A Local Tournament Report

Well, this last weekend was the last tournament of the year.  The last two events, I've been having a poll on the local Alaska Wargamers Group to see what army I should take to the local tournament next month.  I did pretty well last month when they voted I should take Orks; I ended up winning the event.

This month the vote was Imperial Guard (or Astra Militarum for those newer to the hobby).  I haven't played much Guard lately (I haven't even played the newest book yet!), and my Traitors were in a sorry state; I couldn't really field an army.  So I asked my buddy Dan (I'll be writing another blog post about our huge game of 9th Age that we finished as well) if I could borrow some models from his huge collection.  I cobbled together a list using the new formation from the Mont'ka expansion.

I feel like the list is pretty solid, but I would have made a few changes in hindsight.  Here's the list that I ran:

Emperor's Blade Assault Company:
Company Command Squad w/ 3 Meltaguns, Chimera
3 x 10 Veterans w/ 3 Meltaguns, Vox-Caster and Chimera
Devildog w/ Multi-Melta

Emperor's Wrath Artillery Company 1:
Company Command Squad w/ Warlord, Vox-Caster and Chimera
Basilisk
Wyvern
Manticore

Emperor's Wrath Artillery Company 2:
Company Command Squad w/ Volkov's Cane, Vox-Caster and Chimera
Basilisk
Wyvern
Manticore

It's an even 1850 pts.  Pretty solid, and has lots and lots of templates with Ignores Cover.  Now, the day before the event I posted my list so that people could see what I was bringing to the table.  It makes me feel a little cocky to say, but I've won just a ton of local events in a row.  I wanted to give people a chance to build against it if they wanted to.  It's not that people around these parts are bad players or anything; actually, it's completely the opposite.  I've just had a string of good luck in match-ups and have been able to either play slightly better or get better dice rolls when I've played against the really good players.

Here's a brief rundown of the games:

Game One:

Anyway, so to start the event I play against Chris B, who is playing a Guard/Space Wolves/Cult Mech list.  He brought:

Space Wolves Company of the Great Wolf Detachment:
Rune Priest (rolled Divination for Prescience and Precognition)
Iron Priest on Thunderwolf w/ 2 Fenrisian Wolves
Iron Priest on Thunderwolf w/ 2 Fenrisian Wolves

Cult Mechanicus Battle Congregation
Tech Priest Domunius w/ Volkite and ?
2 x 3 Kataphron Destroyers w/ Grav

Astra Militarum CAD
Pask in Punisher + Executioner w/ Full Plasma; Dozer Blades
2 x 10 Veterans
Wyvern
Stormlord

An interesting army to say the least.  Not a lot of stuff; seemed random; Chris stated at the start of the game he had chosen some random models he wanted to play with.  It seemed more effective than I thought it was going to be though; he really gave me a run for my money.

The mission we were playing was Emperor's Will, with a side of Modified Maelstrom.

Chris managed to win deployment, and chose to go second.  I was perfectly okay with this, as my army alpha-strikes pretty hard.

On my first turn, I knocked a hull point off the Stormlord, killed (due to a failed panic check) one squad of veterans and both the Iron Priests (which were in a unit by themselves).  Suffice it to say that I managed to kill pretty much everything that got to me, and I ended up having to use one of my Wyverns once all my chimeras were dead in order to try and get some of the objectives for secondary.  Chris was really good at making sure he got his Maelstrom points every turn, where I was really struggling.  I ended up having to make some sacrifices just to make sure that he was held at bay as far as objective points were concerned (we ended up tying secondary).  I was lucky in that I was able to kill all his units that were trying to get to my objective, as well as kill those that were camping his.  I end up winning to a thrown together army just barely 6-1.  Credit where credit is due, I was sweating it pretty hard the last couple turns at the Magos slowly chewed through my vehicles with his haywire CCW.

Result: 6-1 me.

Game 2

The only game I managed to get pictures of...

Game two I faced off against Matt and his Guard/Imperial Knights army:

Knight equivalent CAD:
Knight Crusader (Warlord) w/ Icarus
Knight Errant w/ Stormspear
Knight Gallant w/ Stormspear and Meltagun

Guard Allied Detachment
Company Command Squad (in Vendetta)
Veteran Squad w/ Carapace
Veteran Squad w/ Carapace
Valkyrie Vendetta
3 Wyverns

A pretty brutal list.  I was not looking forward to trying to deal with three knights, mostly the Ion Shields.  The mission was The Scouring with secondary Maelstrom.  I did however win the chance to go first...however Matt Seized the Initiative!

I was even more worried after getting Seized on...but somehow I managed to not completely lose any vehicles (minus one chimera on the first turn).  I was pretty happy about that.  My return volleys killed one knight a turn every turn after the first.  We had a ruling on how ion shields were used against Barrage Weapons and I'm not sure or not what was the right answer.  They were allowed if the closest side armor was the one being shielded to the shot...re-reading the section I think it's where-ever the hole ends up on the diagram (as per ITC), but I'm not upset by the ruling or anything..  I managed to nearly wipe out my opponent (with the exception of the running late Valkyrie and the CCS).  At the end of the game I was holding two objectives to one, and probably could have held another.

Two notes on this game:

#1.  Matt's army is beautiful.  His knights looked really good, he just needed to base one more but I feel like he very well could have the nicest army at the event.

#2.  I had a brand-new tournament experience; a legitimate heckler. See notes below for additional information and opinion.

Game 3:

So, for my game three I ended up playing against Jon, which is one of my regular opponents.  Although I usually do pretty well against Jon, his more common tournament list is a pretty good counter to mine.  Jon ran his usual GK/BA list:


BA Baal Strike Force:
Corbulo
5 Bolter Death Company
9 CCW Death Company (two Power Swords, 1 Hammer, 1 Inferno Pistol, one Hand Flamer)
5 Tactical Marines w/ Grav Gun and Pistol
5 Scouts w/ Camo Cloaks and Sniper Rifles
2 Storm Ravens (one with DC, one with Culexus Assassin)
Sicarian w/ Lascannon Sponsons
Aegis w/Comms Relay


Grey Knight Strike Force:
Librarian w/ Daemonhammer
5 Terminators
2 Dreadknights



Culexus Assassin

So overall a pretty nice list; it's fast and I've really got no counter to the flyers and Dreadknights (other than some Meltaguns).  Jon gets first turn, and the Mission is the Relic plus modified Maelstrom.

Jon has a great opening turn, killing 3 of my Vet Chimeras and taking two hull points off a fourth.  Ouch!  I struck back, but try as I might I just couldn't bring down a Dreadknight.  I missed with two entire squads of BS4 meltaguns at the same DK, and the other one I was only able to take down to one wound left.  I did manage to wreck his Sicarian and kill the entire Scout Squad in one go.  His terminators misshaped and I placed them back on his board edge; they played no further part in the battle.

His next turn saw the DC Stormraven come in; I killed the Bolter DC and the Razorback; took some wounds off the Tactical Squad.  I also killed the wounded Dreadknight but I couldn't quite take the other one down; he was left on one wound. Jon killed a Basilisk and my Devildog.

Overall, the game started to go way downhill here.  I tried to rush forward on foot with my remaining vet squads, but they were either gunned down or assaulted off the table.  I ended up calling the game on turn 4 with just a missile-less Manticore, three veterans and a single company command squad.

Overall a tough game; I didn't have the tools to deal with the 2+ armor MC's, or the flyers.  I could have probably absorbed one or the other, but both at the same time were too much.

I had a great time though, it was a fun game, and Jon gets to say he beat me at the tournament now!  He's been complaining a lot about always having to play me and losing on round three.  Haha; Merry Christmas Jon!

Overall a great and fun event!  I wish I could have stuck around more afterwards and hung out/cleaned up, but significant other and I had dinner plans with some other friends.  Overall another great Tier 1 event!

Continuation of #2:

An observer, watching this game felt like it was necessary to start heckling me when a rules issue came up. I've got at least a decent reputation as a solid player in our local group, but having someone telling my opponent that I'm a jerk and a power-gamer is pretty crappy.  The TO came up to me a while later and let me know if he made any other comments he'd be asked to leave, but...

Honestly, why would a community abide by letting a continuously disruptive, unproductive individual (who, I might add, is not a customer...can't remember the last time I saw this particular individual actually purchase something) participate in store events or seriously just even really be allowed in the store?  It's not the first time I've had run-ins with this particular person, and he's had a restraining order put out on him in one instance due to stalking behavior and also been kicked out of the local forums, as well as at least one store in town and been kicked out of a local convention twice for boundary issues.  He's even smashed out a taillight on one of my friend's cars due to being upset with him. I feel like our newer group is very kind hearted; but probably too much so in this case.  When I see a problem person like this, who's been given so many chances and still failed to meet any social benchmarks, it seems like for the good (and maybe safety?) of the community that they be ostracized.  Maybe I'm a little draconian, but it sure seems like it'd be the for the good of all in this case.  Anyway, I rambled enough.

Have a Happy Holidays and a great New Years!

-Danny

A Quick Battle Report (White Scars vs. Blood Angels and Grey Knights 1850 pts)

So, yesterday I got try out my list that I've been working on since the Kauyon book released a few weeks ago.  First of all, I'd like to say that I've -always- had a lot of trouble making marine lists.  For whatever reason, I never feel like I have all the tools I need but still have a decent model count to make the army effective.  To this end, I rarely play Space Marine armies, because I always feel like I'm outclassed right out of the gate.

However, once the Kauyon supplement got released, I immediately fell in love with the Scarblade Strike Force.  I love the "Decurion" style detachments, as I'm sure you could tell if you ever looked at my list building.  If I can, I almost always build to these formations, because getting benefits on top of benefits is always good, and it makes me use units that I otherwise might never take in my army.  So, that being said, the formations in Kauyon are amazing, and fun, and very fluffy for the armies involved.

The Armies:

Scarblade Strike Force 1850

Stormlance Demi-Company
Chaplain w/ Bike, Hunter's Eye and Meltabombs
3 x 10 Tactical Marines w/ Meltagun, Combi-Melta and Rhino
Attack Bike w/ Multi-Melta
10 Devestators w/ 2 Grav Cannons and Rhino

Hunting Force
Ko'sarro Khan w/ Moondraken
3 x 5 Bikers w/ 2 Gravguns, Combi-Grav and Melta Bombs
Attack Bike w/ Multi-Melta
3 Scout Bikers

Speartip Strike
2 Attack Bikes w/ Heavy Bolter
1 Landspeeder w/ Heavy Bolter

The core of the army revolves around the Stormlance; they're my objective seekers, they do some duty as tank hunters and getting re-rolls against anything trying to hold an objective.  The Hunting force is where a lot of my hitting power hangs out; it packs a ton of shooting power, and coupled with re-rolls against the hunting targets is just brutal.  The final formation, the Speartip Strike, is only okay.  I think it could be pretty amazing with a lot of unis, but I didn't really have points for this, and so I just made sure that they were pretty cheap (as you have to take an auxiliary unit in the Scarblade).

I played my friend and co-star of previous battle reports Jon M; he brought a combo of Grey Knights and Blood Angels, as he usually does:

Mortalis Strike Force:
Chaplain w/ Special Jump Pack (the re-roll scatter deep strike one)
10 Death Company, 4 Power Swords, Thunder Hammer
5 Death Company with Jump Packs
5 Death Company w/ Bolters and Las/Plas Razorback
2 Death Company Dreadnoughts, one in Lucius Pattern Drop Pod
Stormraven w/ Multi-Melta, Assault Cannons and Hurricane Bolters

Grey Knight Nemesis Strike Force
Librarian w/ Master Level 2
5 Terminators w/ Psycannon
Dreadknight w/ Hammer, Gatling Psilenser, Heavy Psycannon
Dreadknight w/ Sword, Heavy Psycannon and Heavy Incinerator

It's a pretty nasty list; with the terminators, and Pod-naught dropping in the first turn, and the Death Company plus another Dreadnought coming in fairly reliably in turn two.  In this case, he even got the Warlord Trait on the Chaplain that let him re-roll his reserve rolls.

So, we rolled up Big Guns never tire, as we decided not to play an ITC mission this time.  I actually won the roll-off to see who gets to place first, and I gave it to my opponent.  I wanted to see how my army would do against Jon's Alpha Strike play-style; this was a test run for a list I was pretty proud of.  So, he deployed first, setting up both Dreadknights as well as the two small squads of Death Company as well as their transport.  I had to choose my Hunting Force Targets; I chose the Chaplain as Primary, the Heavy Incinerator Dreadknight and Secondary and the Heavy Psilenser Dreadknight as Tertiary.  I then scouted up my rhinos and bikes, but not too far; hoping to stay out of assault distance of the Dreadknights and JP-Death Company.  I failed to Seize.

Turn 1.

Jon got great scatters on the first turn, deploying his Terminators behind my lines in my deployment zone with no scatter, and also no scatter on the drop pod.  The Psilencer DK teleport shunted up the table, while the incinerator one jumped up, and was realistically in assault range.  I'm not great at scout redeployments yet; I guess I thought I was more out of range, but clearly I wasn't.  The JP-DC were also close enough to assault my other flanking DC-Squad.

His shooting was pretty decent - the Razorback killed a rhino, and I lost about four marines from this squad from other shooting.  I also lost two bikes from the squad Jon was going to assault with the DK, but after killing them it was a huge charge and he failed.  The JP-DC did manage to assault, even after I killed on on overwatch. We weakly flailed at each other in melee and I hit and ran out of combat.  He consolidated with the DC onto an objective (which ended up being a bad idea).

On my turn one, I moved my bikes away from his dreadnought at towards his deepstriking terminators and DK's.  I ended up killing both everything in the terminator squad minus one terminator (so both the chaplain and librarian as well), and the secondary target DK.  Jesus re-rolling grav is powerful.  I also vaporized a coupe of the JPDC on the objective with my tactical marines; since he was controlling it, they got to re-roll to hit against them.  I believe I also took a hull point off the razorback.  I tried but failed to assault the lone terminator with my biker/HQ squad.

Turn 2.

With Jon's warlord dead, he was unable to re-roll his reserves roll, and his Storm Raven full of DC and a DC Dreadnought failed to come in.  In Jon's turn, he moved his units around to try and get into assaults if possible; his bolter DC assaulted the last rhino on that side of the table and wrecked it, his JPDC assaulted the bikes again for no discernible damage (the bikes hit and ran away again), the DC Dread attempted an assault against the HQ/Bikers but was immobilized on overwatch, and the DK assaulted and killed a heavily damaged biker unit.

On my turn, my scout bikers arrived from Outflank, and I managed to bolter and then assault the razorback doing a couple hull points.  My other biker units finish off the last DK.  Everything moves around in an effort to get to some of the backfield objectives or out of the line of fire from the surviving units.  One of the mutli-melta attack bikes finishes off the immobilized dreadnought.

Turn 3.

Jon's Stormraven finally comes in, and kills an attack bike and puts a hull point on a land speeder.  The dread deep strikes out on the way over, and manages to kill a couple of bikers with it's melta and heavy flamer.  The razorback kills one of the scout bikers, and they fall back (soon to rally though).

I try and do nothing absolutely nothing to the Stormraven.  Some tacticals finish off the Razorback, and the combined shooting of several land speeders, plus some bikes and attack bikes finish off the other dreadnought.  The biker "command" squad braces for a huge Death Company assault.

Turn 4.

Turns going by faster, as there's less on the board - Jon's DC assault out of the storm raven, which does some minor damage or other units, but since it jinked last turn this is unsurprising.  The bikers all die, and I lose two wounds on Kor'Sarro, but otherwise I stay locked.  Thank go for Hit and Run - I peace out of there any set up for another turn of brutal shooting.

On my turn, Khan and the Chaplain move into coherency with my last biker unit, and between them and the rest of my army, they destroy the Death Company.  Jon made 0 FnP saves though, so it probably should not have been as effective as it was.

Turn 5.

Jon moves the Stromraven in an attempt to flee my wrath (plus enact some good old fashioned wrath of his own), and uses the Raven to gun down my last two scout bikers.  Those poor, brave souls.

On my turn, I ran towards all the objectives (I secured all of them at this point) and I gunned down the raven with the ignores cover grav; Jon failed the 3+ "Don't crash please" roll on the immobilize result.  I believe I also killed his Drop Pod on this turn.  Regardless, it was a wipe out.

Overview:

It was a really fun game!  I love this list; it's got everything I want in it, pretty much.  It's got speed, good numbers, good firepower, and even a little bit of assault.  Some of the bros on our Facebook group have made some suggestions about what needs to be changed in it; I'm not sure.  I really like the 10 man squads.  It's a little bit more fluffy, and helps to represent an entire company of Scars.  If I were going to change, I'd drop one squad of bikers plus some dudes and break out a 4-GravGun command squad in which to smite my enemies, but it's probably not as fun for them to come across 12 grav shots that ignore cover and also re-roll everything (potentially).  I'm really excited to purchase this army; the plan is to get a bunch of MKIV Outriders, Javelin Speeders and Scimitar Jetbikes (for attack bikes) from Forgeworld and use the MKIV marines I have from Betrayal at Calth for my foot marines.  Here's one of the Sgt's I've created:

Let me know what you think; I'm still working on my style.  I know I need more pictures, but I'm having a hard time stopping in the heat of battle to take some pics.

Thanks for reading!

I've been kinda busy...kinda?

Hey everyone,

I know it's been awhile since I posted last on here, but I'd like to start posting more now that I've got a little bit more time on my hands as the semester comes to a close.  Since my list post, lots of things have happened, especially gaming things.

Warhammer Fantasy

The first of these, any probably the most major, is my attendance of Quake City Rumble in late July.  With nearly 100 players, this is hands down the biggest event for Warhammer Fantasy on the West Coast.  I love this event - it's got a great, laid back atmosphere, even though it's such a large event; and it's a drinking tournament, which means there's a lot of suds flowing and this generally helps to put everyone in an even better mood.

I did pretty well - I lost my first game but almost maxed points my other four.  I played against VC, VC, Chaos Warriors, Ogres and finally Daemons, in that order.  All my opponents were super nice guys, and I had not a single rules quibble the entire weekend.  Usually, I feel like I have to call the judges at least once, if not twice or three times over the course of a 5 game event, but this time everyone was right on point with the rules.

It was a sad tournament, though, because it for the most part signaled the death of Warhammer 8th edition for most of us.  I heard one prominent tournament goer liking the event to an Irish wake, with melancholy drinking being the activity dejour.  Regardless, a super fun time.

Since the game is dead and gone, locally, we've made the switch for the most part to 9th Age.  I'll admit that I've had not a small role in this decision, but I've been trying to get all the other local players to try it out.  I must say, they've done a really bang-up job on the rules front - the stuff that was super broken in 8th is fixed and even the less appealing choices are very solid.  Adopting this game system over the more nationally accepted change to Kings of War is somewhat strange, but I've got to say that I like the more familiar ground of 9th better than KoW, and the game play seems less stagnant and boring.  But hey, that's just my opinion.

Warhammer 40,000

I've been playing a lot of 40k the last few months.  It's been a good time, and so far locally I'm 29-1 for tournament games.  I even managed to pull out the big W at the large local convention, where we even had people from out of town play in our event!  About 12 people from Fairbanks made the 8 hour car ride into Anchorage just to come play at our 2-day event.  It was great getting to play against new people and different (and very competitive) armies.

I brought my Necrons, and brought a Decurion Detachment; here's my list:

Decurion Detachment 1850 pts

Reclaimation Legion
Nemisor Zahndrekh
15 Necron Warriors
2 x 10 Necron Warriors w/ Ghost Arks
8 Immortals
3 Tomb Blades w/ Nebluscopes and Shield Vanes

Canoptek Harvest
5 Wraiths, 2 Whip Coils
3 Scarab Swarms
Tomb Spyder w/ Fabricator Array

Destroyer Cult
Destroyer Lord w/ Voidbringer and Phase Shifter
3 x 3 Destroyers

So all in all, very shooty, with a very solid counter punch/tie-up unit in the Wraiths.  Honestly, the whole deal with the army was that it was hard to kill; and with that in mind I basically just tried to play to the objectives and kill what I could.  I ended up playing against a Marine Demi-Company/1st Company Support list, Iron Hands Mech + Knight; Slaanesh CSM/Daemons summoning bomb; 5 Flyrant Nids and finally 25 Scatterbike/Seer Council/Wraithknight.  All the games were pretty good, although the Slaanesh player got a little contentious at points in our game, and I really didn't have too much fun either (but just for this game).  The toughest game was against the Nids or the Scatter bikes; I probably would have lost the last game had it gone another turn, but my opponent seemed to take a long time to do things and wasted time on the psychic phase that he didn't have.

Overall, a super fun event and a good time as any I've had at a big event down south.  I'm not sure about the future of the event, as the organizer is a little...prickly about some things.  I hope they end up running it again, it was great!

I think we're going to have another large-scale convention coming up as well, during the early summer, so I'm looking forward to participating in that as well.

I've also purchased a new Tau army, as well as a Mechanicum War Convocation and I've bought a bunch more Heresy stuff as well, so I've got a lot on my painting plate.  Hopefully I can work on some of this stuff as the year goes on.

Malifaux

So I've been playing this quite a bit lately.  I love this game - it's simple, but at the same time so complex and variable...I love the options.  This is the skirmish game I've always wanted.  With the addition of a campaign, I can't think of a game of this time I'd rather play.  It's streets ahead of Warmachine and Hordes, as far I'm concerned.  I have almost all the guild models, so that's my main faction, but I've also been playing Collodi a lot, and he's just an awesome dude to use.  So tricky, it's like I'm literally the puppet master of the table.

Personal Stuff

I'm going to school and working at the same time, but I'm really going to try and keep this updated.  It's been a real pain to get my pictures uploaded on this blog, but I'm going to try and make a better point of doing so in the future.  Anyway, for the few people that still might be following, expect more content soon.

Some Gaming!

This week has been surprisingly busy - though I was able to get in two games (one last week, and one the week before that); so I'll do a brief run-down on the first one.  I've been really happy to have a local store that I can stop by and play at; even if it's not to a point where you can just get a pickup game whenever (yet).  I think there will be a time where there's enough of a crowd there during certain days that I won't have to schedule games ahead of time.

40k Game:

So I got to play my Eldar again last Thursday, this time against Jon.  I played against Jon at a recent 40k Tournament (wherein I played against no less than 3(!) Grey Knight players).  Jon brought a solid list, a combination of Grey Knights and Blood Angels, with the Blood Angels being the primary.  His list included:

Blood Angels (Baal Strike Force):
Corbulo (Warlord)
Sanguinary Priest w/ Valor's Edge
2 x 5 strong Tactical Squads with Grav Weapons
10 Death Company
5 Bolter Death Company w/ Rhino
Storm Raven (with DC and Corbulo inside)
Death Company Dreadnought
Sicarian
Aegis Defence Line w/ Comms Relay

Grey Knights (Nemesis Strike Force):
Librarian w/ ML3, Unique Storm Bolter, Hammer
5 GK Terminators
2 Dreadknights; 1 w/ Heavy Psycannon/Gattling Psylencer; 1 w/Heavy Incinerator/Heavy Psycannon

A pretty intimidating list.  I played the same list as last time, which you can find here.

I rolled up a ton of powers, as I am wont to do with 20 Mastery Levels.  Importantly, I got Fortune on at least one of the psykers, as well as the +1 Armor Save power on the warlock conclave.

We played standard Eternal War mission one (the one with the d3+2 Objectives, no special points).  We rolled up standard deployment.  The blue dice in the pictures represent the objectives (unless it's on a model's base, apparently, that means it's

Jon won the first turn, and you can see he is lining up to systematically destroy tons of my dudes.  He kills half of one unit of guardians, and then another units flees off the table after losing several models.

On my first turn, I manage to deal two wounds to both of the Dreadknights, as well as blow up the DC rhino.

On the second turn, Jon's shooting is much less successful.  He only manages to kill most of the rest of one squad of guardians.  The seer council takes some hits, but keeps on trucking.

I think at this point I lost some of my picture taking discipline - We played till turn seven, and some funny/interesting things happened.

• Storm Raven came in with DC and Dreadnought, and one unit of reapers grabbed a nearby objective with Skyfire - shot that thing out of the air.  On the drop, all the DC minus Corbulo died, and the Dread took a hull point.  I shot the dread with the rest of the Reapers, and took it out.  On his next turn, Corbulo joined with the other DC, which shot at the Reapers in the runs enough to cause them to fall back, out of assault range (thank Khaine!).  They rallied and then proceeded to blow the snot out of the DC.
• My psyker unit owned the middle of the table, tanking hits on the 2+ re-rollable Farseer (jetbike + Fortify).  Finally got in combat with the terminators plus librarian, and kept Perils checking a 6 - so the Farseer fighting the librarian always had smash.  Too bad he kept making invulnerable saves.  This led to the combat death of all my farseers, including my Warlord to the Thunder Hammer toting Librarian.  Who said that the TH was a bad choice?
• My War Walker survived both the Autocannons and Lascannons of the Sicarian, only to be gunned down by it's Heavy Bolter.  The indignity!
• Managed to kill the Sicarian with the Seer Council.  Tons of Singing Spears + Guide work wonders.
• At the end of the game, controlled three objectives to none, winning the game 10-2 (Jon got First Blood and Warlord).

A super fun game, filled with lots of explosions and death.  I lost about 80% of my army, but the leftovers were enough to take a bunch of objectives and keep going.  I hope to play against Jon again sometime soon.

Hobby Progress

Worked on some more Wood Elf stuff earlier this week; getting close to having everything assembled and primed/base coated.  All I still need to do is build/base/prime another 16 or so Archers and base/prime my Wardancers.  These (due to crappy shooting) are my Eternal Guard.  I chopped the bottom spears off, and used the hooded heads instead of the helmeted ones.

In addition to building some models for Fantasy, I acquired a Space Wolf army for 40k on the cheap, so I built some of the models for that as well.

Finally, I received in the mail the first of the basic squads I need to start a 30k army.  I haven't played it yet, but the models are amazing.  I painted a Lorgar awhile ago (re: like a year), and I've since gotten a small unit of Gal Vorbak to join him as backup dancers.  I've also got an Erebus/Kor Phaeron on the way to join up, so I at least have a few units to fool around with and try out some small games.  There seems to be a lot of little Zone Mortalis stuff going on at the local shop.

I've got some battle report in the mix now that I need to write up, which will be the next post.  Thanks for dropping by!

Some Recent Gaming

Last night I was able to get in a game of 40k at the local game store, Tier 1, at the last minute.  I was expecting to model last night, in all honesty.  I was going to try out the Space Wolf army that I recently acquired (though to be fair, I've had quite a bit of it laying around as random models), but after I punched the numbers I realized that I'd need to build quite a few more marines before it'd be anywhere close to viable.  So instead, I took the reviled Eldar.

Now, before I start talking about the battle, I'd like to touch on the Eldar subject.  The new Codex Eldar: Craftworlds recently came out and has created quite a bit of controversy and revuslion amongst the gaming community at large (re: Internet).  I've been playing Eldar for quite some time, but I don't really see what the total fuss is, except the D-Weapons, and the Wraithknight - those are legitimate complaints (the WK more than the D, if I'm being honest).  The rest of the book it a bunch of fun (and good!) units and formations.  They're even pretty fluffy.  So, with keeping that in mind, I've been limiting the D-Weapons in my army as much as I can, but it is a little bit of a bummer as the Wraith stuff is my favorite in the book.

I like to play armies that aren't netlists.  I've always felt like running my own units and combinations are what works best for me, and I like...no, love redundancy.  It's part of what makes the gaming experience for me fun; wherein I can trade my units for my opponents, and hopefully the trades will go in my favor.  I also like boots on the ground, so I typically take foot-slogging armies.  While I like the idea of a mechanized force, I've never really been able to make it work for me on the table, with the exception of Dark Eldar (which you pretty much are forced to run mechanized).

Here's my list:

Codex Eldar: Craftworlds; 1850 pts

Eldar Warhost Formation

Guardian Warhost
Farseer w/ Singing Spear, Jetbike
3 x 15 Guardians w/ Shuriken Cannons and Warlock Leader w/ Singing Spear
Vyper w/ 2 Shuriken Cannons
War Walker w/ 2 Shuriken Cannons
Vaul's Wrath Support Weapon Battery w/ 1 Vibro Cannon

Seer Council:
2 Farseers w/ Singing Spears, Spirit Stones of Althalan (or whatever)
8 Warlocks w/ 4 Singing Spears

Aspect Host:
3 x 5 Dark Reapers w/ Exarch and Starshot Missiles

As you can see, the list has decent long range firepower (18 Krak Rockets), decent short range with all the Shuriken weaponry, and a hideous 20-warpcharge Psychic phase.  I figured it was pretty fluffy for Ulthwe to run a bunch of psykers and Guardians.

I played against Justin - super great guy to fight war-dolls with.   Justin brought a Sentinels of Terra list.  He took:

Sgt Garadon (name of the Sentinel guy who is a squad upgrade)
ML 2 Terminator Librarian w/ Telepathy
2 x 10 Tactical Squad w/ Flamer, Vet Sgt; 1 Rhino
10 Scouts; All Camo, 4 Snipers, 1 HB, Bolters on rest
5 Centurions w/ TL-Heavy Bolters, Hurricane Bolters
2 x 5 Devestators w/ 4 Missile Lanchers and 4 Lascannons
Allies:
Knight Errant

Overall, pretty static.  More bodies than Justin brought last time, which is good.  The last time we played, it was under the old Eldar book, and I was able to dominate his army fairly quickly, but was unable to stop him from getting a lot of Maelstrom points; and his fliers really put the hurt on my poor Footdar, so it ended up being a tie.

We played  Emperor's Will, with a Vanguard set-up.  Justin won both set-up and first turn.  I failed to seize.

I managed to get pictures of our deployment, but not really of the rest of the game.  I need to work harder on my battle report skills; taking pictures in the middle of a game is not conducive to how I play.  Clearly, it's my turn again, and I really want to play!

Here are pictures of deployment:

My Objective is in the crater in the corner next to my (shamefully) bare metal Vibrocannon.  His is in the far central tower, towards his own board edge, and is guarded by the unit of Lascannon Devastators.

The Game:

 On the first turn, sufficiently frightened of my Seer Council, Justin pours all his firepower into them, wiping them out before I get to go.  I take a few assorted casualties, but nothing major.  I get a little bummed, as this was the game I was hoping to get to try them out.  That's okay though, I clearly made a mistake putting my best unit in the firing line.  I should have either tactically reserved them deeper in my deployment zone, or literally reserved them, and had them walk in on my board edge.  Either way, no biggie.  My turn one saw the Guardians make a full on frontal assault on the Centurions, killing three or four of them (I think three), and the central Reapers killed all the marines from the foot-slogging Tactical Squad bar one (because they couldn't see him).  I also managed to get one hull point off the Knight with the other two squads of Reapers (3/4 4++ saves).

After the first turn, it becomes sort of muddled.  Another take away - write better notes.  So, the knight advanced up the center of the table, shooting as he went; taking down two units of guardians that I threw in his way to slow him down.  Meanwhile, the Jetbike Farseer and his unit ran around the ruins in the center towards the opposite objective, with the Farseer detaching mid-way and turbo-boosting onto Justin's objective.  The War Walker and Vyper accompanied him, helping to thin out and eventually destroy the Devastators guarding his edge.  Meanwhile, the Reapers racked up an impressive rally by the end of the game - killing the other tactical squad (plus Warlord), taking all but one hull point from the Knight, and killing most of the Devs.  The Knight and the Rhino (with one hull point also) ended the game on my objective, having cleared the Vaul's Wrath battery and most of the surrounding Reapers.  The game ended on Turn 6, with the First Blood kill on Turn 1 sealing the game for Justin, with a score of 6-5.

Take Away:

1. I like the Jetbike Farseer.  I had not ever used one before (always on foot), but it was nice having him run around by himself at the end of the game Mind Waring and Executioner-ing any and all available targets.
2. Seer Council:  I need to work on deployment for these guys.  Yes, I know I'd be better off playing them on Jetbikes, but that's a lame unit to play against.  With just T3 and a 4++ save keeping them alive, they're not super tanky.  I'll give them at least one more try before I write them off completely.  It was super cool to roll up all the powers they had before the game started.
3. Reapers were great.  The unit sizes and formation benefits were amazing.  I'll definitely have to give them another go - they're a shoe-in for my next tournament.  Thought I have been playing around with point for a Wraithlord heavy list (like 5-6 of them).
4. Tactically, I should have played a little better.  There were a couple things that I did at the end of the game that might have helped; like moving a Shuirken Cannon over closer to my objective to try and nail the Rhino.  That being said, my biggest mistake was the deployment of the Seer Council.  Other than that, it was pretty tight.
5. Justin played much better this game that the last one, when he played against Eldar.  Just two games in against the elder (that's a joke) race, and he's already showing some marked improvement.  I feel like with just a little bit more experience under his belt, he's going to be a real force to be reckoned with. 

So that wraps up this post - stay tuned for some hobby updates later this week!  Let me know what you think in the comments section!

Modeling Madness! 5/4/15

This weekend was a busy one - finishing up finals, and then spending some time with the girlfriend (as the last couple weekends have been 40k tournaments).  I did manage to do some fun stuff :

I played Assassin Execution Force game - it was quite fun.  My favorite for quite some time has been the Culexus Assassin, which I got to play in two games.  The first game, he took down the Chaos Sorcerer all by himself, and then the second game got tied up by some cultists.  Super fun little game though, had a great time.

I was also able to get some much needed modeling done, though I feel like I should preface this: I freaking hate building model.  Characters, or one off models are just fine.  Building tons and tons of units I really have issues with.  I feel like this stems from having built about every single army that GW does around twice (or more!) in the last 10-15 years.

So, back to the progress; I was able to put together and primer/first coat thirteen Wild Riders - I have had the other five that go in my Quake City Rumble list built, but I need to base and prime them as well.

I apologize for the poor pictures - I promise I'll get some better ones once I make some more progress on these guys.  I'm painting the army in a sort of dry, snowless winter theme; sort of like the winter that we so recently experienced up here in Alaska.  Main colors will be pale yellow/tan, brown, some bright turquoise accents.  I'm actually looking forward to getting this painted - I really like the new Wood Elf models, and I'm eager to try out some new basing techniques involving some birch seeds for leaf litter (which I can just pick up off the ground up here in Alaska), and some great tufts that I ordered from Gamer Grass in Portugal.

For those that are wondering, here is the list of models that I need to get done for QCR at the end of July:

Spellweaver - built, not yet converted
Glade Captain - not converted; have some ideas
Treeman Ancient - built
47 Archers - 31 built, 15 primed black.  Need to knock off some of the basing bits used on some (2nd hand)
18 Eternal Guard - 10 built.  Converted to only have one spearhead.
18 Wild Riders - 18 built, 13 primed/first coat
10 Wardancers - built - though they're metal and don't really need this.
2 Eagles - built and painted.  Done (from my High Elf army), though I might re-base them.

My plans for later this week are to knock out building more wood elves (this upcoming week), since I don't have to worry about class this summer, and hopefully, working on some Eldar Jetbikes that I picked up (no worries, only seven boxes).  I'm having a couple of the guys over tomorrow to do some group modeling and painting, so look forward to some additional updates!

Introduction

Hello Everyone,

This Blog is a project that I'm creating to help motivate me to finish the many, many miniature projects that I have going on that I'd like to finish.  Though actually finishing -all- of my projects would probably cause me to spontaneously combust, it's something that I need to work on.  Otherwise, it just makes me a hoarder of expensive items.

So, a little bit about me:  I love games.  I like pretty much any kind of game, as long as it has some component of skill or strategy; I have issues with games that purely reward luck.  I like games that have a lot of moving pieces even better - typically the more complicated the better.  It really makes me think and stretches my brain in a pleasing fashion.

I'm a big fan currently of GW games (Warhammer, Warhammer 40k), Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity, Malifaux and Dropzone Commander.  I have lots of miniatures and most of them are not painted.  I like painting, but as a chronic procrastinator, I tend to only paint when the next event I have coming up looms menacingly ahead.

With my love of strategic, complicated games comes a mild case of competitiveness.  I'm not always the best loser, even though I've really tried recently to improve my attitude towards losing.  I'm definitely a long way from where I was, but it's a road I'm currently traveling.  It's a pretty long road for me, apparently.

Speaking of long roads, I live in Anchorage, Alaska.  I went to school in Reno, NV, and there I learned that I really, really like to play in tournaments.  It's my favorite thing to do, pretty much period.  In Reno, we had a pretty skilled group of players for many games, including both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k.  Warhammer Fantasy was my best game, and the height of my skill was just before I moved back to Alaska.  With a smaller, less skilled community (though it's gotten a -lot- better in recent times), the level of practice that I could maintain went downhill quickly.  Even though I don't get to play much, I still try and travel to at least one tournament every year out of state - usually this is Quake City Rumble, in San Fransisco.

This year is the first year that I'm not going alone (though I have lot of friends that I'll meet up with at the event), as my girlfriend C is coming with me.  I'm very excited to show her what a big event (100+ people) looks like, as it has an entirely different feel than the local, 10-14 player events are like.

The general plan for this blog is to take a look at doing some battle reports, unit overviews, army list analysis and most importantly, put of pictures of my completed units/armies as I finish them up.  My plan is tomorrow to post up some of the Wood Elves that I'm working on for QCR this year.

Thanks for reading!

-Danny