Adepticon 2016 Meta - A follow up look at the Meta after LVO [40k]

So it's only 2 months since the LVO, and another one of the large US tournaments has come round, this time Adepticon.  Adepticon has different comp to the LVO, in that it basically doesn't have any, so you can unleash unrestricted D, unrestricted Invisibility and as many detachments as you want.  I was interested to see if two things had happened:

• Would this change the top armies much ?
• Would there be an improvement in the Performance and a narrowing of the spread of performance for Tau & Necrons (which had rather larger spreads of performance in my analysis of the LVO, here, than I expected.

What intrigued me to do another analysis was two comments that I read/heard in passing about the event.  One was while watching Reece Robbins (of Frontline Gaming who run the LVO) explaining that his list for LVO was not good against Tau because he was not expecting there to be many Tau at the event because of the format.  Now I now Tau don't have psykers so can't have or fight against full Invisibility too well, plus their D weapons are limited on 4 one shot weapons that need markerlights to be D on one model in the Tau range, but they are still a good army.

The second comment game from the Blood of Kittens review of the event. here, where they said:
"If you take a look at the lists you will notice one army dominated over the rest: Eldar. Eldar have seven spots in the Top 18 and a few more Eldar shoehorned into other lists! All the Eldar lists had at least one Wraithknight and Scatbike units. Adepticon has full powered D Weapons, so with Eldar having the easiest access this wasn’t a surprise. Still, this is amazingly dominate army, the only other time I can remember an army performing so well was the Grey Knights  at the end of 5th edition. What is impressive are Eldar don’t have any way to get free upgrades or units, they don’t seem to need it. Unless future army rules find a way to easily kill Warp Spiders and Scatbikes I don’t expect Eldar domination to end anytime soon" - now Eldar were already dominate at LVO, but this sounded like they did even better, so was this an exageration or did Eldar really improve in their performance, I thought that with more time people would get better at fighting Eldar, so while good players would still very well with the army they wouldn't dominate as much as they had.

Also Blood of Kittens hosts, here, all the top 18 lists if you want to look at the actual lists of the top players.

Ok, so on to the number crunching to see what happened (but before we do I refer you to my last article, here, where I included some of the limitations of any number crunching):

First lets start out with the number of players, by primary detachment, and I think they changed the primary detachment to the detachment with the most points rather than where the warlord was:

For this analysis I'm only going to look at armies which had 7 or more entries.  I would normally have cut off at a higher number, but I wanted to include Necrons in the analysis.  Just missing the cut were Dark Eldar and Khorne Daemonkin at 6 players each.

Eldar in this tournament have surpassed Vanilla marines as the top army, however when you add in marines in all their varieties Marines are still the most popular, however for nearly 1 in 4 armies to be Eldar is a huge number for them (and a massice jump from the LVO where they were 1 in 7 of the armies).  It also shows that the numbers per army start to drop off very fast.  After Tau, Space Wolves & Daemons you're down to under 10 entrants.

So how did the armies perform ?  Again I would look at average placings, but then also compare the number of placings in the top 50 and top 30, and compare that to how many players for each army there were:

[Click on the pic to view a bigger, more readable view]

Although they are small samples, Dark Angels and Daemons came top, followed by what I think are the top 4 armies at the moment, Eldar, Marines, Necrons & Tau.  However the average placing for Eldar is significantly lower than the rest, and this born out when we look at comparing the portion of armies in the top 50 or 30 compared to the full list, eg. Eldar made up 23% of their field, but 42% of the top 50 players.  A killer stat is that apart from Dark Angels and Daemons which had a small number of entrants the only army to have an average placing in the top half was Eldar, the nearest to them, Marines, having an average placing 30 places down just below the mid point.

However is this better than Eldar did before ?  Due to the small size of Adepticon, the top 50 at LVO is comparable to the top 30 at Adepticon.  Looking at the top 30 at Adepticon Eldar were 1.57 more represented than they were in the general field, compared to looking at the top 50 at LVO Eldar were 1.55 more represented than the general field.

One thing that has changed is the spread of the armies performance, particularly Eldar:

The performance spread is much closer between the armies.  This stat shows how spread out the results of the army were.

The real oddity is Tau with a more narrow spread of results, particularly when you consider that their average placing is just below the middle (103rd against a middle of 92nd).  I have some theoryhammer ideas as to why, but would love to read your ideas as well.  Are Tau handily beating some opponents, but then coming up with things that they just can't beat ?  Is it Invisibility and Psychic Shriek ?  Is it rerollable cover saves ?  Or just the good old fashioned fast assault threats ?  Is it the mission requiring very mobile armies while Tau players are sticking to maximum firepower and ignoring mobility ?  Or maybe a combination of all of this ?

So overall it looks like Eldar are getting even more popular at tournaments.  The top four strongest armies are still Eldar, Marines, Necrons and Tau, however there are some less popular armies that are still doing very well, such as Dark Angels & Daemons (plus Khorne Daemonkin & Cult Mech).

The increase in the spread of the performance of Eldar, in my opinion, means that while players are learning to beat the poor Eldar players and/or those with less optimised lists, when facing good players with optimised lists it's still really hard (not impossible) to win.

Does this follow your idea of where the meta is, and which are the strongest codexes ?  What's your thoughts on Tau's average performance (10% of the field yet only 7% of the top 30, a drop of a third).  Yes I know a lot of armies do make the top 30 at all, but why is an army that is seem as so strong not doing better ?  It was interesting to note that Frankie (of Frontline Gaming) switched from his tournament winning Tau to a Gladius Strike Force with a Culexus Assassin & Inquisitor with Servo Skulls for this event, is Tau not quite cutting it when it comes to the big competitive tournaments ?.

Rathstar

LVO Results - A chance to look at the 40k meta (Beware: Mild Number Crunching)

The LVO (Las Vegas Open) Results are out, and as it's one of (if not the) largest tournaments in the world it's always nice to crunch the numbers and see does the meta of that tournament follow our thinking of which armies are the top dog.

First some pretty huge caveats:

• This is one tournament, and even if it is large it is still a small sample size as any statistician would tell you.
• With most tournaments having comp that will always change slightly which armies are good, with some armies being able to adjust to the comp better than others.  For the comp in this tournament, please look up the ITC (Independent Tournament Circuit) Rules
• Results can be skewed by several factors, eg. some people do not complete all their games leading to them having a lower placing than someone who does complete all their games, an army's primary detachment may be a very small portion of the overall army.

So while we should treat all such analysis with a pinch of salt, hopefully the above factors in some cases even themselves out with a large number of competitors.

The full results of the tournament can be found here.

So lets start off my with my predictions (honest I did these before the analysis):

• All the analysis tables will be dominated by the top 4 Codexs (Eldar, Necrons, Marines for which I include Dark Angels & and finally Tau), ie. the recent codexs with Decurian type detachments (although in the case of Eldar I think their detachment is not their strength, which I think is the base unit cost of their units meaning a CAD with an allied Aspect Host(s) being very powerful for them.  Mainly the top 4 are the most recent codexs
• They will be some placings for some armies, such as Daemons & Khorne Daemonkin, but the results will show the rest of the codexs are definitely chasing the top 4 in terms of performance, however good generals can get good results.
• The last stat I like to do, which shows how widespread an armies results are, which to me shows how much a good or bad general can influence the army, I'm not to sure on what this will show.  People like to say that anyone can win with Eldar, but to me they are becoming (like Marines) an army that everyone knows because they are so powerful and becoming so popular.  When I'm playing my Necrons or Tau I feel I know the Eldar better than my opponents know Tau or Necrons and that I have less to fear if I'm playing a worse player.  However in general I still see Eldar smash average generals with average armies whoever they are piloted by.  I think Marines will still have a wide spread of results as they are a popular army and many beginners start with them.

Well onto the stats, and lets take a look at army popularity:

Well no surprises here with my view of the top armies dominated both the field and also the top 50 placings.  A shout out to Dark Angels which got 10% of the top 50 placings while being only 4% of the field.

A stat that starts to shows the power of a codex is to look at how much more they factor in the Top 50 compared to the overall field.  If we ignore the armies with less than 10 armies, we get the following table:

A bit of a surprise (for me anyway) with Dark Angels topping the list, I suppose I need to pay more attention to them.  Apart from that things were as expected apart from Marines, which had nearly the same percentage in the top 50 as they had in the entire field.  Cult Mech and Nids also did well (however the Nids sample is very small, eg. it could have been just 2 armies with loads of Flying Hive Tyrants making the top 50, which would say much for the rest of the codex).

Now lets look at the average placing:

Eldar still dominate along with Marines, Tau & Necrons, but Cult Mech gets a good showing.  I particularly like to look at the stats for the top 50, as this shows what a good general can get out of the army, and also gets rid of the newer players bringing marines.  This brings up a few things, first being the Necrons did very well in the top 50 along with Daemons (although a very small number, 3, made the top 50).  The Chaos Marines, Nids and Daemons armies indicate that is may have been a very specific build that made the top 50 as the overall performance of the three armies was very low.

And now we come to the last stat, which tries to represent the spread of the armies.  To calculate this I looked at each player and how far their position is away from the average for their army, and then divide this by the number of players.  Again just looking at the armies which had 10 or more entrants we get the following table:

At the top of the list we have the armies which had the narrowest spread in the army placings.  In the case of the top three I think it's because it's hard (not impossible) to place in such a competitive field regardless of how good a general you are.  Another view could be that people who take the weaker armies are there more to have fun and socialise, my counter is that even if you are there to have fun and socialise a good general should do better than a worse, and although this is true with these weaker armies it isn't as much as other armies.

Next we have Cult Mech and Eldar.  It may be controversial to some, but it can be hard to pick a weak list for Eldar once you don't pick silly choices, a complaint I've even heard from Eldar players trying to tone down their list when playing against some of the lower tier armies.

Next we have the middle of the road (in terms of spread), here we have Space Marines (being a very popular first army, so can have lots of newer players as well as experienced players), Daemons & Dark Angels.

Lastly we have a big surprise, in the bottom three we have both Tau and Necrons, which had bigger spread of performance than the average, only beaten by Nids.  The new Tau codex might have had an impact with people trying out the new toys and formations, and not having enough practice time with them, but the Necrons is definitely a surprise.  My only idea is that Necrons can be a win big or lose big army, in that they are very resistant to most shooting, but can be susceptible to some types of firepower and can get sweep easily in close combat.  Examples include a Cavalry and Beasts Space Wolf army could go throw a Necron force like a knife through butter, sprinkle in some allied firepower or a Knight and it could be very tough prospect for a Necron force.  Even though these two armies being low on the spread chart is surprising, and I'm sure the Tau will improve as people get used to the new options in the new codex, or maybe even realise that some of the old ones are still good (I'm doing well and i haven't built my Ghstkeel yet or even purchased a Stormsurge)..


So did anything surprise you ?  Why do you think Tau & Necrons had such a huge spread (I may expand on my thoughts in a future post) ?  Personally I'm going to have another look at the Cult Mech codex and the nasty formation that combined Cult Mech with Skitarii and Imperial Knights.

Lastly this was the meta at this one tournament, and is irrelevant for your local meta, and more importantly the group of mates you play with.  The meta in the UK will be different, the meta in the north US, the meta in the next tournament will be different, however I think it does give an indicator of what codexs are the most powerful, and wasn't toooo far out on my initial predictions, but even I will be doing a bit more research to be more familiar with Dark Angels and Cult Mech.

Rathstar

The Tomb Reawakens III - Wraiths Progress & 1st Tournament Games

Finishing at 5 in the morning before the tournament I got the Wraiths up to gaming standard so I could take them to the tournament (I also quickly added some blue to my WIP Sypder as well).  At 2 in the morning I released I wasn't going to finish them at the rate I was going, so you'll notice that I didn't paint the red in between the tail sections on the back 3 Wraiths.  They are very very far from finished, but I still got compliments about them at the tournament which is nice.

Practice Game

For this game and the tournament games my (1500 point) list was:

Combined Arms Detachment:
Lord (just stock with a Staff of Light)
2 x 10 Warriors
3 Spyders

Canoptek Harvest Formation
1 Spyder
5 Scarabs
6 Wraiths

Destroyer Cult Formation
Destroyer Lord (Voidreaper, ie. a Warscythe with Master-crafted and Fleshbane)
3 x 3 Destroyers
3 Heavy Destroyers

The Thursday before the tournament I got to play my mate's Grey Knights army.  It was a very elite army, but had a lot of 2+ saves to deal with, 2 dreadknights & 2 units of terminators (one with a lvl3 librarian) accompanied by 2 units of purifiers in rhinos and another grey knight unit with the shunt jump packs.

We played maelstrom hammer and anvil, and in hindsight the deployment played into my hand, as it stopped the Grey Knights using their mobility to pick on isolated units because out 24" wide deployment zones were so packed.

Bad target priority meant I took a wound off a dreadknight while leaving a rhino on 1 hull point (should have focused on the rhino), however some destroyers on the other flank killed the other rhino to get me 1st blood.

Next turn I tied to whittle away wounds on the dreadknights while continuing to build up the scarabs.  I was taking a few casualties, but not much as the Grey Knights did not have too much firepower (particular with a terminator unit in reserve).  I charged one of the dreadknights with wraiths and attacked destroyer lord, but the destroyer lord did not make it into combat and the dreadknight lost by 1, ran away, and I did not catch it.

3rd turn the dreadknight flamed some destroyers, but it left the last model from the unit out of range, while the dreadknight the other side charged and killed a unit of destroyers.  My response was to kill a dreadknight with the wraiths, bring the other dreadknight down to 1 wound with the mainly with the heavy destroyers over a couple of turns, with the destroyers doing a number on the advancing purifiers.  The scarabs who were quite big charged the Libby who was with the remaining purifiers and drowned them in attacks, but it still took a few combat phases for the Libby to die.

Although a unit of terminators had deep struck into my back field, the other had had to move backwards to get an objective, so with me having a large lead in the maelstrom points the game was effectively over

Overall my army had nice mobility without reducing it's firepower, and in this game I got lucky in that the maelstrom cards went my way, and my opponents saves were a bit poor at the start of the game.  A good opening game for the Necrons at 1500 points.

1st Tournament Game vs Khorne Daemonkin

A cracking game against another mate.  I went into the game a bit to confident, thinking of all the internet hype that khorne deamonkin made chaos better but still not in any way good.  Never underestimate an army you have never played before.  The Khorne army was a very fast assault army, that imho had been built very well to use the advantage the army had.  It had 2 units of blood letters in rhinos, another in reserve, a unit of khorne hounds, a Maulerfiend (think dreadnought with 2 special close combat weapons that can move 12" a turn), 2 Soul Grinders, 2 small units of bikes and to round everything off a bloodthirster.

Because my opponent had a maelstrom card to kill a character he moved the centre of his line (mainly the bloodthirster) towards one flank that had the necron lord with some warriors, so i mainly went the other flank - I wasn't scared of the bloodthirster.  We both cleared up our respective flank, my wraiths clearing up any infantry they encountered, and the destroyer shooting doing well.  I cleared up the 2 units of bikes, 3 units of bloodletters and 2 rhinos, while Khorne had killed my necron lord, 1 warrior unit, the unit of spyders and the formation spyder.  So I only had my destroyer lord with wraiths as a heavy hitter, while Khorne had most of their big hitters.  Luckily for me the game had to end turn 4, and I had won by 1 point, only because I killed a maulerfiend with the last shot of the match for 2 maelstrom points.  If the game had gone on I think the Khorne would have pulled it back and even had a chance of tabling the necrons if the game had gone on to turn 7.

Big lesson was not to underestimate fast assault armies.  The mobility of my army was very useful to move away to one flank and concentrate my shooting and assault, a more static army would have been rolled over a lot easier.

Tournament Game 2 vs Tau

I wasn't expecting the New Tau, but the codex had come out just in time.  However the player doing the tournament comp, to put in mildly, doesn't like Tau, so made a few rulings that were definitely anti Tau.  This had nothing to do with the new codex's coordinated firepower rule, just plain arbitrary rule changes; snap shots could not be modified (the only army that can modify snap shots is Tau), plus GMCs could only fire 2 weapons (which although is sometimes debated, no tournament I've heard of has ruled it that way).  Out of all the formations in the game the Firebase Support Cadre was one of 2 banned, and this was the same comp that did not modify anything to do with Necrons or Eldar at all.

We were playing the diagonal deployment and the mission was Purge the Alien.  Running across the battlefield into Tau guns was not going to do my infantry any good, so the necron lord and 20 warriors stayed in 2 ruins near my corner of the board and were ready to go to ground if anything looked at them.

The board was dominated by a big building section.  It was a big L shape that blocked line of sight for infantry, but the opponents Riptide and Stormsurge could see over it.  the building had doors so units could go in it.  Looking from my table side, I was deployed in the bottom right, and the buiding started in the about 12" on the bottom left, came accross to nearly the middle of the board, and went up towards the other side of the board stopping about 20" from the other table edge.  One door was at the top of the building, and the other was at the side close to the edge of my deployment zone.

[The layout I faced was more of a large L shape with a door and one end of the L,
and another at the corner of the L shape]

It was really nice terrain, but I think it was better suited to a role playing or small skirmish game, but we have to deal with the terrain that's set-up at the table, and being able to pick table corners I got a massive advantage.  For those interested in the terrain you can follow the link here.

To take advantage of coordinated firepower my opponent had taken lots of small infantry units, a unit of 4 drones (his auxiliary for his formation), 2 units of 5 pathfinders, 3 units of 6 fire warriors.  This was complimented by some big hitters; a Riptide, a Stormsurge (with the shorter ranged main gun), a Hammerhead, plus a Commander with some Crisis suits.  The infantry and drones looked like 6 easy kill points, so I aimed to ensure they died as soon as possible.

After set-up almost everything went to plan.  The Wraiths went through the building for a turn 3 charge, while the scarabs were built up by 4 a turn to also rush round the building for a turn 3 charge.  The destroyers used their mobility (6" move, D6" run, plus 2D6" assault move) to rush up the board with even the spyders running every turn.

Return fire from the Tau was minimal, particularly with the Heavy Destroyers instant killing the broadside, the Spyders regenerating the Scarabs faster than they were being killed (mainly from scattering blasts), and the Destroyers losing a couple of members due to their good toughness & armour saves.

My opponent got very unlucky with the turn three assaults in that the pathfinders charged by the scarabs rolled double 1 for their morale test and got locked in combat.  One of the 3 units of infantry the wraiths were in combat also did the same thing locking them in combat.

Rather than counter charging with the Stormsurge, it just shot at the destroyers and spyders.  So when the wraiths and scarabs were free he following turn (having killed their opponents in the Tau turn) they set up a massive single combined combat.  After the destroyers killed the crisis suits, the scarabs charged the commander, some rallied pathfinders, and the hammerhead, while the wraiths charged some rallied firewarriors, the commnder and the riptide.  The fire warriors and pathfinders were slaughtered, the hammerhead was wreaked, the commander and riptide didn't do much and then didn't roll double 1 for their break test and both ran off the board, leaving the Tau with just the Stormsurge, and a double digit deficit in victory points.

[It's nice to have a Stomp option]

We got to see the Stormsurge in action, and he did roll a 6 on one of his stomps killing 3 wraiths, luckily they had fearless to give the rest of the army time to run away :)

This game mobility and speed was again key, any extra infantry I took in my army to make it a decurian would'nt have added anything, and would have reduced what could run at the enemy with any change of getting there.


Coming Next

Two big wins, and the next game was against Eldar, which will follow in the next post, along with I thought of the army and how I will tweak it going forwards.

Until then, Happy Gaming :)

Rathstar

Tau Re-Emerge & Moray Battlesuit

A Tale of Two Tau's

It's been a long hiatus since my Tau hit the gaming tables.  Hitting the Tau label on this blog takes you back a while.  There was a game (here) at the University gaming club, when I didn't want the first game they saw me play to be with my, very tuned by multiple tournaments, Dark Eldar list.  Then you would be sent back to 2011 when the Dark Eldar codex was released, and Dark Eldar were added to the painting log.  It was a time where Tau were struggling, but also a time where I had many years of experience of taking them to tournaments, and could still surprise a few people with how effective they could be.

Now the same is happening with my Dark Eldar.  They are not struggling as much as my Tau were back in 2011, but the inclusion of Tau & Eldar which bring av12 & 13 vehicles, plus high rate of fire medium strength guns to the meta is making it harder (but more on that in a later post).

Before the new Tau codex came out I took them to a 500 point tournament at the local GW as part of a final send off to the old codex.

I took a list that had lots of models, but was a bit lacking in low ap and anti tank, so I got a swift lesson when I faced this in my first game:

Overall I learnt that although there was lots of blob squads and cheap troops allied in you still needed to have decent low ap for when heavy infantry turned, plus you still needed to ensure you can crack an av13/14 tank.  On the plus side I continued to enjoy the improvement 6th edition had given rapid fire weapons, and my fire warriors and kroot were very effective over the day.

Next I tried a before and after pair of games against my mates Dark Angels.  I took the following army:

It was a close loss for the Tau, so when the new codex came out it was no surprise that I got a good (but not excessive) win.  My initial army was below:

Quick changes I made was changing 2 broadside units for 2 hammerheads, and swapped a pathfinder devilfish for a second unit of pathfinders.  Not surprisingly a unit of crisis suits got upgraded to a Riptide.  A new addition was a unit of Piranhas for more str 5 firepower.  Also trying something new out I dropped the commander for an Etheral as he wasn't compulsory anymore.  You can see the Moray Battlesuit, that I have had since I first started Tau standing in for the Riptide in the above pic.

Other changes that have since happened to my list, because I didn't appreciate the change after my first read of the codex include:

1) Not being limited to 2 drones a crisis/broadside team.  This is huge and allows some cheap ablative wounds that can take the first str8 shots that would instant kill the suits.  The drones are worth it for that let alone what they add to the unit's firepower, particularly if they compliment the units role and range that they want to operate.

2) After the knee jerk reaction of removing broadsides from my list due to drop in the strength of their rail weapons I added a small unit of 2 with high yield missile pods back in the list along with 4 missile drones.  In my first few games they have done well, and will be a stable of the my lists going forward, and points permitting I would expand the unit, but I am wary of having a lot of points tied up in the same unt.  Too many battle reports I have seen on Youtube of big units being killed/decimated completely turning the battle.  The last example was a full broadside team with maximum drones and attached commander and etheral; when a close combat unit weathered the counter fire and massacred the unit it combat it was immediately game over.

3)  If pathfinders were fragile and an opponents first easy target before they are even more now with improved markerlights and worse armour save.  Although I haven't had a game with them yet I am going to try out Tetras, now that their markerlights are a reasonable Heavy2 rather the ridiculous Heavy4 they used to be.

4) I have fallen in love with Ion weapons.  Although risky (which can be mitigated by using markerlights to raise BS to 6) having low ap large blasts is lovely.  Initially I had 2 Ion weapons in the army, and I'm considering increasing that.

5) I've added a skyray, which helps with anti air wonderfully.  In most games I will just markerlight turn one, and then unleash all or most of it's missile against a key flyer on turn 2.  So far the skyray is my only skyfire model, relying on a few markerlights hits and twin-linking on my str7 firepower to help out.  However I haven't faced a heavy flyer list or the dreaded Helldrakes, so I may need to revise this.

At the moment I am rushing to paint up my new additions (Broadsides, Tetras, loads of Drones) to be able to take the Tau to their first tournament in nearly 3 years.  Time will tell if I can quickly adapt to the new playstyle compared to my Dark Eldar in such a sort length of time with a lack of test games.


Moray Battlesuit

So here's a close up picture of my Moray Battlesuit:

I got him at the same time I started my Tau, and for a few games I proxied him as a Hammerhead against my mates until I painted up the proper model.  His weapons of Ion Cannon and 2 Burst Cannons then, would need to change to Ion with Fusion Blasters.  The fusion blasters were already under the shoulder pads, so the burst cannons just needed to be removed for WYSIWYG.

He'd suffered a bit of battle damage, so I had to find a new gun for his right forearm mini drone.  It's only cosmetic but I wanted the model looking for his new outting. Finally I could use the model as I wanted, as a large crisis suit, now that the codex had Riptides in it.

Comparing him to the Riptide model, he needed bigger thusters.  I dithered over using piranha or tetra engines, but eventually decided on hammerhead engines with some crisis circular shields to cover where they attached to the hammerhead..

Like the Riptide I placed them higher than the shoulders. I removed the burst cannon barrels, leaving the nibs to make it look like they were tracking the sky. Finally my Moray is reborn as a Riptide.  Here's a picture of the final model against a normal Riptide:

What do you think of the model ?  Would you be happy playing against him ?  I think it's got the right height and size.  The big difference being the existing Riptide model has the gun outstretched, but as a gun doesn't count for Line of Sight it shouldn't be an issue.

All comments are greatly appreciated.

Rathstar

Next time, it'll be back to Dark Eldar, and my experiences facing the Wraithknight along with the rest of the new Eldar codex

Home Gaming

Sometimes work and social life conspire to stop me from making it to either of my two supposedly regular gaming night's (my local GW and my local club). However to mitigate that, and to fulfil most gamers ideal environment I've purchased a GW gaming table.

Having a table at home means that games can be organised on the fly against anyone that has an army and can get to my house. No more waiting for the next games night.

The board also means you can arrange regular matches easier, such as evert second Tuesday for a campaign night to add an extra dimension to your games.

I already have 2 trestle tables for the gaming board to go on, and terrain to cover most of it. I just need to put together that City Fight terrain box set I boughts years ago :) What I like best about the GW board is that it is better looking than the flat green mat.  The stone and rocky outcrops, plus the in-built hills can be assembled in a number of configurations by switching boards around and can add to the tactical play.

Althought the GW option is very expensive, starting out at £175 unpainted, plus the cost of paint and flock on top of that, it really does look the business, and if you look at the cost over the years of use I think it's worth it. However I would still say getting one of two armies up to a decent size would come first (until then a green mat or playing down the local club/GW would suffice), and I wouldn't consider the gaming board if I didn't already have 3 40k armies and another with all the models bought to get it up to a decent size.

In this current climate it's always worth looking around. Rather than buying my board new and then spending the significant time, energy and further expense to decorate it, I was able to pick my board (pictured) from eBay for £141 (incl postage).

Has anyone gone for any of the GW or other manufacturers gaming boards, and what did you think of them ?

Rathstar