Rathstar's Ramblings

Magnificent Seven - What a Day !!

2012-01-29T20:35:00.001Z

The Magnificent Seven tournament has been and gone. It was a fun tournament, and I got in 7 great games, most of them were also very tough games against good generals. Because of the comp rules baning large blast templates there were a lot more Orks than expected, and there was a nice mix of armies.

Over the day I faced:
lFoot Necrons
lBlood Angels (Assault marines and Bikers)
lSpace Wolves (Grey Hunters x2, 2 Cav, Long Fangs with 4 Missiles, Scouts)
lFoot Orks
lMech Orks
lSpace Wolves (Grey Hunters x 2, Long Fangs with 4 Missiles, 4 Cav)
lMech Grey Knights

There were custom scenarios which on the whole I thought worked quite well, and were a nice change. Different obectives to shake things up, but not too confusing to eat into playing time. However I did think they favoured assault based armies and armies with a lot of mobility. This didn't affect me much, but some armies such as Guard or any gunline would have been seriously impacted.

How did I do ? Well you'll have to wait till during the week for follow posts on how I did in the battles :)

Rathstar

Here there be Dragons

2012-01-27T18:23:00.001Z

Finally I have got my Dragon Warriors (my own chapter which uses the Space Wolves rules) up to the point where I can take them to the Magnificent 7 tournament tomorrow.

Better pictures and a write up of how I do will follow shortly. The list I'll be using is in the post earlier this month.

Rathstar

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Speeding Up Painting

2012-01-19T23:35:00.001Z

You have the tournament looming close, and you just want to use that new unit that you think would round out your list perfectly. How can you speed up that painting, given as we all have a limited amount of free time that we can commit to painting ?

I find myself in this exact situation, although I have to finish painting four units in the next nine days, and I have to summit my army list for the tournament I talked out in my last post today, well yesterday now as I'm a bit late posting this up.

These are some small changes and learnings I have made to ensure I have a chance of hitting my deadline. This are not tips on how to paint to your best quality, but how to speedup getting a unit painted, so some of these tips are not for those looking put out their best work.

Light

If you're painting in the evenings like I am you need a good light source. Ideally you should use daylight bulbs, as normal bulbs can give a yellow glow meaning that when you check out your masterpiece in normal daylight they don't look as good as you imagined when you finished them the night before.

Also it is best to have two lamps from different directions to avoid shadows. Be mindful to keep the lamps far enough away, because otherwise the heat from the lamps will dry out your paints much quicker meaning you have to get more from the paint pot more often.

Painting the Visible

If you like me you've probably spent hours over all the models you've painted trying to squeeze paint brushes through small gaps to paint a part of a model you can only see if you look at the model from an obscure angle that no-one will ever see. You must stop yourself doing this. Concentrate on the areas people will see, face, chest, shoulders etc. It's much better to finish more models than be happy that every small detail is done on a fewer amount. This is particularly important if you are painting an army and have a deadline to meet.

Painting those hard to reach or see areas will add nothing to the overall appearance of the model, but will seriously increase your painting time, especially when you consider the touch-up required on other areas you might accidentally touch.

Standard is your Friend

Try to use standard colours rather than shades you mix up yourself. Having to mix up just the right shade over and over again will cut into painting time.

If you do want to use your own special colour. Write down the colours and proportions used, and create the colour in bulk using a mixing pot. Not only will you always have exactly the right shade every time, but you will save loads of mixing time.

Let Friends / Family Know

If you have a tight deadline like I have, let you friends and family know that you are busy each evening that week. This will avoid (or at least lower the risk that) your other half will request a romantic evening on the coach watching the latest RomCom, or friends organising the party of the century.

Alternatively organise something for after you finish you painting deadline. It will soften the blow that you won't be available while your painting, and it will give you something to look forward to while you paint.

Planning

Make a schedule to keep you on target. This will give you a target to aim for each planning session. Be careful to leave gaps in the schedule which you can use to catch-up if you fall behind, because things happen in real life which come above painting which have to be done (in my case I have to prepare for an job interview).

Drastic Measures

Lastly if you are really up against it, you can leave some techniques to later, eg. you could come back to your models for the last highlighting sections etc. Once you've got a portion of your army done it will inspire you to set yourself another target to get more of the army done and/or go back and add a layer of detail to the models.

My space wolves are progressing slowly, but the remaining weekend I have left for catch-up and I only planned basing for next week means I have a good chance of getting them to a level I can use them at the Magnificent Seven tournament:

The are bit too red to me, but I'm hoping a snow base will balance the colours nicely.

Please share your ideas on how to speed up painting.

Rathstar

Smaller Point Tournament Leads to Army Choice Decision

2012-01-15T00:42:00.003Z

I haven't been to any tournaments that use small points values (eg. < 1000). I've been tempted with a couple of double tournaments, as I have found nothing gets me focused to get some units painted than an upcoming tournament that I want to use them in. Therefore when I heard about the Magnificent 7 tournament I just had to sign up. 600 point singles tournament, 7 games in one day. The number of games would also be excellent for getting to know a new army, plus I really wanted an incentive to make a start on my (mainly red & blue) Space Wolves.

However Space Wolves aren't my only option. I've really been enjoying my Necrons, and I've recently painted up (minus the basing) 2 converted crypeks, an overlord and a command barge:

Also available are the irrepressible Dark Eldar

[my razorwing would not be able to be used in this tournament due to it's large blast missiles :( ]

Magnificant 7 is 600 points, and uses simular army composition rules to Combat Patrol, however it had a few extra restrictions to try and make a more balanced field, plus it would have timmy comp (excessively OTT lists would be asked to be revised). Here's a few of the extra rules:

No HQs: This would affect my necrons the most as they would be able to access a Royal Court
Quantum Shielding: It had been ruled that Necrons could use vehicles with Quantum Shielding, but the shielding would not be working for the tournament, and the vehicles would not get any points reduction for the tournament
No large blast weapons: With the smaller armies it woul have been nice to include a whirlwind or razorwing jetfighter to help deal with hordes, so I'd have to include a couple of flamers to help agaist hordes instead.
A maximum of 3 vehciles (and only 2 can be the same). This hits my Dark Eldar the hardest, as ideally I would have liked to have a ravager, 2 raiders and a venom.

With the army restrictions in mind here's the three lists I game up with:

Necrons 600 Points

5 Necron Immortals (Tesla Carbines) - 85
5 Necron Immortals (Tesla Carbines) - 85
5 Necron Immortals (Tesla Carbines) - 85
9 Canoptek Scarabs - 135
5 Canoptek Wraiths (3 Whip Coils, 1 Particle Caster)- 210

29 infantry (52 wounds), totalling 600 points

The list has no ranged anti tank, relying on the wraiths and scarabs in combat. Also having small squads of immortals means that they are more likely to be wiped out entirely in a phase and therefore not get a RP roll.

Although the list includes the assault elements I have enjoyed using (Wraiths & Scarabs) the rest is just standard troops. It doesn't (mainly because it can't) include the other interesting units I have (or would like to) use such as an Overlord on a Command barges, Annihilation barges, or a Cryptek with Veil of darkness to teleport a troop unit around. This is probably a critic of all 600 pt lists because the troops make up a much more significant proportion of the army.

Next up is my Dark Eldar list:

Dark Eldar 600 Points

10 Wracks with 2 Liguifier guns - 120
  transported in a Raider with a Shock Prow - 65

10 Wyches - 130
incl Hekatrix with Agoniser
transported in Raider - 60

5 Warriors with a Blaster - 60
5 Warriors with a Blaster - 60

Ravager (3 Dark Lances) - 105

30 infantry & 3 vehicles totaling 600 points

Without an Haemonoculus the wracks remain elites, meaning the warriors were essential to give more troop choices. However the restriction on vehicles meant that two small units were required rather than the more effective one unit in a venom. The list is very agressive, and would have to go in reserve in most games that it is going second.

Without incubi or rending razorwing flocks in the list I decided to upgrade the venom blade I normally give to my hekatrixs to a agoniser for this game. Sometimes you just need to be able to deny MEQ/TEQ their armour save.

Overall I think the list could do well, and they are the army I am most familiar with at the moment, however it would be a shame to not use this tournament as an oppportunity to use a new army.

And lastly here's my Space Wolf list:

Space Wolves

Wolf Guard (3) - 84
1: Powerfist & Combi-melta (joins the first Grey Hunter squad)
2: Combi-flamer (joins the second Grey Hunter squad)
3: Basic chainsword & pistol (joins Long Fangs)

8 Grey Hunters with Meltagun & Standard - 135
  transported in Rhino - 35

8 Grey Hunters with Flamer - 120
  transported in Rhino - 35

2 Thunderwolf Cavalry, one with a Frost Blade - 125

3 Long Fangs with 2 Missile Launchers - 65

24 Infantry & 2 transports, totalling 599 points

This list seems quite balanced. The frost blade inclusion instead of the usual powerfist (or thunder hammer) is because there will be less vehicles and because they would be great against scarabs and toughness 3 characters. Also with such a small unit it would be much more likely to die before a powerfist could swing at the initiative one step.

After all my diliberations I have provisionly choosen...

My Space Wolves, however as you can see they are no where near. The two rhinos are done, but apart from that only one model is up to the stage where I can base it. The last week, and the following two weeks will be an exercise it doing as little as possible so I can get the army down. It is really hard to move away from a model, knowing I want to do more on it, but if I don't do this I won't get the models done.

My aim will be to get the models done, but return to the models as soon as the tournament is over to paint more detail and add highlights. It will be a tough challenge, but at least it will get me started on getting my Space Wolves updated for the new edition and new codex.

If I don't make it, the other armies are waiting in the wings to take over for the tournament. My current thinking is that my Dark Eldar will get the nod over my Necrons if my Space Wolves don't make it.

The army list subimission deadline for the tournament has been extended to this coming Wednesday, so please feel free to comment on the army lists or anything else I've mentioned. Now back to painting...

Rathstar

Necron Crypteks: Trying more out

2011-12-22T01:31:00.001Z

Hi,

Until I build two annihiliation barges I have 180 points to try out other stuff in my 1750 point list.

For my last battle I converted two models to be Harbringers of Despair. I use the Pretorians models as the base, then added the lychguard loin cloths, filed down the shoulder pads where the jump infantry equipment would attack, and finally used deathmark heads.

Going back to my last battle, I took the list I showed in my last post minus the annihilation barges, and added:

1) Whip Coils for the Wraiths, and 2 extra scarabs instead of one annihilation barge

2) 2 Harbringers of Despair, one with a Veil of Darkness instead of the other barge

The idea behind adding the Harbringers of Despair was to add some low AP weaponry to the army, and to more mobility to one of the large immortal units with the veil allowing them to better support the wraith & scarabs and threaten distant objectives.

I won't go into much detail of the game, as we only got 2 turns in each, but it was looking like it was heading towards a tabling of my mech guard opponent. He had lost a lemn russ, a leman russ with the str 6 ignore cover turret (nightmare against my scarabs), 3 chimeras, and one gun from a hydra. I had lost 3 wraiths, the command barge, and one scarab squad had been mauled down to 2 bases (after being on 12 bases at one point). I had next turn, and 2 hyrdas would have died to scarabs and my dismounted overlord, a manticore would have died to the wraiths and destroyer lord, and the last chimera would probably died to lances or immortals would have wreaked through weight of fire.

But how did I think the extra stuff I added to the army instead of the annihilation barges performed and whether they would stay:

Whip Coils: This upgrade didn't have the opponents to test them, but I think they will be useful against opponents which have multiple high str attacks (eg. dreadnaughts and grey knights). Allowing the wraiths and particularly the destroyer lord attack first against such opponents could be crucial. I will playtest more with these upgrades, as they are expensive (at 60 pts for the squad) and do nothing against powerfirst and thunderhammers.

Extra Scarabs: After 2 turns the scarabs normally go from 16 to 22 models, so they normally rech combat, however I say how certain weapons could wipe them out very quickly, and sometimes there is not the cover or intervening models to give them a 3+ cover save. If possible I will look at my list to see of I can fit in any more, eg. losing an immortal from each squad to fit in 2 more scarabs.

Harbringer of Despair: I was not too impressed with these. If the immortals do their job they should not be in flamer range of the enemy, particularly as they have assault weapons to move away from the enemy. I think I will drop the basic Harbringer of Despair for 2 more scarabs immediately.

Veil of Darkness: Although not used in the 2 game turns, I could see myself using the veil in turns 3 or 4 to threaten the guard objective held by 30 guardsmen, allowing me to target them with both immortal units, as well as the depleted wraiths. I will give the Veil a few more test runs. The ability to move a large unit accross the board to where the action is or to capture an objective should come in handy.

A last thought I had from the game, was that again the warriors did nothing. The Harbringers of Destruction killed a chimera and took one weapon off a hydra. I could lose one unit, but for the moment I think I keep them as losing the basic Harbringer of Destruction will leave me with 39 scoring models. Normally that would be a good number, but as all of mine are on foot, slow, and without a transport to hide in, I may need all I've got if the enemy decided to target them.

That's all for now. I should have another game with my necrons later this week, plus I be posting up Starsmash Part II which is all about deployment.

Rathstar

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Necrons Slowly Rise

2011-12-14T00:35:00.001Z

Hi,

I just came back from my local Games Workshop, and I got in a quick 1500 point with my Necrons. I've still got to assemble 2 Annihilation Barges, but the lists I've been using so far have had over half the points in agressive assault units, which is odd given that Necrons are a mid range shooty army, but the army has been fun to play. For 1750 points I'll just add in the Annihilation Barges to even it out.

Below is the list I intend to take down my local club, and the army should get some good test games over the xmas break.

How does my list fair against the local necron lists you've seen or played against ? Do you think necrons will have any effect on the tournament scene ?

Rathstar

Necron 1750 Point Army List:

Overlord - 100
Warscythe
Command Barge - 80

Destroyer Lord - 160 (joins wraiths)
2+ save, Mindshackle Scarabs

10 Immortals (Tesla Carbines) - 170

5 Warriors - 65
Cryptek, HoD**, Solar Pulse - 55

5 Warriors - 65
Cryptek*, HoD - 35

7 Scarabs - 105

6 Wraiths - 210

3 Spyders - 150

Annihilation Barge - 90

Total: 1750pts, 66 models.

* Crypteks sometimes join the immortals allowing the small warrioir squads to go into reserve.
** HoD = Harbringer of Destruction, so has a lance (Str8, AP2, 36" range, Assault 1)

I may drop 2 immortals to give the overlord a 2+ save and mindshackle scarabs, but so far the overlord tends not to voluntary get off his barge.

Starsmash - Part One - The Toughest Tournament in My 2011 Calender

2011-11-30T00:00:00.000Z

[Reflection]

Two months ago I went to the tournament I had been building up to all year. For me this is the toughest tournament of my tournament calender, and would be a real test of my improvement over the last two years. I have been going to more tournaments and trying to get more games inbetween tournaments to up my game.

Starsmash is also my local tournament, run by local club (Spiky club). It's 1500 points (I would prefer 1750 points, but variation is always good and shakes things up), 5 games and no comp. What I think makes the tournament so competitive is a number of factors, the two main ones being that it very well run (helped by the fact that it's in it's 10th year at least), it's easy to get to with good rail and motorway links, and it's counts for full points on the Rankings HQ website.

Last year taking my Tau I finished very low, so I wanted to finish at least top half, with an top ten finish being ideal (out of 40ish players).

Rather than full battle reports, over the next few weeks I will show my main learnings from each game, from deployment & terrain rules to the dangers of clumping, and how the good or bad decisions in these areas affected the game. First up will be deployment from Game 1.

Rathstar

PS. The list I used at Starsmash was:

HaemonculusNalix Soulseer - 55
with Venom Blade

6Incubi - 132
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons -65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider withDark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade -105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

8 Wyches incl. Hekatrixwith Venom Blade - 95
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravagerwith 3 Dark Lances & Shock Prow - 115

Ravager with 3 DarkLances & Shock Prow - 115

Razorwing Jetfighter - 145
with2 Dark Lances, twin-linked Spinter Rifle & 4 Monoscythe missiles

Total:1499 Pts

Battle for Planet OG II - Belated Game 3 Battle Report

2011-11-27T21:18:00.001Z

Well this battle report is well overdue, as I returned yesterday from Battle for Planet OG IV.

Overviews of battles one and two can be found in the comments section of this post. The scenario was:

" The battle for the cells has had consequences beyond any ones perception. The battle that ensued after the initial raid is suddenly interrupted by eruption and devastation. Huge tremors result in magma filled geysers erupting from craters around the battlefield, shooting many feet into the air and inflicting terrible damage to all it contacts. Time to win the conflict fast before Mother Terra takes you both out "

Primary Mission: Kill them all

Table Quarters Deployment

Place an objective in the middle of the board.

At the beginning of every players turn, roll 8d6 and scatter a large blast template from the center of the board (this always scatters). If it hits the edge of the board bounce it back again using the remaining movement.

- Any unit hit by this template will suffer 2D6 S8 AP 1 hits

- Any vehicle hit will suffer an auto S10 AP 1 hit

Cover saves may be taken by infantry if applicable (as they try to dive for safety), however any model caught directly may not (and must always have the most amount of wounds allocated to it)

As time is not on your side, prioritising your targets is key, this is a kill points mission with the following changes.

- HQ units are worth 3 KP each.

- Elites / Heavy Support are worth 2 KP each

- Everything else is worth 1 KP each

Secondary Mission:

The eruptions have thrown up a (previously) deeply rooted Cell of enormous stature and power.

The winner of the mission is the one who has the most troops choices within a 6 inches of the center of the objective.

The Game

My opponent had taken 2 max sized platoons with 7 heavy weapons accross the 10 infantry squads. A Command HQ had a medic to give them feel no pain, and a master of the ordance. The basic infantry was rounded out by a heavy weapon squad of 2 lascannon teams and 1 missile launcher team. Within the infantry was a 2 commassairs ready to make up to 50 guys stubbon, and an hq slot psyker was also included. The odd meltagun and many grenade launchers were scattered through the infantry as well.

Finally Orgyns and Rough riders were included to give his horde a nice counter attack responce, while a squad of ratling snipers was included to round out the force.

After complaining in many recent games that my anti tank kept failing me, this opponent had completely nerfed my anti tank by taking not a single vehcile. They couldn't even instant kill orgyns because they were toughness 5. However they would be useful for instant killing the heavy weapon teams and ignoring the feel no pain on the command squad.

This mission was a modified kill point mission, ie. hq was worth 3 kill points, heavy and elite slots were worth 2 kill points, everything else was 1 kill point. My kill point total increased from it's normal total of 18 to 26. While the guard had the option to combine his squads vastly reducing his kill point total. The basic guard modified kill points was 23, however of the 10 guard squads they were split into a mob of 50 guys with 2 heavy weapons, a mob of 30 guys with 3 heavy weapons & a mob of 20 guys with 2 heavy weapons. This reduced his kill points by 7.

The deloyment was Spearhead, and as a bit of random fun, each turn a larget template would scatter 8D6 from the centre of the board, anything infantry touched by the template would suffer 2D6 Str 8 Ap2 hits. Vehicles (even glanced by the template would suffer an automatic str10 ap1 hit. To make up for this the secondary objective was to have the most troop choices within 6" of the middle of the board.

Every game you should come up with a game plan (but have the flexibility to change it on the fly). Mine for this game was simple. I couldn't win a straight up shooting match, having to kill 20 or 30 guys to get rid of 2 or 3 heavy weapons when they are in cover simply wouldn't happen. This game would be won or lost in the assault phase. My assault elements would move as fast as possible towards combat, while everything else advances to the middle of the board (to be safe from the scattering template, average scatter = 28").

I won the roll off and decided to go first, which had the added bonus that I could put the Guard in the top right hand quarter that had the least terrain. There was a small ruined walls terrain piece in the middle of the board. In the guard quarter there was a forest about 10" from the centre of the board, and a 3 story ruin in the top right had corner of the board. There was a multi story ruin in each other corner of the board, a few forests scatter round the small middle ruin.

With the scattering template I decided to set up in a loose quarter circle 12" from the middle of the board. My opponent put a blob of 20 guys with 2 heavy weapons and the psyker in the ruin in the top right hand corner of the board, along with the command hq on the first floor, and the heavy weapon team split between the 2nd and 3rd floors. The orgryns were hiding in the ruin behind the 20 infantry. A blob of 30 guys (with 3 heavy weapons and a commassair to make them stubbon) were deployed stretching from just behind the forest in his quarter all the way back to the right hand table edge.

The two platoon commands were left in reserve (my opponent probably worried about easy kill points). Joining them in reserve was a blob of 50 guys (with 2 heavy weapons and a commassair to make them stubbon), and the rough riders.

Remember all the blob squads had multiple sergaents with power weapons and the psyker had power weapons making them a daunting prospect in assault. Lastly 5 scouts deployed in the ruin in the bottom right hand corner.

Luckily I did not have initiative stolen from me, and was able to start turn 1. I was lucky with the scattering template an it scattered towards the guard lines. It hit the blob of 20 guys and killed 5 of them, and killed one of the command squad. After that the template did not hit anything else, it didn't scatter towards the guard quarter and I moved my army into the middle of the board knowing the average scatter would take it 28" away (so I won't mention it again).

All four raiders with assault troops moved nearly the maxiumum 24" forwards, all stopping just before the forest, the rest moved 12" into the middle of the board to avoid the scattering template and get in range of the guard. I started by shooting the razorwing missiles at the heavy weapon squad (hoping to instant kill them). As they were split between levels I could only get 2 models with a hit. A combination of bad scattering and good cover saves meant that I only killed one base. Splinter cannons did little to the command squad with their feel no pain, and most of the ravager lances were stopped by cover saves.

I think this was bad target priority by me. Although it would have been nice to try and instant kill the heavy weapon teams the fact that they were on different levels meant that I had to get a hit or only move and inch to hit any of them. A much better target would have been the unit of 20 infantry that had already lost 5 models. They were quite packed and all on the ground floor. The razorwing would probably have reduced them down to the size that just one of my close combat squads could have killed them. Ideally I had to kill the guard squads quickly because their multiple power weapons would take a toll on my fragile squads.

Splinter cannons should also have gone into the 20 man squad to help reduce them to much more manageable levels. Given that I was likely to be out of range with the ravager darklance to fire at the heavy weapon teams they should have gone into the command squad (to ignore feel no pain).

With no reserves, the guard stayed still in their turn. They blew up the raider with the wyches and the haemonoculus. Luckily no-one died due to having feel no pain, and they passed their pinning test. The wrack raider was also blown up, and again no-one was hurt due to higher toughness and feel no pain.
This would leave me with 2 squads to assault the 30 man unit, and 2 mounted squads to assault the 20 mn squad further away, however the wracks failed their pinning test. Because the wrack raider went full speed the trueborn venom's wouldn't have been in range even if they had grisly trophies, and I didn't roll the exact 9 (1 in 9 chance) that would have meant a squad leader would have made a difference. I'm coming the conclusion that I'll just have to suck it up when I fail pinning tests, and rather than spend money to help I should just buy more models and guns.

With only 2 raiders downed I think I got off lightly.

Turn 2 I pushed both wyches into the 30 man squad, and the incubi went on their own into the 20 man squad (they were down to 15 men plus the psyker and I calculated the incubi should do about 9 kills). All the remaining vehicles (including the small unit of wracks and the 2 trueborn units) else stayed in the centre of the board (they at least moved slightly to ensure they would require 4+ to hit in combat).

The wyches fleeted to get right next to the 30 man guard blob. I didn't want to fire at them in case it meant that a bad difficult terrain role from the wyches with the haemonoculus meant they did not make combat. The incubi moved so that they would only reach the two guard models out of terrain (meaning they didn't need to risk a difficult terrain test).

Shooting saw me pick the right targets, with all the lances making sure the command squad (apart from the commander who was hidden out of line of sight) were dead. The heavy weapon team was also finished off.

In combat the commassair and all three sergaents in the 30 man blob could move against the the wyches with feel no pain. It was a bit tense, but they wyches eventually broke the blob after 4 turns of combat. The incubi did not fair too well as there was still 3 power weapons in the squad of 20 (2 sergaents and the psyker). I really should have allocated some razorwing love (ie. large template missiles) on turn 1 :)

While these combat were going on the guard 50 man blob unit came on from reserve, and one of the platoon hqs. The platoon hq hid in the ruin in the top left hand corner, and the 50 man blob spread out along the middle 20 inches of his side of the table, spread evenly because the wracks had 2 liquifier guns.
I think this was a mistake by my opponent, he should have moved more agressively forwards. What he did do was first fire grenade launchers at a vehicle, and then the following turn fire at another vehicle with the addition of 2 heavy weapons bringing down a raider.

Just before the wyches finished off the 30 man blob the rough riders came on from reserve amd charged a ravager that I had carelesly left on his half of the board. A good fleet roll and they charged and wreaked it. With nothing much else to fire on (the 50 man blob squd through cover or the orgyrns hidding in the top right hand corner ruin) all my lances and splinter cannons turned on them and killed them in a turn.

When the 30 man blob squad was finished the pain token was given to the wyches without feel no pain. The squad that started with the haemonoculus moved towards the incubi combat and helped them finish off the last of the squad, however there was only 1 incubi and few wyches left, who were seem off by orgyrn shooting nd combat the following turn. The imperial commaneder risked coming out of cover to kill the incubi and then consolidated back behind line of sight blocking terrain.

The other wych squad got on my last remaining raider and moved towards the ratling snipers in the ruin in the bottom right hand quadrant. In the last turn they hopped off and charged the ratlings, easily killing them all.

In the centre the orgryns (after killing the wyches) moved accross and assaulted the wracks. The wracks lost combat but held for the game to end. However with the small wrack unit on a borrowed venom sitting on the middle objective the orgryns would have needed another couple of turns to force me off the middle objective (particularly s in the mission rules it stated that only troops could contest objectives.

In the end I hadn't killed many kill points; 2 blob squads (50 men), the ratlings, the heavy weapon team, the primis psyker, and had lost a lot; haemy, incubi, wych squad , 3 raiders, venom & ravager, however I had managed to keep the secondary objective for a 10-5 loss.

With 2 big wins in my first 2 games I was able to win the tournament on the victory point tie break :) Winning the secondary objective in my 3rd game was essential to winning the tournament.

Rathstar

Life stirs...

2011-11-24T01:39:00.001Z

As the 2011 tournament season draws to a close for me I'm busy assembling necron barges. It was to go to a tournament this weekend, but because of other priorities I don't think I'm going to make it.

So what have I been up to since my last post. I've completed my battle report for the Battle for Planet OG tournament I went to. It's on my tablet waiting to be transfered to my PC and will be posted this weekend.

I've also attended 3 tournaments, Starsmash in Reading, M.A.D. at Triple Helix & Warfare in Reading. My posting schedule should return to normal now, so overviews of my performance and learning with my Dark Eldar will be forthcoming along with my initial games with my necron army (so far they have drawn against a Lysander led marine army).

Until next time...

Rathstar

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Time to be Ruthless - Tournament Live Blogging

2011-09-10T09:30:00.000+01:00

By the time this is posted I will well on my way to the Battle for Planet OG - Part II tournament.

I've been playing with my Dark Eldar using slightly different lists, but always with the same core. In every game (at 1500 points or higher) I have played for the last 4-5 months there has always been:

A cheap HQ Haemonoculus
2 units of trueborn in venoms
A small incubi unit in a transport (which has varied)
2 ravagers
2 Wych units in raiders
A Large Wrack unit in a raider
A small unit of Wracks in a venom

Apart from the incubi I would consider these units in my list as manditory, they all almost always perfrom, and is the core around which I tweak the final list.

After months of playtesting, it's now time to take it up a gear. Lets be ruthless, and try to use the army to it's fullest, no more silly mistakes; forgetting to roll for combat drugs, being too conservative, or making deployment errors. As I head towards what I consider the most competitive local tournament of the year (Starsmash next week) and I need to up my game to do the army justice.

I'll be posting in the comments how I do in this tournament throughout the day, but feel free to comment between my posts. Here's the list I'm taking:

Battle for Planet OG - Part II, 1500 Point Dark Eldar List

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer - 55
with Venom Blade

6 Incubi - 132
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Razorwing Jetfighter with 2 Dark Lances - 145

Total: 1499 Pts
Time will tell if I will regreat removing the grisly trophies that were usually on the trueborn's venoms, or not including the shock prows that will be on the ravagers for my next tournament next week. At the end of the day these small changes will nothing compared to me playing well or not as the case maybe. I know the army can do well, now I need to play it to let it's power shine through.

Here's a link to the forum thread showing the tournament rules, let me know what you think of the custom missions and my chances.

Rathstar

NB: After deleting an old draft it turns out that this, rather than my previous post, is my 100th post. Hope that's a good omen :)

[40k] August Review

2011-09-09T23:57:00.001+01:00

Intro

After a quiet July following the two tournaments in June, hobby activity has picked up. A bit later than I wished, here's what I've been up to:

Painting / Modelling

I assembled, magatied, and painted up a razorwing jetfighter. The razorwing is not finished; I need to finish the jems, and do more highlighting on the hull, but the razorwing is in a good enough state to take to tournaments.

I also converted and painted up 3 beastmasters, and painted up a 6th reaver to make my unit legal. I now want to finish fixing up a second unit of jetbikes I have, and paint up a further 3 beastmasters and some flying reapers (to represent razorwing flocks) so I have more options when building army lists.

However before that I am painting a 6th incubi (so I don't have to use my old dracon as an incubi). Also I picked up 2 old incubi with blasters, so I want to paint them up so I have the option of using 2 units of 4 (rather than my current units of 3) trueborn with blasters. Hopefully if I pick up one more old incubi with a blaster, so I can try out the option of 3 units of 3 trueborn.

Gaming

Gaming has picked up as well, spurred on by a tournament. I went to the 10th Annual 40k Online (forum) tournament. I won't give away where I came yet (as I'm going to post quick battle reports / summaries later, however I did get to try out the three units I finished painting.

Preparing for the tournament I also got in a game against Imperial Guard, and I had a taste of my own medicine and played my mate's Dark Eldar with my Space Wolves. All these games have given my valueable experience, as I head into my next two tournaments, and decide on my list for a 1800 point tournment in October.

The next two tournaments for me are 1500 points, and out of the beastmasters, reavers & razorwing jetfighter, only the razorwing has made the cut at the reduced points value. I felt that I couldn't afford both the incubi and the beastmasters in the lower points value, and the incubi (although more fragile with their smaller numbers and slower once their transport is blown up) got the nod, because of their reliablility to kill MEQs. I really liked the reavers AP1 guns, but they seemed so hit or miss, as they have to get in so close, and they are more fragile than last edition now that they only have a 5+ save. After they slow down to get the first shot with the heat lances it seems if they enemy wants to kill them it's not too hard. Both the beastmasters and reavers will get further try outs in 1750+ point games, but I'm staying with the tried and tested for my next 8 tournament games and my list is not much changed from my Rapid Strike tournament list.

I posted my draft list in my last post here. For this weekend's 1-day tournament in London I submitted the list posted. However a helpful comment by speedfreak in this post mentioned shock prows. I had a few situations come up where being able to tank shock would have been nice. speedfreak suggested losing 2 wyches to give my 4 raiders shock prow. I really didn't want to reduce my fragile troops choices anymore, so i considered losing one incubi and mounting them in a venom (which would allow the 3 remaining raiders to all have shock prows). In the end I compromised (and for my Starsmash tournament list) I lost one wych (from the unit the haemonoculus would join) to put shock prows on my two ravagers. The raiders tend to be going agressively forwards and tend to be shot down by the end of the game, while normally one ravager survives to the end, making them perfect for late game contesting, which is what I think I need more than raming.

I'm behind on battle reports (so my mate Gav will moan at me again), but I will try to post up, more importantly, my learnings with shorter battle summaries for the old tournaments I haven't reported yet.

Other Hobby news

Lots has been happening in the hobby and blog world. The Sisters of Battle codex was split over the last two issues of White Dwarf. After being miffed with buying White Dwarf for the blood angels codex I haven't bought the issues, and I'm waiting till it's free download from the GW website. However the feeling from the hobby community is that is a lacklustre update. My main concern was that the basic Sister are 12 pts, and that it was commented that the standard sisters troop choice would be 10 sisters, 2 special weapon, with a sister superiour in a rhino costing around 180 points. That seems a bit much when they are still T3. Maybe this comes from being spoilt with a cost effective MEQ troops choice in my Space Wolves Grey Hunters. 10 Grey Hunters with 2 meltaguns in a rhino starts out at 190 pts, swapping one of the meltagun armed grey hunters for a wof guard with a combi melta only increased the cost to 198, with the squad having the options to include further useful upgrades, such as powerfists, mark of the wolfen, standards the sisters seem a bit expensive for how good they are. Exorcists are still the same, so expect competitive armies to have 2 or 3, and target them early. Multiple shot AP1 weapons are awesome tank killers.

NOVA has been and gone. For those not in the know this a a very large American tournament. This year it had 216 40k competitors. I was fortunate to catch the live coverage of the final game where Space Wolves were victorious over Grey Knights. Now that the tournament is finished there is lots of number cruching and analysis trying to say where the meta game is at, and what are the best codexs. This is always subjective as there are so many ther factors involved, and after all a 40k has a random factor in the form of dice. Initial thoughts are that not much as changed; Space Wolves, Blood Angels and Guard are still doing well (but Guard were hampered by more terrain on the boards). These armies were joined by Grey Knights and Dark Eldar. Many of the older codex showed they could still compete, but found it hard to consistently win against the top tier armies when they were commanded by good generals. However whatever I or anyone else says it is all subjectve and all someone can do is try to improve with the army they have. Build a efficient list with the models you have, but try to play as much as possible, because that's one of the best ways to improve.

For those interested in my tournament travels, my next few tournaments are (pop over and say hi if you see my Dark Eldar):
Battle for Planet OG Part II - London - 10th September
Starsmash - Reading - 17th & 18th Septemeber
Mutually Assured Destruction - Westbury - 22nd October
Warfare - Reading - 19th & 20th November

Now I must get back to planning the route to the tournament I'm attending tomorrow morning. The first round draw has been made and I'm against Choas Space Marines for game one. The tournament is a very small one (10 players) and has 70% MEQ, and three of what I would call top tier armies; Imperial Guard (commanded by the previous winner) and two Blood Angels armies, however a mid tier army commanded by a good opponent can be much more dangerous, so I must not be complacent (I have lost too many games where on paper I should win).

Going into the tournament I'm hoping for 2 wins and a loss, with one of the wins being a tabling. You never know I my fluke 3 wins. However the tournament missions have secondary objectives. In one mission the secondary mission is almost guanteed a draw, and the other two are kill points. Out of the 45 tournament points available 15 points are for winning the secondary objecives, so if I lose the kill point objectves and draw the other secondary mission I will have dropped 13 points. Last year the winner only dropped 3 points. Therefore to win I will have to win all three games, and probably table one of my opponents where kill points is the secondary objective. A tall order, but I'll try my best :)

Playing 3 games this week (as tournament practice) and work being busy has had a toll on blog posting, and the next week will likely be the same, with this tournament being the first of 8 tournament games in 9 days, not to mention the games I will try to get in next week in preparation for the 2 day tournament next weekend. More frequent posting will continue after next week.

I'll post my progress on a post that will be publish tomorrow morning. First post tournament impressions will be posted as a travel home (not much else I can do on the 1hr20min return journey on the train :)

Rathstar

PS. This happens to be my 100th post, a nice milestone after a year and a half. Thanks to all those who read and comment on my blog.

A Week of Reflection

2011-08-31T03:16:00.001+01:00

[It looks so good, it has to be used, alas 3rd ravager you have been replaced]

Hi,

As is normally best, after my last tournament I took a little break from gaming, and spent some great time with family over the bank holiday weekend. It's always nice to have a bit of Gaming / Real Life balance :) - at least if you want to stay with your girlfiend/fiancee/wife.

However it's hasn't stopped me relfecting on how my Dark Eldar and Space Wolf lists should evolve.

My first impression coming away from my last tournament was that my Dark Eldar needed more anti-tank, however upon reflection I think I can blame a bit of my bad tank killing on a poor luck, however there were some mistakes I made, chiefly being too aggressive with my trueborn and getting them killed too quickly. I must endevour to keep them on their venom and resist the urge to disembark them turn one to get 6 more lance shots at enemy vehicles.

Out of the three units I was trying out (beastmasters, reavers & a razorwing) only the razorwing seemed reliable, mainly because I tried to off load it's missile payload as soon as possible. Both the beastmasters and reavers showed their great potential. The beastmasters killing a grey knight librarian and held up a grey dreadnaught in combat by ripping it's powerfist off, while the reavers increasing the chance of a pentration hit killing a holofield-ed fire prism from 1 in 9 to 1 in 4.

[My army in action in their last tournament, battle reports coming...]

I have to send in my army list for my next two tournaments this week (which are the lower size of 1500 pts), and it hard to include either reavers of beastmasters. It seems too risky to drop to 3 troop choices, or remove the reliable trueborn to put reavers in, or beastmasters instead of incubi. Reavers and Beastmasters seem like units that support th more reliable parts of the army, and therefore are more suited to larger games. However I still need more experience with both these units so I will continue to playtest them, but they don't quite make the smaller 1500 point lists. Beastmasters are close to covering for incubi, but I like the incubi ability to just shread MEQ (or at least dent them badly), while a failure to roll 6's to wound can see the beastmasters do nothing and bounce. Although the beastmasters are better against light infantry I think wyches, wracks, splinter cannons and even razorwing missiles have this covered.

Role Reversal Gaming

Tonight I played my mate who was trying out Dark Eldar and I was playing with my Space Wolves. It was an interesting experience being on the receiving end of venoms, trueborn and lances.

I was trying out putting slightly more heavier mech in my list, hoping to draw firepower away from my light mech transports. In went a predator for a long fang squad, and a walking grey hunter unit gained a drop pod. Out went fragile landspeeders for cheap razorback transports.

A surreal feeling was looking at my deployment and thinking it resembled an imperial guard parking lot:

[the las/plas razorbacks were actually representing heavy bolter razorbacks, while I try and source heavy bolter turrets from ebay]

My mate was trying an army of threes, three troop choices of wyches, ravagers, trueborn, venoms, raiders, haemonoculus :) His list was:

3 Haemonoculus with Liquifier guns and Venom Blades
3 units of 9 Wyches, including Hexatrix with Agoniser in Raiders
3 units of 3 trueborn with 3 blasters in venoms
3 units of 3 reavers with a heat lance each
3 ravagers with 3 dark lances

One of the things that shocked me playing against the Dark Eldar was how annoying liquifier guns were. It has definitely made me reconsider putting some back in my list (I was almost about to drop them to save points).

The game ended a bloody draw on turn 6 with us each having one objective each. I liked most things in my list, but I was not impressed with the single drop pod. A scatter left the unit a bit to far away from the rest of my army to get any support, so I may lose it to bring the squad back to full size. The drop pod also did not draw much firepower in the game, because it just isn't a threat once it's landed, unless it's contesting an objective. I'll have to make do with 8 vehicles. 2 spare razorbacks plus a dread and a predator will hopefully give the rhinos more chance to survive to bring the aggressive grey hunters into mid table to dominate the battlefield.

My current space wolf list can be found here, and the current Dark Eldar list I'm considering for my next two tournament is below. Feel free to comment on either list ot anything else from your experiences being on the receiving end of trueborn filled venoms or your stories or rubber lance syndrome :)

Rathstar

Draft 1500 Point Dark Eldar List

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer - 55
with Venom Blade

6 Incubi - 132
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Razorwing Jetfighter with 2 Dark Lances - 145

Total: 1499 Pts

One change I'm giving serious thought to is reducing the incubi to 5, losing the liquifier guns and losing a couple of the troop models to up the trueborn to units of 4, all with blasters (bringing my lance total up to 20).

More Souls Havested :)

2011-08-22T02:13:00.000+01:00

Hi,

A quick update to say I'm back from the 40k Online Tournament.

It was a great day, and I enjoyed 4 good games, while getting valuable experience using the new units I'd added to my army list (razorwing, beastmasters & reavers).

I faced Mech Eldar, Paladin Grey Knights, Mech Eldar & Choas.

Battle reports and my thoughts on my army performance will follow over the next couple of weeks, starting mid this week.

Rathstar

As time closes in - Part Three: Final Preparations

2011-08-21T01:49:00.001+01:00

Hi,

I've just applied the static grass to the base of my razorwing, and will soon be packing the last models I was painting into the case for the tournament later today. Talking of the razorwing, here's a pic I took of it in better light:

Although I tried to make it down to my local club last Thursday to try out my new list for the first time, work was too busy and I wouldn't have made to the club till over an hour after it started. However as I was popping into my local GW to pick up some paints for basing today I decided to take my army, and I got to face an Imperial Guard army in a Anniliation mission in Dawn of War.

It's too late to do a batle report now (I need to be on the road to the tournament in just over 5 hours, but below is a picture of what I faced (minus some storm troopers who were deep-striking, a squad of guardsmen on the other side of the ruin in the top left of the picture, and a heavy weapons team of three missile launchers who were in a ruin just off to the right of the picture):

Yep, that's a 30 man blob in the forest complete with a commosair to make them stubbon. I also had the joy of facing the special character Straken, while finding out that Imperial Guard HQs can get Feel No Pain with a medic.

I'll do a quick battle report next week after the tournament (so I won't give away the result).

As promised in my last post below is a pic of my beastmaster unit I'll be using in the tournament:

The beastmasters are only half finished in the picture. You can see the old choas hounds I'm using as my krymera. Please note that the really nice painted razorwing flocks are borrowed from a mate (as there was no way I'd get my forgeworld flying rippers painted up in time).

I'll post my progress in the tournament either in the comments to this post, or as seperate posts if I remember to take pictures.

Must get some sleep now :)

Rathstar

As time closes in - Part Two: WIP Painting

2011-08-17T03:31:00.000+01:00

Hi,

Well the 40k Online (Forum) Tournament is closing in fast. In my previous post I discussed the army list I want to take. Part of the reason I booked up for the tournament is that having an upcoming tournament seems to be one of the best ways to to motivate myself to get more models painted.

For my proposed new army list (see my previous post) I will need:
A small Beastmaster unit
A Razorwing Jetfighter
A completed unit of Reavers

Reavers

Previously I bought some small fusion gun tips from ebay. That I will use to add to my old blaster models to make heat lances. Also I will have to paint up one bike to match the rest. I haven't started on any of this yet, so pics will have to follow later in the week. If all else fails I could borrow a bike from a mate, but hopefully I should be able to fit these in.

Beastmaster Unit

I've converted and uncoated three hellions to be my first three beastmasters.

I ordered a few spare whips, daggers, swords and spare heads from ebay a while ago. I wanted to use the heads pictured below, however because people are using them for wrack conversions they are sold out on all the bits websites in the uk, and nothing was available on ebay. I still like the helmeted heads I used so I'm not too disappointed.

(typicaly now one set of these heads have popped up on ebay).

The bare headed beastmaster at the front will be the leader, and has one of the hellion hellglaives cut down slightly to be a long blades staff. The models were easy to put together and was a joy to convert.

I'll be using old choas hounds (I'll post pics when the unit is nearer completition). Luckily these are already painted. Unfortunately I know I won't have a chance to get the razorwing flocks done in time for the tournament (as it's only this weekend), so I'm going to borrow 4 razorwing flocks from my mate for the tournament.

Although I'll won't be using all my own models, I will get valueable practice using the beastmaster unit at this tournament, plus it will give me an excellent start for getting a bigger unit ready for the Mutually Assured Destruction tournament in October which is 1800 points and uses a bigger beastmaster unit.

Razorwing Jetfighter

Last time I showed a pic of my razorwing it was only partially assembled, because I wanted to take my time and make sure it was fully magnetized. I bought some more magnets from ebay, some 60mm ones to compliment my 20mm ones.

Now you have to be careful with the magnets, the larger ones are particularly strong, and they pulled the smaller set straight through their original plastic bag when I tried to seperate them :)

Since them I've magnetised all the weapons in the weapons loadout used in my tournament army list. I used 23 magnets in the end, and will need another 19 magnets to magnetise the last 3 weapons and 8 missiles.

I've also been busy painting over the last two evenings. I haven't finished the Razorwing, but I've easily got it past the stage where I could take it to the tournament. Because I have so much else to paint and so few days left, I'm only going to do another 20 minutes on it tomorrow night before I start the beastmasters. Here's some more work in progress pics, I need to do more highlighting of the purple, add further thin highlights on the blue and purple areas, highlights to break up the large black areas, and finish the gems.

I haven't glued the hulls together yet. The tail fin holds the top and bottom sections of the hull together fine.

I'll aim to get a picture of the finished army before the tournament, otherwise I'll post some shots via my mobile of the army in action at the tournament.

Rathstar

As time closes in - Part One: Next Tournament Army List

2011-08-13T01:56:00.002+01:00

Time is running out fast until my next tournament. In 8 Days I will be on my way to the 10th 40k Online Tournament. This tournament gives me the opportunity to try out a new 1750 points list.

In my first tournament with the Dark Eldar since the new codex I used a list with 6 troop choices. After that I played in two 8 games over two tournaments using a 1500 point list that did nothing apart from drop 2 troop choices from the list. My experiences over these 8 games and other games against my mates is that I should try out adding none troop units when I move back up to 1750 pts. Part of the reason is that you only need to win by one objective and because the rest of the Dark Eldar army is so fast they can contest objectives.

The two main things I think my list needed were (my previous 1750 point list can be found in this battle report, and my 1500 point can be found here):

Some AP1 - Reavers seems to hit the bill here, they got the nod over scourges due to their increased toughness, 36" turbo boost allowing them to get into position quickly, and their jump-shoot-jump movement meaning they have a chance of withdrawing after killing a target to survive retribution.
Beastmasters to give some redundancy in anti MEQ close combat power (as I didn't want to lose a trueborn unit to have a second unit of incubi).

Lastly I wanted to upgrade a ravager to a razorwing (whose missiles could help against hordes). Anyway here's the list I'm planning on taking at the moment:

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer - 55
with Venom Blade

5 Incubi - 110
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

9 Wracks with 1 Liquifier Gun - 100
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
8 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 95
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

6 Reavers with 2 Heatlances - 156
Beastmaster unit - 132
containing 3 Beastmasters, 3 Krymera, 4 Razorwing Flocks

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Razorwing Jetfighter with 2 Dark Lances - 145

Total: 1750 Pts

Obviously trying to fit in a beastmaster unit, a reaver unit and upgrading a ravager to a razorwing (which cost well more than the extra 250 points I had over my 1500 point list) meant that I can to cut into the existing list. Sacrifices include droping the incubi to 5 models, reducing my troop choices to 3 units of 9 (after the haemonoculus joines a wych unit), and even the wracks lost their Acothyst.

There was not even the points to upgrade the twin-linked splinter rifles on the razorwing to a splinter cannon (a measily 10 pts), or add unit leaders to the wracks, reavers or incubi for extra leadership. Vehicles upgrades are also absent (I would dearly love some flickerfields on the heavy support vehicles).

Also although I said that I wanted AP1 to help my anti-tank, even though I have included 2 heatlances on the reavers my lance total has dropped by one. I lost one dark lance by using a razorwing rather than a ravager, the incubi raider (with dark lance) was replaced with a venom, and one less wych squad meant one less raider with a dark lance. I'm hoping that because I regularly moved my transports fast to get my assault elements into position will mean the reavers dedicated to tank hunting will offset the drop in lances.

I feel the list is more balanced in two main areas:

Close Combat

The close combat ability is better balanced between light and heavy infantry. In my old 1750 points list (seen here) I had assault elements of Incubi, 3 Wych squads & 1 Wrack squad, now I've lost one wych squad but included a beastmaster unit, plus the reavers can help if neccessary. Also both the beastmaster and reavers aren't reliant on paper thin transports for their speed.

Shooting / Combat

Compared to the 1500 point list the list is more balanced between shooting and combat. My most convincing games were where I almost shot the opponent up so bad that combat was just a mopping up exercise. However when I faced another shooting army, good examples are a battle report here and when I faced a shooty marine list, I was outshoot and I didn't have a good enough alternative response and I only won through good generalship and being focused on the objectives. I think having a gunline Dark Eldar army leaves you at the mercy of tournament match-ups turning into a game of paper-scissors-stone.

Beastmasters

This tournament will be a real test for the beastmasters. Some people like them (including myself in the few test games I've had against my mates), and other people think their fragility is too much of a weaknesses. I think they are a unit that will need to be played carefully. I will try to adopt simular tactics to my incubi, partically because with the incubi they are the only two units good at killing MEQs quickly. They will follow just behind the wave of 3 raiders and aim to kills target of opportunity or help extract the wyches and wracks from combats with heavy infantry they are struggling with.

Beastmasters, along with the many units that are leadership 8 in the army, are the reason the grisly trophies on the trueborn venoms were not cut. I will have to plan my approach to the enemy carefully to try and keep the trueborn venoms in range of the beastmasters and key combats I may lose by 1 or 2, where their granted leadership test reroll could be cruicial.

Ideally I'd like the beastmaster unit bigger but the points were too tight at 1750. I've got a 1800 point tournament in October, so if they do well I will increase them to 14 models (an extra beastmaster, krymera, and 2 razorwing flocks), as well returning the incubi to 6 models in a raider.

As time closes in - Part Two

Later in the weekend I'll post what's on my painting table for the tournament, but feel free to leave your comments on my intended list, tweaks you think would make the list better, or tactics I can use.

Rathstar

ASMOH Tournament Game 4 & Final Thoughts (Text Size Fixed)

2011-08-04T18:00:00.004+01:00

So after my cheeky win in game 3 I moved up the tables to face Steve from Triple Helix Wargames in Westbury. Steve had nice Nurgle Daemons army, which unfortunately (which Steve freely admitted to me as soon as we set our armies up) was a bit light on long ranged firepower. His list was roughly (it's been a couple of months and my memory isn't that good):

Greater Daemon of Nurgle

Nurgle Daemon Prince with Warptime

1 Dreadnaught

Some Obliterators

3 units of Plague marines (with icons) in Rhinos

Some Summoned Daemons

Looking at his list I completely agreed so tactics would be to kill the small amount of long ranged firewpower as quickly as possible, and cripple his mobility by killing the rhinos to make the nurgle marines walk turning the battle into a long ranged shooting match that I would easily win.

My list was again:

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer with Liquifier Gun - 60

6 Incubi - 132

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Wracks - 30

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Total: 1749 Pts

We were playing the normal 12" in deployment and we were fighting over 6 objectives that was spread evenly around the board (quite spread out).

I won the roll off for first turn and duly took it. I deployed centrally not wanting to get out delpoyed too bad it my opponent decided to start mainly in one corner. Plan was to kill the daemon prince with splinter cannons (I was under the misunderstanding that warp time allowed him to reroll armour and cover saves, so I wanted to kill him before he had a chance to cast it), then the dreadnaught. Next on the list would be one or two rhinos to cripple his moblity and stop his nurgle marines attacking me all at once (which would allow to pick on each squad in turn) and then finally the obliterators. Although the obliterators would probably kill a vehicle a turn I think a turn I thought it was important to kill one or two rhinos to criplle his mobility first. The obliterators would become top target once two rhinos were dead. Until the deamons were summoned I planned to keep my distance, even though they

My opponent deployed all three rhinos on the left flank (with the daemon prince standing behind one to just about give him a cover save). The dreadnaught went on the far right hand flank (as a distraction I think and to stop him firing on his own troops).

My opponent didn't sieze the inititive, and I moved forwards cautionly not wanting my opponent to be in range with much. I wanted to keep the game as a long ranged firefight for at least the first two or three turns, where I had a huge advantage. A ravager took out the dreadnaught, and even though my first venom was slightly out of range of the deamon prince, the other three helped by a few raider dark lance shoots killed him. This left the remaining two ravagers to kill one rhino and stunn and immobolise another to finish off a good start.

It was a risk leaving the obliterators unharmed, but I wanted to stop the plague marines advancing on me in one wave of three rhinos.

My opponent decided to advance with one squad of plague marines, another stayed on the objective in the ruin he had castled round, and the last one stayed in their rhino as it had good cover from the immoblised rhino in front of it. Not much other movement, so it was onto the obliterators which took out the large wrack units raider and damaged a ravager (I think stunned and weapon blown off).

I decied to be a bit more aggressive as the first turn had gone so well, and the enemy had split up his army, which should allow me to pick it apart bit by bit. I moved forward to just before the middle of the table. I knew I would be in assault range of any daemons that may be summoned in the next turn, but hoped they would crash into my army, do a bit of damage and then be wiped out by my counter charge.

Seeing the obliterators as the main target I fired a lot of dark lances into them, but they made an ungodly amount of cover saves. Firepower into the approaching plague marines faired better with the squad reduced to 2 models. Maybe it would have been better to concentrate on the close nurgle marines until they were completely dead (because then any summoned daemons would have to risk scattering if they wanted to deep strike close to me). Now there was still an icon close to my army.

In my opponents second turn a unit of daemons duly arrived, and used the icon from the unit of two nurgle marines to land without scattering. I can't remember what the obliterators took out, but it was probably a ravager. The nurgle marine hiding in the last mobile rhino decided to move accross to the centre of my opponents deployment zone towards an objective and popped the smoke on their rhino. The nurgle marines on on foot which were staying on an objective with the obliterators stayed still. The nurgle marines reduced to two models and the newly summoned daemons moved fowards and charged the wracks that had been shot out of their raider the previous turn.

The oblits probably killed a vehicle in the shooting phase, and then it was on to the assault phase. With the toughness 4 and Feel No Pain of the wracks the daemons couldn't do much, and my return attacks having poison killed a decent number. I think I won combat slightly, but the main thing was that all units stayed in combat.

My next turn dark lances finished off the oblits (although I didn't have enough firepower left to kill the last mobile rhino). Splinter cannon and blaster firepower took a toll on the marines left in the ruin to try to claim an objective. A wych squad and the incubi squad moved to assault the daemons and the last nurgle marine that advanced upon my lines. The other two wych squads (who had the last two mobile raiders) moved to get a clear line of sight of the objective the nurgle marines in a rhino was heading towards.

In assault the incubi ensured most of them were against the nurgle marine, while all the wyches went on the daemons. The combat was quick and one sided with the wyches and incubi gaining the two pain tokens (which was the perfect result i wanted with the pain token randomisation). Both the wyches and incubi consolidated forward towards tbe nurgle marines on foot guarding an objective.

Although the daemon prince still had to come down I was in a pretty good position, particularly with the 2 small wrack units still sitting in untouched venoms (perfect to help kill the daemon prince when he turned up and capturing objectives with a 24" move in the last turn.

A quick summary of the remaining turns are:

The marines guarding the objective in the ruin was wittled down further with splinter cannons and blasters before being charged by incubi. Although needing 5s to wound was a pain they eventually went down allowing wyches to claim the objective.
The large wrack unit captured an objective in my deployment zone.
The nurgle marines in the rhino were shot out of their rhino after they reached the objective they were heading for. I was able to kill a few, then I rashly charged some wyches, hoping to get lucky and finish off this last squad for a tabling. However toughness 5 was a bit of an ask, so I threw a second unit in. Things were not helped by the greater daemon showing up joining the fight. Eventually both wych units were seen off with one nurgle marine left to claim the objective. The game ended before any of my remaining firepower had a chance to kill the last two remaining nurgle models.
Growing frustrated waiting for the greater daemon to be targetable the small wrack units zoomed off to claim 2 objectives. Making the final tally 4-1 to the Dark Eldar.

Thoughts on my Performance

I thought I played quite well, however there were some mistakes made. I thought I should have been much more aggressive in the first game. Staying back to fire one dark lance on a raider full of wyches meant they were out of range to support the incubi when there raider was blown up. Also I over extended myself when 2 of my units assaulted 2 space wolf units. Dark Eldar are quite fragile, so it doesn't take much to have slightly bad luck and have a whole unit run down, therefore it's best to overwhelm one unit to take it out completely rather than trying to take on two units at once.

Overall that was a theme of winning games. I did well when I outmaneovred the enemy and completely anniliated part of their force while the rest out not respond to well, eg. being out of range, my units having cover from that part of the enemy's force and/or having to move to get line of sight (which normally reduced firepower coming my way).

All of my units performed well, but there were some real stars:

Incubi: They were real stars, but only when they made it into combat. Being slightly behind the front units helped against weaker opponents who underestimated how far away they could assault; 12+3+D6+6=20-25 inches. I would really like some redundancy by having 2 small units, but unfortunately I already have my elite slots filled. The only other good MEQ combat killing power open to be are the Talos (but my heavy support are filled) or razorwings in a beastmaster unit.

Trueborn: With multiple blasters and a fast vehicle these guys were great killing tanks and heavy infantry. Although the Dark Eldar list looks like it has anti vehicle firepower covered with all the dark lances in reality a heavy mech force will overload the dark lances, especially if they are mainly on fragile vehicles like in my list. Blaster trueborn give that extra bit of anti tank firepower that really helps the list.

Feel No Pain Wyches: It was nice to have some wyches left when their raider was blown up. Although it may seem wasteful, but many times I put my wyches joined by my haemonoculus in the first wave, knowing they would survive the crash when the enemy shot their raider, plus they were a distraction that in many cases allowed the incubi to get a second turn charge. However you have to be careful with the basic wyches because they don't kill that much with their poor strength stat.

The Rest

Some units were not flashy like the units above, but were reliable at what they did, and were as essential as the above units. These were the ravagers and the wracks. The ravagers did exactly what they are asked and they do it well. The normally die during the game, but you won't get anti tank firepower that is this maneaovable or effective for 315 pts. The wracks were great at holding objectives, and the large squad was great at being aggressive with the wyches, bringing resiliance and template love to the enemy.

My troop choices all performed well, and having six troop choices made life very easy in objective games. However in some games they seemed like they were a bit overkill. The were all combat based (apart from the small wrack units) so did not contribute to the game until the enemy had been de-meched. For the tournament after ASMOH I lost one one of the wych squads and one of the small units of racks to go down to 1500 pts. The army seemed to have a better balance of scoring units to firepower and close combat.

My next tournament is 1750 pts, so the differcult aim will be keep the balance while increasing the pts back to 1750. My current idea is to add reavers and a small beastmaster unit (while saving pts from my existing units).

Well that's the end of the ASMOH battle reports, I hope you liked them, and they've proved interesting, or at least thought provoking. Please leave a comment if you've got a question on the battle reports, what I thought of any of the performance of any of my units or anything else.

Well back to assembling more Dark Eldar if I want to try out Reavers or Beastmasters :-)

Rathstar

[40k] July Review

2011-08-03T01:45:00.000+01:00

Hi,

This is going to be a very quick review because not much has happened. I've done very little painting and no gaming at all. I've occassionly popped into my local club and local GW on their games nights, but watching games is no substitute for playing.

Part of the issue, along with real life being very busy, is that there is such a big gap between my last tournment and my next one. To give me a bit of a push I have signed mysef up for 2 more tournanents; the 10th 40k Online tournament on the 21st August and the Battle for Planet OG - Part II on the 10th September. This brings me up to 5 tournaments for the rest of the year, nicely spread out between now and the end of November.

With Games Workshop focusing on Storm of Magic it's been rather quiet 40k wise. ok, we have had the first part of the Sisters of Battle mini-codex in White Dwarf, but until we see the point values it's best to wait before anybody starts saying their good or bad, but that won't stop the internet (which already seems to say their bad).

Focus for me over the next two weeks is to get some new models painted up, so I can use them in my upcoming tournanents.

Rathstar

PS. A battle report of my last game of the ASMOH tournament with my thoughts on how the various parts of my army performed is uploaded and scheduled to publish on Thursday evening.

On The Road - A New Tournament

2011-07-26T01:07:00.002+01:00

Well I haven't really had any motivation to assemble models let alone get any painting done. My next tournament being 2 months away and the fact that work is so busy that I never have a chance of getting a game in at my local club or GW is not helping.

To give me that push to get something done I've decided to go on the road and enter a tournanent a bit further away than I normally travel. I've been to the location before, but last time I stayed round a mate's house, this time I'll be travelling there and back by car on the day of the tournament.

4 games of 40k, and getting up at 6 to be out of the house at 6:30, will make it a long day, but it should be a fun day. The tournament I'm going to is the 10th Annual 40k Online (forum) tournament. I've attended the last few years, however this year, rather than being in Bracknell it's in Westbury at Triple Helix Wargames.

I'm quite happy with the 1500 point Dark Eldar army list I've been using lately, which added to the lack of motivation to paint when my next tournament was going to be another 1500 point tournament. This tournanent is 1750 points, which will allow me to experiment going down from 6 troop choices to fit some more interesting choices in. All those interesting choices (razorwing, beastmasters, reavers) need painting, so with only 4 weeks to go I'll have to get a move on.

Sometimes you have to give yourself a push, and say "so what if I'm busy, I'll find the time". Have you just thought f**k it and signed yourself up for something ? How did it go ?

Rathstar

ASMOH Tournament Game 3

2011-07-22T08:00:00.001+01:00

So after the first two games (reports here) I was on one win and one loss, and I had a very healthy victory point total (as my opponents only 7 models left at the end of the game between them). At 1-1 this is the game to make a break a tournament day, loss and you need a win to regain mid table, win and you still have a chance of finishing high.

Also for games 3 and 4 the big guns came out and we were allowed to add our 500 points of reinforcements bringing out armies up to 1750 pts. I added a 3^rd wych squad in a raider, 3 wracks in a venom and a 3^rd ravager, making my full list:

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer with Liquifier Gun - 60

6 Incubi - 132

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120

in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Wracks - 30

in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Total: 1749 Pts

I was facing a Dark Angel Deathwing army with vehicle support that made it very shooty, it contained:

Beial with Thunderhammer & Storm Shield

5 Thunderhammer & Stormshield Terminators, one upgraded to an Apothary (giving FnP) and one given a Cyclone Missile Launcher

5 Thunderhammer & Stormshield Terminators, one given a Cyclone Missile Launcher

3 Seperate Landspeeders with Typhoon Missile Launchers & Multi-meltas

3 Vindicators

3 Dreadnaughts with Plasma Cannons & Missile Launchers, 2 of them upgraded to Venerable Dreadnaughts

This list was the ying to my yang, tough as nails, with anti-tank spread nicely throughout the army. What was so well built was the volume of shots. At very ling range it put out 13 missile launcher shots, and after one turn the rest of the firepower (3 str 10 ordance templates, 3 plasma cannon templates & 3 multi-meltas) should be in range.

Not having reread the dark angels codex after the FAQ update I thought yeah they got proper storm shields, but the rest is just ok, how wrong was I. My opponent had sensibly gone through the dark angel codex and picked everything that was better than the other marine codexs, and then added 3 vindicators:

Although only allowed one typhoon per landspeeder squadron the dark angel landspeeder is 75 points were the same marine codex one is 100 pts
Although losing WS & BS 5 their venerable upgrade cost is 20 pts rather than 60 pts
The big weakness of thunderhammer terminators is that they can't shoot, so lets add the new cyclone missile launchers at 10 pts cheaper to offset their terminators being 15 pts more expensive.
Add in Belial, a cheap HQ at only 130 pts, and 30 pts more to give him and his squad FnP.

It was an impressive army, but I had to come up with some idea on how to win this game. Firstly there was the small number (10) of scoring models. Yeah they were in terminator armour, but if I threw enough shots at the non FnP unit they would eventually drop. This was made better by the fact that I had 6 troop choices, if I could kill one terminator unit and control 2 objectives I would win.

I just didn't think my army could win a straight shoot out with this army, so I had to use my troop advantage to try to win the mission.

Below is a diagram of the battlefield:

The scenery in the centre and just in the top right hand quadrant was a large three story ruin, however it had lots of windows so it would block LOS, but would definitely give a cover save to anything behind it. The green areas were forests, and the inverted L shape is an L-shaped wall section (only big enough to give infantry cover, and not big enough to give skimmers or other vehicles a cover save). The square scenery peice in the bottom right hand corner was a rough terrain on top of a small hill. The hill blocked line of sight completely and was difficult terrain on top.

We started by placing objectives. My opponent started by placing one in the top right hand quadrant, wanting to keep the objectives far apart (to make use of my mobility advantage) I placed one in the bottom right hand corner. My opponent wanting to keep the objectives close together (as he only had 2 slow moving troops) placed another one in the middle of the board. Now, wanting to keep the objectives far apart, I had the choice of top left or bottom right.

I should have looked at the terrain and thought about where my opponent would like to deploy, ie. in the quadrant with the large ruin, giving him cover and 2 objectives close together. If I placed the last objectove bottom right it would give that quadrant another easy to get to (or contest) objective. If I placed it in the far top left it would spread the objectives up more. The quadrant with the large ruin would still be appealing to my opponent but not quite as good as if the last objective went bottom right.

Unfortunately this analysis is with the benefit of hindsight, and at the time I put the objective in the bottom right hand quadrant. The objectives are marked on the map by small red circles.

My opponent duly won the roll to pick sides and choose the side with the large ruin and first turn L He deployed quite defensively, about 12" back from the edge of the large ruin. Vindicator's in the middle behind the ruin, dreads spread out either side with the terminators sprinkled around them, and landspeeders at the back.

I had two choices with deployment, either

use the one piece of terrain I had to hide some of my vehicles, and deploying my whole army that far back to reduce some of the firepower I would receive in the first turn

Deploy everything as far forwards as possible. The first turn response from my opponent would be devastating, but I would be in a better position.

I decided to take option 1, as turn 1 enemy firepower would be concentrated at my anti-tank, and if all my ravagers went down early I wouldn't have a chance against all his vehiciles, plus my ravagers were useful firing at FnP terminators.

I deployed all three ravagers behind the ruin, either side of the ruin I placed the small wrack unit's venoms sideways to give cover to the raiders behind. Behind the venom on the right of the ruin was the incubi, large wrack unit, and wyches (with haemonoculus) raiders. Behind the left side venom was the remaining 2 wych raiders. The 2 trueborn venoms were behind the ravagers just within 6" of where the wracks could deploy if their venom was destroyed.

The game would have been so much easier of I had placed the last objective in the top left. I could easily claim it, and then push to contest the middle objective, or just kill one of the terminator squads and then blast any vehicle trying to make it all the way to contest either of my objectives.

I rolled to seize (not that my deployment was set-up to take advantage of it) but didn't roll a 6.

The vindicators advanced to the large ruin in the centre. The rest of the army split in two

One section comprising 2 landspeeders, 2 dreads (one venerable) and the FnP terminators with Belial went south (and marginally west)
The 2^nd section comprising, a landspeeder, a venerable dread and the other terminators went west

Some missile launchers were still in range of my forces, and both small wrack venoms were destroyed, they both passed their pinning checks (one helped by the grisly trophies on the trueborn's venoms), and deployed behind the ruin (ready to pop up turn 4 or 5 to claim the objective. The incubi raider was also destroyed. 3 vehicles down and this was only a fraction of his firepower.

No point being cautious, if I did my troops would be stranded far in my quadrant when their vehicle was killed, as he would be in range with all his firepower apart from the multi-meltas next turn. The wyches (with haemonoculus) and the wracks on the left hand side of the ruin in my deployment zone zoomed forward 24" near the L shaped walls. The raiders on the right hand side of the ruin moved northeast, and the ravagers drifted out from cover, but stayed a bit back (hopefully out of range of the enemy that had just gone south from the enemy starting position. One trueborn venom went >12" to catch up with the wrack and wych venom going across my long board edge, and the other followed the other 2 wyches heading towards the top middle of the board.

My firepower did little, I stunned one vindicator, shook another.

My opponent didn't move the section of his army that had moved south much (as it was pretty much in between the objective in the middle of his quadrant and the objective in the bottom right hand quadrant. The smaller section continued moving westwards towards the top middle of the map (ie. north of the large ruin).

The raider with the wyches (accompanied with the haemonoculus) was blown up, thanks to FnP there wasn't too many casualties. They disembarked near the L-shaped wall sections. A ravager was also blown up. A few other vehicles were stunned or skaken due to bad rolls on the penetration table.

I was losing vehicles and mobility fast, so I had to try and kill one of his troop choices fast. The terminator unit without feel no pain was just north of the large ruin in the centre of the board, flanked by a landspeeder, vindicator and dreadnaught.

2 Wych raiders moved towards the terminators without feel no pain, one unit got out to assault. As always when you're about to assault I looked to see if the opponent could stop me assaulting by removing the nearest models as casualties from any firepower I sent their way. If the nearest one or two models were removed it would ensure making the assault was risky, however the cyclone missile launcher was the closest, so I was confident my opponent wouldn't take that models off as a casualty so I decided to fire as much as possible at the terminators. Both raiders, the venom, even a ravager opened up on the terminators, yet unfortunately they all made their armour and invunverable saves. Later the wyches assaulted and again all saved were made and the wyches lost a few but stayed in combat. I was hoping to drop one or two that turn, but that's the way the cookie crumbles (if the opponent gets a save sometimes they never fail).

On the other flank I advanced with everything (apart from the wyches and the haemonoculus in the ruins). The ravagers didn't advance as far as everything else to make best use of the range on their guns. Firepower did little again, shaking a few vehicles at best.

My opponent had a poor shooting phase in the next turn with all three vindicators scattering and killing nothing at all, so in an uneventful enemy turn I think I lost another vehicle and the wyches in combat with the terminators were seen off after the terminators again made all their saves.

With the terminators (without feel no pain) freed up for me to fire and assault I duly obliged them. I desperately wanted to kill one of his two two troops choices, so that whatever the other unit did I would be able to hold the objective in my quarter with the small wrack units and at least draw the game. Trueborn blasters, ravager dark lances, venom splinter cannons and even wyches splinter pistols opened up on the terminators, when the dust cleared 4 or the 5 terminators defiantly stared back at the wyches. The wyches gulped at the prospect of assaulting these almost invunverable opponents, but however scary they were their succubus needed her souls so into assault they went. The wyches didn't kill anymore but luckily stayed in combat after losing a few models.

On the other section of the board, my army moved further rightwards towards the other half of the opponent's army. The trueborn disembarked and shot down a landspeeder. A few more dark lances and a couple of the vehicles were shaken/stunned (but again no permanent damage).

I made a mistake with the trueborn. I had kept them close to their venom transport so they might get a cover save from some of the enemy shooting. However my opponent took advantage of this and his first shot was with a plasma cannon a dreadnaught. The dreadnaught was able to place the centre of the template on the venom while still touching all three of the trueborn (without them receiving a cover save). The shot duly didn't scatter and a failed flickerfield save later I had lost both the venom and all three trueborn L

The raider containing the large wrack squad somehow survived the firepower that was sent it's way, but I lost another vehicle or two on the left hand flank. In combat I still didn't kill and terminators, and my wyches suffered 7 wounds, however using my opponents dice they saved all wounds.

Moving into the end of the game I had lost a lot of vehciles (I was running out fast) and along with it my anti tank firepower was dwindling fast. The objective in the middle of the table was had an enemy landspeeder nearby who was moving towards my home objective, however I had a wittled down wych squad in the ruin the south, and a large wrack squad in their raider nearby. Also it was only a matter of time before the terminators at the middle top of the map killed the wyches they were in combat with and advanced upon the middle objective. I had two small wrack units hiding behind the ruin in my quadrant ready to jump and claim the objective in my quadrant. The scary half of my opponent's army (Beial, FnP Hamminators, 2 Dreads, vindicator were very close to the objective in my opponet's quadrant and not to far away (20") from the objective in the bottom right hand quadrant.

For my 4th turn, it was time to really time to think about claiming and contesting objectives. I knew the raider with the large unit of wracks was unlikely to survive another turn, so wanted to make the best use of it. I went flat out into the bottom right hand quadrant. I couldn't reach the objective there, but the wracks could make it there on turn 5 even if the raider was destroyed. The heamonoculus with the wittled don wych squad in the small wall sectioin just south of the middle objectived stayed in the cover but moved as far north as possible (fo a cheeky turn 5 jump out and run to the middle objective). My last ravager was concerned that my poor shooting would continue so moved to protect my home quadrant objective from a turn 5 flat out contesting move from a centrally located landspeeder (all I'd killed so far was the two other landspeeders).

My ravager need not have worried, as it immobolised the central landspeeder. The rest of my firepower was again ineffective (apart from shaking/stunning a couple of vehicles). However using my opponent's dice my wyches against saved all 6 wounds that were inflicted upon them my the terminators. Also in the combat phase my incubi (who had had a very quiet game) charged the immobolised landspeeder to get them forward movement and put them near the central objective to be part of my last ditch effort to kill the terminators in the top middle of the map when they finally killed the wyches they were in combat with.

In my oppoents 5th turn, he didn't move much (probably wanting to inflict as much damage as possible). He killed the raider with the large wych squad (even with it's 4+ cover save for going flat out, there was only so much it could take), luckily for me the wracks were not pinned. The immobolised landspeeder took revenger on the ravager which blew it up and kill killed it to have the last laugh. The last of my vehicles went down as well, along with some remaining trueborn, even the wyches in the wall section cover in just south of the middle of the table took got reduced down to the haemonoculus and 2 wyches, howver they managed to pass their morale test.

With prayers to the dice gods to make this the last turn I commenced by 5th turn. The wracks moved and ran to claim the objective in the bottom right hand quadrant My opponent could have moved a vindicator 12" to stop me claiming it the turn before but didn't so it could shoot. Both small wrack units climbed the ruin in my quadrant to claim the objective in my quadrant. Even the haemonoclus & 2 wyches just south of the objective in the middle of the board moved and ran forwards to claim the middle objective.

The incubi tried to kill the immobolised landspeeder again, but failed. The wyches in combat with the terminators took a load of wounds again, but this time not even my opponents dice could save them, and they lost a few and the remaining wyches broke from combat.

The dice was rolled for random game length, and my prayers were answered and the game eneded with me winning 3-1 on objectives. I was lucky that the game eneded so early, helped by my opponent concentrating on kiling me, when he should have slowly moved towards the objectives while still killing me. All his army can move at least 6" and still fire at full effect, so why he wasn't moving more is beyond me, but I'm not complaining as it's what allowed me to win the game.

I scored 187 victory points (2 and an half landspeeders) while my opponent got over 1300 vps. Although my opponent had only two troop choices he had many units to contest with, and not concentrating on them and/or advancing cost him the game.

With that win I was on 2 wins and a loss, and would face Steve (of Triple Helix Wargames) using his Nurgle marines. Next battle report will be up a quicker than this one. However it's now back to putting together my Nightwing, and assembling Hellions to be Beastmasters (after a month of not doing much I'm a bit behind with getting my new list ready for M.A.D. in October).

Rathstar

Return of the Rat

2011-07-18T23:19:00.001+01:00

When 8th edition came out I didn't want to believe the rumours that that all the tactical nuances had gone out of the game with pre-measuring, random charge distances, wheeling not counting towards charge movement.

I played a few games with my Skaven and a game with my Lizardmen. I lost all the games and became a bit disillusioned. When you start a new edition of a game, a new army or new game altogether you expect to lose most of your games to start with, put caused me to be so disillusioned was that my old tactics (with armies that I new well and had taken to many tournanents) just didn't work, mainly because I had underestimated some of the changes in 8th edition.

Like many others I gave up on Warhammer to concentrate on 40k and Warmachine. Storm of Magic has got me interested again, and whenever I went down my local GW or club I would always look in on the Warhammer games. Also talking to a mate I realised that I had to change the way I played.

So taking my Skaven army as an example here`s misconceptions I made, and how I think I should rectify them.

Horde Rule

Stupidily I wrote this off as being a nice gimmick that wouldn`t be cost effective. How wrong was I :) With the Step Up rule combat in 8th edition is all about damage output, gone are the days of killing the 5 guys in the front rank and winning big on static combat res, so an ability to get an extra attack per model in the front rank is golden and very important to wittle down units with lots of ranks fast, so they aren't stubbon and can be broken more easily.

Skaven don`t have the best infantry when it comes to doing damage, and they can't win as easily through static combat res, because (i) the combat resolution chart has changed (no +1 for outnumber, plus a +1 for chargers) and (ii) units doing so much more damage (whether it's infantry getting double attacks or monster impact hits). These factors have driven me to the decision that I need one ot two horde units (to compliment the abonination & doom wheel i'll be adding to the list).

From my experience so far I can see three units being useful as a horde unit; Storm Vermin have the best WS, I & hitting strength of the basic infantry. At 2.5 pts more than the cost of clanrats with shields they are expensive in skaven terms, but if you're going to build a unit that can do damage you might as well consider the most expensive.

50 models with full command cost 375 pts (good options for a magic banner woud be the common standard that gives flaming attacks, the war banner or the storm banner). Given my preference for quanity or quality with most armies I built it's a bit of a culture shock to even consider such a unit. The unit will start losing leadership after 11 casulties, but if the general is nearby it will need to suffer 21 casualties before it drops below leadership 9. Against another horder unit will deliver 31 WS4, I5, Str 4 attacks (and still do 70% of those attacks at a minimum width unit).

Next up for consideration is a Plague Monk unit. Again 50 models with full command is 375 pts, but this unit is crying out for the banner which allows all clan pestilence models in the unit to reroll to hit and to wound once a game. This bumps the unit cost up to 410, but on a key combat they woul churn out 41 WS3, I3, Str3 attacks (with the rerolling to hit and to wound leading to a sizable number of wounds). Another advantage of the plague monks that they allow plague censer bearers to gain their rank leadership bonus.

Last option is a Giant rat unit. By far the cheapest of the three options. However with the rats allowed to attack in an extra rank, and the pack masters being able to attack from the rear, they can put out a large number of attacks. A unit of 60 models (50 rats and 10 pack masters) would put out 50 WS3, I4, Str3 attacks against another horde unit. Being larger than the other 2 units they will keep their rank leadership bonus longer, and they are also the fastest unit of the three at Mv6. Lastly being only 230 pts they are significantly cheaper that the other two units, making them a good candidate for the second horde unit of an army.

All three units put out a decent number of attacks, and should do a decent number of wounds against most infantry units. Now none of these units would be able to stand toe to toe against any deathstar, so as Skaven players we have to use something else to even the battle.

Steadfast

The steadfast rule made my eyes light up when I first read it; you mean i can have stubbon ld10 slaves with a reroll (if my General & BSB are near) if I just have more ranks than the enemy.

While I increased the sized of my units, because I knew they would be taking more casualties I did not realise how much more they would be taking (especially with people using wider formations to generate more attacks).

In my earlier test games my slaves held up weak units for some time, but elite units and ones with lots of attacks sliced threw them like they weren't there. Slaves units for holding up enemy units need to be at least 40 strong, if not 50 or 60. Going from 40 to 60 models is only 40 pts, but if it means the enemy's most dangerous unit is tied up for a turn or two more it's well worth it.

Small Elite Units

Because in 7th edition you could kill the front rank of an enemy unit to enure no return attacks, small elite units could just attack the front of huge units and win. However with the step up rule they would take return hits, and this stopped this tactic for weak elite units. I good example in 7th edition was small units of 6 or 7 sword masters.

For my skaven I found this a problem for my plague censer bearers. I was used to throwing them into the front of units and slaughtering the front rank and many more, but now they would face return attacks and be whittled down very quickly.

Although they lost out in this respect they gained a few things, and require a change of role. First they can take a leadership test to avoid having to charge (combining this with them being allowed to use a nearby plague monk unit's rank leadership bonus, meant they could ld10 for this test. Secondly if they changed to a support role and aimed to attack the flank of enemy units already engaged if would mean they suffered less attacks (only those in base to base rather than 2 or 3 ranks of attacks if they attacked a unit on it's own).

Although they would require a change in tactics plague censer bearers are one of those rare skaven units that can do damage to the enemy, rather than killing a small amount and then running away.

Overall Impression on How Skaven Play Now

Skaven remain the combined forces army. They can kill medium skilled enemy units with our horde units, and to take on tougher enemies we can use magic and shooting to weaken them first, and then use efficient characters and monsters to even the battle against enemy deathstars. Lastly we can still use (now very deep) units of slaves to tie the enemy up for a while, allowing 90% of our army to focus on 60% of the enemy's army while their deathstars free themselves from a few slave units we threw at them.

So what's your experience of 8th edition ? How has the flow of the game changes ? How often to you see horde units on the battlefield ? How did your army adapt to the changes of 8th edition, and are those changes working for you ?

As well as more Dark Eldar posts, I'll be continuing with my thoughts on Skaven in 8th edition, as I try to move them towards how I think they need to work. Next I'll be considering the merits or diametrically opposed Warlord builds.

Rathstar

[40k] June Review

2011-07-05T02:02:00.000+01:00

Hi,

It's been a bit of a relaxing month 40k wise, but there's been some interesting developments.

Painting/Modelling

I haven't done much painting or converting this month, probably an effect of having my 1750 point Dark Eldar army completed means there isn't the pressure to finish models for a deadline.

I converted an old haemonoculus model to be a Wrack Acothyst by replacing the pistol hand with an arm holding a blade from the new warrior box set. I've also started assembling a Razorwing (see my early progress here).

To help me focus on my painting I've made a draft list for the M.A.D. tournament in October which contains most of the units I want to add to my Dark Eldar army (Reavers, Razorwing Jetfighter & Beastmaster unit). After the lull over the last month I'm hoping this will motivate me to get some more units painted for my Dark Eldar, plus I'm looking to trying out some of the other Dark Eldar units.

Gaming

I didn't manage to get in any gaming with my mates or down my local gaming club, due to my nightmare commute meaning that I was getting back to late to make the club, plus lots of social events at the weekends. However I did manage to attend a great 2 day tournament called Complaince II hosted by Triple Helix Wargames.

Going into my last game I was an unbeaten, but a third kill point game of the weekend (which also had special rules to give the opponent bonus kill points for what you had left on the board) saw me drop to 7th out of 20 players with a loss.

Overall it was a good tournament, and I really enjoyed the weekend, including picking up some more Battlefield In A Box terrain and an Army Painter paint set at 20% off RRP :)

It's not all doom and gloom with the Kill Point missions with my Dark Eldar, so far I've gone 9/1/2 (W/D/L) with my Dark Eldar over the three tournaments, and I have gone 3/0/2 in kill point missions, and only one of my three wins at kill points missions was by tabling my opponent, so it'd definietely possible to win anniliation games even when you have significantly more kill points than your opponent. Careful application of firepower can cripple an opponent's mobility (in the case of assault armies) or long range firepower (in the case of gunlines) allowing you to assault on your terms.

Other Gaming News

Warhammer interest will be boasted by the release of Storm of Magic. It looks interesting, and I'm tempted to play a few games with my Skaven. With my interest in Bloodbowl and Warmachine being roused by various leagues and campaigns down my local club, I'm in danager of being in the same situation I was last year, and being pulled in two many directions at once. I'll be trying to stay mainly focused on 40k, and use the other games as a nice distraction in between painting and gaming with my Dark Eldar.

Rumours for Necrons are starting to appear on the internet. As the codex is a way off all of it has to be taken with a large pinch of salt. A seclection of the rumours can be found here (Warseer) and here from the always excellent Faeit 212 blog.

Upcoming Posts

Well I'm so behind on posts I have quite a backlog to post. Hopefully without the rush to finish painting units for a impending tournament, I should be able to make some headway into the backlog this month.

Rathstar

No Rest For The Wicked...

2011-06-29T02:23:00.004+01:00

Hi,

Well the first three tournaments of the year are over, and my play with the Dark Eldar has improved noticeably.

However rather the rest on my laurels I'm back at the painting table because I have written a provisional list for the M.A.D. tournament (in October). The higher points total, 1800 (while also stripping my list to the absolute core), allowed me to include all three elements that I wanted to improve (see this post):

Reavers with heat lances for anti tank
Upgrading a ravager to a razorwing for anti horde
Adding a beastmaster unit to add anti-MEQ combat redundancy

The new list is at the bottom of this post, let me know what you think of it.

What this new list means is that, while I have a fully functional tournament army, I have an awful lot of building and painting to do. First off was the Razorwing.

I have to say the quality of the build is very good, with all the parts fitting together nicely, and various parts having locator pins to make it easy for pieces to lock together nicely.

Being a bit undecided about the armament I wanted, I was looking out for magnitising opportunities. The missiles should be easy to magnitise, and it's nice that all types of missiles are included. The wing weapons slot into holes, they are a bit lose, but once they are sprayed and painted I'm sure the fit should be a nice & snug.

The chin weapons are a pain though. They fit between the top and bottom of the aircraft and you can't slide them out once the hull is in place. However one option is to not glue the top and bottom of the hull together. The tail fin at the back holds the two halves of the hull together quite nicely without glue. My only worry is that it's a snug fit now and that paint may make the tail fin very difficult to remove and re-attach. I'll let you know how I get on.

My top tip assembling the razorwing is to hold the hulls together when you are glueing the engines and weapon mounts to the top hull. This ensures that they dry in the right position, and that the bottom hull will fit on nicely later. However be careful to use glue sparingly and only on the top hull section to avoid accidently glueing the hulls together before you are ready.

Rathstar

Draft 1800 Point List for M.A.D.:

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer - 55
with Venom Blade

5 Incubi - 110
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

8 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 95
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Beastmaster Unit - 174
containing 4 Beastmasters, 3 Krymera & 6 Razorwings

6 Reaver Jetbikes - 156
with 2 Heat Lances

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Razorwing Jetfighter - 145
with 2 Dark Lances

Total: 1797 Pts

Update 3rd July:

I'm dithering on a few small tweaks, and would appreciate any views you have. I am concerned with the small size of both the beasts unit and the incubi could do with an extra model (or a venom transport), just one more model and I would be happy with both. The places where I can see I could lose points (wthout affecting efficiency too much) are:

Changing the Reavers for 5 Scourges with 2 Heat Lances (saving 22 points, but I'm not keen on this change)
Lose a wrack with a liquifer gun (saving 20 pts)
Losing Nalix's Venom blade (saving 5 pts)

Using the last two options I would have 28 points to spend. I'm tempted with an extra Krymera, and giving the Incubi a Venom rather than a Raider, leaving me with 11 points free, for either a 10th wrack, a wrack acothyst, or grisly trophies on the trueborn venoms.

Also for Neath Leanan here's a pick of the Razorwing Jetfighter showing how thin it is:

A Further Campaign of Terror

2011-06-26T00:47:00.000+01:00

The Dark Eldar fleets looked like a swarm of locus swarming over the major cities of the planet below. Archon Rathstar surveyed the devastation his Kabel and their allies had wrought on the Imperial world below.

Haemonoculus Nalix Soulseer had done well in the first two campaigns, winning some decisive battles and reaping a vast number of souls.

However the next target was the star system's main planet, time would tell if the young haemonoculus would continue to perform against a larger army and populace who, more importantly know an attack is likely imminent...

________________________________________________________

Yes, after initial successes at my first two tournaments of the year, it was now time to sort the men from the boys with a two day tournament. With the swiss system matching players it normally takes at least 2 games for the top players to rise to the top, so with a one day tournament (especially if it is only 3 games) you can be lucky and not face any of the good players, particularly if you don't get many victory points (which is normally used as the tie break).

Of course this luck can run both ways, and if a top player has some bad luck some poor person may find themselves playing a person much much better than their current tournament placing suggests, a good example would be my 2nd opponent at ASMOH after I lost a kill point game. He had a nice fluffy Eldar army (that won best painted) and I tabled it.

In two day tournaments, if you are in contention of winning then you will have had to play on the high tables for most of the tournament. There is always the argument that if you lose your first game but win the rest you will have a much easier time than someone who wins all but the last game. This was true in ASMOH, I lost my first game and then won the rest, while my mate only lost his last game. He had to play the player who finished 1st and 3rd while didn't get near them. However I think deliberately losing the first (or any game) game is (apart from being dishonest) is bound to fail. Taking ASMOH, even winning my remaining 3 games, picking up good painting points and getting loads of victory points I couldn't catch up to the leaders to finish in the top 3.

Also you run the risk of facing a really good army and/or player who has lost a game (due to a bad match-up or just plain bad luck). A perfect example was my 3rd game at ASMOH; we both had strong lists, and knew how to use them, and having a win and loss each being mid table was a bit low for our ability. Unless we got a.draw, one of us was going to slip far down the rankings. Even when the losing player (likely) slaughters their last opponent the losing player can only get back to mid table. Always best to play your best and try to win by as much as possible (without being a wanker about it) - interestingly enough my phone tried to replace wanker with banker :)

Well after that long amble, my Dark Eldar are sitting at home waiting for me to pick them up and take them to the Compliance II tournament. I've barely changed the list since the last tournament. I only lost my last agoniser and Animus Vitae from the Haemonoculus to give the large Wrack unit a Acothyst and gain an extra Wych. The new list is:

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer - 65

with Liquifier Gun & Venom Blade

6 Incubi - 132
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

10 Wracks incl. Acothyst, with 2 Liquifier Guns - 130
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
10 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 115
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60
3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Total: 1499 Pts

Update: Actually it is now the first day of the tournament, as I could post because my mate lives in the middle of nowhere and therefore I had no internet reception on my phone. I will update you with my progress as I progress though the tournament.

Rathstar

As Russ Intended - Evolution of my Space Wolves List

2011-06-22T16:30:00.087+01:00

Hi,

You may remember from this post that I said that I was trying out a new unit in my Space Wolves list. So I wouldn't have to rush my thunderwolves to get a army list up and running I decided on a list without the thunderwolves in to be my painting challenge. The list I came up with was as follows:

Rune Priest

4 units of grey hunters with wolf guard in rhinos

1 Dreadnaught

2 multi-melta/heavy flamer landspeeders

2 units of max long fangs with missile launchers with las/plas razorbacks

whirlwind

The list was performing well, however I wasn't too impressed with the razorbacks. They did have a lot going for them:

they were the only lascannons in the list, and at short range
at short range the plasma guns added some nice extra Ap2 firepower in the list
they allowed the long fangs to deploy better in dawn of war
they could pick up grey hunter packs who had lost their rhino later in the game

However for most of the game 150 pts for 2 lascannon shots seemed a bit ineffecive. Also without having a lot of other vehicle armour in the list there wasn't enough other targets to distract the enemies heavy guns. Razorspam Wolves or Razorspam Blood Angels works due to the number of razorbacks and the distracting Av13 predators. My lists didn't have that so my fragile razorbacks were shaken often (if not destroyed).

What had always performed was the reliable grey hunters, although there was always an issue of having one unit stay slightly further back to get objective. So my thought was 2 las/plas razor backs were the same as 10 grey hunters on foot. To keep the volume of low AP2 shots I needed 10 pts to give the grey hunters 2 plasmaguns.

It I them considered that if this squad was on foot it would be the perfect place for a 5th wolf guard in terminator armour with a cyclone missile launcher. Now that wolf guard is a lot of points so I had to be ruthless. The squad of 9 grey hunters (including wolf guard) that was normally joined by the runepriest lost a grey hunter and it's mark of the wolfen. A squad of 10 was reduced to 9, the weakest squad (which had only a combi melta on the wolf guard and a melta gun) was reduced to 8 models. Finally although the whirlwind had done fine I changed by 2 long fangs and whirlwind to 3 units of 5, going from 10 missiles accross 4 targets and 1 whirlwind blast to 12 missile accross 6 targets, but more importantly saving me 20 points towards the cyclone wolf guard.

My new unit fought on foot as Russ intended, aided long range shooting with 2 more missile shots into another target, and was more than a match for most outflankers (or any traitious wolf scouts). My first interation of this squad was:

Wolf Guard in Terminator armour with Combi-Plasma, Wolf Claw & Cyclone Missile Launchers

10 Grey Hunters with 2 Plasmaguns

Unit Performace

My first test was against a blood angels force that had two troops choices in landraiders, while also ramming dreadnaughts down your throt in drop pods, rounding the list out with fast vindicators, and they had been to the vampire cloning company to get a Mephiston clone (he pops up in so many lists).

The unit performed well advancing to mid field while firing off missiles every turn. However their inability to hurt dreadnaughts in combat was also shown up when my missile launchers failed to hurt onr dreadnaught and it fell to the grey hunters to rapid fire plasmaguns into the side armour which luckily immobolised it.

My second game was against marines. Lysander drop podding down with a tactical squad, along with two dreadnaughts in drop pods. By the time most armies had recovered from that there was 5 hammer terminators in a land raider supported by another tactical squad in a rhino, scouts, and a vindicator.

This game it was nice to move the new grey hunter round a building and rapid fire three plasmaguns in hammer terminators, however it did seem like overkill with the rest of the rapid firing bolters and other squads ready to charge the couple of remaining terminators.

Over these two games it seems that I didn't need the plasma as much. Normally the squad was moving to engage the enemy or claim objectives (so they weren't using the full 24" range), and they didn't need the risk of plasmagun overheats killing them. What I did need (especially as this squad had to be move self sufficient) was a way to deal with vehicles and dreadnaughts. Therefore out went the plasmaguns on the grey hunters for meltaguns, and the wolf guard gained a chainfist (at the expense of his combi weapon, and the points savings from using meltaguns rather than plasmaguns).

The revised unit was:

Wolf Guard in Terminator armour with Storm Bolter, Chainfist & Cyclone Missile Launchers

10 Grey Hunters with 2 Meltaguns

It would have been nice to squeese the combi meltagun on the wolf guard, but I ran out of points. This new unit faced an experimental tyranid army with prime, 9 hive guard, 2 trygons, termagaunts, hormagaunts, gaygoyles & genestealers. The new unit performed very well. They held a flank (staying 18" away from the board edge so it could rapid fire at any genestealers that outflanked that side) while hammering a trygon. Later in the game they were charged by a weakened (about 12 left) hormagaunt unit. With counter attack they saw off this threat and advanced to just short of the tyranid deployment zone. Later in the game the firepower the unit put at short range was great (2 missile shots and then 22 bolter shots), and then were able to let most enemies charge them and counter attack. The icing on the cakes was the chainfist that would allow them to be a threat to heavy vehicles, dreadnaughts and monstrous creatures in close combat.

Overall I really like the unit, it adds a lot to the mid field presence of the army. I do have to be careful with it's deployment so it doesn't get left out of the main fight, after all with the wolf guard it is a lot of points, at 233 pts including the wolf guard (especially if all it does is fire 2 missile shots a turn).

For those interested here's my revised list:

Rune Priest - 100
Living Lightning, Jaws of the World Wolf

Wolf Guard - 225
(Alpha) Frost Axe, Bolt Pistol
(Beta) Powerfist, Combi-melta
(Gamma) Powerfist, Combi-melta
(Delta) Combi-melta
(Epsilon) Terminator Armour, Cyclone Missile Launcher, Storm Bolter, Chainfist

Dreadnaught - 105
Multi-melta, Storm Bolter

Grey Hunter Squad Alpha - 170
7 Grey Hunters, Mark of the Wolfen, Meltagun, Wolf Standard, Rhino

Grey Hunter Squad Beta - 185
8 Grey Hunters, Mark of the Wolfen, Meltagun, Wolf Standard, Rhino

Grey Hunter Squad Gamma - 195
8 Grey Hunters, Powerfist, Meltagun, Wolf Standard, Rhino

Grey Hunter Squad Delta - 130
6 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino

Grey Hunter Squad Epsilon - 155
10 Grey Hunters, 2 Meltaguns

Landspeeder - 70
Multi-melta, Heavy Flamer

Landspeeder - 70
Multi-melta, Heavy Flamer

5 Long Fangs - 115
4 Missile Launchers

5 Long Fangs - 115
4 Missile Launchers

5 Long Fangs - 115
4 Missile Launchers

Totals: 1750 Points, 67 Models, 16 Kill Points

For high strenth shots the army starts out with 14 missile launcher shots spread accross 7 targets, and at short range this is complimented by 6 meltaguns, 3 combi-meltas & 3 multi-meltas. Anti light infantry is covered with the ability of the missile launchers to switch to frag missiles and the number of bolters in the list.

What I also like about the list is it's large number of models for a marine list. It's slower than my other armies (Tau & Dark Eldar), but is as large as those armies and much more resiliant. However it must be careful not let the many units get isolated so they can be taken apart piece meal. If they support each other they can take on pretty much anything, even if it's by tieing something up so it can be dragged down and (power)fisted to death - as happened to Mephiston in the Blood Angels game :)

What do you think of the army list evolution ? The army is much more counter attack rather than the full on agression of my early thunderwolf list. What do you think of the new unit, do you use one like it yourself or have you faced such a unit ?

Rathstar

Battlefield in a Box Review

2011-06-21T00:57:00.001+01:00

Hi,

Well it's been a while since my last post, and for those waiting for the battle reports from my last tournaments they are still in the pipe line and will be appearing eventually.

Today I decided that I will definitely buy the tables so I can have a gaming table at home. I have an a Cities of Death boxset with a few ruins, some barracades and various pieces of terrain I've picked up from ebay a few years ago, but I needed a few more pieces to fill a table. While browsing in my local games store I came accross the Gale Force Nine Battlefield In A Box Range. The idea is that the terrain is already assembled, painted to a gaming standard and ready to use straight out of the box. This is a refreshing change from GW, and is perfect for any of us who find it hard to fit in time to paint our armies let alone terrain pieces.

I decided to pick up a set of small pine trees and a box of crystals.

Turnng the box over showed the exact contents of the box:


The tree boxset contained 14 trees spread over 6 bases along with 2 large bases

The crystal boxset contained 10 assorted crystal formations.

Opening both boxes they were very well packaged. Each collection of threes had it's own plastic section, and the large bases were each in a plastic bag packed within polystrene:

30 sections later I had a 2 forests that I could put straight on a gaming table:

The boxset also contained a bag of flock in case I wanted to spend a small amount of time to improve the forests to make them look like the ones of the cover of the box. Alternatively I could use other flock (such as snow) to match my army.

The crytals were just as well packaged. The packaging in both box sets was so good I'll probably use them to store the terrain between games. Again 30 second after opening the box I had a nice array of crystals for my Dark Eldar to fight over (I'm tempted to turn a few of the small crystals into objective markers).

You couldn't ask for better packaging

Whether they clumped to getter to block LOS for infantry or spaced out to give cover as they advance this terrain would improve a game

Price wise the trees boxset was 50p more than GW's trees, but you got 2 forests rather than one, and the forests are painted, and it would only take half an hour to flock them to make them look as good as anything you'd see in a gaming store.

GW's Tree boxset offering

Overall I really rate this terrain range, and I'll probably pop back for a set of swamps, and if I didn't already have lots of terrain I could probably pick up some of their other sets which include ruins, elven pillars/ruins, ponds, river sections, tank traps and more.

For those of you that live near Reading in the UK, Eclectic Games sells a large selection of the range. They also offer a 5% discount to Spiky club members, and that's on top of their loyalty card. So I got both the forests and the crystals for less than £31 (instead of £32.50) plus 3 tenths of my loyalty card filled (which gives £10 credit once filled). Compared to buying 2 games workshop forests (for £34) and then having to paint them I think is was a good buy.

For those not near Reading, UK, the Gale Force Nine products are sold via many webstores such as Wayland Games in the UK, where you can get them cheaper than the amount I paid (but I like to occassionly support my local store).

Until next time.

Rathstar

PS. Battle reports are coming soon, I must get them done as I have another tournament, Compliance II, coming up in 4 days.

[40k] May Review

2011-06-06T01:17:00.002+01:00

Hi,

40k playing has really picked up this month, helped by the two tournaments I've attended. The first half of the month was filled with painting to finish off my Dark Eldar in preparation for the two tournaments, and attending those tournaments. This was followed (as happens frequently when so much effort is concentrated in a small space of time) with a period of two weeks cool off with no painting or gaming done with the Dark Eldar.

Painting / Modelling

My first painting milestone of finishing my 1750 point Dark Eldar army was finished in the early hours of the day of my first tournament of 2011. Here's a pic of the full 1750 point army, and further pictures can be found on this post giving an overview of the day. Click on any pic for larger versions.

Although there has been no further modelling, I know my next mini projects. First I want to convert some scourges (even though the official models look amazing). I was going to use kabalite warriors, but they are quite static so instead I'm going to use the crew in the vehicles boxsets which are hanging off the vehicles (as they'll have more dynamic poses. For wings I am going to use the blood angels wings. Next up will be to repair and repaint a 6th reaver so I can get them on the battlefield.

Feedback on my venoms at both tournaments were very positive with another Dark Eldar player saying they were the best venom conversion he'd seen. It'll be interesting to see what people think once the official model starts appearing in armies.

However it's not all Dark Eldar at the moment, I want to progress with my Space Wolves, particularly assembling a new unit I've recently decided to add to the army, and completing the assembly of my second landspeeder (so I can stop borrowing my mate's landspeeder if I want to have a game). Adding this new unit to my modelling tracker has dropped by the progress bar, but I aim to get it back up during the next week:

Gaming

With the tournaments I've got in 7 games with my Dark Eldar this month, and they have gone a very respectable 6/0/1 (W/D/L). The first two games of the first tournament, A Small Matter of Honour, can be found here along with my initial thoughts on the army's performance. A bit delayed but following soon will be game 3 and 4. Eventually a summary of the second tournament, Rapid Strike, will also be posted up.

From these tournaments I pretty much happy with my 1500 points list, however the experience of going down to 4 troops choices, means that I'm reassessing my need for 6 troops choices in 1750 points games for Dark Eldar, especially if the extra points are spent on units which will be in the opponents face and will draw firepower. The units fighting for the right to join the 1750 point army are:

Scourges
Reavers
Beastmasters
Razorwing Jetfighter

The first two units are to add extra anti tank to the list. I'm fed up of having to roll 5+ penetrate and then another 5+ to wreak/explode, so heat lances will be getting a trial run. The beastmasters add some extra MEQ combat power (through razorwing rending and drowning them in armour saves) to add redundancy to the incubi. Finally the jetfighter adds 4 large templates to help against hordes. Test games over the next couple of months will show who wins this battle.

As well as Dark Eldar tournament games, I've got in 2 games with my Space Wolves, and I've just come back from a third game today. I've changed my list for these games to try out a new unit. I'll post my reasonings on choosing this new unit, and how it's performed in an upcoming post.

Other Hobby News

The big thing at the moment is the transisition to Finecast. There has been mixed reviews in this change, including worries about the brittleness of Finecast, and horror stories of it melting in (uk) sunlight. Neither myself or any of my mates haven't bought any finecast (mainly due to we have enough to paint already, and being shocked at the price), so it'll be a while before I can say anything first hand. However a good source of info is a blog which I read for upcoming army rumours which is Faeit 212. Check out the rest of his really good blog by following this link.

Upcoming Blog Posts

Due to my lack of activity in the last two weeks, I've got a huge backlog of blog posts, but I hope to make good progress on them before my 3rd tournament of 2011 in two weeks time, currently the list of upcoming articles is:

Test running my tweaked Tau list
Guest pictures of a venom, and instructions on how I made mine
ASMOH Game 3 & 4 with final tournament thoughts
Rapid Strike Tournament Debrief
Who needs AP1 when you have 20 Lances ?
The Evolution of a Space Wolves list

Until next time,

Rathstar

Two Blasters from each Kabalite Warrior Box, plus Status Update

2011-05-18T23:57:00.001+01:00

Hi,

I recently came accross this, and thought I'd share it. The "blaster" on the left in the pic is actually made from a shredder and a blast pistol.

This simple, yet great, idea was posted on heresy-online by Strange Dude. Follow the link here to go to the forum thread, which includes pictures of the exact pieces to use and where to make the cuts; basically cut the nozzle of the shredder and replace it with the blast pistol nozzle, and then remove the shredder ammo canister.

I'm going to use this method to make 2 extra trueborn from a box of warriors I bought to convert into scourges (with blood angel wings).

__________________________________________________

Painting, building and converting models has kind of grind to a halt after the rush to get my Dark Eldar army ready for the two tournaments over the last two weekends. It's always good to take a short break after tournaments to reflect and recover. However I do have a few projects I want to get started:

Making Scourges from Warriors and Blood Angel Wings
Making a 6th Reaver jetbike
Finish getting my Space Wolves in a state I can use it in games against my mates

I'm also completing battlereports from the two tournaments I recently attended (Game 3 of ASMOH is 80% done), expect a post in the new few days.

My next tournament has been booked as Compliance II at Triple Helix Wargames, so lots of playtesting to do until then, plus hopefully finishing my scourges and/or jetbike to give me more options.

Rathstar

ASMOH Tournament Game Overview & Learnings (Game One & Two)

2011-05-15T01:03:00.002+01:00

So last weekend I attended the A Small Matter of Honour Tournament at Basingstoke's Sad Muppets club. As you'll probably now from a previous post I went 3-0-1 (W/D/L) and came 5th, so with another 1 day tournament tomorrow what learnings can I take from my first tournament of 2011.

Tournament Game Overviews

Game 1 I was lucky to draw the difficult Anniliation mission (to get it out of the way). Game 1 and 2 were 1250 pts so I was using the following list:

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer with Liquifier Gun - 60
6 Incubi in Raider with Dark Lance - 192
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 151

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns in Raider with Dark Lance - 180
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade in Raider with Dark Lance - 165
9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Agoniser in Raider with Dark Lance - 180

3 Wracks in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 95
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Total: 1233 Pts

I was facing a foot Space Wolves army, consisting of 2 units of 8 grey hunters, a unit of 6 grey hunters, each grey hunter unit had a wolf guard in terminator armour, 2 units of long fangs (each with a wolf guard in power armour to be an extra ablative body), a rune priest, a wolf priest, and a unit of scouts with a wolf guard. So my 15 kill points was facing 8, so if he could get though half my army I would need to table him to win.

Being anniliation I decided to take first turn hoping to cripple his long fangs, as quickly as possible, as they would make a nasty mess of my 8 vehicles very fast.

I split my army into 2 sections. The main section on the right contained both ravagers, wyches with the Haemonoculus, the Incubi, and the trueborn. On the left I had both the large and small units of wracks, along with the other unit of wyches

Opposite my strong flank my opponent deployed both large units of grey hunters (one behind the other), the wolf priest in the first unit, the rune priest in the second. They were behind some small alls giving them a cover save. One unit of long fangs deployed behind them. Against the light flank he deployed the small unit he deployed the small unit of grey hunters, and slightly further back behind a small ruin the other unit of long fangs.

Both raiders (wracks andwyches) on the light left flank moved flat out, leaving me close to the grey hunters that side. The small wrack venom moved forward 12" so it could fire on the long fangs. The stronger right flank moved forward 12" so it could all fire, except the incubi raider which moved forward behind a ruin in the middle of the table which blocked line of sight.

My first turn shooting saw me do little damage to the long fangs with one missile launcher lost from one unit of long fangs and the pack leader from the other unit. Yep 4 splinter cannons and 7 dark lances killed 2 marines. However killing the pack master in one of the long fang units would save a vehicle a turn as they couldn't split fire anymore.

His response was to move the furtherest forwards grey hunters on the stronger right flank forwards (out of the cover of the walls) so he could fire at a venom. The second grey hunter squad moved forward to just behind the walls. Everything stayed still and fired at the incoming Dark Eldar vehicles.

I got lucky and the small grey hunters firing plasma shots and bolters didn't kill the wrack's raider on the left, so the long fangs were forced to kill it. I only lost 1 model in the explosion (I would have killed the wych raider as they would suffer more casulties in any explosion).

On the right the long fangs killed the truborn's venom, and stunned the wyches raider. I think I should have moved the raider futher forwards (at the expense of not shooting, because now the wyches would be able to charge the front grey hunters with the incubi next turn). If the raider has just been shaken I was tempted to charge the wyches into both the grey hunter squad (with the addition of the incubi) hoping to win my a fair margin. However I think having the raider stunned was a godsend in disguide because I probably would have over extended myself in a protracted combat envolving too many characters and wolf guard terminators.

I was also lucky with the rune priest which only rolled 1 or 2 shots with living lightning and didn't hurt a vehicle with a poor penetrating roll.

Second turn and combat is about to be initiated. On the left the wracks charge the small grey hunter squad, the wyches zoom over the grey hunters and get out ready to charge both the long fangs and the grey hunters. The small wrack unit moved 12" further forward so their venom could help against other flank.

The incubi raider zoomed 12" forwards over the ruin in the centre. However they couldn't clear the ruin amd it immobolised itself (not a problem as it had done it's job of getting the incubi in combat and it could still fire it's dark lance). The wyches for out of their raider and advanced forward. The truborn moved forward to lend more firepower into the front grey hunters.

Shooting at the front unit of grey hunters was a bit too much leaving only about 2 grey hunters and the wolf priest and wolf guard. The incubi duly charged and despatched them. A bit of firepower went into the long fangs and grey hunters. Another stroke of luck is that the small wrack venom firing accross field into the right flank long fangs took out one of the missile launchers putting the unit out of coherency meaning they wouldn't be firing their heavy weapons next turn.

One of two big mistakes in this game was charging both the long fangs and grey hunters on the left flank. What I should have done was multi assaulted the grey hunters to ensure their demise and then taken the hit from the one turn of long fangs shooting before killing them the next turn. What happened was that I was only winning combat by small amounts, and eventually a poor combat phase saw me lose combat and the wyches fleeing and getting cut down by the long fangs. This also freeed up the wolf guard terminator in the grey hunters to attack wracks rather than wyches (with 4+ dodge save). By the end of the game I even throw the the small unit of 3 wracks into the combat. Although the grey hunters were wittled down to just the wolf guard he refused to die (making 5 or 6 saves in the last turn of the game).

On the right flank things went better. The incubi were counter charged by the second grey hunter squad, but after the incubi had taken a few out before they died, the firepower and conter charge by the wyches took them out. Other firepower took reduced the long fangs to just a few and the rune priest which were quickly finished off by shooting and combat soo after.

While this was going on the wolf scout turned up. Now if they game in to help out the main space wolf force, I would probably have been able to kill them as well, however my opponent sensibly bought them on the flank board edge but near my deployment zone. They killed a ravager the turn they game on, and I forgot to move the wyches raider forwars (to put it easily out of range of the scouts), so the scouts duly killed that as well. I didn't have the transports to go back and deal with them so they scout had got 2 kill points for no loss and stayed huddles in my bottom right hand corner of the board.

The game ended 8-6 to my opponent on kill points. I throw one away by losing the wych raider to the scouts. I also ended the game with the small unit of wracks running, but if they hadn't gone into combat the other unit of wracks would have lost easily. However maybe a better tactic instead of trying to win that combat would have been to let the larger wrack squad eventually lose so I could shoot the wolf guard.

Main learnings was:

Be a bit more aggressive, ie. the wyches with the haemonoculus could have made combat turn two if I had sacrificed one dark lance shot.
Attacking in waves works, as I have more units to start with, attacking with one unit normally draws out another unit, which I normally have a counter charge ready for.
Against MEG the incubi are great for cutting the heart out of an enemy unit, even if they may die in the process.
Don't over extend myself. I didn't need to try and kill the lighter left flank on turn 2. Killing half that side with lots of units left over there (large & small wrack units, wyches, raider & venom) to kill the other unit would have been fine.
Don't over do the shooting into units you're about to assault. In a couple of turns I felt it was hardly worth charging in because my shooting has reduced the target to only a few models, essentially meaning I wasn't using the power of my army efficiently.

Game 2 I was against the person who eventually took best army. He had a lovely Eldar army, so kin wars should be a nice battle. The battlefield was dominated by the huge bastion you can see behind the picture of my army below:

My opponent was fielding Prince Yriel, with 5 Wraithguard and a Warlock in a Wave Serpent, 7 Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent, 7 or 8 Banshees on foot, 5 Rangers, 5 Jetbikes (with 1 shuriken cannon), Nightspinner.

The mission was the one everyone seems to be calling the draw mission. The side of the board my army is pictures on turned out to be my side of the board. He placed his one objective in the top right hand corner of the board. I placed mine in a forest in the on the edge of my deployment zone on the same flank. Unmodestly thinking I had the stronger army I didn't want part of my army staying away from the fight to defend an objective, my objective holder would be the first unit to have their raider destroyed.

I stormed on turn 1 with all of my army and put it all behind the hude bastion. Some of the side vehicles could still be shot, but the important stuff such the ravagers were well hidden. My opponent's three vehicles came on turn 1. The dire avengers wave serpent drifted to his objective in the top right hand corner, the nightspinner came on in the opposite corner, with Yriel and his wraithguard taking centre stage (near his board edge).

The Nightspinner tried a shot into the middle of my packed vehicles. It would have affected 4 vehciles with it's special ability (you count all terrain as dangerous), but it scattered away (which would have hit 2 vehicles). My opponent rerolled (because of twin linked and it scatter 11" hitting nothing). The raider carrying the wyches with the haemonoculus got shot down, but their pain token giving FnP meant only a couple died.

My counter attack worked well. Everything apart from the trueborn venom went towards the right flank. The trueborn went 6" forwards round the left hand side of the bastion. The trueborn were in range of the nightspinner and shook it. A ravager blew up the wave serpent with the dire avengers, and other shooting shook the wave serpent carrying Yriel and the wrathguard.

In the next turn the Yriel's wave serpent moved about 10" forwards. Behind Yriel's wave serpent 5 jetbikes moved onto the board. The rangers also turned up and fleeted into a ruin, about 12" left of my opponents objective in the top right hand corner of the board. The banshees arrived and went behind the ruin the rangers went in, as a counter attack threat. The dire avengers moved forwards towards a small patch of ruins. With the two remaining vehicles unable to shoot shooting was light with the cannon from the jetbikes failing to kill a Dark Eldar vehicle.

Taking my learnings from my last game I decided to be a bit more aggressive. The wrack's raider moved 12" forwards and they got out ready to flame and charge the jetbikes (and hoping to draw out Yriel). The incubi raider moved 12" and they got out and fleeted, so they could charge round the ruins on the right into the dire avengers without having to go through the terrain (I love that they now have fleet). The wyches who still had their raider went flat to be just in front of the ruin the dire avengers wer behind. The trueborn moved another 6" round the bastion towards the middle of the table (as the blasters would still be well within range of the nightspinner).

All my shooting plans changed when the first ravager blew up Yriel waveserpent with the first shot of the turn. Yriel and the wraithguard deployed behind the wreck The splinter cannons from small wrack's venom, and the trueborns venom opened up on the wraithguard. Even the trueborn decided to leave the nightspinner and fire at Yriel an the wraithgiard (because they were coming from the opposite direction and wouldn't give the wraithguard a cover save). With the incubi raider & the 2nd raveger killing off the wraithguard leaving Yriel on his own, adding insult to injury, the last shot of the turn was the wrack raider instant killing Yriel when he failed his invunverable save.

Combat went swiftly my way. The incubi slaughted the dire avengers for the loss of one model (helped by the avengers failing all 7 of the 5+ invunverable saves given by the exarch). A poor consolidation move meant they were still in the open and in charge range of the banshees. After losing 2 bikes to flames the rest died in close combat with the wracks. The wracks consolidated towards the banshees (the banshees would win that combat, but if they moved left to get the wracks it would mean ignoring the incubi and wyches near his objective).

With Yriel and his squad dead, and only 5 rangers having to advance accross open ground to get to the objective it was mopping up time. The banshees charged the incubi (they only seem to get charged by power weapons once they have a pain token). The banshees easily won but were left in the open, meaning they were shot at lots and charges by wyches when they were outnumbered 3-1. The rangers were shot down (3+ cover save vs loads of shots from vemons) and eventually flamed by the wracks. The remaining wyches (who killed the banshees) and the small unit of wracks on a venom went to claim my opponent's objective. The wyches who's raider got blown up turn 1 spread out around my objective (there was still an active night spinner around turn 3). A ravager and the trueborn kept the night spinner from firing in turn 4 and finally killed it in turn 5 to complete the tabling.

It's hard to fault your army when it does such a convincing performance. However things I was beginning to like very much were:

The trueborn. They would move 12" turn 1 and then with the increased 18" range of the blasters would move 6" each turn thowing out 3 blasters shots at one target and 12 poisoned shots at another. Also because they were not the closest targets and they were other threats (eg. ravagers and raiders full of close combat troops) they normally escaped retribution (for a while anyway). The increased range of splinter cannons made it much easier to coordinate firepower to overwelm part of the enemy.
Holding the incubi back a bit and then raming them into the enemy, is proving very effective. In both games they died, but they took the heart out the enemy resistance, allowing wyches to clear up and enemy left. All other parts of my army has redundancy, so protecting the incubi and allowing them to shine is very important. If there's one piece of LOS-blocking terrain to hide behind the incubi should have it (even above ravagers or trueborn).

Well that's games one and two. I would have liked to finish all the games, but I must rest as I have three more tournament games tomorrow at my local club's Rapid Strike tournament.

Rathstar

Dark Eldar June Advance Orders (updated with Razorwing Pics)

2011-05-11T17:34:00.004+01:00

Just a quick update to let those that don't know, that the Dark Eldar advance orders are up on the Games Workshop website.

The advance orders cover models being released on the 4th June. The release covers:

Venom
Talos Pain Engine
Cronos Parasite Engine
Scourges

So unfortunately there's no sign of either flyer. I'm a bit disappointed but hopefully they'll come out soon.

A battleforce is also released containing: warriors, wyches, a raider and 3 jetbikes. Not a bad selection of models that you'll use in nearly any army list (if you're not using warriors you'll probably be using trueborn). At £60 the battleforce is a £13 saving, and I think two battleforces would be a very nice start to an army.

The scourges look very dynamically posed, so I'm torn between converting warriors with blood angel wings or just waiting for the new models. The main advantage with using warriors is that I'll have them finished in time for a tournament mid June.

The Talos and Cronos look radically different from the current Talos model, and also miles different from my converted model. However this is in no way a bad thing as the models are absolutely gorgeous, and will also be a converters wet dream.

The venom, as expected, is based on the venom, even down to the closed canopy. I prefer the open canopy on my converted venoms (but then I would say that :) ). Luckily the placement of the weapons is the same on the official model and my converted version so there no chance of having any issues at tournaments.

Hopefully with these models now released we may see an increase in the number of Dark Eldar players at tournaments, and an increase in those doing well. However I think we really need the wracks and flyers to be released for most people to have every model they want to use available.

Rathstar

Update: Now that blogger is back up I can now post pics of the (OMG) Razorwing Jetfighter (which is due for release on 18th June. I'll be getting one of these as soon as they come out.

ASMOH Mid Tournament with Army Pics (updated with final results)

2011-05-07T13:36:00.005+01:00

Hi,

I'm half way through the tournament, having played the two 1250 point games.

I lost the first game 6-8 on kill points. The enemy, Space Wolves, had 6 scouts in one corner of the board, and one last wolf guard that refused to die in the other corner.

In the second game I tabled an Eldar army.

The pictures of the army are:
The 1750 army has a whole
The Coven portion
The Kabel portion
The Wych Cult portion

I'll post my final placing in the as an update this evening.

Rathstar
_________________________________________________

A quick post tournament update:

Hi,

Well the tournament is over. I had a pleasent evening with mates discussing our armies performance.

In the end I won my last two games, ending the day on 3 wins and one loss. I had a great day and four great games.

The final results sheet showsed that I was 9th place. however I think there was a mistake with the results as I came below my mate who finished with with 2 wins, a draw amd a loss. As the difference between a draw and a loss was 20 points, the extra 3 or 4 extra painting points my mate may have got could't have put him higher than me (especially as the top three players had 3 wins and a draw, and I was expecting to finish around 4th or 5th).

Update 14/05/11: It was confirmed my last results was entered wrong. My placing on the final official results is 5th. I'm quite pleased with 5th out of 50 for my first tournament with the new codex.

It was a great event as always,. I thought I played well overall, but made mistakes in my first game which would have made it a closer game.

A brief over view of the second two games was that I was getting slaughtered by a Dark Angels player but luckily pulled out a win because the game ended on turn 5 (careful observation of the objectives helped here), and in the last game I won against Nurgle Marines (who had very little long ranged firepower).

A blog post about my thoughts and learnings will follow shortly.

Rathstar

PS. I big hi goes out to Firewasp who I met at the tournament. Firewasp was flying the flag for the Tau. It was also interesting that I was the only Dark Eldar player/

ASMOH - All Ready Now

2011-05-07T02:09:00.000+01:00

Hi,

My army is now painted, and I'm all ready for the tournament, well apart from getting a good night's sleep (I need to be on the train in just over 6 hours).

As it's so late I won't try to take pictures of the army now, but I'll take pictures during the tournament, and if there's time I'll post them here from my phone.

I've choosen the names of my kabel, coven & cult, plus the names of the main characters:

Kabel of the Twilight Shadowns
Coven of Endless Nightmares
Cult of the Baleful Sun

Archon Rathstar Venomblade
Succubus Kitera Bladesnake
Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer
Tanis Shadowhawk (Kabel Champion / Incubi)

Here's what's on my army list sheet:

Kabel of the Twilight Shadows

Supported by the Coven of Endless Nightmares and the Cult of the Baleful Sun

All eyes were upon Rathstar Venomblade, Archon of the Kabel of the Twilight Shadows, as he proclaimed who would have the honour of starting the initial raids against the many forces planetside.

There was a gasps of surprise and looks of disbelief when the young Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer was chosen to start the raids as a prize for luring so many races to one planet making it ripe for the impending slaughter.

Nalix would even be accompanied by some of the Archon's Incubi and Trueborn, along with wyches from the Cult of the Baleful Sun.

Successful raids would put the forces planetside in disarray, leaving the way open for the major offensive to land the decisive blow.

Raid Force (1250 Points)

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer with Liquifier Gun - 60

6 Incubi - 132
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Total: 1233 Pts

As Nalix's raiding fleet converges with the expected reinforcements, the enemy forces are in disarray from the many raids carried out.

Archon Rathstar Venomblade and Succubus Kitera Bladesnake stand prepared with their own forces ready to launch the final combined assault...

Battle Force (1750 Points)

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer with Liquifier Gun - 60

6 Incubi - 132
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches incl. Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Total: 1749 Pts

Well I must get to bed, so don't fall asleep during the games tomorrow :) Look out for updates during the day.

Rathstar

[40k] April Review

2011-05-04T00:36:00.000+01:00

Hi,

It's been a busier month 40k-wise, so let's see what I've got up to...

Painting / Modelling

Work has moved swiftly on the Dark Eldar, with the upcoming ASMOH tournament this Saturday. The progress tracker is up to 87.5%. The list of required tasks is now:

Finish off two Venoms
Flock four bases for the new Venoms
Build and paint 2 Ravager turrets (to replace two turrets that snapped off recently)
Paint the base edge of 20 wyches
Paint base edges and some minor base painting on 6 Wracks

Definitely do-able, I just need to do a bit each evening.

Gaming

I’ve managed to get in 6 games this month. My new Tau list got a draw against Blood Angels in GW Slough (battle overview to follow), and my Dark Eldar went 3-0-2 (W-D-L). The Dark Eldar losses were against Mech Eldar (I must have better target priority, ie. at least stun the tanks) and Marines in an Annihilation mission (having 22 kill points hurts). In total I've had 7 games with the new Dark Eldar codex, and watched quite a few others using armies of varying flavours (mech without any of the new vehicles, lots of hellions, and WWP with beasts & cronos engines). Although I would have liked more practice games against marines, it should mean I don't get slaughtered at the tournament.

It’s nice getting more games in, and I definitely needed the practice with the upcoming two tournaments.

Other Hobby News

The main GW rumours I am reading is of a switch from using metal to resin. There have been a couple of counter rumours, however something is definitely up from what stores are hearing from GW Trade Sales. Hopefully over the coming weeks things will become a little clearer.

May is normally the month where the number of tournaments starts to pick, so it’ll be interesting to see if Space Wolves & Imperial Guard maintain their top tier status and whether the new codexes of Blood Angels and Dark Eldar join them as they mature and people get the hang of them. IMHO Grey Knights will prove to be a tournament force but will not join Imperial Guard and Space Wolves as top tier, and I believe in the right hands Blood Angels & Dark Eldar will challenge but not quite emulate the success of Space Wolves or Imperial Guard.

Upcoming Posts

I've got a few posts in the pipeline, which include:

Gaming in a GW store, and the new Tau list’s first test-run
Archon Rathstar Venomblade introduces his Kabel plus their Wych Cult & Coven allies
Guest pictures of a converted Venom
ASMOH overview and/or battle reports

If you have any preference for which post you’d like to read first please let me know in the comments. I’ll try and finish another post before the tournament, but as you can imagine I have to ensure I get all the painting done for the tournament.

Rathstar

ASMOH 4th Practice Game & Final Tweaks

2011-04-29T13:14:00.003+01:00

Hi,

It's now less than 12 hours for me to submit my list for next weekend's ASMOH tournament, and I'm still dithering over the list.

Good news is that I finally got a second 1750 point game in as practice, and I won against my mate's Eldar which use to routinely trash my Tau. Everything in the army worked well, apart from my large wrack squad and a trueborn squad failing pinning tests from their exploding transports the turn I would have been able to shoot (3 blasters & 2 liquifier guns) at a large scorpion unit with eldrad. Both leadership tests were double six's so a squad leader for the wracks wouldn't have helped. However one thing that would have helped is Grisly Trophies (reroll any leadership test if within 6" of the vehicle). As they're only 5 pts I'm going to put them on my trueborn's Venoms.

What I'm dithering on is the kill point total in my army list; 22 will mean I'm very likely to need to table my opponent to still win. If I get the right opponent it's possible but not likely against a decent opponent. What worked well for my list so far is that it has so many vehicles and so many targets. To reduce kill points I would have to reduce that strength. My only thought is losing one of the very small wrack squads and their venom, and putting the points into 2 trueborn with splinter cannons and 2 more incubi. Painting 2 extra incubi will take longer that finishing off a half painted venom, but it's an alternative. Even this morning I did some painting on all 3 remaining venoms (see the pic at the top).

So what do you think ? Is it worth catering to the trend of trying to lower an army's kill points ? Is 20 rather than 22 kill points going to make any difference ? Is it too dangerous going down to 5 troop choices when 4 of them are assault troops that are sent into the enemy lines ?

PS. I'll be playing a mate in another practice game this afternoon, but I'll be checking for comments on my phone all day, so please give me your ideas. I'll be sending my list in late tonight.

Rathstar

PS. Here's the two lists:

22 Kill Points List: (6 Troop Choices)

Haemonculus - 65
Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun

5 Incubi - 110
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1747 Pts, 67 Models (including 12 vehicles), 14 Dark Lances, 8 Splinter Cannons & 6 Blasters

20 Kill Point List: (5 Troop Choices)

Haemonculus - 65
Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun

7 Incubi - 154
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

5 Trueborn with 3 Blasters & 2 Splinter Cannons - 125
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons & Grisly Trophies - 70

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1750 Pts, 68 Models (including 11 vehicles), 14 Dark Lances, 8 Splinter Cannons & 6 Blasters

Dark Eldar 1250 Battle - More ASMOH practice

2011-04-25T01:42:00.005+01:00

Picture of my right hand side of the board after my turn 1 (blue gems are objectives)

Out of the blue a got a call from my mate with the Nids army I played before (battle report here). He said he was popping down for the weekend to see his brother and wanted to get some more practice for our upcoming tournament (A Small Matter of Honour).

One the call he said either 1250 or 1750 point games were fine, so I thought it was a good chance to try out my full Dark Eldar list, however when I turned up he said he’d only bought his 1250 list due to having to transport it on the train, especially with his newly converted Tyranid Strike models.

The Tyranid Strike models are converted from the old zoanthrope body, the very old tyranid hive tyrant head, and two sets of gargoyle wings. It looks very bug like and I’ll try to get him to send me some pictures so I can post some up (unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures of them).

So after having rushing to finish converting and undercoating all the models for my 1750 list I had to leave the new ravager and a venom in the case. My list was:

Haemonculus with Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun - 65
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons – 146

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons – 146

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns in Raider with Dark Lance - 180
9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser in Raider with Dark Lance – 180

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser in Raider with Dark Lance - 190
3 Wracks in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 95
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1212 Pts, 47 Models (including 8 vehicles), 9 Dark Lances, 6 Splinter Cannons & 6 Blasters

I was roughly facing:

Tyranid Prime with Deathspitter, Bonesword & Lashwhip

3 Hive Guard

Tervigon

12 Termagants

15 Hormagaunts with Poisoned & Furious Charge

8 Genestealers

5 Ravenors

4 Strikes with Boneswords and (maybe?) Furious Charge

Rather than a full battle report I'll quickly go through the first few turns, and then focus on specific events of interest.

The mission was multiple objectives and Dawn of War. I choose to go first, deployed nothing with everything coming on turn one. My mate debated on deploying the tervigon, prime and termagants, but sesible decided to keep them off with everything apart from the genestealers (outflanking), ravenors (deepstriking) and strikes (deepstriking) coming on turn one.

Knowing the hive guard only had a 24” range, I knew I could be aggressive, so everything moved on but stayed at least 6” away from the centre of the board. The tyranids moved on, with the tervigon and hive guard staying behind a building. The prime joined one of the hive guard units that could be seen through a doorway in the ruin. With hindsight running the hive guard and using termagants as cover would have been better as it would allow the hive guard to reach a good mid board position earlier.

Without the threat of the strikes, raveners or genestealers I decided to soften the tyranids up, while allowing them no response by moving everything back 6” to ensure the hive guard would still be out of range next turn. Fire power reduced the prime to 1 wound and the unit of hive guard he was with to 1 model.

After the tyranids moved forwards (and was still out of range) I was able to reduce the other unit to 1 model as well. With the tyranid anti-tank firepower crippled so early I really had the game in the bag. The first of two nails in the coffin was my mate being too cautious. His strikes and ravenors deepstriked in cover out of assault range, plus he outflanked the genestealers on the left flank to capture an objective, when it probably would have been better to outflank the other side to help with a key combat and then threaten the side with the more objectives. The other nail in the coffin was a single unit of wyches performing well on the right flank, ending the game sitting on an objective with 4 pain tokens.

What I thought cost my mate the game

My army just works very well against nids, the only improvement I would like is to add a razorwing jetfighter instead of one of the ravagers. The 4 large templates would be a godsend against some of the troublesome gaunt broods.
My mate delayed a lot of his army, genestealers outflanking, ravenors and strikes deepstriking, leaving pretty straight forward target priority decisions
He was too cautious about losing the strikes and ravenors, leading to both of them dying. If both had moved out at the same time, one may have survived to reach combat, leaving it too long meant I crippled one on turn 4 meaning if the other moved out on turn 5 it would have been all alone
Thinking too early of capturing objectives, and concentrating on the wrong ones. The genestealer outflanked on the side with an objective they could easily get in cover, but ignored the other side where they could have helped out with a key combat on the side where the majority of the objectives were.

What worked well for the Dark Eldar

being aggressive after the two turns of softening up the tyranids
focusing firing, first on the hive guard and then on the combat threats of the ravenors and strikes
looking out for opportunities (charging into hormagaunts with the attached prime not being able to assist, see later)
the small wrack squad did not draw much firepower, one splinter cannon was knocked off when they were shot at once by a single hive guard, but they ended up in their venom taking an objective at the end of the game. However the small wrack unit needs to be tested against an army which can't have all it's anti-tank shot away in two turns (eg. most armies have anti-tank spread across many units).

Points of Interest

Objective Placement: Never, Never assume you'll be playing on the side your standing on when you place the objectives.

In the picture above you may be able to see 2 of the 5 objectives (which were represented by blue gems). To make it easier to see on the small picture (clcking on it shows a bigger picture) I have put red crosses where the objectives are. They are all on the ground level. As well as the two visable blue gem objectives another one was on the left hand side of the ruin on the bottom left hand corner of the picture. A further one was in the crater that you just see above the ruin at the top middle of the picture. These 4 objectives were close together and meant that the winner of the game would be the one who controlled this area. The last objective was in the far top right hand corner of the map.

Normally I'll take second turn, but with the objectives placed as they were, when I won the roll off I choose to go first so I could take the side with the more objectives. Having first turn on a side with easier to get objctives gave me a significant advantage. If my mate had placed his objectives more neutral, ensuring both sides were even getting choice of table sides would have been less significant.

Killing Characters Without Wounding Them: After seeing this done against a thunderwolf lord at my local GW, when I saw an opportunity I went for it. This tactic is based on looking for characters that are more than 6” away from the edge of their unit. In the thunderwolf lord example he was at the front of a large unit of fenrisian wolves. Two units of genestealers outflanked and charged the big unit. The lord could not make it into base contact, and the genestealers slaughtered the wolves, causing the thunderwolf lord to take 14 no retreat saves and die.

My example was caused when the tyranid prime (after being reduced to one wound while being with hiveguard for one shooting phase) joined the back of a 15 strong hormagaunt unit (well more then 6” from the front of the unit). My wyches were in charge range so went for it. However when doing this tactic you have to be careful.

I couldn't shoot at the unit at all, because careful casualty removal would mean I would have to charge deeper into the unit which might allow the prime to reach base to base contact after I charged. There was a termagants unit right next to the hormagaunt unit, giving the hormagaunts a small 4 model frontage. I could not shoot at the termagants either, because killing those would mean my mate could take off models to leave a gap at the side of the hormagaunt unit meaning that I would probably have to charge models in the second or third rank of hormagaunts, again allowing the tyranid prime to make base to base contact after I charged.

Sitting In Cover Sometimes Only Delays the Inevitable: In this battle the tyranids were too cautious after having the hive guard crippled so early. The ravenors deepstriked off the the left of the map picture above in a ruin. This allowed me to concentrate the half my army on finishing off the hive guard, leaving plenty of str 8 firepower to go at the ravenors while only leaving a venom in their assault range. After a load of cover saves the ravenors were untouched. When the Strikes deepstriked the following turn the tyranids should have been move aggressive, but instead decided to deeptrike the strikes in the same ruin as ravenors. In my following turn the ravenors did have the same luck with their cover saves and were reduced one a single model.

If instead the ravenors had advanced, at the same time the strikes deepstriked in a more aggressive position. I may still have nearly killed one of the units, but then the remainder and the other untouched unit would have been able to charge directly into the area holding all the objectives.

Unit of the Match

Wyches who bravely charged hormagaunts with attached prime. After appalling dice they were counter charged by termagaunts and the prime made it into combat, then on the third round of combat (with only three wyches remaining) they only lost one model to the tyrant (but not before that wych killed a termagant). The other two survived the hormagaunt and termagants attacks (they had been reduced to initiative 1 by the prime's lash whip), allowing one to kill the last hormagaunt, the hexatrix to take the last wound from the prime, and then they ran down the termagants as they broke. They even lived to capture the bottom right hand objective, positively gleaming from the 4 pain tokens they had.

What I did badly

It's had to say when the game went so well, however I did think that I didn’t coordinate my assault on the right flank as well as a could. The wyches were left to go it alone against the hormagaunts because they were the only unit within range. Even though I was constrained by the many craters that meant I was worried about crashing my raiders on, if the large wrack unit had been able to help the wyches, they would have charged the termagants at the same time and linked up the two combats. Even with the poor wych result the wracks would have really tipped the balance in my favour, allowing me to win the combat very convincingly rather than just well (leaving the wyches outnumbered, and really lucky to survive). The combat would probably have ended in a single combat phase with any survivers dying to no retreat saves.

The Walk of Shame

The Haemoculus. After leaving the wyches as they assaulted the hormagaunts he decided to take on 10 termagants. He started by flaming 6 of them with his liquifier gun, and the charged the remaining four. After killing 1 for no return wounds, another died to no retreat leaving only 2. These two plucky termagants then both hit, both wounded, and I failed both saves (no Feel No Pain, as I had left the pain token with the wyches), and the Haemoculus dropped dead with a look of disbelief on his face :(

And with that I leave you with the Haemoculus hoping his master doesn't being him back to ridicule him eternally, and as the tournament countdown clock slowly ticks away the time, it's now less than 5 days until I must submit my lists for the tournament.

Next post will probably be about my experiences of playing at a GW store, and an outing for my new Tau list. My next Dark Eldar game should be the middle of this week, where I hope to be facing Marines.

Rathstar

[40k] First Thoughts on Grey Knights

2011-04-23T01:58:00.000+01:00

Intro

Well I’ve had the Grey Knights book for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been using some of the time I spend travelling on the train, and my evenings, looking through the book to ensure my armies are ready to face them.

Overall Assessment

When you see an army across the battlefield you need to quickly know the main strengths and weaknesses of it. To do this quickly you should immediately know the main strengths and weaknesses of each race and then see how your specific opponent has strayed away from an average build (eg. more firepower at the expense of mobility etc.).

So what have the Grey Knights for a main theme ? Looking through each of the unit entries the overwhelming impression that you get is that they are very good in close combat, particularly against units with good armour saves and/or multiple wounds. The standard marine stat line, complimented by good psychic powers which increase their close combat ability (eg. +1 str before weapon modification, all their attacks causing instant death etc.), and an excellent line of close combat weapons (ranging from the basic nemisis force weapon to free or very cheap upgrades to force weapon thunderhammers, initiative 6 force weapons and even a defensive force weapon that gives a 2++ save in close combat).

As if the close combat ability wasn’t enough a closer look will show that their anti infantry firepower is not bad either. All Grey Knights start with a storm bolter, and the options just get better and better. Units and vehicles can have psy bolt ammunition that boosts the strength of bolters, autocannons & assault cannons by 1. This upgrade is not that expensive (the cost of a tau fire warrior for dreads, twice that for squads, and half the cost of a fire warrior for rhinos/razorbacks). You could have a squad of 10 Grey Knights throw out 20 shots at str 5. Riflemen Dreadnaughts (dreads armed with 2 twin linked autocannons) become even nastier for 10 pts (over their marine counterparts) when their shots go from str 7 to 8.

Standard upgrade weapons for Grey Knights squads are the Incinerator (a heavy flamer with +1 str), Psilencer (a heavy 6 bolt gun that always wounds deamons on at least 4+) and Psycannon (an assault 2 or heavy 4, 24” range, str 7 ap4 rending weapon). One notable omission from the grey knights arsenal is melta weapons (although they do have the ap1 missiles on the storm raven). Two ways Grey Knight armies can get melta is on dreadnaughts, and taking warriors in the henchmen unit. Warriors are 4pt guardsmen that can take 3 special weapons (eg. meltaguns) and can be mounted in a chimera.

Grey Knights can also be a heavy terminator army, with basic terminators as troops, and a new elite slot terminators with WS5 and 2 wounds. The troops terminators are the same cost as standard marine terminators and come with nemesis force weapons (which can be upgraded to the other nemesis weapons) and storm bolters. They have the same weapon upgrades as normal grey knights.

Overall we have an elite army that is very good at close combat and has good mid range (particularly 24” range anti infantry firepower). Long range firepower will come in the form of dreadnaughts, razorbacks or land raiders. Melta weapons are in short supply (mainly dreadnaughts and landraiders multimeltas or henchmen meltaguns).

The main weakness of Grey Knights (apart from heavy henchmen army builds) will be the toughness of the Grey Knights. Although they have lots of boosts to their offensive abilities they die just as easily as a basic marine. Plus their terminators do not get access to storm shields, and their elite two wound terminators (paladins) can be instant killed easily with only a 5+ invulnerable save from shooting. Slightly increase your low AP and high strength weapons and your shooting should do well.

Basic Grey Knights are also slow outside their transport. So tactics should include trying to out deploy or outmanoeuvre them and shoot their transports early. The Grey Knights are also another incentive to mechanise your army more. This will have the twofold effect of stretching their limited and/or short ranged anti tank and protecting your troops from their very effective anti-infantry firepower.

These general weakness flow through the entire list, as outside inquisitors and henchmen you only have the same grey knight unit and a two variants of terminator units. In general terms for powered armoured grey knight units you have:

The standard grey knight troop unit
A elite unit that can take more special weapons
A heavy unit that can take more special weapons
A unit that has personal teleporters to make them jump infantry

Treat them all the same way you would treat their marine counterparts, apart from close combat because they are all good at close combat and require special attention if you intend to deal with them in close combat (particularly if your army has a good armour save as the nemisis weapons will cut straight through it).

Basic tactics against elite armies that will help against Grey Knights are:

Try to pop their transports early to reduce their mobility, reducing the chance they can use their good close combat ability much or coordinate and focus their excellent short to mid range shooting.
Try to refuse flank them and/or split up their army allowing you to deal with the enemy in small chunks, while the rest does not play too large a part in the battle. While this tactic can be used against most armies the fact they Grey Knights need to get to close combat to make the full use of all their abilities and the short range (normally 24”) on their infantry means this tactic can be devastating to them if pulled off well.

Things to Watch Out For

Daemon Hammers: These are an upgrade to the standard nemisis force weapon. It is a force weapon and a thunderhammer at the same time. When combined with the Hammerhand psychic power which gives +1 str before weapon modifications it gives the Grey Knight Str 10. This can instant kill T5 troops (such as thunderwolves) and make it much easier for the Grey Knight to deal with dreadnaughts in close combat
Nemisis Halberds give the user initiative 6 force weapon attacks. This can totally swing a combat if you don’t take them into account. Some close combat specialist rely on killing the enemy before they strike, so if suddenly the Grey Knights get to strike first with Str4 power weapons it could be disastrous (eg. dark eldar incubi, genestealers etc.). Even heavy hitters would not like losing casualties before they attack (eg. blood angel sanguinary guard, marine command squads etc.).
Dreadknights look awesome, and their stats back up how impressive they look, monstrous creature, 2+ save, additional invunverable save, good in combat and shooting. However if you think of him as a better daemon prince you won’t go far wrong. Without a personal teleportor (see Shunt move below) he is slow and he only has 4 wounds. He does have the nice combo of good armour save and good invunverable, so a few more low AP1 weapons so it has to rely on it’s invunverable save would be good.
Purifiers are an elite slot version of the basic Grey Knight power armoured squad. I think these will be seen a lot because they gain so much over the basic squad for only for 4pts more a model. They can have the double the special ranged weapons, plus the heavy flamer equivalent drops from 20 pts to free, and psycannons stay at only 10 pts each. Purifiers are also good against hordes because their Cleansing Flame psychic power allows them to cause a wound on all close combat opponents on a 4+ and these would happen before blows are struck and count towards combat resolution. A squad of 5 could charge a mob of 30 orcs and cause an average of 12.5 wounds from this special power, and then deliver another 15 close combat attacks which should kill just under another 4 orks. This totals just over 16 kills from the 5 Purifiers (on average). Even when the Purifiers loses on average 2 guys from the orks return attacks the majority of the remaining orks should die to the no retreat rule. With the ability to cover the Grey Knight weakness against hordes, and their flexibility to be ranged anti-horde with up to 4 heavy flamers or ranged heavy weapon teams with 4 psycannons (16 str 7 rending shots of they stay still) they are a great unit. The icing on cake is that a reasonable costed special character can also make Purifiers troops choices.
Vehicle Psychic Pilots (which pilot all the space marine vehicles, ie. rhinos, razorbacks, landraiders, skyravens & dreadnaughts) come with the psychic power Fortitude, which means that if they are shaken or stunned they can ignore it if they can pass a ld10 psychic test at the start of their turn. A common tactic used against vehicles is to stun or shake them so they can not cause any shooting damage the following turn and then move onto the next vehicle. The Grey Knights vehicles will probably ignore such damage meaning you will need to destroy key Grey Knights vehicles, facilitating the need for more anti-tank and/or an increased proportion of AP1 weaponry. Just remembering that stunning a Grey Knight vehicle does not necessary put it out of the game for a turn will stop game changing mistakes happening.
Shunt moves given by personal teleportors can cause a nasty surprise. As well as allowing the unit to move as jump infantry it allows them to (once a game) make a 30” move, although they can’t assault that turn. Luckily these can appear on the fast attack powered armoured Grey Knights and the Dreadknight (for an expensive 75pt upgrade). While the Shunt move can allow them to redeploy very quickly and shoot a unit/vehicle you thought was safe, it is very nasty when combined with the Grand Master (standard HQ character) that allows D3 units to be given one of a number of Universal Special Rules (one of which is Scout). If a Grey Knight army goes first and gives a DreadKnight the scout ability it can set-up normally, Shunt as it’s scout move 30”, leaving it free to move and assault 18” in the first turn giving it a 48” threat zone from where it deployed. Counter options include:

Reserving your whole army to give the DreadKnight no turn one target
Castling your army, with cheap sacrificial units on the outer edges
Let the DreadKnight have it’s first turn fun, knowing that what it kills will probably be worth much less than the DreadKnight (which could be near 250 pts with upgrades), and then the DreadKnight is in the middle of your army unsupported. This only works if each of your units/vehicles the DreadKnight can get to is not worth too much, if the DreadKnight can charge a full Tau broadside unit for example it will make it points back before you even have a chance to move (castling or reserving would be better tactics in this case).

With that I’m going to leave going into the Grey Knights psychic powers and the Inquisitor henchmen for another post. Hopefully this post will have given you some ideas on how to prepare for the Grey Knights, the overall theme of the list and what to look out for.

Let me know your thoughts, and feel free to point out where you think I’ve got it wrong and other things I may have missed so we can all learn.

Rathstar

Dark Eldar Painting Slowly Continues

2011-04-21T00:51:00.001+01:00

Hi,

After a quick trip to Staines GW after work I picked up some more paints. Warlock purple is much lighter than I remember, however the new Liche purple is a bit lighter than the old pot I had, so it's fine for the vehicles I have to paint (to matching my existing vehicles).

As usual when I pop into GW I didn't just buy the paint I needed. I bought a Aegis Defense Line, partly for more terrain for when I eventually get a gaming board again, and partly to use the two twin autocannons for a marine dreadnaught. I also have been thinking of scourges, so my final purchase was a box of dark Eldar warriors with the intention to source blood angel wings from eBay to turn them into scourges.

Once I finish painting for my upcoming tournaments I want to finish off my Dark Eldar by adding:
Beastmasters
An extra reaver (to make a unit of 6)
Scourges
Razorwing Jetfighter

I'll probably wait for the official razorwing model before I decide to either splash out on a forgeworld Nightwing or convert one from an old Batman ship I've seen others use to great effect.

Back to now and I have half painted a ravager and half painted a venom over the last two evenings. If I could keep this up I'd be finished with 5 days to spare. However, although I'll have lots more time on my hands with all the bank holidays, I'll have more Non-Gaming calls on my time (eg. trips to London to visit family). If I can get some progress tomorrow night and next week I should be in a position to confirm a Dark Eldar list for the tournament in early May.

On the gaming front, Staines store is only 25 minutes walk from work, so I'll probably try to get some games in there. With only 4 DE games with the new codex under my belt I desperately need gaming practice.

It'll be a busy 9 days until the army list deadline on all fronts (work, family, social), but it's looking good so far.

Rathstar

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What's in a Name ? [Dark Eldar]

2011-04-20T01:00:00.001+01:00

Hi,

As my Dark Eldar approach their first tournament in many many years I've been inspired to rename my Kabel as they enter this new period in their history.

My Kabel is currently named the Kabel of Darkness, but this seems a bit bland to me. I've considered just lengthening the name to Kabel of Eternal Darkness, but that still doesn't sound too good. I would like to keep the theme of darkness somehow in the name as my Kabel has a dark color scheme (black, purple and dark blue), however I just want a name my victims (I mean opponents) will remember.

So help a guy out, give me some ideas. You never know your idea may become the proud new name of my Kabel.

Painting

I am making slow progress on painting, and my first tournament of the year is fast approaching. I also only have 10 days to submit my list for the tournament, so I have until them to get far enough in the painting to know what I'll finish by the tournament.

I've given myself the target of a ravager and 2 venoms painted by the army list deadline or I'll have to send in a Tau list. I've started the purple on the ravager, but it seems a bit darker than my old models, so I'll switch to the dark blue tomorrow so I can pop into GW to see if there's a slightly lighter purple. It may be that I painted the original models so long ago that the GW purple has slightly changed shade :)

Gaming

My Dark Eldar finally won their first game under the new codex. It was a very convincing win, however it was against Nids against a mate who has only got back into 40k about 15 months ago.

I'll post what I think worked well and what didn't in an upcoming blog post. It'll be after a Grey Knight post which should be up in the next day or so.

Rathstar

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Venoms Ready for Painting

2011-04-09T10:12:00.001+01:00

Hi,

With some final conversion work last night and some spraying this morning I now have 4 Dark Eldar Venoms ready for painting.

Today I'll be trying out my current list for the ASMOH tournament. Next week I'll be trying to make some progress on painting these 4 Venoms and a Ravager I have to get done for the tournament.

With this slow but steady progress I should get everything ready in time for the tournament.

Rathstar

PS. Coming soon will a blog post about my thoughts on the new Grey Knights.

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[40k] March Review

2011-04-02T02:39:00.002+01:00

Hi,

Has it been another month already, damn that went quick.

Painting / Modelling

I've received all the bits from America to convert all of the remaining (3) vipers I have to venoms. I have converted a second one, and the 3rd and 4th ones are half converted and should be done in the next day or so.

With less than 35 days to my next tournament, I'm getting a bit nervous about getting the whole army finished in time. I reorganised the painting task list (on the right hand pane), and some of you may have noticed a slight reduction in the dark eldar painting progress bar. I just wanted to split out into two tasks some of the later bigger ones. The progress bar has to move forward 5% (one task) every 2 days for me to finish the army 4 days before the tournament. Next week should be crucial as I need to get ahead of schedule as some of the later tasks are to paint an entire vehicle from start to finish, and I'm not sure I can do that every 2 nights when I factor in trying to get games at the local GW/club/mates and family life being a welcome but neverless distraction from getting my army ready.

I've almost got my mech Space Wolves in a state where I can play them without proxying anything, just a razorback and a landspeeder to finish. Nearly all the infantry are headless (as I spray them a different colour and attach them after the rest of the model is painted), but it should give my mates a good game.

Originally I was going to assemble the thunderwolves as well, but in the end I decided to wait so I could spend more time on them, and playing without the thunderwolves would help me to decide between which support elements I like the best (ie. landspeeders with multi-melta and heavy flamer or long fang razorbacks with lascannon and twin plamsa). Also (along with my Dark Eldar) it will be nice to try overloading the opponent's anti-tank. My Space Wolves mech list has 10 vehciles (4 rhinos, 2 razorbacks, 2 landspeeders, 1 whirlwind & a dreadnaught) in 1750 pts; not as much as razorspam armies but more vehicles than I'm used to using.

Gaming

Rather than the complete fail of the previous 2 months, I did actually get two games in (with my Dark Eldar). Battle reports can be seen here and here. Not only that but I did make it down to the local GW on games night twice and the local club once (however on all occassions stuff popped up at work meaning I didn't get there in time to get a game).

The Dark Eldar army is showing it can handle nids well, but I need to learn to play the army better. I've almost settled on the idea of using beastmasters rather than a large unit of incubi in a raider in my ideal list. However I'd never get the beastmaster unit painted up for my upcoming tournaments, therefore my current idea is to use a list that's a compromise between my cut to the bone list and my last list with the large incubi squad (shown at the top of this post). Basically I cut the last two small scoring units in venoms and the incubi to the bone in order to keep the nice upgrades such as agonisers and liquifier guns while having 6 troop choices and 4th venom. Hopefully this will be the last list change for a while so I can just keep practicing with it for the tournaments. Adding the beastmasters in would lose me 3 kill points so I'll been keen to get them painted up fast, plus I'm quite happy just adding the beastmasters to this list to make a 2000 point list. Anyway here's the list:

Haemonculus - 65
Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun

5 Incubi - 110
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 130
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Wracks - 30
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1747 Pts, 69 Models (including 12 vehicles), 14 Dark Lances, 8 Splinter Cannons & 6 Blasters

Other Hobby News

The grey knights codex is out today, so now we can all get the actual codex and see how close all the rumours are, and make sure we're ready to face this elite army.

Even before the grey knights codex is out, rumours for sisters of battle on BoLS, helped by 4 "leaked" pages of the codex. Whether this is an April Fools, a fan wish list, or GW leaking stuff to gather reaction we'll have to wait and see.

I hope you've had a fun and productive March (feel free to let us know what you've been up to in the comments), now I must get to bed as I'm got fun family stuff tomorrow, however when my son goes to sleep tomorrow (really later today) I'll hopefully be able to finish converting the last of my venoms.

Rathstar

Dark Eldar vs Tyranids Battle Report

2011-03-31T02:10:00.003+01:00

Hi,

After a bit of a nightmare fortnight I have come out of the other side in one piece (barely).

On the gaming front it looks like the number of attendees at my local GW’s games night has mushroomed. Last week they only had 3 tables being used, but last Tuesday all 5 tables were being used with people waiting, so I wasn’t able to get a game with my Tau, but it does mean that as I approach the dates of my upcoming May tournaments I may be able to get 3 games a week; Tuesday at the local GW, Thursday at the local club, and the weekend against my mates. I’ve got a bit rusty recently, and starting playing a new race, means I could do with the a lot of extra practice.

On another note I have now paid for my 2nd tournament of the year, which happens to be 8 days after the first, so I now have 2 one-day tournaments in May (ASMOH in Basingstoke & Rapid Strike in Reading).

Now onto the main event, the Dark Eldar vs Tyranid battle report. I went through the deployments in my last post, but I’ll go through everything again here.

We rolled up the draw mission (ie. one objective each) with dawn of war deplyment. My mate placed his in the centre of his deployment zone about 5” from the board edge. I placed mine on the top level of a building in the bottom left hand corner of the board. My thinking that my fragile Dark Eldar could not just sit and defend an objective because they are not good at wars of attrition, and it made any speed advantage I had completely useless. Instead I would hope to use my objective as a lure allowing me to concentrate my force on the other flank allowing me to capture his, and hopefully at least contest my objective.

To recap here are our lists:

Dark Eldar List

Haemonculus - 65
Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 115
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 130
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

5 Wracks - 50
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

5 Beastmasters - 234
accompanied by 7 Krymeras & 6 Razorwing Flocks

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1746 Pts, 79 Models (including 10 vehicles), 13 Dark Lances, 6 Splinter Cannons & 6 Blasters

Tyranid List

Tyranid Prime with Twin Boneswords & Scything Talons

2 Zoanthropes (accompanied by Prime)

3 Hive Guard

3 Hive Guard

Tervigon with Poison & Furious Charge (mainly because termigants nearby get it)

Tervigon with Poison & Furious Charge

10 Termigants

15 Termigants

18 Hormagaunts with Poison & Furious Charge

5 Ravenors with Scything Talons & Rending Claws

5 Tyranid Strikes with Twin Boneswords, Scything Talons & Furious Charge

18 Gargoyles with Poison & Furious Charge

My mate took turn 1, and deployed two tervigons in two sections of ruined buildings in the centre of the board, everything else would come on turn 1. Wanting to see where the Tyranids deployed before committing myself I deployed nothing with everything set to arrive on turn one.

Tyranid Turn 1

The Tyranids deployed 2 tervigons in the two ruins in the middle of the board, and everything else came on turn one. The tervigons spawned and 18 (yes a triple 6) and 14 termagants which moved slightly into my half of the board. Here are are pictures after the tyranid turn 1 showing where everything was after their turn 1:

Strikes Hiding on the left next to the Hormagaunts

Next are Hive Guard and Gargoyles,

with Zoanthropes accompanied by Prime in the middle,

and the second unit of Hive Guard

At the back in the middle are 2 unit of termagants on the Tyranid objective

2 Tervigons in the building, and in front of them are 34 spawned gants

Behind the building are 5 ravenors

Dark Eldar Turn 1

Seeing a hive guard unit on the left hand flank (opposite the objective I had placed in my near left hand corner) I decided to deploy heavily on the right hand flank hoping to overpower and threaten the tyranid objective (hopefully capturing it) while trying to contest my own objective with a late game flat out move from a venom.

However I was concerned with the large number of gaunts on my side of the battlefield. They could move forwards and start shooting down raiders. I didn’t have the firepower to wipe them out but I could kill them in combat (particularly as I had rolled +1 attack for the combat drugs for my three wych units). Trying to stay out of range of the gaunts would put hamper my army going forwards.

Here's a pic of my central position and my right flank:

Between the buildings in front of all the vehicles are my proxied beastmaster unit;

Rippers as Razorwing Flocks, and Tau Drones as Beastmasters

Trying to learn from the mistakes of my last game (where I played too cautiously) I decided to give it a go and charge the termagants. To wych squads went straight forwards towards the gants, disembarked ready to fleet and charge. The beastmaster unit got a good fleet roll so was in position to support wyches against the largest gant unit. Everything else entered on the right half of the board with everything aimed at the tervigons.

Shooting downed one of the tervigons (even though it had a cover save) which was helped by me remembering to reroll night fighting this game. The tervigon dying exploded some of the gants from the large unit. Good casualty removal meant that a poor fleet and charge into cover roll might stop the wyches and beastmaster from charging.

A few spare lance shots tried to instant kill a ravenors but the distance was too far.

An average fleet and charge into cover roll saw one wych squad and the beastmaster unit charge the large gaunt squad on the right, and another wych squad charge the gant unit to the left. Combat was swift and one sided with both gant units slaughtered. Typically the beastmaster unit picked up the pain token from their combat.

A nice start put I still faced the counter attack from the tervigon and ravenors, and those hive guard would be getting close soon.

Tyranid Turn 2

The hormagaunts and tyranid strikes moved forwards towards my objective. My mate was a bit concerned about exposing the strikes to (instant killing) lances. The gargoyles advanced on the wyches in the middle (one ones furthest left of my army). The tervigon and ravenors advanced to put them within charge range of the wyches and beastmaster unit.

It always happens, so here comes my big mistake...

I could see from the positioning that it looked like the tervigon was going to charge the wyches and the ravenors were going to charge the beastmaster unit. The wyches took some shots (I can’t remember where from, probably the advancing zoanthropes 24” blast shot). Now I thought the wyches could take the tervigon, after all it only had a few attacks, the wyches had an agoniser and +1 attack. Therefore I thought I may as well go to ground to save a few wyches (to give the agoniser more ablative wounds and therefore time to kill the tervigon). When the tervigon charged I would only have to pass a ld9 test.

My obvious mistake was forgetting to take into account my mate changing his plans based on my decision. As the wyches had gone to ground they could be killed later by the huge squad of gargoyles that was about to kill the left hand wych squad. Therefore the tervigon decided to help the ravenors with the beastmaster unit – opps.

Although the beastmasters absorbed a lot of attacks, they lost combat and their poor leadership didn’t give them much chance of passing the morale test. Luckily their high initiative allowed them to escape. The ravenors consolidated back into cover, and the tervigon (who wouldn’t have been able to get a cover save, as he couldn’t move far enough to conceal 50%) moved forwards, luckily not far enough stay within 6” of the beastmaster unit to disallow them a rally test.

The gaygoyles also overwhelmed the left hand wych squad after taking a good number of casualties from 5 wyches that were left after the gaygoyles shot them before charging.

Dark Eldar Turn 2

My mistake with the wyches in the middle left them a sitting duck for the gargoyles that had just killed the left hand. Both units hive guard would now start being in range of my army. I’d learnt my lesson from the last game [posted here] and knew that retreating back to try and stay out of range would just pin me in, not necessary protect all my units and prevent me from getting to objectives by the end of the game.

With this in mind I decided to advance forwards and slightly to the right (hoping to keep most of my army out of range of the left hand hive guard).

The wyches with the haemoculus moved only slightly forwards and left ready to counter attack the gargoyles after they finished with the wyches who had gone to ground. The beastmaster unit rallied and also got ready for the counter attack.

All ravagers, venoms & trueborn took positions to do as much damage as possible. First target was the ravenors and tervigon. The tervigon went down fast without a cover save or feel no pain from lance shots. A few more splinter cannons and blasters finally took out the ravenors, leaving 2 venoms to drop one of the hive guard.

Tyranid Turn 3

With ravagers left the strikes on the left flank was still a bit hesitant of coming across to the right, so decided to ensure the hormagaunts would take my objective in the bottom left hand ruin, by being a nasty counter to anything heading that way.

The rest of the tyranid army advanced forwards angled towards my right flank, apart from the two units of starting gants sitting on the tyranid objective (well one was about 6” to the left of the objective so I couldn’t take them both out at once).

One hive guard unit was only in range of an empty raider (from one of the dead wych squads), so blew it up. The other unit blew up a ravager, and the zoanthropes only killed a few wyches who were about to be charged by gargoyles.

Combat was again swift with the gargoyles killing the wyches who had gone to ground, taking a few more casualties.

Dark Eldar Turn 3

With tyranid strikes and hormagaunts about to to reach the ruin on the left flank with my objective I had to get to the tyranid objective. I still had quite a bit of firepower so I had to push on. However my forward movement was still a bit conservative (probably a sign of playing Tau all last year).

My last remaining wych unit with the haemonoculus moved forward on their raider and disembarked ready for a charge on the gargoyles. They would be supported by the remainder of the beastmaster unit.

The large units of wracks on their raider advanced on the right flank to the mid table line (knowing their double flaming would clear the enemy objective of gants if the raider stayed alive). With hindsight I should have gone flat out to the objective but wanted an extra dark lance shot at hive guard. Sometimes you just have to ignore the chance that small arms fire (in this case fleshborers) will down the raider for other weapons (eg, hive guard) to kill the occupants.

My firing dropped one hive guard unit to 1 and the other to 2 due to good tyranid cover and armour saves. However combat went my way, with the wyches charging the gargoyles, and the beastmaster able to multi charge the tyranid prime with zoantropes and charge the gaygoyles to link up the two combats, hopefully causing the prime and zoanthropes to take multiple fearless saves at the end of combat.

Being able to put 2 razorwings against the tyranid prime and hounds against the zoanthropes and gaygoyles, the combat was brutal. After taking a few casualties from the gaygoyles, zoanthrope and prime against the beastmaster unit, i put a wound on the prime, a wound on the zoantropes and wiped out the gargoyles (there were about 11 or 12 left. In a display of bad dice the zoantropes lost their remaining 3 wounds to no retreat, and the prime lost another wound leaving it on one left.

Tyranid Turn 4

The strikes and hormagaunts reached the bottom of the building in the bottom left corner (they had been getting poor run rolls all game, and were tempted to move slightly rightward on one turn).

The remaining hive guard prioritised the wrack raider as the wracks were posed to clear out the tyranid objective.

The unit of 1 hive guard was not able to kill the wracks raider. However it’s luck didn’t hold when the second unit blew it to bits and to make matters worse pinned the wracks. [Note that I didn’t roll a 9 for the test, so a squad leader would have made no difference]

With both hiveguard forced to fire at the wrack raider, and the majority of the remaining tyranid forces around my objective on the far left hand flank there was no-one left to support the tyranid prime, who died in combat against the beastmaster unit, giving the beastmasters themselves their 3rd pain token.

Dark Eldar Turn 4

The trueborn who were still alive in the middle of the board (due to being less of a target than other units), moved forward to target the squad of 2 hive guard. I honestly can’t remember what the ravagers and trueborn venom did, probably killed a few termagants.

The wracks were pinned so couldn’t move towards the objective, however a venom could turboboost towards the objective and found a place just within 3” that was more than an 1” away from any termagant to contest.

The wyches and moved forwards towards the unit of 2 hive guard, while the beastmasters moved towards the unit of 1.

To try and do something about my objective I moved the venom with the small wrack unit within 24” of my objective (which was sitting on the 2nd floor of a ruin). To stop the strikes from being able to fly forwards and attack the venom, the wyches raider flew in between so that the strikes would not be able to get to the venom. A cheeky lance shot tried to instand kill a strike but it made it’s cover save.

The reason this might have worked is because if the hormagants rolled badly they might only get up to the first floow, allowing the venom to move 24” to the top floor (and hope the venom didn’t crash).

Onto shooting and one trueborn unit did one wound to the unit of 2 trueborn, then the second unit hit and wounded with all three to take the remaining wounds. It was then I noticed another mistake, not counting on the trueborn killing the unit of two hive guard I had not separated the haemonoculus from the wyches, which meant that they were out of charge range of the other hive guard unit because they couldn’t fleet and assault.

In the combat phase the beastmasters killed the hive guard effortlessly and looked menacingly at the termagants on the tyranid objective.

Tyranid Turn Five

To counter my venom flat move to contest, my opponent instead made the strikes fly up to the second floor, as they wouldn’t be slowed by differcult terrain. He also made all of his dangerous terrain tests. Then the hormagaunts got up to the second floor (directly underneath the objective and well within 3”).

The only thing left was for the termagants to shoot down the contesting venom and brace themselves for a beastmaster charge in the dark elder turn (if they wyches had been able to charge the single hiveguard they would have been in range to charge the termagants on the objective).

Dark Eldar Turn 5

Now a special treat, absolutely unbelievable mistakes on my part. Now the game is 2-0 to the tyranids at the moment. Getting carried away (maybe aided by alcohol, and the fact i was winning multiple close combats – other the last 2 years playing Tau it never happened) I somehow got it into my head that I had to try and contest the tyranid objective. However if I did I would still lose 1-0, so what I should have done was play as normal and hope for a turn 6.

The only units in range to contest the tyranid objective in the movement phase was the 2 ravagers. So I went flat out with one to land on top of the venom wreckage, and promptly crashed. Never fear, if a mistake is worth doing why not do it again, so i went flat out with the other one, and promptly that crashed as well.

Correct course of action would have been to move with all vehicles (and trueborn) towards the strikes and fire everything at them. If the strikes died the hormagaunts would be outside synapse range and have to move towards the closest enemy (off the objective).

Apart from that the wracks and wyches moved and ran towards the tyranid objective, but were out of range, while the beastmaster unit charged and slaughtered the termagants sitting on the objective.

With 2 troop units inches away from claiming the tyranid objective the game ended with a roll of a 1 for random game length.

Here’s a picture of my objective swarmed by tyranids, and the tyranid objective (that was mine in all but name):

The picture also showed that one hive guard was still alive in the cente,

so I must have misremembered some part of the end of the battle.

It also shows how being too cautious left my scoring units too far away from their target.

Thoughts on the Game

All the units performed well, but then tyranids with their monstrous creatures make the dark elder weapons look good. However I did notice how splinter cannons are no assault cannon or scatter laser against hordes (in this case mobs of gaunts and gargoyles). To kill mobs I’ll have to coordinate my close combat strikes.

Also I still feel I’m playing too cautiously. I started this game off well, but then spent too long whittling the enemy down, meaning I ran out of time to capture the tyranid objective.

The Beastmaster performance showed their greatest strengths and their greatest weakness. In turn 2 they showed their weaknesses when they were counter charged by ravenors. Although the razorwings with their multiple wounds and the khymera’s 4+ inv save meant that the units still had lots of fighting strength left, losing combat meant that they were easily going to run away when they start on ld8. Just losing by 3 means a ld5 morale test. Next their speed is a liability when they run because in other circumstances they could have run straight off the board with a 3D6 fall back move. Lastly ld8 is less than ideal to try and rally, especially when another 3D6 run move is very likely to see the unit run off the board.

Luckily for me the beastmasters rallied and got to show what they could do, killing gargoyles, zoanthropes, a tyranid prime, hive guard and termagaunts by the bucket load. The mixture of multiple str 4 attacks, and loads of str 3 rending attacks means they can take on most opponents.

However they should be good in combat when you consider their weaknesses and their 234 point price tag. However use them well and they can cause havoc. I think overall I think they could be better than the 8 man incubi squad in a raider that they replaced. The incubi have an obvious “hit me” sign on them, downing the raider (not hard at all) really hits their mobility, and even a 3+ save will not stop incoming fire seriously damaging their effectiveness. A 5 model ravenor unit counter charge would completely maul the effectiveness of an incubi squad, but the number of wounds in the beastmaster unit (42) means that they still had some bite left (abiet after having to pass a risky rally test).

So the learning point for me is to try to be less cautious, and get stuck into close combat. Not just ploughing into the middle of the enemy, but picking on a flank of the enemy. After all after the first kill wyches should have feel no pain and have consolidated into cover or behind their raider giving them two 4+ saves against firepower that isn’t str 6+ or AP1or2.

As always feedback is always welcome.

And lastly my Tau are being a very well travelled (but not used) army. Two weeks running I carried by army on the one and an half hour each way trip to work and back, but stuff has popped up at work meaning I couldn’t leave early enough to get back to my local GW in time to get a game at their gaming night.

On the other hand the number and quality of armies at the shop is much improved. There was a couple of competitive marine armies using assault terminators in land raiders (one in a vulkan army, the other with a chaplain), two space wolf lists (one with a thunderwolf character accompanied by loads of hounds, the other mech with some drop pods), a mech guard army & a mech blood angels to name but a few. A nice varied list of armies was down there which is just what I need to play against to improve.

Rathstar

Hiatus For a Few Days, and Dark Eldar vs Nids Battle Deployment

2011-03-15T03:40:00.001Z

Hi,

Work is going a bit crazy, and other stuff is drawing on my time, so there will be a bit of a lull (hopefully only for a few more days) before my next blog post.

A quick update of what I've been up to:

I've resprayed black the old ravager I bought on ebay (and converted to match my army) and my converted venom, so they're ready for painting.
As my new list needs a unit of 8 incubi I also sprayed 3 more incubi
Unfortunately converting has ground to a halt, as I'm waiting for an ebay auction win to arrive from America :(

Gaming wise I got in another game with my Dark Eldar, this time it was against a different mate with a bright yellow tyranid army. We played 1750 pts, and I decided to try out a beastmaster unit (the call of the razorwings was just to much) instead of an incubi unit.

We rolled the "one objective each" mission, and Dawn of War. I lost the roll to go first. With 2 tervigons sitting in the middle of the board in cover I decided to let everything come on turn one...

Below are our lists, and pics of the our deployment zones after our turn one.

Dark Eldar List

Haemonculus - 65
Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 115
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 130
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

5 Wracks - 50
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

5 Beastmasters - 234
accompanied by 7 Krymeras & 6 Razorwing Flocks

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1746 Pts, 79 Models (including 10 vehicles), 13 Dark Lances, 6 Splinter Cannons & 6 Blasters

Tyranid List

Tyranid Prime with Twin Boneswords & Scything Talons

2 Zoanthropes

3 Hive Guard

3 Hive Guard

Tervigon with Poison & Furious Charge (mainly because termigants nearby get it)

Tervigon with Poison & Furious Charge

10 Termigants

15 Termigants

18 Hormagaunts with Poison & Furious Charge

5 Ravenors with Scything Talons & Rending Claws

5 Tyranid Strikes with Twin Boneswords, Scything Talons & Furious Charge

18 Gargoyles with Poison & Furious Charge

Here's the Tyranid side after their turn 1 (going from left to right):

Strikes Hiding on the left next to the Hormagaunts

Next are Hive Guard and Gargoyles,

with Zoanthropes accompanied by Prime in the middle,

and the second unit of Hive Guard

At the back in the middle are 2 unit of termagants on the Tyranid objective

2 Tervigons in the building, and in front of them are 34 spawned gants

Behind the building are 5 ravenors

With a unit of hive guard on the left flak (opposite my objective) I deployed centrally with 2 wych raiders to try and assault the spawned termagants, with the rest of my army on the right flank. Here's a pic of my central position and my right flank:

Between the buildings in front of all the vehicles are my proxied beastmaster unit;

Rippers as Razorwing Flocks, and Tau Drones as Beastmasters

How do you think the battle will unfold, and what do you think of the deployment of the Dark Eldar and the Nids ?

Rathstar

[Dark Eldar] Venom Gets a Test Run – ASMOH Practice (& Lists)

2011-03-11T00:19:00.011Z

In just under 2 months I’ll be attending the A Small Matter of Honour tournament, run by the Sad Muppets Society [link]. My mate came up from near Bristol and wanted some test games. He played another mate at 1750 and 1250, and then I turned up for my first game of 2011.

I had previously come up with a very cut to the bone style list, however upon reflection I thought the list was lacking MEQ close combat killing, so had the following 1750 list ready to go:

Haemonculus - 65
Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun

8 Incubi - 176
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

10 Wracks with 2 Liquifier Guns - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 115
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 120
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

10 Wyches with Hekatrix with Agoniser - 130
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

5 Wracks - 50
in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1748 Pts, 70 Models (including 11 vehicles), 14 Dark Lances, 6 Splinter Cannons & 6 Blasters

The list is still pretty bare when it comes to wargear, compared to my previous list[link] it has a small dip in firepower (2 blasters & 2 splinter cannons) for more MEQ close combat killing power (agonisers and incubi) & and short ranged MEQ firepower (liquifier guns).

It always happens when a new book is released that some models that were used all the time previously are destined to stay in the case forever more. For my Tau it’s all but 6 of my 40-odd fire warriors. For my Dark Eldar it’s the 6 squads of warriors and the warrior retinue that I used before. The warriors to make the cut in this list are 6 blaster armed ones who represent the trueborn. So I have a Dark Eldar list without a single Dark Eldar Warrior in it. My old archon is hanging his head in shame, but my new Haemonculus leader is completely fine with the idea 

I might add warriors if I play a 2000 pt game; a nice blob of 20 as a 6th troop choice would probably be effective, however once I get my Beastmaster unit assembled I can’t see the warriors making the cut.

After getting my army across town my mate said he wanted to practice the 1250 point game for the tournament. The ASMOH tournament has 2 games at 1250 and two games at 1750. The 1750 list must contain all of the units in the 1250 unchanged.

The 1250 pt list also restricts the force organisation chart. You are only allowed 1 HQ, 0- 2 Elite, Fast Attack & Heavy Support, plus 2-4 troop choices. For my tyranid opponent this meant that the restriction to the elites slot meant that the only effective choice would be 2 units of hive guard. My mates list was roughly:

Hive Tyrant with Venom Cannon, the Leech and “you have WS1 & BS1” psychic powers, accompanied by 1 Tyrant Guard
2 units of 3 Hive Guard
8 Genestealers
Tervigon
12 Termigants
15 Hormagants (Furious Charge & Posion Attacks)
4 Warriors with Boneswords and Scything Talons

I’ve only just noticed that my make still had too many troop choices (however I don’t think it would have much effect on the game).

With only 3 units (Tyrant & Hive Guard) that could shot vehicles I had to prioritise them. If they went down quickly it should be an easy win.

When it came to my list. I first had to lose a ravager, and an elite unit. After losing the ravager I didn’t want to lose a trueborn squad (with their high strength blasters) as well, so I lost the incubi. The incubi would have been too many points in the same place at 1250 pts, I may have been tempted to keep them if they were the smaller squad I originally had, but at 8 strong they were too expensive for 1250 pts. Lastly I had to lose one of the troop choices. After losing the power weapons of the incubi it had to be the wych squad without a power weapon that had to go. This nicely bought my list down to 1232 pts.

We rolled up multiple objectives and dawn of war for the game, and my mate won the roll off and decided to go first to get his hive guard as far up the table as soon as possible.

He deployed the hive tyrant with the tyrant guard in the middle of the table. The tervigon behind the building just left of the centre line in his deployment zone, and the unit of 12 termigants behind the building just right of the centre line in his deployment zone. Everything else apart from the genestealers (who were outflanking) were due to come on turn 1.

I decided to let everything come on turn 1 rather than deploy anything, and let my opponent start the game. I decided not to try to seize, but in hindsight I should have. The hive guard would have been a turn further back when they would be able to fire at my army, and I still would have been in range of the hive tyrant. This might have allowed my army to be further enough away to avoid a turn of hive guard firepower after I was on the board.

Tyranid Turn 1

The tervigon spawned 9 gaunts (and ran out). The spawned gaunts moved forwards to be cover for the hive guard, who moved and ran on as far as possible (9”). They were arranged in 2 rows of 3, one unit behind the other. The other termagants moved and ran forwards as well, being replaced behind the building by the warriors (who were being a bit cagey with all the str 8 firepower in my army). The hive tyrant stayed put in cover and waited for the Dark Eldar onslaught.

Here’s a pic of the tyranid deployment zone after their turn 1:
Note the warriors hiding behind the building on the right, the tervigon hiding behind the building on the left, and one of the objectives (the tyranid spres) in front of the building the tervigon is hiding behind.

Dark Eldar Turn 1

The ravagers drifted onto the board in the centre with the large wrack squad’s raider between them. The Haemonculus with wyches was on the right of the ravagers. The other wych squad came on in their raider behind the building just to the right of the centre line (firing through the building would make no difference to the tyrant who was already in cover). All these vehicles pretty much had their back almost touching the back of the board.

Two venoms with trueborns flanked each side of the formation, and also moved to the edge of my deployment zone and the trueborn got off the front to fire their blasters at the hive tyrant. When I deployed the trueborn I thought the three enemy long ranged shooting units wouldn’t bother with the trueborn compared to ravagers and venoms.

The 2 trueborn units took a wound each off the tyrant and the tyrant guard. The venom on the right opened up, and did better than average and did 6 wounds. The tyrant passed 2 armour saved leaving it on 2 wounds, while the tyrant guard died.

Everything else opened up on the tyrant, and did...NOTHING !! This was compounded by 2 huge mistakes by me:
I forgot to to reroll the night fighting roll for a ravager and a venom
I forgot to deploy a venom with the small wrack squad (it went into reserve, as I only noticed half way through my shooting phase)

Not the best turn as I hadn’t killed the tyrant.

Here's pic of the board after my turn 1:
Please note the locations of the objectives (small tyranid spres):

Bottom right of the table, to the left of the building the venom is next to
In front of the building the tervigon is hinding behind in the tyranid deployment zone
Just to the left of the ruin that is in the centre of the board
On the far right, between the big yellow spore in bottom right and the building in the middle right

Although you can't see it, the second venom has sped into the building in front of my two wych raiders, and has dropped off it's trueborn passengers in front of it.

Tyranid Turn 2

The gaunts in front of the hive guard only moved 4” though cover, but this was enough to move diagonally sideways out of the way of the hive guard, but the hive guard would have had their forwards movement slowed by about an inch. The other termagants moved forwards (and after the hive guard shooting would fleet in front of the hive guard to give them a cover save).

The tervigon cast Feel No Pain on itself, and the Hormagaunt continued their sprint down the left hand flank towards the objective on that side of the board. They trailed back to ensure they would be within synapse range of the tervigon.

The genestealers outflanked (a little early for my mate’s liking), and came in on the right flank near the objective on that side.

My idea that the trueborn would not be a threat compared to the other targets backfired, because the unit on the right was the closest unit to the hive guard. After firing the back unit of hiveguard at the trueborn on the right it was obvious that only their venom would be in range of the front unit of hive guard. The trueborn unit was wiped out, and I got lucky with the venom when it was shaken, immobilised and had a splinter cannon blown off.

The tyrant took aim at the raider with the large wrack unit in it, and blew it too pieces

Dark Eldar Turn 2

My Small Wrack unit and their venom that I forgot to deploy did not turn up from reserve this turn.

I tried to play the range game, so I didn’t move forward much at all. Even though I fired all my dark lances, blasters and splinter cannons first at the tyrant to finish him him off and then at the hive guard, I only reduced one of the hive guard units by 1 wound.

Tyranid Turn 3

The tyranids advance rapidly and make mid field their own. The hiveguard advanced (behind termagants) to just behind the ruin in the middle of the board, meaning they could reach anything in my army with their shooting.

The tervigon advanced, so that the hormagaunts which had reached the objective in the bottom left hand corner of the board were still in synapse range once they ensured they were trailed back far enough. At 15 models the hormagaunt unit was big enough to surround the objective so I couldn’t contest with a vehicle (as I couldn’t tank shock) and still trail back far enough to remain within 12” of the tervigon.

The hiveguard opened up on the 2 ravagers and both went down in flames. The tervigon shot one of the trueborn on the left, and the termagaunts killed another, and the last trueborn failed his ld9 test and ran away.

Tau Turn 3

I was kicking myself for playing so cautious, as my assault units were quite far back, and their raiders were likely to suffer the fate of the ravagers next turn.

The wyches slightly on the right side of the field, moved the full 12” on the raider, got out, fleeted and charged the genestealers which had moved up to sit on the objective on the right side of the board.

The wyches accompanied by the haemonculus went flat out in their raider. They went to the right of the main tyranid blob in the centre of the board, and prayed for some hive guard bad luck.

The wracks decided to come on from reserve and went on the right flank to support the wyches in combat with the genestealers later.

In the shooting phase the 3 venoms targeted the hive guard that did not have feel no pain, and in a display or accuracy and hive guard cursing their meagre 4+ save, the untouched unit was wiped out

In the wych/generstealer combat it was close with 3 genestealers dying compared to 2 wyches and the genestealers passing their morale test.

Tyranid Turn 4

The hormagaunts stayed on the objective in the bottom right hand corner. The hive guard and the termagants stayed in the middle of the table near the two central objectives. The tyranid warriors thought it was time to advance a bit as most of the dark lances and blasters were gone. They advanced straight forwards so they could either head towards the wych/genestealer combat or the centre objective.

Shooting from the remaining hive guard failed to do anything to the raider containing the wyches and haemonculus. The tervigon fired a template which killed a few wracks that was advancing from the centre of my deployment zone to the centre objective, and a few termagants tried to kill a raider and a venom but failed on both counts.

In combat the wyches and genestealer hacked at each other killing two members of each other leaving the combat a draw. The genestealers were the better combatants but they were outnumbered 2 to 1 now, and each casualty was really affecting them more than a wych casualty.

Dark Eldar Turn 4

A lucky turn where I hadn’t taken much casualties had allowed me to get back in the game a bit, so now it was time for some bold moves.

The raider with the wyches and haemonuculus zoomed 12” behind the main tyranid blob in the centre. The haemonuculus separated from the wyches to get the best liquefier shot at the termagants, while the wyches prepared with a nice fleet move to assault the termagants and the hive guard.

The raider from the wyches fighting the genestealers moved between them and warriors, to make it very iffy that the warriors could get to the wyches. This was complimented by careful casualty removal that meant the wyches remaining in combat were on the far side of genestealers away from the tyranid warriors.

The venom with the small wrack unit moved up and the wracks moved to help out the wyches with the genestealers.

Two dark lances from the 2 wych raiders, managed to instant kill one tyranid warrior. Venom splinter cannons took two wounds from the hive guard (leaving them on 3), and the haemonuculus took out 6 termagants with his liquefier.

Moving onto combat the haemonuculus and wyches assaulted the termagants and wyches. Tyranid armies work best where units are supporting each other, so you should always look out for multiple assaults. The wych leader with an agoniser and one other wych went on the hive guard while the rest of the unit and the haemonuculus went on the termagants. The idea was to kill enough termagants to win the combat and make the hive guard take lots of no retreat saves.

The small wrack squad was quite far away from the genestealers so rather than risk a long assault through terrain they had run in the shooting phase, putting them right next to the action.

Combat worked out fine. All but 2 termagants died, and the wych leader took the last wound from one of the hive guard. The return attacks only killed one wych, meaning the tyranids had to take no retreat saves wiping out the termagants but good saves by the hive guard left it on one wound.

The wyches and genestealers did one wound to each other meaning another drawn combat.

With both wych units locked in combat and out of range of the tyranid warriors I was happy, as we rolled into, possibly, the last turn of the game.

Tyranid Turn 5

The tervigon stayed near the objective near the tyranid deployment zone. The termagants and tyranid warriors advanced (and ran in the case of the warriors) near the objective in the centre of the board. The hormagaunts stayed spread out to both hold an objective and stay in synapse range.

In combat the wyches with the haemonoculus killed the last hive guard, while the wyches against the genestealers killed 2 for loss of 1, leaving the last genestealer who didn’t run away.

Dark Eldar Turn 5

The wyches fighting the last generstealer were joined by the small wrack squad. While the wyches and haemonoculus (who had 2 and 1 pain tokens respectively) moved between the termagants (in the centre) and tervigon (near their “home” objective).

The large wrack squad, whose raider got blown up early, and weren’t so large after getting hit repeatedly by the tervigon’s template attack, had cautiously advanced enough that they were able to move forward and flame the termagants holding the centre objective.

One wych raider flew behind the tervigon to contest the objective near the tyranid deployment zone, while the other one moved forward to contest the middle one.

Firing from the wracks liquefier guns and and splinter cannon fire took out the termagants, and the last genestealer was taken out in combat. They wyches gained the pain token and the remaining few wyches left the wracks to hold the objective and while they consolidated toward their raider near the middle objective.

The wyches near the haemonuculus were feeling brave and therefore assaulted the tervigon, after all it only had 3 attacks and the wyches had a 4+ dodge. Unfortunately I got carried away and assaulted with the haemonuculus as well (who doesn’t have a 4+ dodge). I only managed to do 1 wound to the tervigon with the wych leader’s agoniser and the rest of the wyches and the haemonuculus did nothing. The tervigon then killed the haemonuculus winning the combat by one. The wyches promptly failed their morale test and fell back.

The score was 1-1 on objectives. The hormagaunts had the one on the bottom left, the small wrack squad was holding the one on the far right, and the other two were contested. We rolled the dice and got a turn 6

Tyranid Turn 6

The tervigon had to try and kill the contesting raider, but with shooting and assaulting the raider survived, after a scattered shot and the tervigon needing 6’s to hit in combat.

The tyranid warriors decided to attack the wracks which had raosted the termagants. The tyranid warriors slaughtered them and consolidated in the ruins inches from the central objective.

Dark Eldar Turn 6

The few remaining wyches from the genestealer combat embarked on their raider giving me a scoring unit within range of the middle objective. The wyches who ran from the tervigon were unfortunately within 6” of the tyranid warriors and kept on running.

Everything opened up on the tyranid warriors (2 Lances, 5 Splinter Cannons). However the combination of covers saves and Feel No Pain (given to them from the tervigon last turn) meant that they not only wouldn’t die, but refused to even lose a wound.

This time the dice game up to show the game was ended with the scored still tied 1-1. The Hormagaunts had the bottom left objective. The small wrack squad was holding the objective on the far right. The middle objective was contested by the tyranid warriors and wyches in a raider. The objective near the tyranid deployment zone was contested by a raider and the tervigon.

Final Thoughts

Having not played for a few months and playing a newish army really showed. I played much too defensive with the dark elder on turns 2 and 3 when the hive guard was in range to shoot most of my army anyway. Also moving aggressively forwards with the trueborn venoms on turn 1 allowed the hive guard to have a target on turn 2 was silly.

Forgetting abilities like night fighting rerolls and flickerfield saves also made this game an uphill struggle for myself. Even late in the game assaulting with the haemonuculus against the tervigon cost me dearly, but to make matters worse if the haemonuculus had rejoined the wyches they would have had 3 pain tokens between and been fearless – doh !

However apart from my bad playing I though the army showed that it can do well. I really liked the firepower the venoms put out (but tyranids are an army to make the venoms shine).

Playing with 8 vehicles I was surprised 5 were still alive at the end, but then tyranids don’t have the highest number of anti tank options. Playing mech dark elder means that it’s always a race between the enemy’s anti tank and your vehicles. If you can overwhelm the anti tank quickly even dark elder vehicles can survive, but if the anti tank isn’t silenced the dark elder vehicles will disappear fast.

I liked the addition of liquefier guns, and I think in bigger games the upgrades I picked at the expense of the 6th troops choice will do better for me. I also liked the survivability of wracks compared to the fragile warriors for the role of a small troop unit in a venom.

I’m looking forward to 1750 games where I can try out the large incubi squad. If 8 incubi hit a unit they should make a mess of it. I’ll try to keep them a few inches off the front line, and hope opponents underestimate their 22-27” threat range from the front of the raider.

I should be getting another battle in this weekend, so we’ll see how the Dark Eldar list fares.

Hope you enjoyed this, let me know what you think ?

Rathstar

[40k] February Review

2011-03-05T01:12:00.006Z

Hi,

It's been another slow month for me, having a long commute to work does allow me to read lots of blogs while on the train, but doesn't really let me get back to my home town early enough to go to my local games club, and normally I'm don't feel like doing much painting or modelling when I get home.

The month started out with a blog post about cutting unnessary upgrades from your army list to afford more units, and give a yard stick to compare your other lists to. There were some good comments, and also Galador gave us his experiences with his Dark Eldar and how they performed at a local tournament he went to recently. Even if you've read the main blog post, it's worth popping back if you haven't read all the comments.

Painting / Modelling

There has been a bit of progress on my armies. The progress bar in the sidebar has moved marginally. I'm closer to playing games with my space wolves, I just need to finish assembling a razorback I got from ebay. I've taken sections of it apart to paint seperately (it's a pain trying to prise apart glued plastic bits, and I nearly took my thumb off).

Sometimes I wonder if the small saving from buying a poorly painted model off ebay is worth all the hassle, time and pain of cutting it up and repainting it. Al least it's nice to tell my other half I've bought it x% cheaper by going on ebay, she still glares at me for spending more money, but it helps.

You may have seen (here) that I've converted my first venom. The feedback I've received so far is good - thanks all of you that commented.

So a bit of progress, but not enough if I want to have an army ready for the tournament in 60 days. Let alone have the army ready in time to have lots of games in preparation for the tournament.

Gaming

Unfortunately it's been another barren month for gaming. However I should be playing a game with my Dark Eldar or my Space Wolves against my mate whose down for the weekend with his nids. Also I e-mailed my mates I normally play against and suggested we have a few games next week. So hopefully things will improve, and there should be the odd battle report here soon.

Also my local GW is changing their games nights to a tuesday, so it doesn't clash with my local club giving me two chances to get back to Reading early enough to get a game. Another bonus is that your army does not need to be fully painted, once there is progress each week to getting the army painted, so I'll be able to take my Dark Eldar as soon as the Venoms are converted.

Unfortunately I'm waiting for some auctions to end on ebay so I can hopefully purchase some more bits to convert my remaining vypers into venoms. Also the ebay sellers are in the States so they may take a while for the bits to get to me. I think I'll just write up lists containing the number of vemons I have converted. It's better I get games in whether or not it's with my ideal list doesn't make much difference.

Other Hobby News

The grey knight rumours are getting more concrete, helped by a leaked playtesters version of the codex. I haven't looked on the web for a copy of the leaked codex so I don't know the full details. They appear to have special rules for teleporting about, but as before they will be expensive, so unless they have guard allies (something that was rumoured that they had lost) they will be a small elite force. That kind of force has never really worried me, but I'll to wait till I see the codex to see what nasty wargear and abilities they will bring to the game.

There are sketchy rumours about a Summer of Fliers event in a few months. To conincide with this a number of model releases will come out. At first it was rumoured that the Venom, Razorwing & Voidraven would be released, but now the rumour is that only the Razorwing will be released. It would be shame if only one of the unreleased Dark Eldar vehicles were released by the summer, however these are only rumours which have to be taken with a heavy dose of salt, so things could be totally different.

I hope you've had a fun and productive February, now I must get back to my razorback...

Rathstar

Converted Venom

2011-03-03T03:35:00.001Z

Hi,

Just some quick pics of my first converted venom. The first pic is of the whole model.

I started with a vyper and cut of the top of the canopy to make it look more open, and added a Dark Eldar head. For the back section I used a raider gang plank and 2 raider keel blades. I was going to use plasticard for the back section but when this was suggested to me I thought this was much easier and in my view looks a lot better.

I then added a reaver jet bike canopy to the front, and jetbike tail fins to the vyper wings, which I think carries on the Dark Eldar feel.

I added raider spikes to the front of the vehicle, and added splinter cannons (shown in the second pic) converted from raider disintegrators and splinter rifles.

Apart from the reaver jet bike bits all the raider bits would be spare from any raiders you'll probably be building for your army. As I've already got 6 old raiders I had to ask friends who were starting Dark Eldar and use eBay. I definitely recommend to anybody starting Dark Eldar to keep all the spare parts they get from making the kits because they are excellent for conversions.

The final pic is the venom from a different angel.

Let me know what you think. One venom down, at least 2 (if not 3) more to go...but not tonight.

Rathstar

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