Wednesday 31 May 2017

IG Leaks

So this information has come from Nafka (Faeit 212) and originated at CanHammer_yt's Instagram account (here)

I've been waiting for something like this for ages and its finally here, so who does it tell us? It actually tells us quite a bit, some good, some not so good.

Orders

The new orders are pretty much the same as the last orders, but just adjusted to the new rules. Many of them have got better, such as FRFSRF giving double the number of shots rather than just one, so 4 in rapid fire range. Take aim and bring it down give rerolls to hit and wound, but are no longer specific to a target type. Forward for the emperor and move, move, move are pretty much unchanged. Get back in the fight is very similar, giving the same basic ability to rally troops back in to normal actions, but its fix bayonets that seems like it could be most useful, giving you an extra fight phase, something that could be very useful to the guard, who are not exactly known for their close combat abilities.

Squads

Now, this is the first of two pages which has the not good bits on. Infantry squads are a troop choice, but special weapons squads are marked as elite! On the next page heavy weapons squads are marked as heavy support and vets are elite. So is this the end of the Infantry Platoon? Are infantry squads the only troop choice?

As for the squad rules, well, nothing really changes, apart from the sgts gaining a chainsword. One thing that stood out but isn't really unexpected is written in the vox rules. It mention friendly officers, which I assume means that officers will now be single models, not a surprise really, but what happens to the company and platoon command squads? Will they now act as the leaks suggest that the SM command squad will, being able to take wounds for the officer at the expense of every one becoming a mortal wound. If so, your going to want a few around, especially for your warlord.

Special weapon squads still appear to be useless, apart from demo charge spam, which still looks like it could be fun.

Vets

So with heavy weapons teams being relegated to heavy support, this means that they are now in one of the most congested slots in the FOC, good job we can take more of each of them now. As for rules, nothing seems to have changed. It will be interesting to know if the same rules applies to weapons strength as before, ie strength twice toughness causes instant death, if they do, then the squads are just as squishy as before. The only advantage I can see now is that I might be able to shoehorn these guys into my MT force as some heavy support.

The vets seem about the same as well. There is only one thing that is interesting. It says that one vet can take a heavy Flamer and that up to three other vets can take special weapons. There doesn't seem to be any caveat a out if you take the Flamer you can't take a third special weapon, so ill have to look at upping the number of special weapons in each squad. There is however a bit of bad news, there doesn't seem to be anything about doctrines, hopefully its on the bottom of the page that's been cut off, but it looks like we could have lost them! I'm still hopeful, as this was one of the key features of vets but then so was the platoon structure and we seem to have lost that.

Tanks

 The Leman Russ Battle Tank, the mainstay of the imperial armored might. And personally I think its pants, ok that's an overstatement. I still don't think its great, its a lot better than it was but its still not great. Stat wise its ok, and will take a bit to killing but there are a few problems for me. First the autocannons taken a nerf, as it was 4 twin linked and now its just 4, surely it should have been 8 shots? That would go with the rest of the twin linked world. And apparently an overheating supercharged plasma sponson  can destroy a tank in the blink of an eye. In the rules for tank commanders and I assume for LR demolishers, the plasma main weapon, the Executioner plasma cannon can overheat and only cause d6 mortal wounds and render the gun useless, but a sponson plasma gun can kill the tank outright? Seems a little odd to me.

One good bit is the fact that squadrons still exist, which I find strange as they seem to have removed platoons. Coupled with the fact that you now run the vehicles seperatly is good, means that taking different types of tanks, ie vanquisher and punisher, in the same squadron is not such an issue. It means that I don't have to take two squadrons to get my choice of tanks.

On the right there is a little peak of the demolishers variants, you can't make out much but they are more expensive, power level 12 instead of 11, hopefully they will have more wounds or higher toughness to show for the tougher nature of the vehicle as shown by the higher rear armour on the previous editions.

Tank commander

As with the rest of the characters in 8th, the tank commander has lost his buddy and is now flying solo. He remains the same in most other ways, with a similar stat line to standard tanks but with better BS, as before. His orders seem to be exactly the same and will be very important if you fancy supercharging your plasma guns, using the gunner, kill on sight order. Here we see the extra rule for the plasma cannons, which states the vehicle only takes 6 mortal wounds instead of being removed, hopefully this is just been missed off the page of the LRBT entry. There is not much else to say about the tanks apart from the fact that storm bolter finally make sense, rapid fire 2 is what they should always have been, as they are basically two bolter duck taped together. Granted assault 2 was the best they could do in precious editions, but now there defiantly where they should be.

So, what's my overall verdict? My feelings are mixed right now, there are some good bits, namely orders and extra weapons in the vet squads. But there are some bad bits, the potential removal of the platoon system, something that may well effect both the MT and the IG. Also the moving of the various squads, heavy, special and vets, is not something I'm in favor of yet. The main thing is though, were still lacking a lot of information, what will happen to platoon and company command squads, what are the rules for commissars and priests (although I suspect these will be similar to the sisters versions), what will happen with artillery squadrons? If the same applies as with tanks, what will happen to barrage weapons? One thing is for sure, there's going to be quite a few changes to my armies!

Tuesday 30 May 2017

More Eagle Knights

Just a quick update on the Eagle knights. With getting sidetracked with the dreadnought and the additional characters that i forgot about, I didn't get as much done as i would have liked the other weekend. However, I have been pushing on with the knights. I have almost got all of the models base coated. 

The Box

There are still a few more models to go, but on the whole they are there and ready for a coat or two of orange. I have noticed that the colour of the primer is not having as much effect as I though it might have. Yes, the white primer does make the base colour lighter and the black primer does make the base coat darker, as you would expect, but with the various grey coloured primers I also ended up with didn't make as much difference. I was hoping that there would be quite a difference in the final colours and that the oranges would be different, creating a patchwork effect of power armour. The idea was that this would come across as an army on the move, constantly in battle and performing repairs as necessary, but I think that it will not show up like that. I still think that I can get the effect that I want, but only time will tell how well it works out.

In other news, there have been a number of leaks in recent days, mostly yesterday as far as I can tell, the show some info about the death company. Now, its good and bad. Looks like some new characters, namely ancients and champions, both existing as single model units, who or what these are I don't know, but I'm keen to find out. On the bad side however is the fact that the death company seem to loose relentless and rage, as its not in the data sheet, however it could be included in the death company key word? Not entirely sure how these things work yet. Plus my boltgun wielding thunder hammer armed dudes are now in trouble.  In the previous codex you could swap your chainsword and/or bolt pistol, now it just says "and". One of my guys is visibly wielding a hammer and bolter but one isn't, but the three other squad members are also wielding bolters and chainswords, and without relentless they are also going to need surgery. Ill hold off until the books drop but seeing as they are only base coated, now is the time to do any major reconstruction work.

Friday 26 May 2017

Wargaming mat

So a while ago I got a war games mat for Christmas. It is a Micro Art Studios Grassland's mat in the standard 6' by 4', alongside this I also received some MDF buildings. I have only played a couple of games of the mat so far, also using the buildings, although only the first two sets (A and B) formed of the smaller buildings. I cant vouch for how hard wearing the mats and buildings are, but from what I have seen of them so far they are at least as good as any of the other mats I've used in the past. I will do another review in the future after i have had a chance to use both more, and also how it gets on being stored, as I usually have a long time between games and the mat will spend a lot of time rolled up in its case. This leads me to the only issue I have found so far. While the bag it comes with is of a good quality, its very basic. Ok, so its a free bag, but there is no handle on it at all. I would have liked just a simple handle on the case, just for manoeuvring it around more than anything. I may well look at getting a proper carrying case at some point, but for the moment the basic case will do.

Mat ready for battle

The table above was used in a game against Orks, and it really makes the difference to the experience and I really want to get all the buildings up and running and also get some paint on them, just a very basic colours scheme just to finish off the visuals.


Another view

The next plan is to get some foliage, to this aim, I have got hold of some cheap plastic plants for creating some tropical plants. I'm just trying to find some suitable MDF bases.

Tuesday 23 May 2017

Dreadnought surgery

In the previous post I mentioned the dread I'd done for my Eagle Knights. I think everyone will notice that it was actually the Hellbrute from DV, with minor modifications. But the question is how do you turn the DV Hellbrute in to a marine dreadnought? There are probably some people out there who will think that this is a simple easy thing and I really wish I was one of them! Granted I could probably have done a lotmore than I did, shaving off some more of the symbols and faces carved in to the body of the dread, green stuffing various parts to make it more angular and slab sided, as per the marine dreads.


Hellbrute and Marine dread

With them side by side its easier to see the differences, and there are quite a few of them. Apart from all the spiky bits, of which there are quite a lot, the whole thing is more rounded, less brick like. There is also a lot more detail to the torso, and especially the legs. While I would quite like to have a proper dread, I have an agreement with myself that I will always try to use what I have before buying anything else and while a dread with multimelta and powerfist, foot slogging across the board is pretty useless, its cheap and I've only got one because I have to (but thats a topic I've covered before).

So what did I do to try and De-chaos the dread, probably not as much as I could have. I went for the basics of cut all the spikey bits off and lost the chains and bits from the torso. I could have taken off the spikes/arrows from the torso and legs and possibly the face from the left leg but that was going to be a lot of time and effort, both of which are a bit lacking at the moment. I also like the face, and think that with the right paint job it might look quite good and not at all chaos like, its a long shot as everyone knows what the model is and instantly jumps to the 'oh your playing chaos' conclusion. There are a couple of things I would have liked to change, but a) don't have the bits or b) don't have the skill. These are the middle of the torso, as I would liked to have put a marine dread center section in, but I don't have one and I'm not paying ebay prices for one. I don't really like the face but I don't know what else to do with it, so it willnstay for the moment and ill see what its like painted. I would have liked to have changed the exhausts at the top for more mechanical looking ones, as the current ones are quite organic looking, but hopefully a metallic paint job will do something to mitigate that a bit. The big one though, is the back bone/spine structure up the back. Its obviously a back bone and doesn't fit with the machine that is the marine dread but I have no way of dealing with this. Not only don't I have a clue as to how to deal with it, I don't have the ability with green stuff, and the like, to remodel it.


In reality the who thing is a compromise and not a very good one at that but its what I have, so ill deal with it. The one thing I can say is that I actually quite like the pose, he does look like he's aboutto wreck something or someone. Ill see what he looks like when the paint job is finished, but for now its a waiting game.

Friday 19 May 2017

10000 views part 2

Continuing looking at the stats for the blog, I thought that I would look at the operating systems and browsers. There isn't much to say on either of these two as they are fairly self explaining but its a snap shot in to the world computer habits.

As you can see, chrome (46%) is the favorite Browser by quite some way, followed by firefox (27%). The old faithful Internet explorer (15%) is sitting way down in third, it always surprises me how far down IE is, as I remember a time when it was all anybody but the really tech savvy used and the likes of firefox and netscape were quirky alternatives. Safari and its mobile brethren are the only other browsers of note, forming 8% of viewers, the others are pretty insignificant and some are brewers I have never heard of, phantomJS anyone?

Of operating systems, windows is still very much king of the hill, with a massive 68% of the share, the Mac and istuff only forms 14% as the next biggest share. It seems odd that windows is such a big player here but its own browser is dropping down the list, I wonder if google have any plans to get in to the operating systems market! Again the other systems are pretty insignificant in the grand  scheme of things, forming only 18 percent, with 12 being taken by Linux and android.

Its interesting to see that despite all the views from all over the world, there are actually a lot of common features.

Referring sites and url's

Now, these have always confused me but I recently had a good look into what all these mean and while I still don't full understand what it all means, it makes a lot more sense to me. One of the thing that has shown itself is what putting the blog on to the faeit212 blog roll. The blog has received a massive amount of traffic from the site and has defiantly shown me that I could grow the blog quite easily if I wanted to, by putting the effort in to putting the blog on Reddit and being more specific on things like google+. 

For the referring url's nafka.com has shot to the top of the list, overtaking google in a relatively short time, but in truth, a massive amount of traffic come from nafka, as 6 of the top 10 on the list are variants on the site ( .com, .Co.UK, .De and so on) compared to just 2 google url's. Its a similar story on the sites, google maybe top of the list by some was over nafka, only challenged  by blogger, once you combine things, it paints a different picture.

Google referred 436 times in total (350 and 86) where as nafka referred 644 times (239, 183, 106, 59 and 57) obviously it doesn't show the whole picture, just a small snapshot, but it all points towards joining the nafka blog roll as a good thing. I don't know if it will mean that the views will keep growing of if they will plateau off again, even if they do plateau I will be quite happy.

I really have to mention confessions of a 40k addict and St Andrews wargaming at this point, as both of these sites also bring a lot of traffic my way. So thanks for that and hopefully I repay the favor by sending a few your way too.



As for searches, well there have only been a handful and the only one of note is "sobspace land com", not quite sure what they were searching for or if they found it, bit its an odd one nonetheless. 

I know a lot of these facts are not of interest to a lot of people but I always find them fascinating, a small snapshot of the world of the internet. Its also interesting to see the change over time, although as the blog gets older and the numbers rise, there will be less changes in the stats. I guess the next big milestone will be 25000, it will be interesting to see how long that takes and what changes will have occurred before then.

One last thing to note on here is about adsense. I posted on here not long ago about putting ads on the blog, well I tried but apparently I the blog isn't suitable, not sure why and I didn't really look to hard into the reasons. So there won't be any ads on here for the foreseeable future, although I will probably revisit things at some point. If I do i will have a better look at why it did t work this time around but for now it does take the decision out of my hands, which makes things easier. 

Normal service will resume next week, and I plan on having a look at how the changes for 8th will affect my main armies, the hjaltland LI and Eagle Knights.




Tuesday 16 May 2017

10,000 views

Ok, so this happened a few weeks back but life has been a little hectic of late. Anyway, the blog hit a new milestone, 10000 views. Its been a while in coming, but now its here. Granted for many its not a huge tally for some but its quite exciting for me. To me it pushes the blog past a major milestone and in to another league. Ok, probably a little silly to look at it that way but when I started this blog I didn't really expect to be seeing 1000 plus views a month, I wasnt sure that anyone would actually visit and was quite excited when I got my first few views. Recently I've had several posts pass the 100 views mark, which has been great but lets have a look at the stats. Now for may people these are pointless numbers and to some extent they are, as they only give a very broad view of those who frequent the blog, bit I've always found them interesting.

Overview page

Views


So, who has been viewing the blog? The list seems not to be changing much these days, as the top half a dozen or so are pretty well spread out. Below are listed the top ten counties, with the last viewing figures in brackets (at 2500 views)


USA - 2862 (742)
UK - 1585 (194)
Russia - 1151 (185)
France - 786 (89)
Ireland - 440 (190)
Germany - 438 (71)
China - 343 (114)
Ukraine - 306 (121)
Australia - 232 (-)
Canada - 182 (-)

So, its only Australia and Canada that are new to the chart, the rest seem firmly established. However, there have been a few changes in order, with both France and Germany jumping up the list a bit but china and Ukraine have dropped a bit. With some of the recent bot attacks that have occurred I was surprised that neither of these two were higher on the list, or is that a little too stereo typical? One thing that I'm surprised that google don't provide is % figures, so I thought that I would do them and see what it says.


USA - 28.5
UK - 15.8
Russia - 11.4
France - 7.8
Ireland - 4.4
Germany - 4.4
China - 3.4
Ukraine - 3.1
Australia -  2.3
Canada - 1.8
Rest of the world - 17.1

To me It makes a lot more sense when i look at it like this. Over a quarter of my views come from america, almost double the next biggest readership, the uk. Russia still forms a signigficant percentage as well. How much is actual views and how many are bots, i dont know. These three together form over half my total views though, a barmy 55.7 percent. The top ten make up 82.9 percent, with the other 7 making 27.2 percent, less than america on its own. What is also interesting is that 17.1 percent is made up from the rest of the world. With significantly more than 10 counties in the world, who are these people and where do they come from? Well, i know that some are from belgium, netherlands, Finland, norway and poland in europe and malasia, indonesia, new zealand, brazil and south africa. There will have been others but they are the ones i remember seeing On the list.


Pages and posts

Next up are the pages and posts. We've looked at whos Looking but what are they looking at? Well, recently I have had a number of posts Pass the 100 views mark, altalthough i suspect that each has been viewed more times than that, as the main page always has move views than each page and the full posts are published there. Still, its nice that some of the posts have reached this level. The posts in question are Mostly related to 8th edition with my thoughts on the possibilities for 8th edition guard, marines and scions all breaching the 100 views mark. The most popular post though is still the post on painting and the advantages of painting pre or post assembly.  The post I wrote on the then new sternhammer formation has been steadily gaining views over the last year or so and has finally reached the 100 views point too. 

There are also a couple of posts sitring in the 90's who may yet reach a hundred views, but they are older posts, so those last few views may take a while. 

The various pages that i have on the blog have also had there fair share of traffic, with a number of them climbing steadly towards the 100 views mark. A few months ago, I redesigned the pages, grouping things together in to pages and sub-pages, and it seems to have been successful, not only in simplifing the main blog page but also navigating  around the various elements of my collection. The popular pages still seem to be the about me and tactics pages, which is probably due an update. it will be interesting to see what will have to be updated on the various pages with the new addition, but that's for another post.

I think I've talked enough for the moment but will follow this with a look at some of the other facts on offer, such as operating systems and browser and also the site referal data,  which I fine quite interesting.

Friday 12 May 2017

Eagle knights WiP day 2

So, with one night down, I was keen to get on with painting. the little ones had other plans and it was quite a lot later than planned when I eventually sat down at my paint table. While I was going through the models the previous night, I noticed that I had forgotten a few models that I needed for the new BA demi-company, notably the devastators and dreads. I still don't have a suitable dread for the death company, one with two power fists, but I sorted out the one for the demi-company. I also decided that I wanted to be able to field both command squads with jump packs, so I put together another command squad, one that mirrors the non-jump pack squad, minus the storm shield to pay for the jump packs. 

The more densely populated box

By the time I finished sorting and priming the models that were stripped last night, plus priming the new models, the box was looking a little fuller than it did before. All this extra work cut in to my painting time, so I wasn't able to get all of the models primed and base coated. I forgot to mention last time that I had chosen to base all the models in Jakero Orange, as after some more research, this seemed the base colour of choice for a lot of people, and after some careful comparison in daylight, the Ratskin Flesh was defiantly pinker than the Jakero Orange.

So what did I actually do? Well, here's some of the highlights.

The Dread

The dreadnought is the DV hellbrute, with a number of the more chaos'y parts removed. Its not perfect and could probably have quite a bit more removed to make it even less like a chaos model, however I don't have the time, ability or inclination to really go to town on the conversion. I've always thought something like a Dremel multi would be a useful tool for modelling, but I cant justify the cost of such a toy. I'll go in to more details in the next post, which is all about this 'conversion', but for now this is a picture of how it turned out once primed.

Next up are some members of the command squads, some are new models, some are modified existing models.

Command squad members. 

Tac sergeant, champion and sanguine novitiate 

Two captains, without and with jump pack

my version of the new Death Company priest

I bashed this together as I wanted to run a DC Priest for the DC formation but I wasn't going to buy the model. This is basically a Assault marine with a slightly tarted up jump pack and a Crozius Arcanum made from part of a servo skull from the Militarium Tempestus box ad a shaft from a chaos chain axe. he also carries the obligatory infernos pistol. I would have liked to have a fancier jump pack and armour for the model, but these were the only bits that I had left in the box.

Crozius Arcanum


Tuesday 9 May 2017

Eagle knights WiP day 1

The other week the wife had to go away for work for a few days, this meant that I had two nights to myself once the little people were asleep. Over the past few weeks, I have been gradually priming the various models for the Eagle Knights. There will be a post in the future on my thoughts on priming models, and the primers that I have but that's for the future. So when I sat down at the paint table (aka the computer desk and box of models) this is the view.

Models primed and ready

As you can see, there are a few different primer colours, from white to black through various shades of grey. This is intentional, as most forces that you see are nice and consistent, with a common colour through all the models, I decided that I wanted a more rough and ready looking force, without a consistent colour across the  models. They will all be orange but some will be brighter than others and some will have smoother colourings than others. Its all in an effort to show a force on the edge of the imperium, both geographically, politically and ideologically, one with limited support from the mechanicum and the various forge world. It will be a while until I see if it works out this was, or just looks like a crap paint job!

In addition to painting up some of the models, I also had some green stuff modelling to do. this was due to the fact that I have changed up my list slightly, again! Its only a minor swap to try and get some extra anti-armour capacity, without loosing any anti-infantry ability. As such I went to one of my favourite weapons, the power maul. I've said this in the past, its annoying that the only place I know to get this is in the DA vets set and even then there is only one of them! This means that I lost couple of swords (at S5 Ap3) but gained a couple of mauls (at S7 Ap4), a decent trade I think.

One Maul (left) and one combat shield (right) in their moulds

For my new setup, I needed 2 mauls and one shield. I still had my power maul mould from last time, so that was relatively simple to do, although the finished items were not perfect they should do quite nicely once painted. The shield was less successful, as some of the details were lost on the front, however, it proved pointless when I later found some spare shields in amongst some imperial guard bits!

As a result of this re-equipping of my command squad, it means that the squad now has 2 swords, a maul and an axe, along side the chainsword of the Sanguinary Novitiate, giving me 8 S5 Ap3, 4 S7 Ap4, 4 S7 Ap1 and 4 S5 Ap- attacks on a charge, all at I5.

In a few days longer than planned!

Also I dealt with some of the models that had been sitting in the 'soup' stripping. They were in there a little longer than planned, but the paint came off easily, giving me a bunch of nice clean mostly paint free models to deal with. 2 models went back in as they needed a little more time in the soup and were dealt with the following evening.

All in all I felt that I made a fair bit of progress during the night and was still in bed by a reasonable midnight! With one night left, I was optimistic I would get all the models primed and base coated.

Hjaltland LI vs Orks tactical thoughts

I don't usually do follow-up posts for my batreps, as normally I don't think themes much to talk about that I haven't mentioned but this time I have to admit, I did make a few mistakes, so quite big. I'll try tonwork through from the beginning to the end, but I'll probably end up jumping around somewhat.

Going second
This was the first and probably biggest mistake of the whole game. I chose to go second so that I coyod counter his deployment, which was just silly, as I don't really do counter deployments in that fashion. I should have gone first and hit as hard as I could  turn 1, tovtry and knock out some trukks or even just slow them down and stop the orks gaining an overwhelming charge. Again, by going first it would have meant I got two turns of shooting in, rather than just one and even though I knocked out only 1 trukk that turn, two rounds of shooting wood have almost halved the number of orks at my door. Part of my error was because I didn't know my opponents list, it was my fault as I didn't ask the right question, namely, what's your list. The squads had been explained, but I want really prepared for the trukks. Next time ill remember to double check the list.

Outflanking units
There is really two parts to this point, the fact I choose to outflank units and where I brought them on.

My choice to outflank some units as a result of my warlord traits, was a simple one, I wanted to give myself more options and also keep them alive long enough for a counter strike. I think that this was basically a sound idea but poorly executed, as I had no reserve modifiers and so the unit didn't turn up until turn 3, by which time the action was pretty much over. I think having them on the board could have been the better option, keeping them out to a flank and forcing my opponent to spread his forces out more. This would have meant he wood not have been able to gang up on the centre units as much and maybe they could have held a little longer.

The second issue here though is where I decided to bring the squad on. I chose to bring them on at my board edge, to try and counter the orks. As it happened, they ended up at the furthest edge and had to fit slog across most of the board to really make a difference. I should really have pushed them up in to the enemy deployment zone or mid table to try and give me options for objectives, away from the few remaining orks. This may have gotten me a couple more points, as two of the cards required objective up that end of the field and a 21 man squad can be strung out across the table to cover a fair bit of ground. This wouldn't have won the game for me, but it could have made a difference as to how close the game was.

Priest
Now I really love my priests, not just because of the looks on peoples faces when they ask you to take morale tests on that 30 man squad and you point to your man and utter the word 'fearless'. The zealot rule and war hymns are also a great reason for taking the priest over the commissar, when you remember. In the orks turn 2 assault I forgot both of these things, and that was a big mistake, probably the second biggest behind the deployment. I think that if I had remembered then the orks would have suffered quite a bit more then they did. With rerolls to hit, plus possibly rerolls to wound, I could have been killing 10 orks instead of 4 (according to mathshammer), which could have made a huge difference as that equates to 24 extra attacks that I wouldn't have had to face. This could have resulted in quite a few guardsmen surviving until the next turn. I doubt that it would have changed the games result, but it would have meant that it would have taken at least 2 more assault phases to destroy the guardsmen then it actually did.

Also, its a bad idea to risk your priest trying to tank an instant death attack on the 4++. Especially when it means that your squad will collapse and be killed off when you do.

Plasma command squad
I threw these guys in to try and take down the mega nobz and the warlord and while they did damage,  they really didn't do that much before being wiped out in combat. I think that I was far to aggressive with them, as I decided to get up close and personal and in rapid fire range with the plasma guns. I should have stayed back and taken more time, keeping them out of charge range and either kept chipping away at the nobz or drawn them away from my lines. The other option would have been to just ignore the nobz and dropped them over the far side of the board, to take the objectives there. This could have worked out better, especially combined with the outflanking squad.


Card errors
I made a few errors with the cards as well. One error is quite a fundamental error and that is with when to discard cards. I have always played it, and have never been told/shown otherwise, that you discard a card as the first thing you do in your turn, before dealing replacements or additional cards. My opponent commented otherwise, saying you discarded at the end of your turn, however in the game I pretty much overruled him. I have since had another look through the book and it appears that I have been playing it wrong all this time and next time I see my opponent I shall have to apologize to him. This may have made a small difference in game, as I had a few objectives stolen off me, however I stole some too. I will have to remember the correct order for next time.

I also did not discard some cards as quickly as I should have. I think that really I should have been discarding a card every turn, to keep the cards moving and keep my options open as much as I could. Thesis one of those things that I don't believe would have altered the game on its own, but combined with the other factors might have brought the game closer, even if it would still have resulted in my defeat.

The final this g to say about the cards is that I don't think I gave enough priority to the cards this time around. In past games I have always been willing to sacrifice units to gain points or at least risk them. In this game I think I held back to long and too much, in terms of outflanking units, and should have gone more aggressive on the objectives.

Ultimately though, it was a combination of numerous failings that led to my first defeat in quite a while, since Northern Invasion, and I think only the second in the last 6 months. I think it was probably a good thing, as I was probably getting a little cocky and its made me reevaluate things again. Hopefully when I get another game in, it'll go a little better than this time around.

The next few posts will be back to 8th edition and a catchup on my thoughts about what's been happening. I've a number of posts in the works at the moment and with all the 8th stuff going on its hard trying to fit everything in but we'll try.

Friday 5 May 2017

Hjaltland LI vs Orks

I finally managed to yet a game in this year, its only taken 4 months but I did it. It was also the first time I had been able to use my Christmas presents. I have been looking forward to using my mat and terrain for a while and I was not disappointed. Ill cover the mat and terrain properly in another post, but right now ill get on with the game.

It was a maelstrom of war mission, mission 4 to be precise. 1500 points of the imperials finest verses the scum of the universe, the orks. My list was fairly standard, Creed and his ccs with MoO, a second ccs with 4x plasma, two platoons of two squads, one with flamers and autocannons and one with just flamers. These were backed up the the ever dependable wyverns and the valkyrie and vendetta of the navy. I also took 2 ml1 psykers and 2 priests. 

My opponent went for a very aggressive ork list, with 5 trukks, 4 with boyz in heavy armour and one with the warlord (possibly ghazghkull thraka)  and 4 meganobs, plus the mad doc himself. He also had a cannon, I can't remember which one, possibly the traktor kannon, and two bombers.


The table pre-deployment

The table post deployment



The ork deployment, simple and easy.

My deployment, nothing much different from usual.

I missed what warlord trait my opposition had, but I know that he got two, one fixed and one from the strategic traits I believe? But I could be wrong on that. For my warlord trait I rolled relentless for the command squad and D3 units outflanking. I decided that this want the best options and rerolled, and ended up with exactly the same traits, so it was meant to be. I rolled a 3 for the D3 outflanking units and decided to outflank two squads and a priest.

My psykers both rolled on Divination, as always, and ended with Scriers gaze and perfect timing. One is pretty useless and one good, as it means I could issue a different order and effectively double up, ie cast ignores cover and order bring it down on the quadgun, and hopefully kill off the bombers nice and early. The plan was a sound one, shame the dice didn't agree.

Turn 1

Opponents cards - 25 (objective 5), 44 (ascendency), 46 (domination)
Scored - none
Discarded - 46

My cards - 15 (overwhelming numbers), 22 (objective 2), 54 (hungry for glory)
Scored - 15, 22, stole 25
Discarded - 54

54 - challenge

As the game began, my opposition did what was expected of an ork player, and when head long towards the enemy. It was at this point I realised I have made a monumental error of judgment, I had let my opponent go first and by that I mean, I won the toss and chose to go second. This was something that would come back to haunt me many times in the game. Anyway, ork movement done, there was little else to do, so it was on to my turn.

My turn started pretty well, I pulled out some good cards, however things started going down hill after that! I failed 3 out of 4 orders, one with creed! And my last order went through on a double 1! Great. My shooting dice were just as good, missing with a lot and and failing a lot of armour pen rolls. In total I managed to take only 3 hull points, including one explodes result thanks to the trukks being open topped. This explodes result also took out 5 Orks, but still left 4 trukks pretty much unscathed.

The orks advance

The green tide advances

Turn 2

Opponents cards - 12 (an ork card, issue a challenge?), 24 (objective 4), 44 (ascendency)
Scored - 24
Discarded - none

My cards - 13 (strength in unity), 34 (objective 4), 51 (overwhelming firepower)
Scored - 51 (2)
Discarded - 13


My opponent called a waaagh this turn, and maneuvered all his troops for the charge. Overwatch managed to take a few Orks down, but with 3 squads charging the central blob squad, there was only so much I could do. The assault was pretty devastating, taking outvlarge portions of the blob squad. Now, at this point I made another mistake, that's the trouble with not playing for a long time! I had a priest in the squad yet forgot he had both zealot and war hymns, so no rerolls to hit and not rerolls to wound, which, while it wouldn't have meant I won, would have been very helpful in taking down a few more Orks.

The assault

Assaults all along the line

The aftermath of the ork charge

As a result of the charge, I was on the back foot, a small portion of my guard survived just long enough to be wiped out during my assault phase. The only highlights were the wyverns destroying the remaining ork squad on the right flank, using the heavy flamer. I think it got used more in this game than I've ever used it in the past.


A lot less guard

not a pleasant sight! 

The skies above the battlefield also became quite congested this turn, with both ork bombers and the valkyrie and vendetta arriving this turn. The vendetta made a quick impact by destroying one of the bombers but the valkyrie did little as the MMRP's scattered all over the place.

the wider battlefield

The cards were starting to turn against me at this point though, as I only scored one card, bringing my total to 5 to 1. I also realise that I played the cards slightly wrong, as I have always discarded cards at the beginning of my turn, but if I read it right the other day, you do so at the end of your turn. So I might have been able to stop my opponent getting at least 1 point.

Turn 3

Opponents cards - 12 (challenge), 44 (ascendency), 66 (big game hunter)
Scored - 44 (3), stole 34
Discarded - 12

My cards - 12 (fix bayonets), 14 (hold your ground), 46 (domination)
Scored - 14
Discarded - 46

14 - half units in deployment
12 - charge

By this point I was worried that I was lacking troops to deal with my cards. Although my opponent was also suffering as well. His cards this turn were not to concerning, but it showed that me had a lot of options that I didn't.

His rampage through my limes continues with the destruction of my command squad by the mega nobz, although he missed a few points (d3) by not charging and killing my warlord I a challange and instead flaming them to death. This saved me a few points, however he gained 3 points for ascendancy and stole one of my cards.


the orks advance

With the death of my warlord, my plasma command squad went for a bit of a hail Mary and dropped close to the ork warlord to try and plasma the guys to death. It didn't quite work as I only managed to take down 2 of the nobz, not quite what I had hoped for. The wyverns took out the remains of another ork squad.


Reinforcement arrive

The reinforcements

The last of my forces also turned up this turn, but turned up a bit far from where I needed them. It was probably another mistake to reserve and outflank the squads, but this game was turning in to a game of mistakes. Again the valkyrie did pretty much nothing again, as the MRP'S scattered massively again.


Turn 4

Opponents cards - 32 (objective 2), 64 (assassinate), 66 (big game hunter)
Scored - 32, 64
Discarded - none

My cards - 12 (fix bayonets), 21 (objective 1), 63 (scour the skies)
Scored - none
Discarded - 12

It was at this point the game was starting to turn as were started off at 6 - 5 in my favor, but the cards had other ideas.

My opponent started his turn by bombing my wyverns and immobilizing one of them. With little else to do, he chose to charge my remaining command squad and my reserve squad. The command squad was destroyed by the the nobz, but the reserve squad managed to do quite well. The ork bomber finally got to drop its payload, striking the wyverns and immobilizing one.

Its busy in the skies

Vendetta manoeuvring for a kill shot

My turn consisted of taking what positives I could, which weren't many. I maneuvered to strike at the ork warlords squad, which proved to be successful. I was also able to eliminate the last ork on my left flank. My only worry was that I failed to destroy all the mega nobz with the warlord, leaving one still alive.


In position

The bomb run

Despite slaying the warlord, things were looking bleak. With only one blob squad, two flyers and two wyverns, one of which was immortalized, on the  my options were limited. However my opponent had 4 trukks, 1 mega nobz, a bomber and a kannon, a lot less troops, but far more mobility. At this point we were 6 - 7 in objectives but 8 a piece with secondary objective (warlord and first blood)

Turn 5

Opponents cards - 21 (objective 1), 45 (supremacy), 66 (big game hunter)
Scored - 21, 45 (3), 66, stole 21
Discarded - none

My cards - 23 (objective 3), 52 (blood and guts), 63 (scour the skies)
Scored - 63
Discarded - 52

It was at this point that the cards deserted me, with my opponent drawing 3 cards he could achieve, plus steal 1 of mine and I drew only 1 achievable card. Being that this was turn 5, I was not overly hopeful.

With so little on the table, the turns were quick. The last of the mega nobz charged and destroyed the wyverns and he moved his bomber. He didn't need to move anything else as he was already in position for gaining supremacy.

The wyverns finally die

My turn was just as quick, moving forward with the reserved squad and moving my fliers around, taking down the bomber with the vendetta in the process. as it was the only objective I could achieve, I thought I'd better achieve it!

the only troops in the field, notice the missing ork bomber?

At this point we rolled for turn 6 and we continued.

Turn 6

Opponents cards - 15, 23 (objective 3), 43 (hold the line)
Scored - 15 (1)
Discarded - none

My cards - 23 (objective 3), 25 (objective 5), 45 (supremacy)
Scored - none
Discarded - none

opponent error - read 43 wrong

Turn 6 and the fun continued. By this  things were dire. It was 7 - 14 and I could score a maximum of 7 points if I was  (the objective I had and two d3 cards). As it was my opponent drew 2 achievable cards that would give him an unassailable lead. He did however give me a small lifeline by reading one of the cards wrong.

For hold the line he went forward in to my  deployment zone, rather than back in to his. A simple miss reading but it did mean that with some luck I could draw. He also decided to take out my quad gun for the fun of it, well, there was little else for the mega nobz to do.

I got my revenge by blowing the nob to smithereens by the vendetta. Iboostedthe valkyrie in to the enemy deployment zone for line breaker. And thus ended the game.

Not a lot left

The trukks advance

The Kannon

At the end of the game, I had the blood squad, with about 15 guardsmen left and the two flyers, my opponent had a kannon and 4 trukks. If we had played out turn 7, the result would have been the same as I couldn't take out more than 1 trukk and he could disperse easily to the objectives. In the end, I could have tabled him, but it would have taken about 5 more turns, so  impossible task in 1 turn.

Overall score -
16 (14 objectives, Warlord and Linebreaker)
10 (7 objectives, First Blood, Warlord and Linebreaker)

No i don't normally do follow up posts to batreps, but this time I think its needed, as I made so many mistakes during the game, both before and during, that I think its merited. So look of for the follow up soon.