of Blood - 10 assault marines, 2 infernus pistols, sergeant with powerfist

Gragh's Reavers - 7 bikers, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist

Raptor One - Stormraven with extra armor and twin-linked lascannons and multimeltas

Dante and his buddies are screened by the jump pack assault squad. The bikers, 1 assault squad, and the furioso charge forward in the storm reaver, and the last assault squad can split up between the two rhinos if they want for more scoring skulltaking options.

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 4/2/11

(picture by frank)

Using a 1500 point mech guard army, I pulled off a 1st place win at the Dragon's Lair tournament yesterday and took home a Storm Raven. My list:

Company Commander
4 flamers
Officer of the Fleet
Chimera (heavy flamer)

Veteran Squad
3 meltaguns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Veteran Squad
3 meltaguns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Veteran Squad
3 plasma guns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Veteran Squad
3 plasma guns
lascannon
Chimera (heavy bolter)

Vendetta

Manticore (heavy flamer)

Manticore (heavy flamer)

Medusa (camo netting)

First game was seize ground/pitched battle against Jon C's space wolves, consisting of a wolfrider wolf lord, 4 or 5 mixed loadout wolfriders, another wolfrider wolf lord with 15 fenrisian wolves, 3 small squads of grey hunters with 2 rhinos, and 1 squad of missile launcher long fangs. From the beginning it would be wolves coming across the table and me just trying to shoot the hell out of them before it was too late. My own saturation of fire and Jon's terrible luck with 3+ saves combined to get me a big win.

Second game I played a kill points/dawn of war mission against an unpainted guard army, who seemed much more well versed with the previous codex and rules edition. It seemed like he had a pretty small guard army that he had inflated into 1500 points using veterans and carapace armor: Yarrick, two small ratling squads, four or five veteran squads on foot, a couple heavy weapon squads, 2 basilisks, and a standard leman russ. Now that I write this out I'm not sure how he pulled off the heavy weapons teams - he also insisted he had given the army improved comms and asked if my vets were light infantry, so... Maybe not a big deal for a friendly game but surely a tournament is something just a little bit more than a friendly game? I noticed he was playing a completely different army for the third game, so who knows what was going on. In any case, after losing a couple chimeras early on, I took him apart piece by piece with heavy ordnance and the command HQ outflanking in the vendetta and got full points.

Third game was against Frank at the top table, with probably the most boring combination of competing armies, deployment, and mission: foot marine gunline, mech guard, spearhead, and capture and control. I zoomed around with the vendetta for a few turns, making ridiculous cover saves, before I realized that I'd never be able to contest his objective with it (not being a tank). After the manticores failed to make a dent into the marines holding his home objective, I saw a draw coming and just castled up, fending off outflanking scouts and shooting a couple squads that were within range. The game ended on the 5th turn, just as his librarian was drawing in to contest my objective with a last-minute gate of infinity. Big draw, but my other two wins were good enough to secure first place.

Feel Like Takin' Skulls

I reallllly want to have a pure post-heresy World Eaters warband army using the blood angels codex... I just can't figure out if it would be worth the investment (and whether I need any more damn armies). It would avoid any psykers and pre-heresy weapons like assault cannons and such, and just focus on quick resilient assault - just straight up coming to take your fucking skull. Sanguinary priests would be represented by khorne icon bearers. Really, the main impetus is to do something fun with my old school berzerker jetpack guys. They just remind me so much of an 'evil' sanguinary guard. And it would give me an excuse to get one of those dope world eater dreads. But is it enough to warrant spending a bunch more on getting the rest of this force? I did notice today that it is somewhat similar to a Lamenters list the Dude has posted on his blog, though a bit lighter on troops. And I will just mention that his Lamenters just get more and more badass as time goes on.

2000 Points

Madrigor the Exsanguinor - the Sanguinor

The Skull Brethren - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 1 powerfist, death masks

Bringers of the Red Mist - 2 Sanguinary Priests

Mortrek the Slaughterer - Furioso dreadnought with heavy flamer, meltagun, blood fists

Khamar the Gatherer - Furioso dreadnought with heavy flamer, meltagun, blood talons

Larkh and the Lacerators - 10 assault marines, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Nephiraghh and the Gorechildren - 10 assault marines, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with powerfist
Rhino

Gragh's Reavers - 8 Space Marine Bikers, 2 meltaguns, sergeant with power weapon

Raptor One - typhoon missile launcher, twin-linked plasma cannons

Raptor Two - twin-linked lascannons, twin-linked multimeltas

Everyone would just stick together and go chop heads or die trying. Everyone would (usually) have furious charge, feel no pain, extra attacks from being near the Exsanguinator, and sometimes even fearless - plus one random sergeant would be blessed by the Blood God every game - seems pretty Khorney to me! It would really count on feel no pain and speed to get to grips - any kind of leafblower list could shoot it down pretty easy. Very low on troops, but a warp-riven band of skull-taking madmen probably probably would be. I could either combat squad into the Rhinos or just go full on into the stormravens. Not so competitive - the only goal would be to take the biggest skulls on the board before the game ended.

Where'd they get the stormravens, you might ask? Maybe the question should be, where'd the imperials get theirs?

Dude, where's your stormraven?

Possible BOLS WH

I have upgraded my Sisters of Battle collection recently. I've played this list a couple of times; so far it has done well and is always pretty fun.

Living Saint

Canoness - inferno pistol, eviscerator, mantle of ophelia, cloak of st. aspira, book of st. lucius
5 Celestians - 2 meltaguns
Immolator - twin-linked multimelta

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 storm bolters, veteran sister superior with bolter, power weapon, and book of st. lucius

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 storm bolters, veteran sister superior with bolter, power weapon, and book of st. lucius

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 meltaguns, veteran sister superior with bolt pistol, eviscerator, and book of st. lucius
Rhino - extra armor, smoke launchers

10 Sisters of Battle - 2 meltaguns, veteran sister superior with bolt pistol, eviscerator, and book of st. lucius
Rhino - extra armor, smoke launchers

9 Seraphim - 2 twin flame pistols, veteran sister superior with bolt pistol, eviscerator

Exorcist - extra armor, smoke launchers

Exorcist - extra armor, smoke launchers

10 Retributors - 4 heavy bolters, veteran sister superior with bolter, power weapon, and book of st. lucius

Naturally, the Living Saint hangs with the Seraphim. Eight is the ideal squad size for that unit, but I find that it gets shot up a couple of times before you can reasonably expect to activate shield of the emperor anyway, so the extra two sisters are just ablative wounds until they really get stuck in. The Living Saint has to watch out for hoss characters and assault smart so as not to get taken down immediately by a power fist, but as long as she's alive that squad is a fearless flying Kenny Rogers Roasters, spitting hot fire with the three flame templates and divine guidance. Together with the other Canoness' squad in the immolator, they can also serve as a probe or distraction while the rest of the army groups together. The melta rhino squads are decent mid-range skirmishers, as long as they stay in range of the other sisters for fire support. Everyone else generally stays in cover in the center of deployment, providing overlapping fields of fire and screening exorcists from assault and drop pod baddies.

Possible BOLS CSM

Short and sweet.


Abaddon

8 Berzerkers - Skull Champion with powerfist
Rhino

8 Berzerkers - Skull Champion with powerfist
Rhino

8 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, Plague Champion with powerfist, combimelta
Rhino - dozer blade

8 Plaguemarines - 2 meltaguns, Plague Champion with powerfist, combimelta
Rhino - dozer blade

Land Raider - demonic possession, dozer blade

3 Obliterators

3 Obliterators