New unit stats

So we've had quite a lot of information on the new edition now, a lot more that I have covered here. I haven't really bothered covering everything as I won't be able to keep up with it all! However, there were a few more bits that I wanted to cover here from the last week or so of previews.

The new data sheets are another great feature of the new edition. Again they haven't really changed much from the last edition but we have seen a few tweaks to really make them better and easier to read. The main things are the OC or Objective Control value, which now dictates how much control a unit has over an objective. This is a more granular way of doing Objective Secured and a lot better and is still very simple. The second big thing is that the WS and BS have moved to the individual weapons profiles, meaning that it's now very easy to see the difference between things like power swords and power fists. 

Another good thing that is making a return are the specialist abilities of weapons, now called “Anti” weapons but previously called “*bane” weapons (as in Armourbane and Fleashbane). The effect is the same, these weapons are really good at certain targets but can still be used against others. The chain fist above is a good example, against armour they are very good but can be used against other targets just as well. 

The “Anti” ability

Other rules that have changed slightly from previous is the Rapid Fire rule. This doesn’t seem to have changed masses but it’s a subtle tweak that could have big impacts on certain weapons. As it stands now, a rapid fire weapon double the number of shots in half range, so a Rapid fire 1 has two shots at half range and a rapid fire 2 has four shots at half range. However under the new rules this does not follow, a rapid fire weapon could actually have any number of shots at full or half range. For example, it could have 1 shot at long range and 3 at shot, being a rapid fire 2 weapon. It could in theory have only 1 shot at long range but 10 shots at half range (rapid fire 9), silly i know but possible under the new rules. I suspect that most will be just rapid fire 1 or 2 with just a few being 3 or even 4 but I can’t see many being higher than that, except maybe Orks!

Rapid fire ability

The last generic rule to mention here is the Firing Deck rule. Again this is a rule of old that has be brought back with minor tweaks. Basically, troops in vehicles will have the ability to shooting out the vehicle. Currently many vehicles have this ability but every rule is different and many vehicles who use to be able to do it haven’t been able to for a while. Now it looks like many vehicles are going to get this rule back, which is great. Drive by melta attacks out the back of chimeras could be a thing again!

 

Firing deck rules

Chimera command transport

Talking of Chimeras, we got a peak of one of its rules. We have a very similar rule at the moment and so its good to see that we will be keeping it and the chimera will still retain its place as a mobile command vehicle.

Another crazy army idea

 So, there have been two boarding patrols announced recently, and by recently I mean the last two boarding patrols to be announced. The League of Votann one looks good but I still don't have much interest in them, I might have more if I could do the majority of them as AI units with just a few actual people in there but I don't think that you really can. The other box is the only release recently that I've looked at and wanted to buy, well since the release of the field ordnance battery and rough riders but apart from them there has been nothing in a long time. 

Boarding patrol boxes

The box comes with a number of units that I'm actually interested in, in fact I'm interested in all the units there, which is rare, as there is usually at least one unit that I don't care for.

Navy units

The box has a bit of an issue though, as far as I can tell yo can't actually field this as a legal force. I could well be wrong but my understanding is that the rouge trader cannot be taken as a compulsory HQ choice and the Eversor assassin would have to be fielded as an Agent of the Imperium in the Navis Imperialis detachment. Now for boarding actions this may be different and I might have missed some rules here but it doesn't seem to work for Arcs of Omen detachments. 

Anyway, as far as I know I can just run it as an agent's of the Imperium detachment but I will have to run some acolyte squads to get my compulsory choices.

So what does the box have in it? To start with it has the Rouge Trader and her retinue, formed of the Rouge trader, Death Cult Executioner, Lectro-Maester and Rejuvenat Adept. There is also the five Voidsmen with doggo and then the 20 Navy Breachers. In addition there is also the Eversor assassin. 

This gives a nice little core to the force and clocks in at about 450 to 480 points, depending upon wargear and extras. Most of the time I think it would work out to 470. This gives me almost half the 1000 points I'd be looking for in this army. The next additions are pretty simple and are formed of units I already have painted up. These units will be 3 squads of 6 acolytes, armed in a variety of ways. These three squads will add another 240 points, and when the Inquisitor is added in, for another 65 or so points, that's brings the total up to around 795. Add in another assassin, this time a long ranged one in the form of the Vindicare and your up to 885. 

Finally, I would like to add two more squads. These are both Adeptus Arbites squads, one a Subductor squad and the other an Exaction squad. (I thought about the Vigilant squad, but they are too similar to the Navy Breachers). These units are here for two reasons, firstly the Subductor squad for their shields and mauls as a counter punch unit, ready to charge down any units that get a little too close. The Exaction squad, or maybe two smaller squads, will be upgraded and tooled up to hit specific characters and models. 

With these two units we'd be looking at around 1135 for a base 10 man  Exaction squad to 1273 with two tooled up 5 man squads. So a full agents of the Imperium Inquisitorial strike force.

Now, I am looking at buying the Agents boarding patrol box but I don't know if I will buy two boxes or more of the Adeptus Arbites, most likely I won't. I might however buy a box of Wargames Atlantic's Ooh Rahs.

These models are not my favourite models from wargames Atlantic, that would be the Bulldogs, but they don't have the right look for Arbites.  

The central head would be my head of choice for an Arbite.

Shotgun looking rifles.

These models look like they could be a very good proxy for Arbites, with rifles that could easily stand for shotguns, if I dont kitbash the spare Navy Breacher shotguns, which would be my preferred option. The meavy weapons will work as stubbers and the special would work as a Webber stand in. I would need to find some shields (probably eBay) and some mauls for the Subductor squad but that should be easy enough.

With a box of 24 models costing 25 pound, I can easily pick up a single box and build 3 squads for the cost of less than one box from GW.

There is a bit "IF" with all of this though and that is 10th edition. Before I commit to any of this I will wait and see what the actual rules look like 10th and how there units will work together in regards to faction keywords and the like.

10th Edition

So, there has been A number of articles about 10th edition and I'm not going to go over them all now, I just wanted to pick out a couple.of things that I thought were interesting. One of the early bit of information we got was about the new ways to build armies, scrapping the detachment or FOC that we have had for many editions. The evolution of the original Force Organisation Chart (FOC) that we had back in the old days, from 2nd to 5th if I remember correctly(??) through in to detachments in 6th to 9th has been long and winding with various successes and failures has finally gone. Now it's a lot more free and fluid. 

The new Build method is a lot simpler, as shown above and contains a couple of key points that we know a little about but will no doubt have to wait until the release to find out the full extend of their impact. We know that when you select the detachment rules it gives you a core rule and then access to 6 or so stratagems. I suspect that for guard we will get detachment rules for an armoured list, one for a Mechanised list and one for an infantry list. I also suspect we will get a dedicated Scion detachment as well. We may get a more general one as well. Overall I recon we will get 6 different detachments in an effort to cover all the various types of guard regiments. I have to say I do like this new system, as it mean that future books can contain a new detachment, with flavour, such as a distinct marine strike force or AdMech maniple,and it would not break the game or an army as 8t would not add to existing rules but be completely separate. 

Alongside this change there is the necessary change to the way that armies are picked, with no FOC or detachment there still has to be a way to control what units there are in an army, after all, an army made entirely out of space marine smash captains isn't going to be fun to play against. In reality this seems to just be a continuation of what we have now wih a few minor tweaks. I don't see this as anything to worry about for most armies, some like scions might have a bit of an issue due to a lack of battleline unit options and the number of other types of unit options. 

One thing I do like is the new unit stats. While there is not really a lot of change here, but the subtle tweaks have made a difference. I'll look at the new data cards in depth in another post, but I do like the new way of doing things.

 

One thing I don't like, is the fact that my shiny new codex that I've waited 5 years for has now been invalidated withing 6 months, plus I brought the data cards as well, which are also going to be invalidated. I am hopeful that our next codex will not suffer the same fate. Don't get me wrong, I do think that 40k need some help as it's just a mess right now and so far I'm liking the sound of the reset but I do wish that they could have found a way to keep the codices.

The last thing I wanted to note here is the changes to the Agents of the Imperium rules. I like to run an inquisitor in my armies when I play, purely for narrative reasons and I think it looks cool. However the issue has always been that you can only run one units, so an Inquisitor but not their retinue, or visa versa. Now, at 2000 points (assuming the battle size designations won't change) I can take 4 units, 2 characters, so Inquisitor and assassin, plus a couple of squads or acolytes or maybe a daemon host. This is another good change that I will take advantage of.

Battle foam boxes£

We hobbits are forever on a quest to find the most cost effective and easiest storage solutions for storing our precious models and up until now I have tried a few different options. I have magnetic storage trays, KR multicast, GW cases, shoe boxes with foam bits, ice cream tubs and plastic bags full of models and I’ve always come back to KR as my first choice in storage. However these are not cheap and have their limitations. However, while surfing the internet or rather eBay, I can across some options for storage boxes and while comparing prices to see if they were worth a punt I can across some Battle Foam boxes and on checking the website I found that their empty D-Boxes are on discount, down from £8.40 to £3.36. With the cost of postage I managed to get 6 boxes for less than £30. With some foam purchased from the local haberdashery, I managed to put together all the stuff i needed to build storage for all my remaining models for less than £35 or £30 for just the material (not including postage). 

D-Boxes

I brought 6 boxes, two of black, green and white. They were a little bit smaller that i though they were going to be, but that’s not a problem. The boxes are are about half the size of the KR standard boxes but are a little bit deeper. For me this works well as they are to be used to store my smaller armies, like my AdMech and my Deathwatch. One thing that i was surprised at was that despite the fact that the boxes are empty, they came ready assembled and in a huge box.

The factory

So after getting all the stuff together I started to build my new storage boxes. Yes, this takes a bit more time than just buying ready made but this way i get fully customised trays. It quite simple to build, just takes a bit of time waiting for the glue to dry properly.

Rhino storage

It can take a bit of working out to get the best use of space and also to make sure that you get a full box and are no it over or under the box capacity. I didn’t find this to much of a problem, just have to take your time with it, the hardest thing I found was making sure that you cut the pieces to the right size and I cut several to big and to small but managed to get things to go together alright. 

AdMech box

This is an example of the custom trays that i managed to build. The Dominus models are significantly bigger that the standard Skitarii, but i only have a couple of them and I am not planning of getting any more. Therefore I build a tray that was uneven to hold the Dominus models and also fir a number of Skitarii.

The vehicle tray at the bottom was also custom built to hold the two armigers and the AdMech tank. I probably could have built this try slightly differently however it works very well.

So that was one box with around 1000 points of AdMech and i have built a second box with 1000 points of Deatchwatch, with a couple of Rhinos and a Dread (the rhino tray above) plus a number of troops. I have 4 boxes left and I’m not quite sure what I’ll be putting in these. One will most likely get my Dark Guardians first born marines army and i would look to put the Eagle Knights First born in another although it will most likely need two boxes for them. Depending upon the Rutledge for 10th, i may well look at building a full Inquisition army (about 1000 points) and put that in a box. Alternatively I may look to put all my kill team stuff in one box, with all the teams, counters and other bits.

The big box

This is the big box that that all the smaller boxes came in, with a ton of small bits of foam, mostly the cut outs from other trays. They are a bit useless and I feel bad about just chucking them out but I have no need for them. The kids have been having great fun with all the bit though.

Game 2 recap - wolves

 I was really looking forward to this game after the lost one, as I felt that I could actually compete and give a good account of myself. I was not expecting to win but I was hoping to keep the gap between scores a little closer. My opponent for this game was a space wolf army, comprised of mostly first born marines, the only primaris model being a redemptor dreadnought.

The actual list itself contained a number of different element, including Grimnar and sledge, two 6 man units of blood claws and two 6 man units of grey hunters, two long fang squads, thunder wolves, wolf guard terminators and a terminator chaplain, a tech marine and then a whole bunch of dreads, Bjorn, murder fang, a redemptor and two venerables. The only advantage I had with the vehicles and most other units in the list was their slow movent, mostly 6 inches, with only the redemptor (8"), thunder wolves and Grimnar (10" each)  being quicker. Luckily the deployment map favoured me here as it opened up the no man's land to around 27 inches due to its diagonal nature. 

Guard Deployment

You can just about make out the random model to the left of my tape measure, that's a priest that's sitting out to deny the deep striking terminators. My Hellhammer is also sitting back to put as much distance between him and anything that might want to shoot at him as possible turn 1. As it happened, I got turn 1 and he moved up on the left flank.

The board 

The central ruins, marked by the two large and two smaller building sections were obscuring terrain, so my Hellhammer couldn't see through them but could be seen nonetheless. This did give me some issues but nothing I couldn't get around.

Space wolves deployment

Another view of the guard deployment

This time round I think the placing of objectives was significantly better and as a result I was able to hold at least 2 objectives pretty much all game, only failing in the last turn, partly due to some unlucky\lucky dice rolls but we'll get in to that later. My opponent placed his objectives down very sensibly, with the middle objective in the centre being placed in the central ruins furthest from me, thus making it a lot harder to get at for me. 

Turn 2

I can't remember what shooting happened in turn one, but it wasn't very much, mostly due to the distance between the armies. I know my mortars chipped a would each of the blood claws but I think that we about it. By the end of turn two though things were a little different. My Hellhammer and survived remarkable untouched by the long fangs and the twin lascannons of Bjorn, the missile launcher long fangs actually did the majority of wounds over the game, mostly as the lascannon armed ones were removed in my second turn, one shorted by the big Hellhammer cannon. In general the there had been little damage inflicted on either side by the end of turn two. The only thing of note was the charge of Grimnar in to an infantry squad on the left and his subsequent removal from the board by the secondary armament of the Hellhammer supported by various infantry squads. 

Turn 2

Some of.my scions dropped in turn 2 and tried to take out the big guy at the back but failed, reducing him down a bracket though. This is one of the mistakes I made in the game, holding on to the bring it down card for an additional turn. I should have ditched it as soon as I failed to score it in turn 2, I could have drawn an additional card I could have achieve in turn 5 as a result. If I could have drawn a line of sight from my Hellhammer it could have been very different but the two buildings in the middle prevented this.

Turn 3

Turn 3 and things were starting to heat up. The wolves were getting close now, one unit already being in combat but a number of failed charges meant that I'd had a little bit of extra time to whittle them down even more. This meant that I could take down a number of thunder wolf Calvary, dropping two but not quite managing the third. I also made a second mistake with the cards here, as I forgot I had "no retreat, no surrender" and fell a unit out of combat. I could easily have go the 5 points, even if it would have meant loosing a few more models, but it might also have changed where the terminators also dropped in, although unlikely.

It was at this point that the new abilities of the marines came in to play, their sticky objectives. In turn 3 when the MT command squad had dropped in on the backfield objective near my opponents deployment zone, he had been forces to send a squad of blood claws after them and abandon the central objective. However, with the sticky objective rule he still held on to it and scored points, without this rule he would have lost at least 14 points or been forced to pull another units, a dreadnought realistically, to hold it. This could have changed the game quite a bit and there wasn't really anything i could do about it.

Turn 3

Turn 4

It was in turn 4 that the game started to finally swing in favour of one of us. Until this point it could have go either way but there were a few moment where things didn't quite line up for me and the wolves just showed that extra resilience over the guard. For me the two moment in this turn that set the scene for the wolves victory were the terminators clearing out the centre of the last guard resistance and the failure of the Hellhammer to Clare the blood claws at the back of the table, enabling them to charge and wipe out the MT command squad and claim the objective. To be honest, there was little I could do about the terminators in the centre as I had little to reinforce my units with. The blood claws in the top corner however I could do something about. I fired the Hellhammer cannon, which up until this point had basically eliminated a squad every turn (apart from the thunder wolf Calvary, where it still took enough wounds to remove a 5 man unit but not enough to wipe the Calvary squad), doing enough wounds, 8 I believe, to realistically kill the squad when saving of 5+'s. My opponent didn't see it that way and rolled 6 5+ saves, only killing 2 marines leaving enough to wipe out the 5 man command squad in his turn. This dropped me to just a single primary in my final turn and denied me vital points.

Turn 4

End game

Turn 5 and the last few plays of the game. This was a short turn and again we didn't play out all of it, as there was little need. The one part we did play out was the final death throws of the Hellhammer. With bring it down in his hand my opponent needed to try and get the last few wounds off the big guy and after shooting everything that it could in to it, I was on 1 wound left. Charges were declared and so was overwatch. I knew that this was a long shot and wasn't going to stop the inevitable result, as there were two breads within easy charge range. The first one though tried his luck and was the second (or maybe even third) dread to be brought low by the mighty weapons of the Hellhammer, mostly the 4 heavy flamers, which really proved their worth this match. Bjorn however didn't fail and made short work of the Hellhammer.

End game

At this point there was little on the table, however it was mostly space wolves and some chunky units at that, including Bjorn, 6 terminators and a redemptor, who while injured had his attendant tech priest following him around. If the game had of gone on longer the weight of power would only have tipped further towards the wolves.

The score card

In the end it the space wolves claimed victory and there wasn't really much o could have done about it. Even if I had played the cards slightly differently, if I had ditched bring it down earlier and not fluffed "no retreat, no surrender" and if I had managed to take out the last of the blood claws, there is still no guarantee that I could have altered the final score of my opponent. The real game changer was the sticky objectives, as it would have brought the scores down by at least ten points, possibly more when factoring in the different cards that were drawn. However, I was really please with how well the game went and really enjoyed it. My opponent was great to play against and played very well, making full use of his rules. I believe that my next game is against Sister of Battle followed by the Eldar. It will be interesting to see how the Hellhammer does against these T3 armies.

Primers

 This year I have set myself the goal of painting up all my first born marines and this involves painting up half a dozen vehicles and about three dozen marines in orange. This is not a colour that is very easy to paint and in the past it has taken a few coats of paint to get the orange to a good level. Previously I had to paint on a couple of coats of Jokaero orange to get a nice base layer before painting several layers of Troll slayer orange. This was a time consuming process, although it did give a nice even colour to the model. However, with so many to paint and with a number of big vehicles I decided to see if there was a quicker way. With my son's Tau I purchased a Colour Forge Tempest Blue to use as it is a match for GW Kantor Blue. So with this in mind I decided to have a look for a colour match to Troll Slayer Orange and was surprised to fine Colour Forge Convict Orange. I was surprised as this is not a colour I had seen before and was not listed in a lot of places, it appears that it is quite new. So one purchase later and my primer collection has grown a little bit;

Black, grey, blue and orange

These are the two coloured primers, blue and orange. The blue is almost empty after priming various models for my son's Tau army. This primer has been really nice to use, has gone on nice and evenly with very little issue. The colour match is really good, there is the usual issue of finish, as there is a different finish between spray paints and brushes but this only shows in certain lights or angles. The orange however has not been quite as good. To be honest I think this might have been more to do with how and when I used this can than the actual paint itself. Now, in terms of colour, it looks to be a very good match again, however, one thing I have noticed is that it goes on a lot more opaque than the paint. I initially thought it might be a my old paint that I’ve added thinner to a couple of time to revive it but even with a brand new pot it is still fairly transparent out of the pot. This means that it is great for getting the orange doesn’t on a model quick but it has acted a little bit oddly in places. I suspect that some of it was due to the old paint that was one the models when I over sprayed them but I have also found that it  very consistently, even on the same spray \ pass with the can. The second thing that I notice was that the paint dried very quickly and covered the floor with an orange dust and when I say covered, I mean covered and which then got trapped through the house on the bottom of my slippers from the conservatory to the kitchen as I went back and forth to get different models. Now, I don’t think this was all the fault of the can, I think that the conditions that I was spraying in were ideal, probably a little bit to cold, the can probably wasn’t warmed properly and I hadn’t prepped the models at all. However, I’m not that worried as the models that I was spraying were the first born marines destined for the Eagle Knights space marines and I am really just painting these up so that I can say they are fully painted as its pretty clear that first born will be going to legends fairly soon. 

The other two cans that I use fro priming are just cheap car spray paints, one black, one grey. These are from the local car supplies shop and cost about half the amount of GW spray for a bigger tin. These have been great for just spraying up both metal, resin and plastic model equally. I usually use the grey over the black but that’s just as the colours I use work better over grey than black. 

I have to say that I don’t think that I will be using GW primers again, as these all work just as well and are colour matched which the GW sprays don’t seem to be. The only thing that I do buy from GW is the varnish, however I have a varnish spray from another company that I have yet to test out but when I do I will let you all know how it goes.

Game 1 recap - knights

 My first game of the league and possibly my worse match up. I was facing a Knights army comprised of a Castallan, an Errant, three warglaives and three helverins. In other words I had 28 T8 2+ 5++ wounds and 96 T7 (or higher) 3+ 5++ wounds to chew through with .ostly lasguns and the odd occasional heavy weapon in addition to a Hellhammer. Oh and did I mention that each model would.regain a wound at the start of the turn and a chunk of the models had -1 damage?

So yeah, I was not looking forward to this match up at all. 

Guard Deployment

Knight deployment

The table

Now, mistakes were made early on in the game, possibly the biggest before deployment. When setting out objectives, I set one inside the ruins at the bottom left of the above picture. This meant that whoever held it was open to the enemy and had no real cover, I should have placed it the other side of the wall, hidden from the enemy but I didn't. It would have made no difference if my opponent had chosen that corner as the other deployment objective was in the top right ruin, under the big green knight, nicely hidden from view. Trying to hold this objective just turned in to a blood bath and I had to give up trying as it was just getting my infantry murdered every turn for no gain. Had it been placed behind the ruins, I think I could have held it for at least 4 turns and gained a few more points.

Turn 1

Turn 1 and I started strong, after taking a round of shooting with minimal casualties, I pulled three great cards and went for it, gaining 15 points and subsequently the only points I scored all game. It cost me 2 squads of infantry to do it but I thought that it was a fair trade at the point in the game, as two squads for a third of my possible secondary points seemed reasonable.

Turn 1

Turn 2

Turn 2 and the world comes crashing down. My Hellhammer bites the dust, despite a 2+ 5++ and a techpriest, it just couldn't take a volcano cannon to the face twice and a shield breaker missile for good measure. I used a stratagem to fire before it died and well, over two turns of shooting I did a grand total of 3 wounds. Not exactly a great Omen for the rest of the game. This also left me with very little to even hit the Knights with, let along wound them, apart from praying for 6's to hit and some failed saves. 

Turn 4

By turn 4 things had gone from bad to worse. At this point a Cadian squad had actually done more damage to an warglaive than a Hellhammer, as they managed to take about 6 wounds off one in just one round of shooting but it just wasn't enough. Even when the scions dropped in and took out another armiger, there were still two big Knights on full wounds stomping about. 

Turn 4

All in all I manage to take out 3 of the baby knights and put a few wounds on another by the end of turn 4, in return I had by scions, for 25 bodies, and about 16 other infantry models left. We didn't even bother to finish turn 5, the three little Knights moved in to kill off the models at the bottom of the table, the big blue knight lined up the remaining infantry in the centre and the big green knight moved over to intercept the scions. As it was getting late, gone midnight at this point, we looked at the options and cards. My opponent had already maxed out secondaries and held enoght objectives to max the primary at the end of the game, I on the other hand drew 3 cards I couldn't possibly achieve, including bring it down and assassinate! I also could not hope to hold any objectives at the end of the game, so we theory hammered the rest of the last turn and called it. 

The score card (ignore the CP, I lost track on the app but we had tokens on the table)

So, there we have it, a resounding win for the Knights. The cards were not in my favour and probably never were going to be. I had the best 3 cards I could get in turn 1 and if I hadn't I probably would have scored even fewer points. Mixed with the (read "my") objective placement, I was up against it from the start. The dice really didn't help either, as I didn't make a single one of my command point rerolls and I made quite a few over the course of the game, spending half my command points of rerolls and redrawing cards, with pretty much all of the rest being spent on the Hellhammer in one way or another to try and keep it alive.

The only advantage of this game being first is that things can really only get better, as I would have to go some to get a lower score!

Despite the crushing defeat, my opponent was great and played the game very well. The fact that I had nothing that could really hurt him and my cards and dice were rubbish takes nothing away from the fact that he played well and maximised his own opportunities. I really enjoyed getting out and rolling dice again and as long as the other 4 games are as enjoyable as this one was (game 2 was actually better), it should be a good league.