Friday 30 September 2016

The Deathwatch

Image result for deathwatch symbol



So, he we are, jumping on the band wagon. The new deathwatch codex has been it and about for a few weeks and while I have the latest Battlescribe files and have eeen the codex, I have yet to get a, er, "copy" to look at. As talked about in a previous post, Battlescribe is not perfect and at present I can't see how to take a vet with boltgun and bolt pistol, in fact I dint see a bolt pistol listed at all. This seems a bit strange as boltgun and bolt pistol are the mainstay of a marine, and its pointless arming a marine with a ccw unless he has a pistol of some sorts. Anyway, hopefully I can get eyes on a codex and see what's right.

Ill post up a full list later, in another post and ill post up the fluff for it as well, again in another post. But I though I would put down some initial thoughts here.

The deathwatch will be fielded with my inquisitional force, to makes 2000 point list, as all my lists are. The current inquisition list is around 650 points, so I'm looking at around 1350 points, which should be easy to hit. In terms of setup, the inquisition list currently is heated towards taking out men's, with hotshot lasguns and power sword wielding death cult assassins and crusaders. The deathwatch will continue this theme, not only with the special issue ammo but in terms of wargear. None of my armies are particularly good, usually lacking in one area or another, such as the Hjaltland lacking any anti heavy armour, and the deathwatch will no doubt suffer the same fate, although there are a few chain fists and a dread ccw in there which will help.

In terms of teams, ill be going for a range to cover all the bases, using the Black Spear Strike Force, for universal deep strike, and then the Watch Company, to gain the additional reroll benefits, and finally ill be taking an Aquila killteam for general stuff, a Dominates killteam, a Furor kill team and a Purgatus killteam all for their special target types, (HQ, Elite and Troop). I haven bothered with heavy support or fast attack, as I figured the Aquila team can deal with fast attack and heavy support doesn't go far usually and can be dealt with by the the chain fisted termies in the Furor team.

I've got most of the bits I need to make this lot, as I'll be using the Betrayal at Calth boxset for the marines and the termies will come from my left over stock of metal bodies with BaC arms. I have pretty much got all the arms and weapons I need from the boxset and my bits box, the only questions are whether I have enough flamers to make the 3 Infurnus Heavy Bolters I want and whether I need jump packs for the vanguard vets, who are listed as jump troops but apparently don have jump packs listed in their wargear. I'm assuming this is an oversite and I'll need jump packs but it would be good if I could drop the packs, as I don't need them.

This army may well be on the drawing board for quite sometime as my priorities right now are to finish the Hjaltland LI, which only has a handful of models to paint including a Valkryie, and paint the rest of my Dagr Ormr MT force and that doesn't include the Eagle Knights, which are also on the list!

Friday 23 September 2016

Northern Invasion

A few years ago now I attended Kings of the North, this year, in about a month I will be attending Northern Invasion 4, without doubt the most northern 40k tournament in the country! (It may also apply to AoS and Magic as well, as I'm not going to include the local Christmas tournament, as teats just a club thing) So what is Northern Invasion? Its a small and very friendly tournament held in Orkney. At last count there were 8 40k players taking part and this is the first year that trophies will be awarded. I've posted up the basics of the tournament below and then I'll have a look at my ideas for a list. I will go over the list in detail later, as a lot of the posts in the next few weeks will be about the tournament.

So what are the restrictions? 
The army must be 1500pts and must use the CAD and be from ONE CODEX. Formations, Allied detachments and models that are lords of war cannot be used including imperial knights. So BRB CAD from one codex only and no LoW, which is nice but maybe a little to much as LoW's tend to be quite pricey and in a 1500 point list take a good chunk of points.

The Battlefield will be the standard Dawn of War setup with the usual deployment, except the objectives which are fixed. 5 objectives, 1 at the centre of the table and 2 oother, 24” away also on the centre line. The final 2 are placed by the players (1 each) and c)he games is victory point based with the objectives being the primary, 2vp each for the middle objectives and the player ones are worth 1vp to you and 3 to your opponent. In addition you gain 1vp for every enemy unit destroyed, with IC's and transports being counted separately.  Secondary objectives are the usual 3, first blood, line breaker and slay the warlord. There will also be night fighting. 

So, in general there are not a lot of changes to the game for the tournament, mainly just restricting to the CAD, and changing the objectives. Its a bit of a shame they have gone with the eternal war missions rather than the maelstrom games. At least I assume they have as there is no mention of maelstrom cards. A modified deck, like those I've used at previous tournaments, are quite good as they get rid of a lot of the action type cards, weighting the deck towards to objective cards. 

What is this going to do for my list? Well, it seems the movement will not be too important, and last turn objective grabbing will be the thing (scatbikes FTW). This means that sitting behind my defensive line until turn 4 before surging forward for the objectives and using the units in the flyers for a last turn grab as well. The main advantage will be that my list is very much a troops list,so lots of objective secured, useful for last turn grabs. Ill post up my first draft list next post, although I had a game the other day so the list has already changed! But ill write about that as well.

Initial thoughts though are that it will be a bit of a challenge to switch back to eternal war missions and the mindset that goes with them. I've been playing maelstrom for so long and think that the setup us a lot better. In looking forward to the tournament though! 

Friday 16 September 2016

Terrain options

There ate still a few more battle reports to write up but I thought I'd have a little break and look at a few other bits,namely terrain and Deathwatch, and possibly some other bits and pieces. Anyway, in case you missed the title, this post is about the various terrain options I've been looking at.

Firstly the battle mats. Now there are several companies out there that do mats, some ofthemore known ones are gamematz.eu and urbanmatz, as well as deepcut studios, terrain mats and battleboards and the there are some of the less well known (well less well known by me anyway) such as tiny war games and cigar box battle mats, plus a friend down my club has just received his kraken battle mats,which are still shipping their Kickstarter stuff before general release. With so many different mats out there its hard to decide which to buy! However I recently came across Javis mats. Javis seem to have started as a model railway scenery producer but have expanded a little.

Javis don't do a standard 6x4 mat, but do 4x2 instead, and this got me thinking. They do urban, desert and field, all in the 4x2 sixe, so with 3 mats I can make a 6x4 mat, but one that I can change around for every game and terrain. The idea is like this, say 2 desert and a urban plus a few buildings and trees, equals town on edge of desert, or two urban with a field in between, equals a large open park area between the buildings. with say 2 of each, I could create a number of different situations, so every game would be different. The down side? Well, the mats are not nearly as robust looking or as nice to look at, as they are not printed like many of the others but are cloth. I don't know how this will impact of wear and tear factors, but I think that they should hold up fairly well to the amount of use that they will be getting. I don't know anyone who has them, so I cant go and have a look, and I don't really trust the online stuff, as you only every seem to get the two extremes, those that love things and cant praise them highly enough or those that hate them and want to burn every single one.

But a mat doesn't make a battlefield. So what of terrain. Well, after looking at several options and also getting my hands on a few different types, namely some plastic Mantic terrain, some very nice scratch build stuff and some MDF building, I'm going with the MDF stuff. There are several good packages on eBay. It can be hard to choose which building to go for as there are some really nice looking ones, and they range from old west to ultra modern and sci-fi. But I want something to fit in with the fluff of my armies, mainly the IG ones, so I've been looking at single story type building, build in a kinda middle eastern type style. I eventually came up with this lot (picture just in case the link doesn't work):





Ok, so not quite what I was looking for, but it covers every angle. Single story buildings plus some ruins, for making the little villages fitting the fluff of my IG worlds, some big buildings, mostly ruins for some off world action. They will also fit in with my plans for the mats, painting up the single story building to mostly fit the desert and grass areas and the bigger ruins for the urban areas, obviously I could chop and change a bit, but on the who I think that its going to be good. In addition, the same seller is selling off cuts/miss cuts that can be used to base other items, namely the trees/plants that will accompany the buildings. Again, these will be themed to the IG worlds and will there for be mostly made of fist tank plastic grass. Based up in small clumps, they will represent scrub and bushes and scattered around the board they can be used to represent the greener side to the planets, lots in the grass areas or just a few scattered around in the desert and urban areas.

All in all, I'm quite excited by this project and i'm hoping to get it underway soon. However, I may have to wait until funds are more available, which may well be after Christmas, when I've had all my present money (yes, no ones buys me present these days, I just get money and told to "buy something nice", so that would be little men stuff then.





Wednesday 14 September 2016

Blood Angles

Image result for blood angels baal strike force



Well, there has been a few leaks of the new Blood Angles stuff. While I have yet to see it in the flesh as it were, its not looking great for my boys, I think there may need to be some serious changes if I need to move away from the Blood Angels Baal Strike Force. I'll wait and see what happens, but i'm safe enough until the 8th ed codex hits.

Friday 9 September 2016

Tyranids Vs Hjaltland 1000pts

This is the third of the battles that I fought in the last few weeks. This was between the Nids and Hjaltland LI again, although this time I was facing a different player and a very different Nids list. I was expecting this to be a hard fought battle but it didn't work out that way in the end, but I'll go in to that later.

The armies were 1027 points of Nids, consisting of several groups of Termagaunts and Hormagaunts, a Genestealer brood and a Lictor and I think 2 groups of Tyrinid warriors, but not 100% certain.

The Hjaltland LI, consisted of 1033 points, (yes I could have dropped a flamer or grenade launcher and hit 1027, but I didn't think about this until after) including, a command squad, 2 platoons of 3 squads apiece, my wyverns, and a couple of psykers, priests and commissars.

We played the Mealstrom game 4, I cant remember which one it is, but its the one where you can steal each others cards. I like this game as it can be helpful when you pull out your cards and think, "bullocks, can do any of them". Obviously this doesn't help when you opponent had completed all his cards already!

On a side note, we didn't do warlords, as my opposition was using a borrowed army without a codex, using battlescribe.


Turn one

For my cards I drew 12/24/52  (fix bayonets, obj 4, blood and guts). I knew that all of these cards were out of reach for my first turn, so I prettymuch ignored them. With most of the nids hidden I stayed where I was, only moving up on the right to engage the unit of gaunts there. The main player for this and many other turns though was the wyverns. They managed to destroy a unit of gaunts outright for first blood.
So at the end of my turturnscored a point for first blood and Discarded 52 (blood and guts )

My opponent drew  cards - 16/51/64 (obj 6, overwhelming firepower, assassinate). Again, not a great set of cards, especially for a combat orientated army. However, he managed to steal one of my objectives for a point.
So after turn one my opponent scored - 24 (stole obj 4) and discarded 64 (assassinate )

It occurs to me now that I might have been playing things slightly wrong, with discarding cards. Do you do it at the end of your turn or at the beginning of the next just before you draw new cards. Think its supposed to be the latter and not the former as I've been playing.



Just before the wyverns opened up, already the unit on the right is down to just 2 models and a center unit is decimated but its the Grey unit hiding behind the building that's about to bare the brunt of the stormshard mortars.


On turn 2 I drew some new cards, giving me - 12/13/34 (fix bayonets, strength in unity, obj 4). Again not great, but there was some points to be had. My turn was pretty simple again, hold on the left and push up on the right. This resulted in destroying the remnants of two gaunt squads, the one on the right with 2 models in, the last of the center units and a small squad to stealers leaving only one squad of gaunts hiding behind a building in the top left of the board. I managed to steal a card off my opposition and score an AM objective for 2 points - 16/13 (stole 16 - obj 6, strength in unity) and I discarded 12 (fix bayonets )

My opponent drew new card for turn 2 as well, ending up with cards - 12/22/51 (obj 2, obj 2, overwhelming firepower). If he could grab objective 2 in the center of the board he could get double points and seeing as he was already camped on objective 4, had the option to steal that as well. As it was he managed to get half his units in from reserve. One of the units came in dead on target the other scattered a little, unfortunately it was the unit going for objective 2 that scattered, lucky only by 4 inches, so it could still claim it when all the models were rather tactfully placed! These new units managed to wipe out 8 guardsmen in one squad, but it was starting to look like too little too late, even at this stage! At the end of the turn though he scored  - 12/22/34 (obj 2, obj 2, stole 34 - obj 4) for 3 points.

The horde moves up

A lack of targets, good job the wyvern can rain death anywhere it likes!

Some nid reserves! 

Just before the nids open up, the squad in the open in the middle are just about to take a whole lot of pain!


Turn 3 and my new cards - 15/23/25 (overwhelming number, obj 3, obj 5). This time I was confident that I could get all these cards done. The blob squad on the right flank did alittle bit of a conga line to get in range of the enemy and stay on an objective. Easy when you've got a lot of guardsmen to spare. Most of the nid reserves were removed this turn, leaving very little on the board. At 5he end ofmy turn I scored - 15/23/25 (overwhelming number, obj 3, obj 5)

mY opponents turn started with the arrival of the last of his reserves and the unavailing of his new cards - 42/51/53 (behind enemy lines, overwhelming firepower, no prisoners), all of which were achievable thanks the the deep striking units and the meager remains of one squad. The squad in question was dispatched with ease by the newly arrived units, but not a lot else happened. with only 4 units for a total of 12 models, half of which were spore mines, there was little else he could achieve. Anyway he scored 42/51/53 (behind enemy lines, overwhelming firepower, no prisoners)

They survived turn 2, but there's only so much 2 guardsmen can do!

The conga line for the objective on the right.


Turn 4 and things were starting to look perilous for the nids. my cards this turn were - 16/44/56 (storm of fire, ascendency, harness the warp) and all were achievable this turn without much effort. Most of the effort went in to securing points by running units to ensure I claimed enough objectives and all the psykic dice went in to one roll to ensure success. As a result only just 2 of the units were removed from the enemy, all those with shooting abilities as it happened. As a result I scored - 16/44(2)/56 (storm of fire, ascendency for 2, harness the warp)

At The end of the top of turn 4 and the nids are suffering.

My opponents cards - 31/35/52  (obj 1, obj 5, blood and guts), did him few faviours this turn. If I remember correctly I had both of the objectives, but even if I hadn't I think the closest was still over 15 inches away. So he did what he could and went for the only card that he had a chance of getting, blood and guts. As a result he charged one ofmy squads, loosing one creature to the wall of death from 2 flamers, and then failing to do enough damage to the squad. The fact that there was a priest in the mix helped a lot, and I managed to get a wound back as well. So at the end he scored no points this round.

The nids falorne hope!

End game

At this point we were running out of time and when I turned over my new cards I could achieve all of them, I cant remember what the cards were as I did not record them, and even with discarding a card and drawing a new one, it was going to be impossible for my opposition to score the required points to win or even draw, so we called it there. As it stood we both had line breaker, and points wise it was standing at 11 to 7 in my faviour. Another turn and the gap would have spread further, possibly in to a tabling. 

Whilst this game wasa resounding victory for the imperium, I was surprised at how squishy the bugs were. I have always faced big stuff when playing nids and I realise why now, the basic troops and stuff are very very squishy. With poor saves and love T values there easy to remove, even for lowly guardsmen, where as the big stuff is almost impossible. Ill still take the win though!

Friday 2 September 2016

1500pts Quins vs MT Dagr Ormr

My second game is my recent run of games was fought using my Militarum Tempestus and was fought against the dreaded Harlequins. We fought Maelstrom games 5, which I cant remember the name of but its the one where you don't show your cards. I like this game, as you are always left to second guess your opponents cards and left trying to figure out the best way to stop them.

My oppositions army  is a very nice army, well painted and with a good theme. All the models are based around a circus, with jesters, clowns and mimes all being represented.


Clowns, not looking very funny if you ask me!

Mimes, and a random Mantic blokes on the right! Used to proxy some of the characters, Death Jesters and Shadow seers I think, but I cant remember which was for which.

The warlord traits we each received were relatively good, My opposition gained the ability to mirror jump once per game, so I nice 24" movement if he wished, a good get out of jail free card that one. Mine gave me the ability to re-roll reserve rolls or deep strike and only scatter 6", very useful when your DS'ing half your army!


The board, with my units set up in the building at the bottom.

The sum total of my deployment, a command squad and two squads of troopers,

A close up of the command squad (at the rear) and the rifle squad (at the front)

The enemy deployment.

Turn 1 - cards drawn were 14/24/61 (obj 4, obj 4, kingslayer)
This turn nothing happened, really, nothing, I moved one squad forward, and he moved forward. With both of us having 18" range weapons, we were both out of range.


Turn 2 and I retained all my cards, so, 14/24/61 (obj 4, ojb 4, kingslayer). Using my warlord trait I also inserted the remainder of  my ground forces, acting very aggressively, placing all my units behind the enemy, and trying to do maximum damage to their transports and fast moving bike units. While this generally worked out well, as I destroyed 2 of the 3 large vehicles with melta, one bad scatter, 5" straignt towards an enemy unit if I remember correctly, resulted in the death of 8 of 10 troopers!

Said incident can be seen above and below. Next to the green skimmer there was a black one, which went boom big time, with a 4" blast, taking out the attacking unit and all the special weapons. Below you can see the two remaining members, the vox caster and rifleman. Somehow they survived, passed their leadership test and held objective 4 for me!



As you can see, the return fire was brutal though. From 2 ten man squads and a 5 man command, I was down to just 2 men and a 4 man command by the end of turn 2! Not a great start, but the units on the other side of the table faired a lot better!

At the end of my turn though I had scored cards 14 and 24 (obj 4 and obj 4) thanks to the two brave warriors, I chose to discard 61 (kingslayer) though, as this was going to be pretty hard to achieve. I also managed to get First blood for killing the skimmer that cost me so many live, no such thing as an easy point!

Turn 3 and the air support finally showed up! roaring on where the Valkyrie and Vendetta.
For this turn I also got some new cards, 23/26/34 (obj 3, obj 6, obj 4), a nice easy set, just take a few objectives! One was a straight up point as I already had obj 4 from last turn, bonus! This turn I continued with the plan, focusing on the skimmers where possible, trying to kill of the mobility. From memory, this worked out quite well, I'm pretty sure that by the end of the turn they were down to just one of the gun boat skimmer things and a skyreaper thing. However, this turn we made a mistake, as an enemy deathjester deep struck in and then proceeded to assault my warlord and his unit, resulting in the death of my warlord.


The sound of jet engines! The planes had a bit of a job flying through the buildings, there wasn't a lot of room to manoeuvre, as you'll see in the next few turns!

The death of the warlord, at the bottom right of the ruin and the other fight between jet bike and rifle squad at the other end. If I had been able to get the squads in to support each other, I might have done a little better, but as it was both squads were doomed.

At the end of my turn I ahd scored - 26/34  (obj 6, obj 4), and lost my warlord in the process!


Turn 4 and I drew cards 11/23/45 (obj 1, obj 3, supremacy), and had a good chance at getting a few points.
This turn saw a lot of mopping up by my opposition. I had been unable the past few turns to kill of the last of the Quinsy troops, something I didn't manage to achieve this turn either. However, my opponent managed to wipe out prettymuch all my ground troops.

Things get a little congested in the middle!

A cheeky maneuver, the valkyrie is hovering and claiming the objective. Placed on the top floor it meant the hull was less the three inches away and skimmers can claim!

The last of the command squad is eliminated

The last stand! The last of my ground troops engaging the enemy. The death jesters were the bane ofmy life by this point. The squad below had survived two previous turns of being forced to run for the edge of the board, surviving the last turn by inches (the Grey line at the bottom is the actual edge, an inch away)


At the end of the turn I Scored - 23 and 45(2) ( obj 3, supremacy for 2)

Turn five was a quick turn, I drew cacar 11/21/42 (obj 1 x2, behind enemy lines) buthad only 2 flyers! 

Not a great deal I could do, so I went for it, both flyers went in to hover and blasted down the table, boosting and forgoing firing to grab the points. With the objective again on top of the building the valkyrie grab it and the vendetta went for the end zone. As a result I last the valkyrie to grenade and haywire attacks, but the vendetta survived and prevented a tabling!


As a result of these antics I scored  all my cards, 11/21/42  (obj 1 x2, behind enemy lines)

So, when all 2as said and done, what were the scores? I had scored 12 in total, 10 for my cards plus first blood and line breaker, lucky to have behind enemy line in my last hand, effectively getting me double points! As for the quins? They scored 7, 6 from cards and slay the warlord. He might have had line breaker as well, but I think we kinda lost interest in that end of the table in his last turn as they couldn't do anything to the two skimmers. This probably would have put him on 8 points, but from talking to my opponent it appears the cards weren't with him and he got a lot of do X cards rather than objective cards.

Either way, another good win for the forces of the imperium!