Austin GW Store Opening Day 10/26/13

I went to the opening event ("First to the Fight") at the new Austin Games Workshop store (their facebook page) in the Brodie Oaks shopping center. It's a relatively small store but, as far as I could tell, is laser focused on showing off the goods with product shelves, display case, small demo table for the three main games (40k, WFB, and LOTR), painting bar, and two tiled tables with the GW plastic terrain. I think they had all their staff there to talk to folks, give plenty of demos, and run the First to the Fight events. Obviously loads of people that play 40k love to bitch about the font of their folly, as it were, but presentation is one of the main reasons I play this game, and the store is all about presentation. Fully painted armies look great on their tables. The walls are lined with their beautiful merch. Nicely painted demo armies displayed in glass cases. That's the kind of shit that turned me on when I started playing this game back in '95, and though I do indulge quite a bit in the competitive aspects of the game, I still enjoy closely-fought games the most, win or lose.

For the opening day, they had a painting contest, a conversion contest, and a little 40k skirmish contest. Not knowing what to expect, I brought my Saim Hann Eldar. Basically you could play up to three games using a simple scenario: pitched battle, purge the alien, at 500 points. They added up your points at the end and picked a couple winners.

Their was some confusion on the points you could score, but it was just for fun so I really didn't chase the wins too hard. I pulled a small force out of my collection: a farseer on jetbike with singing spear, 3 guardian jetbikes, 9 dire avengers, 5 rangers, a scatter laser/shuricannon vyper, and a double-scatter laser war walker. I was honestly just trying to throw in a bunch of little things so I could use a variety of models, but it ended up being really shooty and I apparently won the little challenge. Scored a sweet certificate even.

First game was against Trent and his nurgle CSM: a nurgle bike lord, 2 squads of about 15 cultists, and a heldrake (!). It came out about how I expected - I shot up the cultists and lord really good, and then the heldrake came on and wiped out about two of my units each turn. Lost that one. Then I played Tyson and his necrons: an overlord, 2 squads of warriors, and an annihilation barge. The annihilation barge was winnowing me down until it came within range of the Farseer's spear and charge. After that I pretty much just shredded what was left and took a win. Third game I played against a guy with a nicely painted ultramarines force: a librarian, one squad of sniper scouts, one squad of assault scouts, some tac marines in a rhino, and a whirlwind. Again, my shooting carried the day and I just worked my way through everything with S6 guns.

All in all, I think it is a nice addition to the Austin 40k community and will hopefully bring some new folks to the local tables.

Tournament: Wonko's 9/14/13

I jumped into one of Wonko's narrative tournaments for the first time earlier this month. It was a 2000-point tournament continuing their campaign for control of a system. This particular week, the gathered generals would be competing for control of Justine, a jungle world where spores in the air gave everything +1 cover.

I brought my now usual mixed Saim Hann list:




Farseer - singing spear

5 Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter laser, shuriken cannon, holofield
9 Dire Avengers
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter laser, shuriken cannon, holofield

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon
3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

8 Rangers

3 Vypers - scatter lasers, shuriken cannons

8 Warp Spiders - exarch with spinneret rifle, fast shot
Crimson Hunter Exarch
Fire Prism - holofield
3 War Walkers - 6 scatter lasers
5 Dark Reapers - starshot missiles, exarch with fast shot, night vision

Game 1 - Table Quarters + bonus relic
Deployment: Vanguard Strike




For this game, the relic (a "spore scope") provided a permanent bonus to one of the winner's units (-1 to enemy cover save) for the rest of the tourney. I was playing against a nice guy (sorry I forgot the name) who was running Trazyn the Infinite, 2 units of 10 warriors in ghost arks, 2 units of 5 immortals, 6 wraiths with whip coils, 5 acanthrites, 2 annihilation barges, 1 triarch stalker, and a tesseract ark. The Tesseract Labyrinth lasted a few turns but didn't do too much damage. I infiltrated the rangers in some woods to his left and he spent a good amount of firepower trying to root them out of the trees. In turn, he came at me with the wraiths and acanthrites on my left. I shot the hell out of his stuff, wiping out almost everything and getting 3 table quarters, but didn't end up having time to jump on the relic. So neither of us got the scope!

Game 2 - Kill Points
Deployment: Dawn of War



I was paired against Noah for my second game. He had a farseer with mantle of the laughing god, 5 wave serpents kitted out like mine, 2 of them carrying min dire avengers, and 2 of them carrying scythe wraithguard, 2 squads of 5 warp spiders, and three war walkers. I sent my farseer, some bikes, and the dire avengers wave serpent up my left side, the fire dragons and rangers in the middle, and the dark reapers and fire prism on my right.The rangers jumped his farseer in the ruins and beat him down in one turn, and spent the rest of the game trying to distract the war walkers. My fire dragons got popped out of their transport by deep striking warp spiders, while the dark reapers succumbed to the other. My warp spiders mishapped for a turn or two, finally coming on to bust a wave serpent and not much else before they were d-scythed. I fought him off pretty good for most of the game, but he ended up winning 12-9 (or maybe 15-9? I can't recall).

Game 3 - Control the Vault (control the middle building uncontested plus bonus points for units within 12" of the center)
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil



For my last game, I drew up against John Cook and his space wolves + fenrisian guard allies. He had a couple wolf lords with fenrisian wolves charging up the middle at me, two or three squad of grey hunters in rhino following up behind, plus a support crew of rune priest and long fangs, a guard squad on foot, 4 guard lascannon turrets, a psychic battle squad, a squad of guard in a vendetta, a squad of guard in a chimera, and a sky shield. Something like that, I can't quite remember. It was a tough dust-up in the middle as I had to shoot up everything he had coming right at me. I ended up controlling the building and winning a few more points for having units close to the middle.

I won second place for my efforts, and one of the last edition tactical squads. Thanks Wonkos and Frank for running a fun tourney! Gonna try to make it next month too.

Tournament: Feast of Blades Qualifier 8/10/13

I played in the Dragon's Lair FOB qualifier yesterday with my Saim Hann Eldar, and ended up withfirst place out of a total of 8 players. I picked up a bunch of old pathfinders and dark reapers from my buddy Hart and got them 75% painted so I could incorporate them into a new 1850 list:

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear
6 Fire Dragons - Wave Serpent with twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields
3 Jetbikes
3 Jetbikes
9 Dire Avengers - Wave Serpent with twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields
8 Rangers
9 Warp Spiders - exarch with spinneret rifle
3 Vypers - scatter lasers and shuriken cannons
Fire Prism - holofields
3 War Walkers - 2 scatter lasers each
5 Dark Reapers - starshot missiles, exarch with fast shot, night vision, and starshot missiles

The Reapers can go down to heavy dakka, but until then are a big time menace to society. The pathfinders are less powerful but can put wounds on high-toughness creeps and camp out on objectives in the second or third floors of ruins. I basically traded them for a fire prism and 2 squads of jetbikes, and while I missed the resilience that comes from duplication, I liked the tactical diversity.

GAME 1 - Space Marines
Mission: Big Guns Never Tire (5 objectives)
Deployment: Dawn of War

Matt (I think?) had a pretty classic vanilla marines list, with a chapter master, melta/flamer dreadnought in a drop pod, 10 terminators with 2 cyclone missile launchers, three tactical squads with plasma and rocket launchers or a lascannon in rhinos, a missile launcher/heavy bolter land speeder, a vindicator, and a whirlwind. I hadn't played with the new eldar against vanilla marines yet, so that was a thrill. He inflicted some good early damage that put me on my heels, but I also made some crucial cover saves that let enough of my sharp pointy things survive to whittle him down and keep him off objectives. I ended up winning 13-2.

GAME 2 - Eldar
Mission: The Scouring
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

I had a very close second game matched up against Carlisle's eldar. He had an Iyanden list with a wraithknight warlord, a shadowseer, three squads of 5 wraithguard (1 with D-scythes) in scatter laser/holofields wave serpents, 9 or 10 dire avengers, and a second wraithknight, and 3 scatter laser war walkers. First turn was critical, and I rolled to win it. I managed to only drop one of his wave serpents the first turn, but he probably would have done much worse to me. Things went his way for almost the entire game, and I was hanging on by the skin of my warlord trait (master of cities!), when I had an epic 5th turn and killed his warlord wraithknight (all 6 wounds), 2 wave serpents, and 6 or 7 wraithguard that were threatening my deployment zone. A single fire dragon survived being charged by a few last wraithguard and held morale just in time for the game to end on the bottom of the 5th and keep them away from my warp spiders, who were holding the 4-point objective. Tough game and luck definitely helped me survive against a badass army and excellent general.

GAME 3 - Eldar
Mission: Crusade
Deployment: Vanguard Strike

My third game sent me up against Noah's foot eldar list, which consisted of a bike farseer with mantle of the laughing god, an avatar, 10 or so striking scorpions, 10 or so rangers, a big squad of 20 or so guardians with 2 star cannons and a warlock, 2 squads of 10 dire avengers with shimmershield exarchs, 2 double-bright lance and sword wraithlords, and 3 double-bright lance war walkers. He deployed his foot troops right in front of all my dakka, and I wiped them out fairly quickly. He had placed one of his objectives in his opposite corner, and was planning on infiltrating his rangers there - but I won the roll to infiltrate first and put my rangers there instead. The scorpions ended up murdering them, but it kept his troops off the objective. I ended up wiping nearly everything of his besides a few pathfinders and striking scorpions by the fourth or so turn, and we called it.

I haven't decided whether I want to spend the scratch on going to Denver to play in the invitational. I'm sure it will be pretty hard core and that's a lot of money to spend on a long weekend of having to deal with spam style douchebag armies and their handlers.

Here's the new guys after a few more finishing touches:

 

Tournament: Dragon's Lair 8/4/13

Played in a 2000 point tournament Sunday with my newly improved Saim Hann. Here was the army:

Farseer - singing spear, eldar jetbike
6 Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields
4 x 3 Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon each
10 Dire Avengers - exarch with twin-linked shuriken catapult
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, and holofields (new addition!)
8 Warp Spiders - exarch with spinneret rifle and fast shot
Crimson Hunter Exarch (new addition!)
3 Vypers - scatter lasers and shuriken cannons
3 War Walkers - 6 scatter lasers (new addition!)
2 Fire Prisms - holofields

GAME 1 - Eldar
Missions: The Scouring and Purge the Alien
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

JR was playing his awesome Iyanden army, with Baharroth, a shadowseer, 2 squads of 10 swooping hawks 2 squads of 10 wraithguard, a wraithlord, a wraithknight, 6 or 7 rangers, and 5 or 6 dark reapers. Getting first turn was a big deal with this game - otherwise I have no doubt that the reapers would have had their pick at wrecking much of my stuff. As it turned out, I got to fire the initial volley and wipe them out right away. After that, I suffered fairly minimal losses (2 of the war walkers, a couple of jetbike squads, maybe one of the fire prisms) and managed to wipe out all he had. The wraithknight and wraithguard suffered particularly from bad save rolls, but with hammer and anvil, I also had the advantage of range, firepower, and speed. I got full points.

GAME 2 - GREY KNIGHTS
Missions: The Relic and Big Guns Never Tire
Deployment: Vanguard Strike

As usual, Matt played his grey knights with great skill. He had an inquisitor, 2 dreadknights, 5 or 6 paladins, 3 10 man strike squads in rhinos, a small deep-striking strike squad, and a psyfleman dread. He rolled to place terrain and objectives first, and since there was only 3 of them, that meant I had one in my deployment zone, and he had 2. I was thankful to have the extra distance to back up in the vanguard deployment. I held my right flank with the wave serpents in ruins. Everything else tried to keep distance and shoot anything that came from behind the big line-of-sight blocking hill he deployed. He rolled for first turn and gave it to me instead. I immediately wrecked the dreadknight with somewhat lucky fire prism shooting, and took out one of his rhinos on my left with wave serpents. He responded with decent counter fire, frying a vyper and one of my fire prisms. I slowly wore down the inquisitor and paladins with the warp spiders and Crimson Hunter. As for the dreadknights, I only put one wound on one of them in the crucial early turns, and they were able to toast a couple things before they got close enough to take down with mass shuriken and laser fire. I killed everything he threw at the relic, and our last turn came just as time was running out. He wouldn't have made the distance with one of his surviving strike squads if I hadn't killed just enough of them to break them, sending them back towards his table edge, allowing them to regroup in his last turn, and take the 9" move towards the center. He also had just enough to take his home objectives, so he won 17 to 8. Good game.

GAME 3 - CHAOS DAEMONS
Missions: Big Guns Never Tire (3 objectives) and Crusade (3 objectives)
Deployment: Dawn of War

Wouldn't you know it, I was paired up against "Yolandi" Hart in my last game. He had a bloodthirster, lord of change, skulltaker and several khorne heralds on juggernauts, karanak, a big squad of daemonettes, 2 squads of plaguebearers, a daemon prince, and a tzeentch soulgrinder. Again, going first worked out very well for me - though this time I got it through seizing the initiative! Ouch. I destroyed the daemon prince right away, and put the hurt on his nurgling squads. He outflanked the juggernauts and karanak right into my red pointy castle, but unfortunately for them, I had wiped out all other proximal threats. This allowed me to have just enough shooters available to wipe out the khornestar before they could do anything back to me. I won with 22 points, which ended up putting me ahead of Matt for first place.

My opponents were all great and I had a blast blooding my freshly painted wild riders (with many lucky breaks helping me out along the way). Thanks Chris for running the dang thing.

Saim Hann Krait

The Saim Hann Krait is a more heavily armored version of the Vyper. Boasting two primary armaments, both controlled by the pilot, the Krait sacrifices some of the Vyper’s speed and agility for additional firepower. The Krait’s guns are mounted on twin vertical engines that allow the vehicle to hover and pivot in place while unloading salvoes of withering heavy weapon fire into fixed enemy positions. Shock poles extend from either side of the front fuselage, creating a coruscating arc of energy that prevents the Krait from becoming easy prey to short range enemy assaults.

I always wanted War Walkers for my Saim Hann warhost, but for some reason those big ass legs just seemed off mixed in with all my cool jets. So after staring at a spare War Walker and Vyper for a few years, I mashed up the two and made a more appropriate gunship for a decent counts-as. Of course it's not exactly convenient to have to get two models just to make one.

And yeah, I just picked a random poisonous snake name. Fiction, it's just that easy.

Here's a possible 1850 list with kraits:

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, guide, fortune, spirit stones, runes of warding

5 Warlocks - jetbikes, singing spears, 3 destructor, 2 emboldens

6 Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, spirit stones

6 x 3 Jetbikes - shuriken cannons

3 Vypers - scatter lasers, shuriken cannons

2 x Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

3 Kraits (War Walkers) - scatter lasers

Saim Hann with Display Board

Cut and Paste

For some reason I glitched out and didn't realize there was a Saturday tourney at BFG this weekend; I hear there was a 3-monolith army there and no big bugs at all. Interesting shift in the meta, wish I'd been there.

Instead I was impatiently mucking about with jetbikes today, concentrating mainly on converting shuriken cannons to mount up to 6 jetbikes and 2 vypers. With the bikes, I first made a couple of cuts to the original weapon, sawed off the cone portions of the shuriken catapult mounts, and put the catapult barrel on one side and the ammo canister on the other. There were actually 2 different versions of the cannon but they both looked pretty cool underslung in this manner. For the Vypers, I put the cannon barrel in the place of the center stabilizer that normally barely pokes out from underneath the front canopy.

I also toyed around with an old cut up Eldrad model I had in the bitz box, sawing it up even further and attaching it to guardian rider legs to mount him on a bike. His sword arm was cut off and replaced with a guardian arm, and his staff top was replaced by the blade and handle-guard from the metal jetbike autarch model to make a singing spear. On the lower half of the staff I put the little power generator from the base of the bike autarch's laser lance. I cut in deep lines in his bike's wings to set his ride apart a little bit from the rest of the troops. I think he's going to look pretty cool, although I still have to dig out the dreaded greenstuff to clean up his robes.

So, yeah, I was thinking I'd put off the Wild Riders until I was done painting Tyranids, but it looks like that's going to be pretty difficult.

Here's the latest 1500 list I'm working with, updated after several helpful comments from visitors. It's got 11 scoring units, some good anti-vehicle and anti-horde, great on movement, and the big guns are generally resilient. At the very least it should be a lot of fun!

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, guide, doom, runes of warding, spirit stones

TROOPS

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon
Warlock - jetbike, destructor, singing spear

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

FAST ATTACK

2 Vypers - 2 starcannons, 2 spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 bright lances, 2 spirit stones

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

To Cheese or Not To Cheese

Holo-fields are pretty expensive, and I worry that putting them on Vypers is like putting lipstick on a pig. Fritz at Way of Saim Hann uses them on his 3 squadrons to what sounds like good effect, and quickly put them back on for good after he played a few games without them. Still, if I take them off, I can just about afford to fit a third Fire Prism in my 1500 list! What's not to like about that?

Well, there's the one thing: cries of cheese. The main 3-falcon player in town is constantly under attack for using 3 gravtanks, and though I've experienced the frustration of losing to that list myself, I don't really begrudge him for what is technically a legal (and probably fun) list. My question is this: does the fact that they're Fire Prisms and not Falcons make the list less cheesy, ie, will people keep their pouty little mouths shut? Somehow I doubt it. I love Fire Prisms and I've never seen anyone using three before, and only rarely have I seen two in the same list (around the Austin community anyways). I'm drooling just thinking about bank-shooting three Prism cannons together to get that S7 AP2 large blast! Also I want to see if the triple focus(sed) beam creates an actual black hole on the table. I mean, it's AP0! What does that even mean?

Kingsley emailed me with a few ideas, including dropping those holo-fields, but probably the most interesting notion was changing the 3 squads of 6 jetbikes to 6 squads of 3. I'll probably give this a whirl starting out. Not only will this give me more scoring units (very important for alpha missions), but it will make them easier to hide and thus make their little pop-up attacks easier to manage.

Eldar Jetbag

Today I finally got my first Apocalypse formation together: the Eldar Jetbag. GW is still putting the final touches on the formal datasheet, but from what I understand, deploying a full Jetbag lets you scatter all the pieces out across the entire board, and any model it touches is immediately dipped in brake fluid and scrubbed to its original pre-painted state. How cruel the arcane magicks of the Eldar are!

Obviously I kid. This is what 2 Windrider Hosts look like cut out of the sprues. Reassembled (over the next several months) they will constitute the larger part of my next project: Saim Hann. Below is my initial 1500 list that I will use to cut my teeth. I anticipate the learning curve will be fairly steep with such a small and delicate army, but I've always wanted to field a bike force and finally decided to go with an Eldar version. The 2000 list will most likely add Wave Serpent-ed Dire Avengers along with either Warp Spiders or possibly a small but expensive Warlock bike squad with enhance, multiple destructors, and singing spears. As an aside, I have a great T-shirt idea that I really need to put together on Cafepress. More on that later. Also let me point your attention to an interesting Saim Hann blog that I recently found and added to my links section in the sidebar. Nice guy, cool army, and great pictures from the Baltimore GT.

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, spirit stones, runes of warding and witnessing, guide, mind war

TROOPS

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
1 Warlock - jetbike, singing spear, destructor

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

FAST ATTACK

2 Vypers - 2 scatter lasers, 2 shuriken cannons, holofields, spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 bright lances, 2 shuriken cannons, holofields, spirit stones

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones