My Ancient Nemesis: Tournament Report Game 2

Game 2 saw me squared off against my ancient 40k nemesis, the Space Wolves. When I started playing in 3rd ed. my buddy who got me into the game had Space Wolves and whooped my poor Eldar with them soundly. By the time I had learned enough to possibly put up a good fight against them he had gotten into Chaos and had sold off his Wolves to help fund his new army. Fast forward to today and my record is still atrocious against them. I have won some games here and there, but after my initial run against them every victory feels just a bit sweeter than against any other army.

We Start by Clubbing Baby Seals: Tournament Report Game 1

1st Tournament Win!

So as the title says I got my first tournament win this past weekend when the Barn held a 1500 point event. I brought my DoA (Descent of Angels) Knights of Blood with me and they put me on their jumppacks and carried me to victory!

 I am working on writing up a full tournament report that will include army lists and batreps of each game. It's taking a bit of time though so I just wanted to throw something out there while I work on it. Unfortunately I left my camera in the truck most of the day so I only have a few pics of some of the painting contest armies, but none from any of my games :(.

Anyway, more to come...

Knights of Blood Progress Pics

So its been quite some time since I posted anything, but that doesn't mean I've been idle. I have been hard at work on my Knights of Blood successor chapter of the Blood Angels and I thought I would show some pictures of some of my finished models.

Team Tournament results (finally)

Okay, so I was gonna try mobile blogging from the team tournament, but clearly I had no idea what I was doing. As such, it didn't work. So I am finally gonna just throw up a quick report of the results.

Long story short it didn't go too well.

The tournament used a Battle Point system, with each mision having a primary, secondary and tertiary objective.

Game one saw Nate and I paired up against Austin and Dave and their Tyranid horde. Swarmlord, a winged hive tyrant, two tervigons, two termagant squads, two hormaguant squads, some ymgarls, a couple of venomthropes, and some tyrant guard. Almost no shooting on the board whatsoever!

At deployment each team was given two objective markers to be placed with any unit in the army, deployment was long table edges. So the mission was to have more units containing the objective markers completely within your opponents deployment zone. Secondary mission was to control the center of the table, with bonus battle points for having an HQ within 3" of it, and the tertiary objective was victory points, needing 200+ more to win.

Not much involved here, two CC armies that just basically ran at each other for a good old scrum in the middle of the table. In the end we tied the primary 0-0 (though we were about 1" from getting ours in!), we also tied the secondary objective. They had the swarmlord about 1-2" out from the center while we had Mephiston staning right on it. We barely squeeked out a win in the tertiary by 245pts. A very minor win for us (and the only one of the day.) Austin and Dave went on to win the tournament. Congrats to them. Ours was a hard fought battle and I think if it would have gone another turn we would probably have lost!

Our second game saw us facing off against a mech BA, razorspam list. 6 las/plas razorbacks with a 5 man ASM squad with flamer in each, 2 librarians with shield and something, 3 Baal Predators with Asscannon and HB sponsons, two Auto-las predators and a Furioso Librarian.

The mission used the dawn of war deployment, and had four objectives (1 per player). Primary was objectives, cant remember what the secondary was, and I think the third was victory points.

Our opponents this time were a couple of guys I had never met before named Eric and 'Biggs' (I could be wrong about this there have been several days and many beers since!) This game was really fun and hard fought. In the early turns things seemed to be going really well for Nate and I, but around turn 4 the worm turned. Once the battle shifted, it went downhill for us quickly. In the end the game went 7 turns, just long enough for them to finish tabling us. So with that ending any chance for us to place in the tournament it was time for beer!

Game three saw us paired up with Mike and Mark. Mike is a regular out at the barn and Mark is a guy he knows from Kalamazoo. They were running Chaos Deamons and Chaos Marines. Mike had the Deamons and had tow heralds of Tzeentch on chariots, 3 Flamers, two squads of pink horrors,, one with the Changeling, and two Soul Grinders. Mark had the Chaos Space Marines with Kharn, 10 chosen, 9 berzerkers, 6 plague marines, and 2 obliterators.

This battle used the spearhead deployment with one objective scattering from the center of each of the non-deployment quaters. The primary objective was Victory points, needing at least 200 more to win. The objectives were the secondary mission, and he tertiary was who had the most surviving HQ units at the end.

This game was downright bloody with both sides seemingly throwing haymakers and turning the tide of the battle with every turn. In the end we had a technical draw on the Victory points, though Nate and I were up by 145pts. they managed to win the secondary though by having one unit of Horrors that came in late sitting on one of the objectives (these, one herald and a rhino were all they had left!) We had a draw for the tertiary as we still had Mephiston up and running (he and one ASM with a melta, a chaplain and a sanguinary priest were all we had left!)

All in all we took a paltry 7th out of 8 teams, but we had three really hard fought battles and a ton of fun in each. Can't ask for much more from a day of gaming. Next time we'll have to see what we can do with lists not written the night before so we can actually play test with them a bit!

Team Tournament Today

So the Barn is holding a team tournament today. The teams each consist of 2 players with 1000 points each.
I am teaming up with Nate and we are taking our Blood Angels out to play. We both have been very busy leading up to the tournament so last night was the first time we had a chance to get together and work on our lists. Since we didn't have any chance to playtest, or to make any new models we might need, we decided to go with things we already have and go for a straight-forward, punch you in the face kind of list.

So anyways, heres our lists:

Mine
Astorath the Grim

Death Company, 1x b.gun and PF, 2x pistol and P.W. 1x CCW and P.W., 2x CCW and B.P, 2x CCW, and Bolter, in drop pod with locator beacon

Assualt Squad, 10 man, 2x meltaguns, power fist

Death Company Dreadnought with Blood Talons, Drop Pod with locator beacon

Chaplain

Nates.
Mephiston

Death Company, 1x b. gun and PF, 1x pistol and PW, 1x CCW and PW, 2x bolter and CCW, 2x pistol
and CCW, in Drop Pod with locator beacon

Assualt Squad, 10 man with 2x meltaguns, power weapon and Meltabombs

Chaplain

Sanguinary Priests x2. with jumppacks and power weapons


Anyhow got to get going! Will be posting updates from the tournament (if I can figure out mobile blogging anyhow!). Wish me luck!

Astorath the Grim

Painted Death Company Models

So I have been working on my Death Company and thought I would share a few pic's of the ones I have finished. When I first read the codex I had dismissed them. I didn't like the thought of a troops unit that couldn't control objectives. However, I have since reconsidered, and now think of them more as an elites unit that takes up a troops slot. I have been having much more success with the army as a whole since adding them (and Astorath the Grim, that guys a beast!)

BarnCon

So this weekend the barn celebrated it's 1st year by holding BarnCon. Lots of games and fun were had by all. I got in two games myself. A win against Austins Tyranids using the Battle Missions 'Vanguard' Mission, and a loss to Shanes Nurgle Chaos Space Marines.

My Death Company square off against Austins Horde of 'gants.

A quick Tournament Report

So my local gaming club hosted a 2000pt tournament recently. I brought my Eldar and my high hopes with me. Sadly this was not a glorious day for the Eldar of the Saim-Hann Craftworld. It was, however a fun filled day with some good games. So let’s get onto the report.

So I guess I’ll start with my own list. It, like most of my lists, is far from the most competitive of lists, but there was also a best painted competition and I wanted to make sure I qualified to compete in that as well. That is why there is a squad of Dire Avengers in one of the Wave Serpents instead of a second unit of Fire Dragons (which I would have much preferred!) Anyways, here it is.

Blood Knights WIP

So here are a few pics of some of the early works in progress in my Blood Angels successor Chapter, the Blood Knights.

'Ard Boyz Semi finals report

So  I headed down to Kenallville IN, to Sinclair Books and Games for the Semi-Finals round of 'Ard Boyz  this weekend. Nate joined me to just come and hang out (and get drunk at the pub across the street.) Anyway, here's a brief rundown of how my day went.

'Ard Boyz preliminary round list

Ok, so I promised it and here it is, the list I used in the preliminary round of 'Ard Boyz.

HQ:
Farseer, Jetbike, Runes of Witnessing, Runes of Warding, Spirit Stones, Fortune, Guide

Autarch, Jetbike, Mandiblasters, Laser Lance

Warlock Unit on Jetbikes
     1x Warlock with Embolden
     3x Warlock with Destructor

Elites:
Fire Dragons
     x4 Fire Dragons (Mounted in Falcon)
     1x Fire Dragon Exarch with Dragons Breath Flamer and Crack Shot

Fire Dragons (Mounted in Falcon)

     x4 Fire Dragons
     1x Fire Dragon Exarch with Dragons Breath Flamer and Crack Shot

Fire Dragons (Mounted in Falcon)
     x6 Fire Dragons
 
Troops:
 
Guardian Jetbike Squad
     4x Guardian Jetbikes with shuriken catapults
     2x Guardian Jetbikes with shuriken cannons
     1x Warlock with Singing Spear and Destructor
 
Guardian Jetbike Squad
     4x Guardian Jetbikes with shuriken catapults
     1x Guardian Jetbikes with shuriken cannons
     1x Warlock with Singing Spear and Destructor
 
Guardian Jetbike Squad
     4x Guardian Jetbikes with shuriken catapults
     1x Guardian Jetbikes with shuriken cannons
     1x Warlock with Singing Spear and Destructor
 
Dire Avengers
     6x Dire Avengers
     1x Dire Avenger Exarch with Dual Shurican catapults and Bladestorm
     Wave Serpent with Twin-Linked Brightlances and Sprit Stones
 
Dire Avengers
     6x Dire Avengers
     1x Dire Avenger Exarch with Dual Shurican catapults and Bladestorm
     Wave Serpent with Twin-Linked Brightlances and Sprit Stones


Falcon Grav Tank with Scatter Laser, Holo-fields and spirit Stones
Falcon Grav Tank with Scatter Laser, Holo-fields and spirit Stones

Falcon Grav Tank with Scatter Laser, Holo-fields and spirit Stones


Army Total: 2497pts


Well there it is, let me know what you think. For the Semi's I am planning on running pretty much the same list. I am thinking of dropping one of the Falcons and cutting the Dire Avenger Squad sizes down, then putting the DA's in the Falcons and giving the Wave Serpents to the Fire Dragons and equipping them with Twin-linked Starcannons, Spirit Stones, and Shuriken Cannon Upgrade. It will boost my ranged anti-infantry firepower and help me to deal with feel no pain units a little better (something I had a problem with in two of my three prelim battles!)

?? The Return of the Starcannon ??

I am thinking of putting a few starcannons back into my standard lists. When I first came back to the game and found them to only be heavy2 instead of the glorydays of heavy3, and the scatter laser getting a bump from heavy d6 to a straight heavy4 it seemed a no brainer to take the extra shots at the much lower points cost. I am beginning to rethink this however, and for one major reason only...

'Feel No Pain'! It seems to me that there are a great number of things out there that benefit from the 'feel no pain' special rule and quite frankly scatterlasers might as well be lasguns for all they're worth against FNP models.

Think about it. Mark of Nurgle models from Chaos Deamons, Nurgle Deamons from Chaos Deamons, both popular troops choices specifically because of feel no pain. Then you have Ork Nobs running (or riding in the case of Nob bikers) around with feel no pain from the painboy upgrade. More recently though we are seeing the ability for certain powers or models to be able to 'give' other units/models feel no pain. In the Blood Angels Codex this comes in the form of the Blood Chalice carried by Sanguinary Priests and for the Tyranids the Hive Tyrant has an ability that allows one unit nearby to gain FNP till the beginning of the next Tyranid turn (I only discovered this this past weekend at 'Ard Boyz and have no idea what the ability is called). I am sure that there are other things out there but these I feel are all going to be common enough to warrant the inclusion of a few FNP ignoring weapons into an army list.

The question then becomes where do I put them? In my usual army lists I don't have to many places where I can upgrade/change heavy weapons other than my grav tanks. So I have to choose between the Falcons or the Wave Serpents. I think this is a no brainer here. The Falcon will usually be firing it's pulse laser if it's firing anything so Starcannons would be a bit wasted here, so the scatter lasers stay here. The wave serpents though with only the one heavy weapon and the fact that they are twin-linked seems like the perfect place.

Now, for most of my time playing 40k I have believed in putting Brightlances on Wave Serpents because it's just about the most reliable place to have them if you want them to do something. I now have enough tankbusting ability, though, between the Pulselasers on my Falcons, my Fire Dragons and all of the singing spears and witchblades running about the table that I feel I can probably get away without those 2 or 3 brightlances. With the Points saved I can even upgrade the shuriken catapults on the Wave Serpents to shuriken cannons adding a bit more dakka to the tank overall.

I don't really know what the Math-hammer comparison is for a str6 ap6 heavy4 weapon vs. a str6 ap2 heavy2 weapon vs. a FNP unit, but I think for my tastes it's got to be good enough to warrant the peace of mind.
What do you think? Does this have any merit whatsoever? Or am I just mad?

Semi-Finals here I come!

So it's happened, two of the original top 3 finishers at the local 'Ard Boyz preliminary round have passed on thier chance to go to the Semi-finals round. So as the 5th place finisher one of those tickets will fall to me. It's not the most glamourus way to advance to the next round, but I'll take it. It's a chance for redemption after that epic fail in game two.

I will obviously will be playing my Eldar again (I will post the list I used soon!), but I think I need to tweak it a bit. More on that later though...

Reflecting on 'Ard Boyz

So 'Ard Boyz was yesterday and I had a great time. All 3 of my opponents were a blast to play against. I wound up coming in 5th overall out of 14 players, which isn't too bad when you consider that my first two opponents ended up taking 1st and 2nd place. Brian did an excellent job running the tournament, especially when you consider he ran two tournaments in as many days! So anyways on to the battles and how I fared in each round...

Fuq'd!

I just saw the scenarios for the upcoming 'Ard Boyz and what the fuck!? The third mission is completely out of whack. It's called 'Kill da Fast Ones'. It uses a modified kill points system that awards 3 points for any unit that can move over 6" in a single phase of the game. That's my whole army! So even if I am in contention after the 1st two battles, unless I get lucky and run into another super fast army, I am going to be seriously handicapped. I guess it's time to go all Reecius (sp?) and bust out the footdar lists again. Then again, probably not! I will just have to adapt and overcome. Still pisses me off that my actual army is going to be that big of a handicap in a tournament. Not the list, not how I use it, but just the fact that my whole army is fast!

Apocalypse Pics

These are some pics I took of the Apocalypse game that took place the other night. I didn't actually play myself, but I had the camera along and so I took some pics. The game was (I believe) 10,000pts a side with Deamon Hunters and Imperial Guard teaming up to take on Chaos Deamons and Traitor Guard.

Aaaargghhh!!! New edition, old armies and all the suck that comes with it!

So I have two armies, and neither is really all that competitive in it's current state. My Eldar is a very fluff oriented army. At 1500pts and lower there seems to be enough room on the table for me to dance around and harrass the enemy at range. At these lower limits I am still pretty competitive, it's when you get into the 1750-2000pts and up that I start to have trouble. My army relies almost entirely on the ability to use it's mobility to stay away from the enemy. With all of the newer codex's coming out having lower points costs and greater mobility I am having a harder and harder time finding these 'safe' spots on the table to move to, and against Orks, there's just too many of them even without a newer 5th ed. codex.

I also have a Crimson Fists army, but it was designed back in 3rd ed. and I haven't updated it yet to reflect the current codex or ruleset. I don't think it was really even that good of an army back then but it certainly fails to pass muster nowadays.

So what am I to do? Well, I have a couple of options I suppose, but they all come down to one real answer...

Spend more $$$!

One option is to start a new army altogether. I have been eyeing a Chaos Deamons army and have always held an interest in Imperial Guard (it was a close decision between them and Eldar when I first started playing!) I even have a few models for each of these armies in progress. Unfortunately I don't have either the time or the money to start a new army from scratch. I need to be able to field 2500pts for an 'Ard boys by mid May. So that pretty much narrows it down to two real choices.

I can always try updating my Eldar by 'Mech'-ing up more. Adding a bunch of Fire Dragons, dropping some jetbikes in favor of the Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents, etc. But I have tried strenuously to keep this a very fluff oriented army. Dire Avengers and Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents is not really what Saim-Hann is all about, it's more Beil Tann's style. So I think for the most part I will be shelving this army for awhile. It saddens me a bit because the general playstyle of the army is very fun, but getting your butt kicked in every battle is not! I will still try to get in some games with it, especially if I can find lower points games where I am still (IMO) competitive.

My final option is to update my Crimson Fists. this could actually be done in a couple of ways. First I can just update them to reflect the new ruleset and codex and call it good. Alternately, they are wearing power armor so I could use them instead as a 'counts as' Blood Angels or Space Pups army. It would still require that I spend some money, but would probably wind up being the most competitive option available. That said, I have never really cared much for the Blood Angels and would feel cheap and dirty about jumping on the bandwagon just cause they have the newest codex. So what about the Wolves then? Well in my 40k history I have only beaten the Space Wolves once and managed a draw against them one other time. Every other game (and in 3rd ed there were lots as I had two friends who at one point or another played them!) I had my ass handed to me. As such I have developed a strong resentment towards them and just couldn't bring myself to do that either. So that means I update the Fists as Fists. Which really is fine with me. I know that the SM codex isn't the most competitive of the 5th ed. codex's, but unlike my Eldar they do at least have a 5th ed codex!

As always I plan on keeping an eye on the fluff as I design my army. This may hinder my lists somewhat, but I don't think I would care for an army that completely ignored the fluff. For me there always has been and always will be more about this game than my win/loss record. For the army specifically I am thinking about using Pedro Kantor (a real divergence for me since I have usually eschewed special caracters in the past) and Sternguard Veterans. To go with that I am thinking about running a couple of Drop Dreads. To get redundancy in the list I want to use 2 Sternguard and 2 Dreads so that means I have to take a Master of the Forge to pull that off. Which is fine with me. I also plan on using a Land Raider and a Lascannon heavy Predator for some ranged fire and having the MotF hanging nearby them to repair any damage and lend the Conversion beam to said ranged fire seems to work well. To round things out I am going to need some troops. These I have in spades, so I will probably run two tactical squads with missile launchers and flamers in Rhinos and a scout squad. It's my belief that most 'fluffy' CF armies should include at least one unit of scouts what with the destruction of Rynn's world and the whole rebuilding the Chapter stuff. Finally I will have enough points left over to add an assualt squad and maybe a melta Land Speeder. I don't really know how competitive an army list this will be, but with 4 drop pods full of nastiness mobile troops with the Rhino Tac Squads and the Scouts infiltrating/outflanking or just loading into the LR, and the Assualt squads jump packs it should at least be a fun army to play!

To do all this though I need to get the models for Pedro, the MotF, all four of the Drop Pods and the Sternguard. I have the rest of the stuff, although one of the Dreads needs to be finished. The predator is an older one using the old Rhino Chassis but it still works so I will hold off on updating that till later.

So the final result would look like this:

HQ:
Pedro                                                                                                                                        175
Master of the Forge with Conversion Beam                                                                                120

Elites
Dreadnaught in Drop Pod with Deathwind Missile Launcher (DML)                                            160
Sternguard (7+ sergeant) with Power Fist and 3x Combi-Meltas in Drop pod with DML             295
Sternguard (7+ sergeant) with Power Fist and 3x Combi-Meltas in Drop pod with DML             295

Troops
Tactical Squad (9+ sergeant) Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rhino                                                    205
Tactical Squad (9+ sergeant) Melta gun, Missile Launcher, Rhino                                               210
Scout Squad (9+ sergeant) Power weapon, combat weapons                                                     155

Fast Attack
Assault Squad (9+ sergeant) Power Weapon, 3x Plasma Pistols, jump packs                              250
Land Speeder with Multi-Melta                                                                                                    60

Heavy Suppor
Dreadnaught in Drop Pod with DML                                                                                          160
Land Raider                                                                                                                               250
Predator with TL ass cannon and ass cannon sponsons                                                               165
Total:                                                                                                                                       2500

So whaddya think? I am not sure about the DML's on the Drop Pods. Does anyone use them? Are they worth the +20pts or am I better off keeping the storm bolters and getting another Multi-melta land speeder? Or something else entirely? It seems to me they would be decent at killing infantry and would be a big enough threat that the opponent would feel the need to deal with them or avoid them.

A 2000pt list I have been tinkering with.

Well, after a few setbacks while trying larger jetbike squads I have been tinkering with my list. So here is what I have so far. I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with it yet, but here goes...


HQ

Farseer (55) 133


      Jetbike (30) Singing Spear (3) Guide (20) Doom (25)

Farseer (55) 118

      Runes of Warding (15) Doom (25) Guide (20) Singing Spear (3)

Warlocks 174

      3x Warlocks (25ea) 3x Singing Spear (3ea) 3x Destructor (10ea)


TROOPS
Jetbike Squadron: 207

      6x Guardian Jetbike (22ea)

      2x Shuriken Cannon upgrade (10ea)

Warlock (25)

      Jetbike (20) Destructor (10)

Jetbike Squadron: 207

      6x Guardian Jetbike (22ea)

      2x Shuriken Cannon upgrade (10ea)

Warlock (25)

      Jetbike (20) Destructor (10)

Jetbike Squadron: 207

      6x Guardian Jetbike (22ea)

      2x Shuriken Cannon upgrade (10ea)

Warlock (25)

      Jetbike (20) Destructor (10)

Storm Guardian Squad: 130

      10x Storm Guardians (8ea)

      2x Fusion Guns (6ea)

Warlock (25)

      Singing Spear (3) Destructor (10)

Dedicated Transport: 155

Wave Serpent (90)

      Twin-Linked Brightlances (45) Spirit Stones (10) Shuriken Cannon upgrade (10)

FAST ATTACK
Shining Spears: 212

5x Shining Spears (35ea)

      1x Exarch Upgrade (12) Star Lance (15) Skilled Rider (10)

Vyper Squadron : 225

3x Vypers (45ea)

      3x Eldar Missile Launcher (20ea) 3x Shuriken Cannon upgrade (10ea)

HEAVY SUPPORT
Fire Prism 115

Fire Prism 115

2000pts Orks vs. Saim-Hann

Here is another battle report between my Saim-Hann Eldar and Marks Deathskulls cult of Orks. Enjoy



and part 2

A few more quick battle updates

Okay so here are a few more updates on a couple of the battles I have had recently. After facing Mikes Daemons I once again went up against Chad's Chaos Space Marines. This time we would be playing at 1,500 pts. I don't recall too many details of this one, but this time the mission was kill points and I ended up winning 7-2. I do recall one highlight of the game was when I gave Chad his 2nd kill point when my own shot from the Fire Prism scattered over my farseer and I failed the invul. save then failed the re-roll and insta-killed him. I was far enough ahead at that point in the game that it was mostly just good for a laugh!

The next week I once again squared off against Mikes Daemons. This battle would also be at 1500pts, and I remember even less about it than most of the others as they are all starting to blur together! I do know that he whooped me good though! A few highlights were when the Changeling forced my Jetbike squad to shoot at my own Vypers! The Seer Council waited all the way to turn 5 before arriving from reserves (that seriously hurt my chances of winning) but when it did show it pwned his Soul Grinder with one thrown singing spear. I have a few ideas for facing daemons in the future (I have a really nasty trick up my sleeve for higher points battles, but don't know if I'll have the units I need to pull it off!) I once again had a blast playing against Mike and look forward to our next battle.

Later that same night I would play against Austin's Daemon Hunters. I knew almost nothing about this army before I played it. I discovered it to be a pretty tough army. The missions was objectives with a secondary objectives of killing the most troops. The battle was hard fought and bloody on both sides, but in the end my greater mobility allowed me to pull out the victory 1 objective to none! Austin was a really tough opponent who taxed my tactical abilities to the max. I look forward to our next battle.

So Saim-Hann can be a very mentally taxing army to play so I decided to take a break and try out something different. I haven't run a footslogging Eldar army in a looooooooooong time. Since Mark and I were planning another battle I figured why not give it a try. After being tabled by Mark it might be a long time before I try it again. I will say that the Avatar was the hero of the battle on my side. He seriously is a CC beast. He single handedly killed Marks Warboss and the unit of boys the Warboss had joined up with. The Pathfinders also performed well. I used to hate Rangers back in 3rd, but now with the pathfinder upgrade available they should be in any foot Eldar army (and maybe some other armies as well)

Finally this past Friday I faced Mikes (a differnt Mike but I don't know their last names to differentiate!) Space Wolves Drop Pod army. This was once again an army that I knew almost nothing about. I learned very quickly though! KILL THE THUNDERWOLVES!!!! That was the resounding lesson I learned. I fared pretty well against the rest of his army, but the Thunderwolves single handedly won him the game. They wiped out my Shining Spears, my Seer Council and one of my jetbike squads! The battle was a really interesting mission with a modified Dawn of War deploymet, modified Random Game Lenth (6 turns guaranteed then roll for a turn 7)and an unknown objective where you rolled for it on turn 4. We ended up with the center of the table being the lone objective with only troops being able to control and nothing being able to contest. His Long Fangs (these are still a nice unit btw) took out the other jetbike squad and with no troops left the best I could hope for was a draw. I killed 3 out of his 4 troops choices and with both of my Fire Prisms still up and running after turn 6 I would have a chance to wipe out his last reamaing troops choice if the game went to turn 7. It didn't though, it ended after turn 6 with him controlling the objective and he also completed the secondary objective of wiping out my HQ. His army is a blast to play against as I have never played against drop pods before. The new Drop Pods are great looking models and Mike did an excellent job of painting them up, and his Thunderwolves conversions are awesome!

Well there it is, a quick update.
C-ya

Battle Report 1500pts. Orks vs. Crimson Fists part I

Alright so here is part one of the battle report between the Crimson Fists and Marks Orks. I have had this one done for a bit, but was going to wait till they were all done to post. I haven't been working on them though and figured that posting this one would help motivate me to get the rest done!

Enjoy

A couple really quick Battle Reports

Okay, so I have been dormant on here for a while, but I haven't been that dormant on the tables! It's about time I give an update on some of the battles I have had.

First of all was the battle with my Crimson Fists vs. Marks Orks. Lets just say it was a fun and hard fought battle, but that's all I am going to say about it. I am still working on the video batrep. Part 1 is done and part 2 is about half done. It's going to take awhile yet, but be patient, it's coming!

Next, I have recently moved to 1st shift at work. This has allowed me to get out to check out and join the group SegmentumMichigandus. They have about 15 guys or so who come out and play on friday nights. So far everyone seems pretty cool. They are currenty running an 'Escalation league' where they started at 500pts and built up from there 500pts every month. The purpose was to encourage players to paint their armies so only painted models may be used in league games. Anyway, they do let people join the league late, so I did and I have played three battles out there so far. Each week they have special home brew missions that so far seem pretty cool.

Write a List or Build an Army?

So I spend a fair amount of time (probably too much!) on some of the internet forums out there checking out other people’s army lists, and occasionally submitting my own. I make suggestions, I tweak a few things here and there, but overall do I really help anyone win games? Do I help them have more fun? Do I make them better players? I don’t really know, but in truth I doubt it. I say this because I don’t really feel that any of the advice I have received in the past has really helped me all that much. I am not saying that none of it has, but if I had to put a percentage to it I would guess it would be less than 10% of the advice I have ever received on the ‘army list’ posts have ever truly helped me. Even in those instances it didn’t really make me a better player though. Usually it just drew my attention to a unit or a piece of wargear that I had previously overlooked. I still needed to figure out if that fit into my army and if so, how?

So what’s my point? Where am I going with this? What does it all mean? Well to answer that let me tell you a bit about how I started out in 40k…

Battle Report: 2700pts vs. Orks. part V

Ok, sorry about the delay but here it is, the final installment of the 2700pts Eldar vs. Orks battle report. Enjoy!

Crimson Fists you say?

So I am having a battle tomorrow against Marks Orks. To throw in a different twist though, I will be bustin' out the ol' Crimson Fists this time. I haven't played these guys since back in 3rd ed. so I have no idea how they perform on the table these days. I love the new (well new to me anyways!) codex and can't wait to see them in action. We'll be recording and I'll make a battle report for it (whenever I finish the last batrep for Eldar v. Orks 2700pts anyway!!!!)
In the meantime here are a few pics of some of the Fists.

Chaplain Jeremiah Rashad


Tactical Squad Rigor


Tactical Squad Rigor's Rhino Transport


Battle Brother Grimm

Battle Report: 2700pts vs. Orks. part IV

Okay, so here is part IV which covers Eldar turn 4. Quite a bit goes on here. Enjoy!

Battle Report: 2700pts vs. Orks. part III

Here is part III which shows Ork turn 4. Enjoy!

Battle Report: 2700pts vs. Orks. part II

So here is part II which covers Turn 3. Enjoy!

Battle Report: 2700pts vs. Orks. part I

To kick off the new year, and the new decade Mark and I had a 2700pt. mega-battle. His Orks and my Saim-Hann Eldar. This video covers mission type, deployment and turns 1 and 2. Enjoy!

My take on online video battle reports

So after perusing the internet for awhile now watching all the video battle reports I could find, I have come to the conclusion that they are all shit! If anyone reading this has posted VBR's themselves, don't be too offended it's not entirely your fault. Many of them have good video quality. Many are quite fun to watch too. The reason I say they are shit is that they fail to capture what playing the game is actually like. Some show the end of each turn with a list of what died, and for turns 5+ the die roll to see if the game continues. Others show some dice rolls for some of the more dramatic moments in the game. Some do both, but as I said before, none of them capture the true essence of the game. Even this is not always the posters fault. They may be playing in a game store where the game needs to move along for time constraints. Or where they may not be able to set up a camera to record all the action. Sometimes it's simply easy to forget to pick up the camera and record in the heat of battle. So, in my vanity, I have decided to see if I can do better. Each battle report will be longer than most and will therefore be broken down into more easily digestible (and quite frankly Youtube friendly) 10 minute or less clips. I have the first two clips ready and will be posting them next. I had these up before, but I have since gotten rid of the subtitles and have instead added a voice-over track describing the action. I hope this will allow the viewer to pay more attention to the video and spend less time reading. The third is almost ready and will be up shortly after. Unfortunately these do take a fair bit of effort on my part so it may take a few days to then produce the 4th video and so on. If you don't like that, than in the words of my good friend Geoff...
Your mother!

Video Battle Report coming soon!

So I had a battle this past weekend with my buddy Mark. My Saim-Hann vs. his Orks, 2700pts a side. I took a bunch of video clip with my new webcam and am currently working on editing them down into a series of Youtube friendly sized videos. It's taking some time but rest assured they will be up soon!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope your 2009 was as good or better than my own (which was pretty good) and may 2010 be even better!
To kick the new year off Mark and I will be having a 2750pt mega-battle on Saturday. Because of the holidays we haven't been able to play in a few weeks so we decided to really ramp it up an play a big one this time. I have got a webcam now that we'll be using to record the battle from an overhead view while using my digital camera to take close up action photos and videos. I am planning on releasing these in a multi-part video battle report so stay tuned!
Here is a tease as to what my army list will look like. It's only at 2500pts here so I have some additions and tweaks to make!

HQ:
Farseer, Jetbike, Runes of Warding, Fortune, Doom, Spirit Stone, Singing Spear
Farseer, Jetbike, Spirit Stones, Eldritch Storm, Guide, Singing Spear
Warlocks, Jetbikes, Destructor x3

Elites
Fire Dragons x6, (mounted in the Falcon)
Striking Scorpions x9 +Exarch with Scorpions Claw and Shadowstrike
Mounted in a Wave Serpent with Twin linked Brightlances

Troops:
Jetbike Squadron, x6 Jetbikes x2 Shuriken Cannon Upgrades
Jetbike Squadron, x6 Jetbikes x2 Shuriken Cannon Upgrades
Jetbike Squadron, x4 Jetbikes x1 Shuriken Cannon Upgrade
Dire Avengers, x9 +Exarch with Dual Shuriken Catapults and Bladestorm
Mounted in a Wave Serpent with Twin linked Brightlances

Fast Attack:
Shining Spears x4 +Exarch with Star Lance and Skilled Rider
Vyper Squadron, x2 Vypers with Brightlances
Vyper Squadron, x2 Vypers with Starcannons

Heavy Support:
2x Fire Prism Grav Tanks with Shuriken Cannon Upgrades
Falcon Grav Tank with Scatter Laser and Shuriken Cannon upgrade

I am going to try to get the Vyper Squadrons up to 3 each but I don't know if I'll have enough time to finish them. I am also probably going to add a few vehicle upgrades to the Grav Tanks (all of them) I really like to add as much survivability to them as possible. So whaddya think?