Points and balance

 Again, I'm a little behind on this topic but I wanted to throw my pennies worth in to the pot. I'm not going to go through each point change and the finer points of each change on the balance sheet, I really just want to give a general overview of how I think the changes will affect me.

There are really only 3 changes here and all of them will affect me in one way or another. The first and third changes on the list are linked, with all Astra Militarum vehicles gaining Armour of Contempt and all titanic vehicles gaining the 2+ save. This means that all Astra Militarum have become more resistant, especially the various Baneblade chassis. The other change that was introduced was that Scion units can now take Hammer of the Emperor, as long as all the scions are from the same regiment, which they would have to be Under the current rules anyway. 

These changes will make quite a difference to my Hrossey Yeomanry lists, which are vehicle heavy, especially when combined with the previous changes to vehicle orders. I really like these changes, although there are a few clashes with some of the existing regimental doctrines. It also mean that I might actually run my Hellhammer again, now that it is not completely outclassed by the Leman Russ. 

Scions gaining Hammer of the Emperor is also great. I currently only run them as a completely separate force, so there is no issues with them gaining the benefits and will add to there punch, as with mostly S3 weapons, wounding has always been one of the harder parts. Hopefully this will see them become a lot more competitive, although -2ap isn't quite as good as it was with Armour of Contempt on marines now. 

The points changes are pretty minimal and are mostly restricted to wargear. No, there are a few people out there, who may be a little sinical, point out that most of the points changes match up with the new releases teased a few weeks ago. It's possible but either way, they are good changes. Most of these changes will impact me, with wargear price drops for basic units like company and platoon commanders, Tempestors, infantry, veteran, special, command, heavy weapons and Scion squads. A couple of these squads, mainly the Infantry, special and veteran squads have received a small price increase but with all the drops in wargear, unless your running them bare bones, you'll be saving points and when all the wargear is now free, why would you be running them bare bones? Other units that have received some points drops are Sentinels and Baneblades (and variants), although the base sentinel did get a slight point hike, taking any weapon other then the multilaser will actually result in a points saving.

Overall, these points drops will mean a saving across all my armies, some more than others. The Hjaltland LI and Dagr Ormr Scions will both benefit from the drops to the various squads, meaning a saving of over a 100 points apiece, the Hrossey Yeomanry will get far less out of the points changes, having a lot less troops and the only vehicle receiving points drops was the Hellhammer. However, the biggest boost to the Hrossey Yeomanry is the addition to AoC and 2+ saves rather then points drops. 

Both of these releases really help my guard armies and should enable me to field some good extra firepower without having to sacrifice other parts of the list. I'm hoping to be able to get a couple of games in the coming weeks but we shall see if thing plan out as I hope!

Chapter Approved 2022

 As usual I'm a couple of days behind most people out there when it comes to putting pen to paper and getting my thoughts out there on the interwebs. This information comes direct from GW community page and has been discussed widely already and there have been some pretty strong opinions but as usual m, quite a few people have missed one key point. These changes only take effect with the latest warzone book, in this case Nephilim. For those of us not using this book, these changes have zero effect. 

The first change that was announced a while ago was the change to command points. Not command points have always been something of a sore point for me. While I agree the old system was a bit broken, with the likes of the "Loyal 32", the new system is not much better for the guard. Typically we have significantly more units than most armies and therefore need more CP to buff an equivalent percentage of our forces, the new system hamstrung us a little and now the new system does so even more. With the addition of having to pay for warlord traits and relics as well, we are not severally behind the curve. Hopefully when our new codex comes out we will have some new tricks that mean we can compete on a more level playing field but at the moment these changes don't help us at all. 

Both of our competitive builds at the moment require significant CP input before the games, either with upgrading white shields or with tank aces and relics, both of which would mean we would be starting on very little, if any, CP. 

The other change is the secondary objective options and we now have access to 4 new secondaries. However, it's not all good news. Of the 4 only 1 or 2 are actually useful.

By lasgun and bayonet is not great as scoring it requires you to kill units on objectives, doing this a few times in a game should be easy but 15 times is significantly harder, so not a great option. 

Special orders is a better option, especially for missions with a number of midfield objectives. Getting a unit on an objective and near an officer should be relatively easy for most guard armies and completing in in a turn also means you don't have to survive a turn in the open. This is going to be very mission dependant but you should be able to grab a couple during the game and bag yourself 10 point of so.

Boots on the ground is probably the easiest one to score points with. Getting units in to table quarters should be fairly easy, it's whether you have enough to keep it up for the whole game. With gaining one point per quarter per turn, you should be able to score 10 plus points a game with your infantry. The second half of the secondary is a little harder, getting a regimental standard in the centre can be harder. For this one you might be able to manage it for a couple of turns, as long as your not in the open. Realistically I think this is the one that will net the most amount of points regularly over the course of the games. 

Inflexible command is our last option and has the possibility to score highly but requires a lot of thinking and could well comprises your match to achieve. Having to maintain all your troops withing 6 inches of an officer or all your vehicle's within 12 of a tank commander could result in you bunching up your units and not being able to move out properly. Yes, if you've vox casters it pushes the range to 24 inches for infantry but even so it's still going to restrict you somewhat. The last part, destroying an enemy unit whilst under an order is fairly easy these days with the way orders now work and should net you a few points over the game. This is not the worst option here (that's By lasgun and bayonet in case you hadn't guessed) but it's not the best either. 

Overall, these are these changes are not really going to affect me much. The command point changes will have no effect on me at all, as I don't plan on playing any of the new missions and the new secondaries won't effect me much as, due to lack of play time, I don't have any set secondaries or preferred ones, so it's not like I now can't take the ones I want.

Deathwatch Dreadnought

Here we have another recently painted model, my Deathwatch Venerable Dreadnought. I've had this model for quite a while but have not bothered painting it, although it has been sitting primed and ready for a while. This was a fairly quick paint job, just to get it painted, although I did really enjoy painting this up.

I went with the high bling factor on this one, with lots of gold trim and shiny bits. I have also added as much extra bits to it, in the form of purity seals, shields and other symbols. Some basic transfers were added to finish it off.

The model is good as it makes it very easy to change out the weapon arms, so I've painted up all three of the options.

Plasma

Assault cannon

Lascannons

 This still needs a bit of finishing, such as the base rim and flocking, but that might wait until I get around to varnishing the model, whenever that is! All in all I think this looks very good for not a massive amount of work, I kind of wish I'd done it earlier, now I just need to get on with the rest of the troops!

Knights

I have had the opportunity to get some serious painting time in recently and one of the first models that I decided to paint up was my two baby Knights. These are my two Armiger class Warglaves, the only two models that exist from House Vandrad, the Laird's of Tunglland, loyal servants of House Krast. They are also likely to be the only models from said house to exist in my collection for quite some time. While I would at some point like to add a full knight, most likely a Crusader (the all shooty) knight, that is some way off.  

As you can see, while the share a colour scheme, it is, in general, reversed on each model, with just the legs being the same. 

Apart from the more obvious fact that one is gold and one is silver in colour, the difference in the colours gives a nice contract between both models. 

Silver 

Gold

If I ever get some of the Armiger Helverins, which is doubtful, I will have to go for a bronze and er??? Maybe a lighter silver colour or something. Anyway, these two will mainly be fielded with my AdMech forces, as some heavy support and anti-armour.