List Changes and Unit reviews

So my list from the pre-Ard Boyz is as follows.  This is with out details for ease of use.

GM w/ psycannon
10x Purifiers w/ 4 psycannons
-both the above riding in a LR Crusader w/ multimelta
2x 5 GKSS w/psycannon in a HB Razorback
2x 5 Interceptors w/ Incinerator and hammer
Libby with Hammer & 3 powers
10x Termies w/ 2 psycannon and hammer (THRAWN!!)
2 Rifleman Dreads

New list will consist of-
Mordrak and 5 ghost knights w hammers
Libby w/ hammer and 5 powers teleport homer
10x Termies w/ 2 psycannon and hammer (THRAWN!!)
2x 5 Purifiers w/ 2 psycannon in HB razorback
5 GKSS w/ 1 psycannon in HB Razorback
5 GKSS
2x 5 Interceptors with hammer and incinerator
2x Rifleman Dreads with psybolts

This is an alpha-strike list.  Pure and simple.

Here's the plan-
Mordrak with Libby and ghost knights jump into range of the enemy and terrain with cover.  Since Mordrak counts as a unit upgrade and not an IC he can carry the Libby too.  Use Grand Strategy to give interceptors scout for the free move and 30 inch threat range.  Jump in with Mo and Co., rush with the interceptors as real threats.  Suddenly the enemy has 5 very real threats, Mo&Co, 2 interceptor squads, 2 dreads firing from backfield.  This along with 3 razorbacks roaming the field should give most players some problems.

The problem that I have run into has been multiple hulls or target saturation.  Multiple hulls being the primary problem I have been in.  This brings the possibility of striking 2 hulls in the shooting with dreads and 2 in assault turn 1 at a minimum.  If they chose to fire on Mo & Co a 2+ cover (stealth + shrouding) will be keeping them alive a while.  Possibly generating a couple more knights from anything not str 8 or better.  Turn 2 Libby summons the termies and it gets really ugly.  Turn 3 if he's still there Libby summons the loose GKSS for additional scoring if needed.

Should be fun.  Now I just have to wait for my 5 new hammers to arrive in the mail to build them.

pre-'Ard boyz Touney results

Well what a sad day for me.  1-2-0    Piss poor planning prevent performance.

There are some serious mistakes and lessons learned from this event.

#1 - Now this is just embarrassing...never leave parts of your models at home.  This is bad.  Namely the turrets for your razorbacks, and additional weapons for Land Raiders.You just look silly with a borrowed Dreadnought melta arm sitting on top of you land raider.  I am sure you can imagine it. 

#2 - Grandmaster and Land Raider - 500 points wasted.  In "Ard Boyz that is too much.  Just the Land Raider itself was the primary waste.  Blown up or wrecked in the first turn in 2 of 3 games.  The third game it got parked in turn 2 and sat there and shot for the rest of the game.    Too high of a point cost for so little effect. 

#3 - Grand Master - primary use...Grand Strategy.  This power is so very versatile and useful.  Need to take 5 objectives?  Have a rifleman dread sit at home base scoring while the purifiers run out for the far one.  Need to get that first turn alpha strike off?  Scout the interceptors, suddenly they have a 30" from deployment threat range.  Going to be recieving a lot of charges to shake you off that single objective?  Counter Attack is wonderful for those termies with a banner and libby attached.  This power alone makes me look at Grand masters as a useful part of my army.

#4 - Learn the codex's of your opponents.  Know your enemy.  ignore that paper airplane of the Dark Eldar, yes that little one, no really go ahead and ignore it....see what it just dropped off in you deployment zone....yes they can walk out of that thing.  Bugger.

#5 THRAWN!!  He rocks my socks....when I remember he's in the game.  When I forget for half the game its a problem.



Anyways... I played, as is evidenced above, a Dark Eldar player.  Who made great use of a webway portal carried by a haemonunculus carried in a Venom.  2 of them with a pair of pain engine things.  He tabled me.  Fuck, there goes winning anything in this tournament.

Second game - Mech-dar.  Low model count and great rolling.  I table him, but there were some hairy moments in there.   Once again proving to me that Swooping Hawks are the worst unit in the game.  Once upon a time I played with them and they saw the table 2 times.  Both times they landed pooped and died to little effect.

Third Game - Victory Points against....IG 2 chimera, 4 russes, 2 basilisks and vets...etc.  Crap.  Once again Grey knights prove to have a hard time against massed hulls.  He nearly tables me but a parked Land Raider and a pair of Dread keep him to a minor victory. 

Overall I finished like 8 out of the 10 folks that showed up.  Really! I fail at this game!  At least today.  But the purpose is for fun and I had a blast playing. Played the last 2 games against people who I really enjoy playing against. 

Some game results and 'Ard Boys planning

So...the time is upon us.  'Ard Boyz.  2500pts of in your face balls out killing.  Big prizes and WAAC players to boot.  I'm in.  But first there are some thing to go over.

RL info- Vacation was great thanks.  I highly recommend coastal Florida for a nice vacation.

Game Results - For 6 games played on my vacation I am 3-2-1.  Beat Thousand Sons, Necrons, Sisters w allied Marines, lost to Demons (I know....really) and IG gun line, tied Chaos Marines.

The tie was a 2 objective game where we basically swapped objectives.  Fun 1500pts against an entertaining opponent.

Losses against the gun line (11 hulls on the table) was inevitable.  Gk at 1500 pts doen't have the penetration to deal with that much AV.  We can do some high AV kills at range but not that many.  Up close it is a different story.  Demons...what can I say...1500 pts again and he brought a blood thirster.  I didn't bring any anti-demonic gift powers and he rolled like a millionaire.  This game was educational though as we both nearly tabled each other but he won by a single kill point thanks to a Rhino.

Wins - Necron monoliths are a problem.  Only the hammer did anything worth while.  Thousand Sons - fluff army but fun and pretty (he paints Golden Demon nominees), Sisters- target priority really helped here. 


As for unit results - Interceptors still continue to please me but I am going to switch out the incinerator for a psycannon.  It is more reliable for can opening.

Purifiers - meh...worth the points but they haven't proven to be anything special.

Terminators - aswesome.  2 psycannons, hammer, banner and the rest with halberds - simply awesome.  They won the game for me in a couple of spots.  With an attached Libby they can eat a unit or two a turn.  They are highly durable, even under concentrated firepower they keep rolling for a long time.  But we already knew that didn't we?


'Ard Boyz Lists - to GM or not?  This is the question.  Do I get super competitive and really go at my list with razors or do I want to play a more fun list?  I have a week to finalize a practice list.  We can see if the Gm will be worth it then.

Vacation - Sorry for the lack of posting lately...

Like the title suggests...its vacation time around here and that means time with family...not time at the Not-so-LGS making tiny wars happen.

I did get in a couple games last Saturday and will wrap them up later though.

One important thing to note - and this is a quote from me to my daughter who was sucked into her DS at the time..  "Real Life is more important.  Real experiences are more imprtant than make-believe ones." 

She missed an awesome view from very high bridge because of this.  So remember all you basement dwellers...sunlight is good for you!

Battle Report - 1100pts GK vs Dark Eldar

First game of the league- no pics again...on of these days I'll remember that I blog about this stuff while I play.

1100 vs Dark Eldar

My List is as follows-

140pt Special HQ (see last post - as an interceptor + shooting)
2x 5 man GKSS w/ 1 psycannon and 3 halberds
1x 5 man Purifier w/ 2 psycannon and 2 halberds
1x 5 man interceptor w/ 1 hammer, incinerator and 3 halberds
Razorback W/ Psybolt Twin Link Assault cannon
Rhino
2x Twin Link Autocannon Dreads w/ Psybolts (hereafter referred to as the "Chumps")

His List was -
Talos Pain Engine
1x Raider
2x Ravager
2x Pile of warriors (kitted with splinter cannons)
10x scourges (2 blaster, 2 haywire)
Special HG Shooter (same as mine basically)

So this game was small so we ended up getting Kill Points 12" in from the edge on a 4'x4' table.  River running vertically through it with a building in each quadrant.

He goes first and sets up one squad of warriors dismounted in a ruin to my left and the raiders in the center.  His Scourges take the building to the right and the Talos on the far left. One of his warrior piles goes into a raider with his HQ.

I put one dread on top (tiny 3rd floor) of a building in my left with the HQ on middle and interceptors on the bottom.  One GKSS is for deepstrike (mistake #1 as you will see in a moment), the other goes into the Razorback.  Purifiers go into the Rhino.  These all go behind the building on the left.  The other dread goes into the building on the right as bait and for side shots. 

I fail to seize and we are off.  He pushes forward with the talos and vehicles, scourges jump forward also.  His shooting blows an arm off my Chump on the left and little else.  I move forward on both sides.  Shooting does very little, damages the talos some but has little other effect.  Then the nightmare really begins on his turn 2.

More forward movement....he parks my rhino, kills the HQ, immobilizes my Chump on the right and
kills a couple of interceptors.  My go...I jump forward with the remainder of the interceptors to flame his troops getting out of the raider in the middle.  Troops in reserve continue to eat coffe and donuts.  Chumps do the only useful thing all game here and park the raider, otherwise these guys sucked. Purifiers get out as do the troops in the razorback.  Razor fires on the Talos killing it, need to get another one of these on the board it was well worth the 85 points or so for it.  Troops shoot some warriors in the ruins killing 2 I think.  His guys that piled out of the parked raider get shot up and burned down and assaulted to nothing.

Turn 3 - turning point...kind of.  He continues to fire on me.  His big troops squad vaporizes my purifiers and his ravagers wipe my interceptors.  Scourges pop my Chump on the right.  My other troops squad gets knocked down a little.  On my go....the reserves decide to come in but mishap due to scattering into his scourges.  Really they just ended up seeing the enemy and going back to coffee and donuts.  Old One arm, chump up top fires and knocks a weapon of one of his ravagers.  Razor moves to cover the troops from LOS and the Razor and Psycannon pop his other ravager.  At this point he has a troops pile, scourges, and a mostly functional ravager left.  I have a parked Rhino, a TLAssCannon Razor, a one armed Chump, and 3 GKSS (one psycannon).

Turn 4 - I win ....aka the dice return the earlier crap with goodness.  He moves the ravager and gets close with the scourges to my rhino.  His shooting kills one GK halberdier and stuns my rhino.  Fortitude away the stun and the little Rhino plinks away killing 2 scourges.  Chump up top finally pops the ravager, assault cannon and remaining GKs nuke the scourges forcing them to flee.  And run they do..3d6 running is huge.

What is that you say?  He has only the warrior pile left?  Yes.  Can the hurt AV?  Nope.   His final turn sees the Scourges stun my Razor but flee to within 5" of the edge.  I pile back into the Razor, Fortitude up and just sit out the resto f the game firing into that warrior pile in cover. 

Game ends with me on top: 8 to 5

Notes: 
-Can't rely on the dreads as the primary AV support. 
-Assault Cannon Razorbacks = awesome
-Dark Eldar paper airplanes are more resilient than forseen.

I am on vacation at the beach so not too much to say this week.  But next weekend has 1500 vs Thousand Sons and 1500 vs. Sisters planned.   Maybe another game too.

40K league/campaign entertainment.

Now there is a new campaign getting started.  One at the new store.  Well, this store is older and far longer established, but new to me after the D-R-A-M-A at the other shop.

Stolen from here, an excellent interactive 40k Map

Anyways, the campaign is similar to a Planetfall game, with the hexes and buildings and all that jazz.  But there are a couple of special rules.  Most basic is that there can be no named characters. 

First is you can get a pair of special characters.  The first is a heavy choice with a Guardsman's stat line that drops D3 large blasts per game with max scatter, 50 points.  The other is the more interesting one.

Stolen from Kingmong at DeviantArt

Take an elite, troop or heavy model.  It cannot be an MC, IC, or vehicle/walker.  It is a basic model, such as a marine or paladin, or guardsman.  It is equipped with basic gear, no upgrades.  Take this and add 115 points to the cost model (say a sergeant in a marine squad) he gains +1T/+1W/+1I/+1Ld (max 10), Eternal Warrior and a 5+ Invul save which does not stack with other Invul saves except the one below.  Pretty cool so far.  Now you get to pick is he shooty or choppy?  If shooty he gains +2 BS and a special weapon that is Str 7 AP 2 Assault 3, losing any assault weapon in exchange.  If assaulty he gains +2WS, a Str 7 power weapon and a shield that gains him an additional +1 Invul save but loses any shooting capability.

You have to name and model said Hero.

Now for the really entertaining part...since I am playing Grey Knights; what sort of unit do I make this guy from?


A paladin for 170pts?  For a WS7 T5 3 wound eternal warrior that strikes at I5 with a str8 (Hammer Hand FTW!) power sword?  Did I mention that it may be a Nemesis Force Sword?  That makes that 2+/4+ save a 2+/3+ in CC.  I still need to clarify with the campaign organizer if they get to keep the Nemesis Force Weapon quality if I go that route.

Or maybe a purgator?  135pts but uses the astral aim power on a str 7 ap 2 assault 3 weapon?

Possibly an interceptor?  Go shooty with him, and run him alongside, but not attached to, a squad of regular interceptors.  Use the gun to open a transport and then flame them with the interceptors.

What do you think?

Interceptors - Far better than hoped

Interceptor with Incinerator...similar to shouting  "Surprise! Butt Seks!"

 So time for more dissection of the GK codex based upon experience.  This time we are looking at one of the two fast attack choices.  I do not own a Storm Raven as of yet as my model budget has taken a quick dive....but I do have some interceptor back packs.  Which means that I have access to Interceptors.

Stat line wise they are normal marines, jump marines.  Cool, 12" jump style moving for only 6 more points per model than normal Strike Squads.  With the usual options of incinerator for 20, psycannon for 10, daemonhammers etc.  Basically its +6 points per model for GKSS so they are now fast attack/jump infantry. 

I personally perfer to use them as distractors and disruption units.  A single 10 man squad with 2 hammers, 2 incinerators, 8 halberds is invaluable to me.  Today's tournament proved that.  They really earned their points in pulling focus from the rest of the army and breaking formations.

So lets talk a little about tactics.  The incinerator is pure fun.  Jump 30", no scatter, place your other Interceptors to maximize targeting, and its BBQ time.  I opened a chimera with this, not the best thing to use but it is possible.  Even better is that first turn, when everyone is all jammed together in the deployment zone.  Dropping in to flame on turn 1 can change an opponent's tactics by a bunch. Sure, using the 30" jump to get there means you won't be assaulting and will most likely receive that punch in the face you asked for.  It doesn't matter though, 5-10 of these can absorb some shots and possibly live through an assault (you did take halberds right?).  This forces an opponent to deal with the parts of your army that you hand to him on your time.  Keeping them from possibly getting to a more brittle/valuable target that you do not want him to be firing at this turn. 

Want to distract him?  Drop in a single squad and allow him to nuke it off the table.  Sure it just became an expensive speed bump, but with a little forethought on placement and weaponry you may have just forced him to maneuver in way more advantageous to you.

Disruption?  Jump them in a big bunch right in front of his tanks.  This guy will put a stop to any tank and possibly force that commander to divert around you, splitting his forces.

From here on out I will run a minimum of 5 of these dudes.