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?