Wednesday, December 23, 2015

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

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

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!

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

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.