The State of the Nation 2013

I've not been too frequent with my blog posts lately, but as that is well documented already I won't go in to that too much other than to say that as much as I love writing, I miss wargaming as much as I used to be able to. 

Focus
One of the decisions I made earlier this year, which is again well documented, was that I would focus on GW games with a view to maintaining a consistent approach as well as to improve my knowledge. As such I have stuck closely to single armies for both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.

Warhammer 40,000
The army I have played the longest for 40k is Chaos Space Marines. I've tried a few different styles over the years be they Night Lords, a mixture of the cults and none cults, but when GW started to focus more on the Red Corsairs more as a unified force rather than a rag tag band that is mentioned from time to time in the fluff, I really started to like them. The Huron model is superb, and as such with the new book I wrote a Red Corsair themed list. The list itself isn't a tournament list by any stretch, nor however is it too weak and as such I have enjoyed using it greatly. As I've tweaked it and become familiar with it, I have looked towards developing a second force, which whilst remaining a Chaos Space Marine force does perform in a different manner. The Red Corsairs were more of a fire base army with a few mobile elements with which to close up to the enemy. However, I have developed a purely Tzeentch army whilst is quite the reverse. It is much smaller even than it's Red Corsair counterpart, and is in truth a bit of a glass hammer, but although I shall need to test and tweak it further, I think it should perform strongly.

Warhammer

For Warhammer Fantasy Battles, I have again developed one army before working on a second. The first being a Daemon Prince led Tzeentch army with a few monsters in it, albeit that I have mixed marks in this army a bit. I liked the idea of men of the North worshipping all the deities, but perhaps some being favoured more and so the bulk is Tzeentch but some of the army is dedicated to Nurgle. Afterall, they are men even if they are servants of the gods, and men follow a strong leader even if he does speak of a different god. This army has done reasonably well. Again possibly not a tournament army, but solid nonetheless. The second army is a much newer beast. All units in this second warband are marked Nurgle, or cannot be marked. It is still early days, but is enjoyable enough to play with.

Children of the Empyrean
I have however begun building my dual system Daemon army. Very early days as yet, but initially I plan to use them as allies in 40k, then develop them as a force in their own right.

Privateer Press

Now, having spent the first half of the year keeping my promise to stick to GW, I find myself yearning to get back to Privateer Press. At the end of last year I felt I was finally starting to get somewhere with Hordes and Warmachine, something which I think I shll have to develop once more due to the break in play. I am still very much in love with my Trollbloods and have spent a lot of time recently thinking about lists. Jarl Skuld is still my favoured Warlock and so he is still going to be the crux of my main list, but I have found myself looking at the new Hunters Grim Warlock unit from the Gargantuans book.

Having played about with some list options, I am happy with the theory of how the units will play, and as such he is now on his way.

Aside from the War Wagon (which I think will have to be a Christmas present) and any of the currently unreleased models, I'm now at full faction and as such I have plenty of options and so I'm trying to vary the lists as much as possible at least up to and including 35 points. Inevitably the Fennblades are a popular option in most lists as are the Scattergunners, but I've resisted putting them both in all lists. I've also varied the Warbeasts as much as I can, though the Impaler, because of his animus and my seeming preference for ranged lists, makes it in to more than one force. Initially I shall concentrate on the two Warlocks mentioned above, though eventually the aim is to get back to developing the Borka list and some of the other Warlocks that I've not used before.

Convergence of Cyriss

Keeping with Privateer Press, I have wanted to have a go at the Warmachine side of the coin for some time, though as they did before I first bought the Hordes Trollblood starter pack when Mk1 was around, none of the factions really captured my imagination. Even the newer Scyrah didn't really hit the spot, and to be honest I had decided to forego that side of the game entirely. However, with the announcement of the Convergence of Cyriss as a playable faction, I decided to wait out the details and see how I liked them, and I must say, I really like them! The idea of them being clockwork beings that have foregone their flesh is a very good one to me, and I like the idea of the Vectors rules. As such, I have ordered the starter set for them and who knows, maybe I can cope with painting silver?

Dystopian Wars
To be frank, this has taken a back seat for now. I still have much less time than I would like to wargame, and either 40k or fantasy will suffer to fit in Warmachine/Hordes. But it is not forgotten, and I shall get back round to it at some point.

The Future
Some of you may know already, however The Whyf has been given a store manager position in Ilkley, and as such at some point the intention is for us to move to West Yorkshire. Their are pros and cons for us that we have carefully considered, but both think it will be beneficial in the long run. It may be in a few weeks that we go, or in a few months. That is the best information we have at the moment, but we are looking forward nonetheless.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Chaos Decided

Well, I'm nearly done finalising my plans for my Chaos Space Marines and I think I'm settling upon Red Corsairs. I love their background and have often considered going with them in the past, especially having taken part on the secessionist side of the Badab Wars campaign last year. I have also always been drawn to the Huron model being as it is a very strong sculpt and I bought it as soon as it was released intending to use it as a Chaos Lord if not as Huron himself. Sadly however in the previous edition it was a Lash Sorcerer or Lash Daemon Prince every time.

I've gone for a relatively unmarked force in order to fit in with the Red Corsair's background, though I have gone for Nurgle Bikers (I know, I know) and Tzeentch Terminators (I said I know) and I may add in a unit or two of marked CSMs or Legion units from time to time.

For now though it's mainly the same force I used in the last edition but with a couple of the new units such as the new Heldrake and a Forgefiend which may switch with a Defiler from time to time.

I am currently trying to find a second list to give a bit of a varied force, this time edging for a more Legion heavy force, though I suspect that it would be best to focus on the first list for a while to see what works, why how and where.

In other 40k news, I'm nearly there with the Blood Angels army (obviously unpainted) as I just need to assemble a Tactical squad before the intended list is ready. The plan here is to use them as a second force for when I play regularly against other Chaos players to give them an Imperial force to face so they can make best use of the Veterans of the Long War rule from time to time.

Say what you will about my painting...

... but Dark Vengeance is still a few hours away and already I shall be able to field a painted Dark Angels force.



Now it isn't exactly wysiwyg, the Ravenwing aren't armed as they should be, but are distinguishable enough and I never really bothered with a Librarian previously so I'm having to use a Veteran Sergeant as a proxy, but that aside it's the full and painted force.

I've not had much time for 40k since 6th edition was released, but I must admit that Dark Vengeance has captured my attention. Primarily because it contains two of my armies, so there are no redundant models.

So the plan is for me to play a couple of missions against Matt at the club tomorrow. I shall let you know how it goes, and it may be a double post tomorrow as I'll also be playing Dystopian Wars.

Popped my 6th edition cherry!

I had my first game with the new edition against Ben on Saturday night, and we had a really good game!

We decided that we would keep it fairly simple playing Purge the Alien with a Dawn of War deployment but with the use of secondary objectives.

The idea was to get used to the rules as much as focus on the victory conditions, however since we'd need to focus on the secondary objectives going forward we also followed these.

Ben used his Tau which consisted of (I think) 3 Fire Warrior squads (two with Devilfish), 1 Pathfinder squad, 1 large Kroot infiltrator unit, 2 stealth teams, two Hammerheads and was lead by a Commander and retinue with a few drones which Ben kept in reserve.

For my Part I decided to field my Chaos Marines. It has been something of a tradition for me to see in new editions with my Chaos army, so that was a big factor here.

My list consisted of:

• Lash Sorcerer
• 10 Chaos Space Marines w/ Asp Champ w/ Powerfist, Undivided Icon, Plasma gun, Heavy Bolter
• 9 Thousand Sons w/ Sorcerer w/ Doombolt
• 8 Bezerkers w/ Skull champ w/ Powerfist, 2x Plasma pistols. Mounted in a Land Raider w/ extra armour
• 4 Bikers w/ Champion w/ Powerfist, 2x Plasma guns, Icon of Nurgle
• 7 Raptors w/ Asp Champ, Lightning Claws, 2x Flamers, Icon of Slaanesh
• 2 Obliterators
• Defiler w/ extra CCW and Reaper Autocannon

I figured that a varied force would allow me to try and deal with a few different options and I hoped that the biker squad specifically would soak up a fair amount of fire being T6. The
Raptors too would probably take a bit of attention since their aim was to get in combat fast and try and hit first. The rest of the force was essentially taken to try and test possibilities. I'd not really used the cult units in the previous editions - I'd only assembled the Plague Marines prior to 6th ed preparations, so I wanted to trial the Bezerkers and the Thousand Sons.

Finally, I had 100 points left and so I decided to take an Aegis defence line with a Quad Gun. I knew that there weren't going to be any fliers in this game, but I suspected that 4 TL S7 shots would at least irritate any lighter tanks.

Ben took the first turn and I failed to seize the initiative. I shall just note the key points from the battle in order to discuss how it played.

Although there weren't too many successes by Ben in first turn (inevitably) those that he did have were particularly good for him. He immobilised the defiler which really caused me issues as that had been one of my forward forces, thus meaning that I would need to re-think my forward forces. I addition, I lost the my Plasma gun to the CSM squad due to not paying attention to wound allocation. Something that I would suffer from again as Ben took a heavy toll on my Raptors with his rapid firing Kroot meaning that as well as a couple of regular raptors I lost their aspiring champion!

I would retaliate, but first I decided to immobilise my Land Raider on a crater. Great. So the Bezerkers disembarked and got ready to find some blood to spill. The Raptors positioned to make the Kroot burn resulting in a bit of crispy space chicken and the bikes took out a Piranha that was edging Its way towards targeting my Land Raider. Meanwhile, I moved the Undivided squad a few inches out of their deployment zone towards the Aegis Defence line and Quad gun which I had deployed slightly forward so that I didn't use up space within the deployment zone - a position I would leave them in for the rest of the battle albeit that I moved squad members around to make best use of firing positions. I also detached the Sorcerer from the Undivided unit so that I could lash one of the Stealth suit squads into range of the Bezerkers so that despite their ride being stationary, they could get stuck in asap. Ben failed his Deny the Witch roll so I moved the suits a decent 8 inches nearer and between the ksons and the bezerkers I managed to destroy the Drones that Ben was using to cunningly shield his more useful troops in order for the bezerkers to wipe them out in combat, which they duly did.

I took the opportunity to issue a challenge trusting that the other bezerkers could cope with with suits. challenge will play a big part in this edition. If you want to keep alive a character that you think will die to a fist sergeant or that would be better taking on multiple opponents (Lelith for example), then it is now possible to sacrifice a Sgt (or equivalent) of your own by issuing or accepting with him. Perhaps using a Fist armed Skull champion to challenge a Shas'ui was somewhat overkill, but at least I know how it works now.

In turn two, Ben managed to explode my Defiler, reduce the Raptors to three (two flamers and the icon), the Bezerkers down to the Skull Champion and a regular Bezerker and took a couple of models out of the Undivided squad.

In retaliation the Raptors wiped out the Pathfinders inc combat. Meanwhile the Thousand sons shot at a Fire Warrior squad reducing them enough for them to fall back thus saving them from being in charge range (note the 2d6 roll required wouldn't reach them even had I had another d6 and got 6 on all!) Also, the bikes turbo boosted to get further up the board and the Obliterators came down, took a couple of shots at the Ion Cannon Hammerhead, both of which penetrated, but Ben managed to pass both his Jink rolls. Say what you want about vehicles in this edition, but Ben is working those Jink saves! out of the approx 15 that I forced on him by the end of turn three, he failed 5, and three of those were on the Piranha's!

Speaking of Turn three, Ben's Commander appeared with his retinue and killed the Obliterators. It seems to me that the only time my Obliterators survive turn 3 or longer is when they don't deep strike, so I think I shall try that next time. The last two Bezerkers died, though it took a great deal of fire power (two squads I think, one being the re-grouped squad that fled in turn 2). In the end I like to think that they took the equivalent number of shots as Boromir and Willem Dafoe in Platoon before becoming the foundations of a giant brass throne. Finally for Ben this turn, a flamer toting Raptor died.

In retribution for the death of the Bezerkers, the two Raptors finished the recently regrouped fire warriors with flame and steel making it fish and fowl for them in a single battle!
The Bikes targeted the Commander's unit taking out most of the drones which the Thousand Sons then also fired upon removing the remaining Drones and one of the bodyguard retinue. The Bikes then charged and won the combat against the commanders unit, but the unit managed to flee, thus meaning that they would keep safely out of charge range if they regrouped, which they would do.

Turn four saw the last squad of Fire Warriors took out the last of the Raptors, though in truth they had done well. They hadn't quite earned their points back (I don't think) but they had occupied what could have been a devastating attack by the Kroot, not to mention the attention of the Fire Warriors. The bikes also died to the Ion Cannon hammerhead, and again they had soaked a lot of fire power before their demise. It's nice to find a use for these guys as I couldn't get them to work in the last edition. The Thousand Sons also took a pounding and were wiped out. They hadn't quite worked how I had planned, but I think that was misuse rather than their ability. They had helped weaken a few units allowing others to wipe out, so maybe that is the way to use them rather than rely on them being game winners.

I'll write up turn 5 and six together as they are a little hazy. Ben managed to wipe out the Undivided squad in turn 5 leaving just the Sorcerer (who was on one wound) and the Land Raider. I cannot remember now, but I think that the Sorcerer died. Luckily however I managed to kill the last of the Commander's unit including the commander himself as well as the last of the stealth suits.

In the end it was a good close game and I did like the changes to the rules that came in to effect here.

Key points to remember are:

• model placement within the unit, remember to make use of the secondary objectives,
• use your grenades at range (I didn't really cover it much here, but I did make use of throwing the odd Krak grenade at the Piranhas - stupid Jink Saves)
• move skimmers - Jink saves can be a real boon
• remember to state when particular models remain stationary in a moving unit.
• Remember overwatch

Thanks for reading, let me know if there are any questions.

Drax