DKoK reinforcements finished

Having just finished writing about the Northern Invasion, I though I should post up about the DKoK reinforcements that filled out the ranks and completed the two 20 man squads.

Firstly we have the Marshalls. There are three here but I will only actually needed two, one for each squad. Now with the latest guard codex these will be transformed in to commissars or similar for the new command squads.

The models are armed with power swords and pistols, one with bolt pistol and the other two with plasma pistols.

The next models were the bulk of the reinforcements, with 21 models painted. This was to allow for the swapping of one sergeant models over to allow for the third marshall.

These three models are some are the stand out models, the medic with his bag and the demolitions guy with pack but the one I'm most proud of is the signaller and his map. I have actually gone back over the other signaller and redone his map to, showing a similar scene which links to this map.

The other 20 are mostly regular guardsmen with a couple of special weapons thrown in for good measure. These models were the main effort for me before NI24, as they were the only part of the army not fully painted.

 There are going to have to be some adjustments to the DKoK forces give the changes in the new codex, as the special weapons options have changed somewhat but I'll be going over all that in due course.

NI24 event review

 A short post to finish this/last years Northern Invasion posts. As always the tournament was good fun and everyone attending seemed to have had a good time. The chat was flowing and the food was as good as ever. 

The Saturday tournament was well run, there were a few little issues but then I don't know of any tournament that doesn't have a few little issues. It feels bad to focus on the negatives when the over all experience was so good but I feel that they need to be acknowledged in order to correct them. So what were these issues? Well, there were three that I feel are in need of attention. 

Firstly, painted armies points. Some people were very strict on awarding the points, while others, including myself, were quite not. This meant that some people got points one match and not the next. Simply having all the armies judged by one of the TO's game 1 and handing out a token or similar means that everyone knows what does and does not score the points and there is not arguments or bad feelings about who gets the points and who doesn't. 

Secondly, missions. There were 8 tables, each one had a different mission set up on them and this means that your overall points score can be very dependent on which missions you ended up with. With some of the missions, it is easier to score primaries, some deployments are better than others.......I can go on and on but I feel that if everyone is playing different games that will affect the overall score. Some one may get three games where scoring primaries is easy, and someone else may get three games that are very hard. As such, I think that all the games in a single round should all be the same, so everyone is playing the same mission and deployment. Yes, secondaries will change between tables and players but at least everyone starts with a level playing field. Now I realise this is harder to sort out, with a lot of shuffling between rounds to reset tables and it's not an ITC tournament or anything but its something that bugs me. 

Finally there was scoring the games. What do I mean by this? Well a lot of games didn't go to 5 rounds, several did but not all of them. So how do you score them? Well there seems to be half a dozen different ways! Say for example a game only goes to turn 3, as all mine did, do you;

A) score turn 3 as a normal turn 3 and take the score as you would for turn 3 in a normal 5 turn game.

B) score turn 3 as if it was turn 5, i.e. score primaries at the end of the 2nd players turn. 

C) finish turn 3 but mathammer out the remaining two turns to give you a full 5 turn score.

In most games it doesn't make much difference which you do, but for a tournament where overall scores combine to give a total score which effects your final position, which method you choose does make a difference. There was no clear indication as to which method to use and so people did different things. I for one believe that the score should be taken as is at the end of turn three, with no modification to the scoring system. This means that those who did play 5 turns are not penalised for playing faster. 

Despite these minor issues the tournament was well run and there was no real issues that required the TO's to step in. 

There was only downside to the whole thing that I can say, and that is that the Sunday was a bit slow. This was not the fault of the organisers but a bit of a miscommunication between parties and the main Sunday activity, a Shadespire tournament, was cancelled fairly last minute, due to unavoidable factors. This was really the only negative point to the weekend that I can see, so not bad I think. The Sunday was not a total loss though, as idle minds create chaos, or in this case, a Knight off.

8 Knights and a Lord of Skulls alongside Angron, took to the field in a fun game of 40k. The rules were fairly flud and changed quite a few times over the course of the game but everyone seemed to be having great fun and there were several fun moments, including Angron killing a Knight, who then exploded, killing Angorn in return, who then went ballistic as he was dragged in to the warp, killing another knight as he did, which also exploded but this time it only managed to wound the Lord of Skulls, although another 6 would have been enough for some more fireworks! The game lasted quite a while, as units came back to life but the winner ended up with a tally of 4 killed to only 3 deaths, with several knights on 3 and 3.

 Overall, this was another well run and hosted tournament, one I would recommend to anyone not after a competitive ITC tournament. I will certainly be trying to get back in 2025.

NI24 Army review - Guard

 The guard did well at the tournament, they mostly performed as intended and I felt that there was not a lot 8 could have done differently on the day. However, there were some units that just didn't pull their weight and some that really did better than expected. 

Many units, mainly the DKoK and the scions did exactly what I expected them to do, with the DKoK moving up to hold objectives and weathering the inevitable storm that followed, and the scions dropped in behind, picking up secondaries and causing problems. The Mortar heavy weapons squad also did their thing, holding the home objective and dropping random annoying shots on things. These units formed the core of the army and worked well, something else that worked well was the Deathwatch.

These units worked well in the test games and I had a good feeling for them going in to the tournament, however, one unit proved really good, the other not quite as good. The combat unit proved to be really effective, doing what was asked of them in all three games. I would have liked for them to be more resilient than they were, but a extra storm shield could solve that a little. The shooting unit were good, but another combat unit would have been more useful I think. I don't have the models to form another combat unit though and I don't think that I will look at getting another as I have a different use for the points, Grey Knights. A full unit of 10 marines plus the Rhino come in at over 250 points, which could easily pay for the 5 man unit of Grey Knight Terminators. 

On the other end of the spectrum was the Leman Russ Vanquisher (LRV) and the Armiger Warglaives. The LRV had trouble hitting anything, especially with the HK missile and even when it did it either failed to would or it was saved. I think in all the games it did only a handful of wound and generally proved pretty useless. With a tank commander or multiple Vanquishers, the effect could have been reduced, but with only one, it was not a great unit. The Warglaives were also pretty underwhelming as well, with the melta failing to hit multiple times and even when wounding failed to really do much damage. The chain swords were equally useless. Having played against a knights army running multiple Helverins, and seeing the damage done by their autocannons, I think that switching the two Warglaives for Helverins would be a better option, as well as saving points! 

A lot of the ideas for what to do with this list are however a bit of a mute point, as the guard codex is due out anything, and hopefully, I should even have my limited edition codex by the time this post goes live! (didn't get the box, just eBay'd the codex and cards). I have some ideas of what I might do, but I really need to study the new codex and units to see what I have and what I'm going to get and then I can see how the new version of this list will look.

So to finish off, here are some (not very good) photos of the army in all its glory.

The armies there somewhere, I promise!

NI24 Army review - Necrons and Tau

With the tournament over it's time to look back over the lists and see what worked and what didn't. 

We'll start with the Tau forces. Overall the force worked as intended, and there isn't much that needs to be changed or altered. There were a few options that needed tweaking, partly because the wrong option was taken on the submitted list but also because a few didn't work as well as intended. The rampagers were very hit and miss but taking a full size unit would make a big difference, to room for 3 extra models needs to be found somewhere, possibly by dropping the strike team and devilfish. However, I think that next year my son will be taking Orks, provided he gets it all built and painted.

As for the Necrons, there will be some significant changes. The young man has some tomb blades that were not built at the time of the tournament, and while at the tournament he acquired a Doomsday arc. Combine this with the Silent King he received for Christmas and you have a very different list.

The trouble is, what do you get rid of? First up would be the wraiths and technomancer. While these are good units for holding up the enemy, they lack much punch. Replacing these with the tomb blades keeps a fast unit, faster intact, but also gives greater firepower. Additionally dropping the scarabs and the spider frees up some points. Now scarabs are useful for rear screening but in terms of output and versatility they are now lacking due to 0OC. Using the pints towards the silent king or Doomsday arc would be better I think. Additionally, removing the flayed ones and deathmarks frees up some points. The flayed ones were useful for grabbing some points turn 1 in a few games but in general I think the points could be spending elsewhere, the same applies to the deathmarks, as their shooting output is not great although they were useful deep striking for secondaries. 

There is still quite a while between this tournament and the next and there will be at least 2 if not 3 balance data slates plus we can expect a whole new mission deck around June this year, all of which will have an impact on the lists. 

Here are some parade photos of the necrons