Imperial Guard Vs Space Wolves - Tournament warmup game 1

 These are a bit out of time here but this is the first of four battle reports that I played before the Northern Invasion tournament. These were just small scale games of 1000 points to get my head around some of the rules changes for 10th before the tournament. This was the first game that I played, against Space Wolves, the same player I ended up playing against when I got to the tournament. The list i played against was pretty similar to the full tournament list, with some thunder wolf cavalry, blood claws, grey hunters and intercessions, with some eradicators, which didn’t make the final list. My list on the other hand consisted of the infantry, breachers in Valkyries and a Field Ordnance battery with heavy lascannons. 

We played a leviathan mission, Sweeping Engagement, Take and Hold with scrambler fields. The scrambler field had no effect on the game, due to neither of us having strategic reserves. Take and hold should have been easy for me, but I really failed to take advantage of the mission. 

Guard Deployment

Space wolf deployment 

Blood Claws and Ragnar pushing up the centre

Blood Claws

The blood claws and Ragnar went charging up the field turn one, engaged and destroyed a full 20 man guard squad with ease and then proceeded to just sweep through my battle lines almost completely unopposed. 

The empty battlefield.

The flyer trying to do something useful

The flyer and everything on the right is dead.

So in this game I found out that flyers are not quite as good as they use to be and when I say not as good, what I mean is useless. You can see the blood claws as the very bottom of the table having slaughtered their way through two 20 man catachan squads and the field ordnance battery. 

The guard almost tabled 

The lone assassin sitting on his perch 

The final result was a resounding victory for the space wolves. I was completely unable to move anywhere on the board, without getting absolutely slaughtered by the space wolves. This game was good though for a number of reasons. The first thing I learnt was that no matter how much I like the idea of 20 man guard squads, 10 man squads are the way to go I think. This means that there is less chance of all 20 guardsmen getting wiped out in a single turn of firing or combat. The second lesson learnt is that flyers are not very resilient, with no natural -1 to hit and even with the extra toughness and save, they are still quite easy to remove. The last thing i learnt was less about the game and more about the system as a whole, that guard are either really over priced or space marines are over powered, as there were as many space wolf units on the table as there were guard units! I’m use to outnumbering the enemy by several units, but this time around I was actually outnumbered!

As a result of this game, I decided to thin down the squad sizes and look at getting more movement options in the list. I wish I could have tried playing this list again with an updated list but there was just no time. I did change the list for my next game, adding in a couple of vehicle to see how that does.

Tournament list review

So with the tournaments all done and dusted, its time to have a look at my list and see what sort of changes I might make to it. It’s not just about making it more competitive, it’s also about removing units that proved to be useless or over costed for what they managed to achieve, and unfortunately there were quite a few of these units. 

There is little I can do with certain elements of the list, such as the detachment or enhancements, as I’m still restricted by what’s available for me to use. 

So, what would will remain unchanged and what would be dropped?

Detachment: Combined Regiment

+ Character +

Cadian Castellan: Bolt Pistol, Grand Strategist, Power Weapon

Cadian Castellan: Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Commissar: Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Platoon Command Squad: Platoon Commander: Death Mask of Ollanius, Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon, Plasma Gun, Master Vox, Medi-pack, Regimental Standard

Primaris Psyker 

Primaris Psyker

The HQ section of the list worked pretty much as expected. The Castellans spread out across the board and the Platoon command squad anchored the centre, as planned. I think that some extra orders might have been worthwhile, as there were a few occasions that I would have liked to have one or two more orders to dish out but on the whole it wasn’t a problem. The psykers also proved their worth with their psychic powers, however, they would be something to drop if I needed a few extra points for the list change.

+ Battleline +

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (20): 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Drum-fed Autogun, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troop (10): Bolt Pistol, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troop (10): Bolt Pistol, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Death Korps of Krieg (10): Medi-pack, Grenade Launcher, Meltagun, Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Infantry Squad (10): 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Grenade Launcher. 2x HWT Autocannon

The battle line units also worked as planned, although I would make a few changes. The main one is removing the 20 man Cadian squad, as this was a mistake in the first place. I would probably go for another unit of DKoK, as their medic ability was useful, when i actually got to use it! I would have liked more Cadian but I am at my max number of units. As for special weapons, i would keep the Plasma gun but I am tempted to drop the grenade launcher for possibly a melta gun, but it does reduce the utility of the units.

+ Infantry +

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Mortar

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Mortar

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Missile Launchers

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

The other infantry units also proved themselves during my games. The mortars were not the greatest at taking out power armour but against lower save units they absolutely proved their worth. The missile launchers were equally as useful, although both suffered from the unpredictability of the dice. The scions also proved themselves and were useful both for scoring points, forcing my opponent to split their force and gave me a lot of movement options.

+ Vehicles+

Valkyrie: Hellstrike Missiles, Lascannon, Heavy Bolters

Valkyrie: Militarum Multi-laser, Heavy Bolters, Multiple Rocket Pods

This is where there is going to be a lot of changes. The planes, while useful and fun to play with, really didn’t do anything for me. The MRP equipped Valkyrie was more useful and did do some chip damage, but the other Valkyrie was pretty much useless. The single shot lascannon and hellstrike missile was basically useless, missing far more than they hit and wounding even less. I was not even able to remove a rhino in one turn of shooting even when both actually hit. The heavy bolters were the best weapons on both platforms. Even though I took these because just because I wanted to, both of these will be dropped from the next iteration of the list as they just don’t do anywhere near the damage or provide anything that justifies their points.   

+ Allied Units +

Imperial Navy Breachers: chainfist, demo charge, heavy shotgun, power weapon, Navis las-volleys, Bolt pistol and power weapon

Imperial Navy Breachers: Meltagun

Inquisitor: Bolt pistol, Inquisitorial melee weapon, Psychic gifts, Warlord

Vindicare Assassin 

The dropping of the Valkyries also means the dropping of the Navy Breachers, which isn’t a bad thing as they didn’t really do much in the game, the bleacher with demo charge was fun and did do some damage, it still didn’t justify the 105 point cost of the unit. Even if the Valkyries weren’t being dropped I would drop the navy breachers anyway. The Vindicare also failed to live up to expectations. I think this is mostly because it’s taken a real hit in this edition and is no longer the character slayer it once was. I would probably look at switching this out for the Eversor assassin for its combat abilities. The Inquisitor was the best choice out of this lot, even though it didn’t do masses, it did enough to justify itself in the list, plus its all part of my fluff to have an inquisitor in my lists. 

So, if i remove the Valkyries, the Breachers, Vindicare and 10 cadians, I would currently have 730 points to play with. With these points I would look to add a Tank commander and additional Leman Russ, with an Enginseerer in support. I would add in an Eversor Assassin as well. I would then use some points to up the number of Scions in the units to 10, doubling the number of troops and special weapons. This means that I would be using 690 points of the 730, leaving me 40 points spare for the moment, to either adjust for points adjustments or to add extra units nearer the time. 

I’ll have to try this list out at some point to see just how it might fare but I suspect that there will be a number of changes points wise before next years tournament.  

Tournament review

 The Northern Invasion Tournament has been and gone and despite the enforced hiatus due to Covid and some other logistical and technical hurdles that needed to be overcome, I would have to say that it was a huge success. There were 16 players there on the Saturday and a number returned for a more casual day of gaming on the Sunday. There was more than 40k going on as well, with magic featuring prominently on both the Saturday and Sunday, with a whole host of board games going on on the Sunday, including Hero Quest, which myself and my son played several games of. 

The 40k tournament itself was not an overly competitive tournament. There were a number of people there who were playing to a competitive level but there were also a number of people there to just play some games and have fun, after all, how many competitive players bring a 3 model army consisting of two Knight Desecrators and a Warhound Titan. 

Chaos Knight and Warhound

Overall there was a pretty even split between Imperial, with 2x Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space wolves, Imperial Guard, Custodies, Imperial Knights and Dark Angels, and Chaos, with 2x World Eaters, 2x Chaos Knights, Death Guard and Daemons, with just two Xenos players, both using Tau. The tournament was won by the World Eaters player i played in game 2, with Grey Knights taking second and third with Space Marines in 4th. At the other end of the table the wooden spoon was hotly contested between World Eaters and Chaos Knights (the 3 model list from above), with the Chaos Knights walking away with the “trophy”. These final games were played on the Sunday morning, so not all placing were finalised.  

Tau vs Dark Angels

I am hoping to return next year if possible, my son already has plans for what he want to do plus there is talk about some of the other youngsters coming down, so there might be some competition for best U18 player trophy that my son walked (uncontested) away with. 

The other thing to really mention about the weekend, is that my son has now set his sights on getting Hero Quest for Christmas, along with some of the character expansions, after we played a couple of games with some of the other guys down there. Also, I bought Space Hulk, the 2014 version, minus the models thought, which is not a problem as i have most of the models i need to play already, or at least ones that I can substitute in, as I have lots of Hormagaunts I can use as Genestealers. I plan on playing the game at some point but also using the tiles for dungeon crawls with the kids at some point or another. 

Next up will be a look through my list from the tournament, which in truth means there will be quite a few changes for future tournaments. 

Northern Invasion game 3

So, on to game three and another hard game but one I though I might do better in. The game was against Space Wolves and I reasonably well rounded list at that. The list consisted of Logan Grimnar on his sleigh, Murderfang, Ragnar, an Iron Priest, lieutenant, a blood claws, 2x grey hunters, 2x intercessors, incursors, skyclaws, thunderwolf cavalry, fenrisian wolves, a redemptor, a vindicator and 2x wulfen dreadnoughts.

This game was going to be tough, but in a very different way to the last  the mission here was going to be problematic, as with purge the foe, victory points are gained for holding one and holding more plus kill one and kill more. Hold one and hold more were not going to be much of a problem, kill one was not going to be to much of a problem but kill more was going to be very difficult to do or deny.

Again with this game, I pushed right up to the line with the aim of moving forward to take some of the central ground. I also had to hang back a bit with the threat of the skyclaws.

My opponent mirrored my deployment, pushing up to the line, ready to charge forward and take the fight to me.

I got turn one, pushed up and only killing one unit, the fenrisian wolves for some easy points. 

We clashed in the in the centre and there were some obvious results, with a couple.of units wiped in the first turn,only to be recycled on the Reinforcements train! 

The wolves kept pushing forward and I took the opportunity to drop in behind, claiming my opponents home objective, forcing his skyclaws to drop in behind, only to fail a charge and then be annihilate by the scions that dropped in behind. A dreadnought tried to come back to reclaim the objective but with terrain and positioning he couldn't quite make it. 

By the end of the game, on turn 4, the wolves were in my deployment zone and could be a real threat and had good board control across the middle of the board. However, I still had a chance to clear out some of the centre and had option to recycle some more units that would inevitably get destroyed.
 

Overall the game was very close and I think turn 5 could have gone either way, however, there was no way that I could have actually won. As you can see in the score sheet the secondary scores were very close. I think a minor mistake was holding on to bring it down, I failed to score it in one round and took a gamble I could do it in the second round but failed. I think maybe I should have just binned it after not achieving in one round and drawn another. I don't know if that would have helped or not but either way 25 to 27 was a close score. The primaries however is a different story, I was 12 point down on the primary, all of which are due to the kill more. In total I was 16 points down due to kill more and if you took the kill more points out then the score.would have dropped to 67 to 65, a guard victory! Although if you take the hold more points out as well, then it's a 63 to 65 loss! Either way it was the kill more points that really hurt me.

Despite this, it was a very good game and I really enjoyed myself. So after 3 games on the Saturday, I found myself ready for game four to decided who came 7th and who came 8th. Oh, and I was to play my son. So all the way south, to play my own son!

Northern Invasion game 2

 Game 2 and as soon as i heard the draw I was resigned to loosing this one. The game was against a World Eater list that I had faced part of during my warm up games (which I will write up at some point) and that game was a resounding defeat. This is probably one of the main hard counters to my list, a pure close combat army with the ability for turn 1 charges across the board. Unlike this my warm up game, where I went very conservative with the deployment, i went aggressive and pushed up as far as I could, hoping for first turn to be able to push further up and try and claim some board control from the off. This didn’t happen and turn 1 went to the World Eaters and it was down hill from there on.

The list itself was quite compact, thanks in part to Angron, alongside two Masters of Execution, Jakhals, two Berserkers, two Exalted Eightbound, two Rhinos, Two Hellbrutes and a Maulerfiend. 

I wasn't bothered by the Jakhals or the Rhinos, everything else however, I was. Not this was possibly the worse matchup I could have. I want to push forward for board control and he wants to just charge stuff. What made things worse was the fact that my opponent got first turn and with his blessings of Khorne got the advance and charge. It was at this point I knew that my game was definitely over and it was now a case of trying to minimise the loss. 

End of movement turn 1 just before Angron charged.

The view from the trenches.

Turn 1 was not as bad as I thought it might be, with only Angron charging and the majority of the army staying back on objectives. Now it's at this point hat I should point out we played the mission wrong, as we did not remove the central objective, as the mission says to. I'll come back to this later when I reviewed the final score but needless to say, it put me at a disadvantage for the game. 

Turn 2 onwards it was mostly a case of trying to keep Angron at bay and keep him away from my home on active, which I managed to do but I failed with the berserkers who disembarked from the central rhino. 

The berserkers who cased me the most problems

I was sensible in some respects, not shooting the hellbrutes unless they didn't have anything to shoot back at or I managed to destroy them, I forgot about the berserkers blood surge though and shot at them, only to have them surge forward and into combat with one of my units, a unit that was supposed to be move blocking them, that they then minced in combat, ready to charge forward their turn, which they did, in to my command squad.

The game carried on that way. The only thing I had going for me was I was recycling units at a rate of knots, at least a unit a turn, as had pulled his exalted eightbound back toward his deployment zone by deep striking and brining reserves in that end. However, I was still having a hard time removing them, thank mostly to some command re-rolls. In the end the result was pretty much a forgone conclusion from the get go but I think I did alrigh, as this was the only game on the first day my opponent didn't score 100 points and technically he shouldn't have scored 90.

 As you can see the game ended 32 to 90 but if we had played the game correctly, it would have ended up just 32 to 75, still a crushing defeat but  not quite as crushing! 

The main issue, apart from playing the mission wrong, was that I just couldn't get out of my deployment zone and even with deep striking units and the reinforcements stratagem I just couldn't claim any real board control, which is what I need to do. The other point to note about this game is that my opponent went on to win the tournament, so can't complain to much about getting beaten here!

Northern Invasion game 1

 So my first game of the tournament and I had quiet a while to prepare myself for it. We all had to submit our lists a couple of weeks before and being a small tournament, the draws for round one were made a week or so before the tournament and all the list were published. This meant that I could see and for a plan for game 1, although all the other games were going to have to be done somewhat off the cuff, with a maximum of an hour in between games to plan! 

 Anyway, for game 1 I didn’t actually do much in the way of planning. Event though i had the list in advance the plan still remained the same. The army consisted of Shalaxi Helbane, the Masque of Slaanesh, a Contorted Epitome, an Infernal Enrapturess, a Keeper of Secrets, 4 units of Deamonettes, a Hellflayer, Seekers and Fiends. All in all, not actually that scary. Yes, there was a lot of close combat potential, if those deamonettes got in to combat, they would mince through any of my units with ease. However, they had to get there first, and that’s where I had an advantage.                                                                                                                                               

Deployment, the flyer is off the field, as are the deamonettes.

Seekers move up

Playing hide and seek, against mortars?

Turn one was the real danger turn with the seekers scouting up and then going for, and getting, a turn 1 charge. This could have been a issue, but he lost a seeker on the way in and fluffed his roles, leaving two guardsmen alive and there for not being able to consolidate in to my big squad on home objective. With that threat removed, I then dropped the mortars on some deamonettes and removed one squad completely and whittled down another to just over half. I also removed a couple of Fiends 

Turn 2 start.

After the movement phase.

This was the real turning point of the game, having managed to screen out the two big monsters dropping in close to my home objective and a superb round of overwatch by the large squad at the bottom to remove 8 wounds off the Fiends at the bottom to leave just one of 2 wounds, meant I was in quite a strong position for the rest of the game. 

Moving up for board control

End of turn 3

I didn’t get any more pictures after turn three, it proved very hard to think about the cards and tactics, take pictures and keep to the 3 hour time limit of games, so much so, that I didn’t actually finish a single game, all of them got to turn 4, including this one and we scored turn 5, after talking it through but didn’t actually get to play the turn out. 

In turn 3 I was able to drop in my scions and take down the last of the smaller daemons, leaving only some of his characters alive, all of which were geared up for taking down big monsters and vehicles rather than guardsman squads, a S6 D3 weapons is great for taking down guardsmen but when you only have 6 attacks, your not taking down a whole squad. 

This meant that I could dominate the primary missions and also restrict his ability to play the secondary missions, enabling me to build up the points. With just 3 models on the table turn 4, there was very little he could do at all. 

The final score was a comfortable win for the guard, and as it turned out this was probably a mistake! 

The way the tournament worked, all the winners from game one went in to one pool, and all the losers went a second pool, so I was now stuck with all the hardcore players gunning for top spot, and I just don't have the ability or will to compete at that level!

I really enjoyed this game and not just because I won but because my opponent was very friendly and nice, and pointed out a couple of mistakes, that wouldn’t have changed the game, did swing things more in my favour, including when I scored the primary’s at the start of my command phase, giving it to him, then used the DKoK medic to bring back two models, which was the wrong way around, as the medic should have acted first, thus giving me the objective and 5 points. 

Overall this game went exactly as i hoped and was really the only one that did!

Tournament list breakdown

 Ok, so by the time you read this the tournament will actually be all done and dusted! I also have 4 warm up games to write up as well, which I will get around to but the new job has cut deep in to my hobby time and at the moment I'm concentrating on getting some painting done,such as my deathwatch dreadnoughts, which I will.post about in due course.

Anyway the tournament list that I took with me to Northern Invasion was a very infantry heavy list, with 155 infantry (including 9 heavy weapons teams for 164 infantry models) plus two aircraft, because why not. 

This is not really a tournament optimised list but more of a fun list that I wanted to take. I'll get in to the details in a second but the basic plan is to trade bodies for points. 

Almost the whole army, there's another 10 guardsmen to add.

The list, while long, is very simple and really only consists of a handful of index cards, 13 to be precise but there are multiples of many of the units.

The detachment is fairly self-explanatory, it's the only option we have.

Detachment: Combined Regiment

The characters are quite simple, Castellans to go with the cadian squads to issue orders. The platoon command squad will be with the big infantry squad to hold my lines. The commissar will go with a cadian squad and try to stabilise some of the squads, probably around the centre of the board. Lastly the psykers will be used for their defensive buffs mostly and their psychic powers being used when the opportunity arises.

+ Character +

Cadian Castellan: Bolt Pistol, Grand Strategist, Power Weapon

Cadian Castellan: Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Commissar: Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Platoon Command Squad: Platoon Commander: Death Mask of Ollanius, Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon, Plasma Gun, Master Vox, Medi-pack, Regimental Standard

Primaris Psyker 

Primaris Psyker

The battle line units are simple, the big 20 man infantry squad will sit back the rest will be used to push up and take objectives and secondary missions, trading their lives away for points. 

+ Battleline +

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gu

Cadian Shock Troops (20): 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Drum-fed Autogun, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troop (10): Bolt Pistol, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troop (10): Bolt Pistol, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Death Korps of Krieg (10): Medi-pack, Grenade Launcher, Meltagun, Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Infantry Squad (10): 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Grenade Launcher. 2x HWT Autocannon

This is where my mistake in my list occured, the third cadian squad, with 20 guardsmen is a result of me.messing up battle scribe and ending up with an illegal 13 man squad. I've had to take a full 20 man squad when I would have rather taken two ten man squads, one cadian and one infantry with heavy weapon. I would have liked to take a DKoK squad but I would have been 5 points over, unless I took a catachan squad with them but then it would have gotten very complicated! So I've ended up with a 20 man squad, but then again it will work better with the reinforcements startagem!

The infantry units (none of which are really infantry) are the support and deep strike squads. The mortars will sit at the back and drop shots on to anything and everything I can or need to, even if I can't see them. The missiles are in because I only have two mortar squads and they can do a similar job with frag missiles plus they have the benefit of switching to Krak if I need to. The three Scion squads are basically cheep disposable units for grabbing things like engage on all fronts or capturing the enemy objective. They are fully tooled up because I can, if I had to pay points for special.weapons and the like, they would be running bare bones.

+ Infantry +

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Mortar

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Mortar

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Missile Launchers

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

The two flyers are here mostly because I wanted to bring them and no other reason. They are not a very competitive choice at all and will mostly likely die to a stiff breeze. While they survive they will be flying around the table, as hovering seems like a terrible idea at the moment. Anyway, the Valkyrie with hellstrike missiles (my old vendetta) is pretty much the only dedicated anti-vehicle and anti-monster shooting I have, even if it's best against flyers. 

+ Vehicle +

Valkyrie: Hellstrike Missiles, Lascannon, Heavy Bolters

Valkyrie: Militarum Multi-laser, Heavy Bolters, Multiple Rocket Pods

Now we have the allied units and these are a mixed bag of units, the Breachers have been taken purely because I wanted to put the Imperial Navy Breachers in the Imperial Navy Valkyries. They are not a great unit, cost basically the same as two catachan units and only have short ranged weapons but it's narrative as hell. The Inquisitor is again narrative, all my forces are lead by Inquisitors as so is this one. The Vindicate assassin is probably the only good choice here, giving me a somewhat potent anti-character weapon.

+ Allied Units +

Imperial Navy Breachers: chainfist, demo charge, heavy shotgun, power weapon, Navis las-volleys, Bolt pistol and power weapon

Imperial Navy Breachers: Meltagun

Inquisitor: Bolt pistol, Inquisitorial melee weapon, Psychic gifts, Warlord

Vindicare Assassin 

Overall this is not the most optimised list and I feel that there are some obvious weaknesses in the list, mostly the lack of anti-vehicle and anti-monster firepower. Yes the Valkyrie has a couple of weapons and there is the heavy weapons teams but overall, if I face more than a couple of big things then I wont be able to deal with them, but hopefully, they won’t be able to deal with my numbers either.  

This army is going to play towards the missions and objectives more than killing the enemy and I feel that I have a good chance of being able to achieve at least one victory during the four games. 

Tournament 2023

 So after a long break, in heading back to the Northern Invasion tournament for its 2023 running (I will not be looking to emulate my 2016 effort!) This year will be special in a different way, as I'm being joined by my eldest boy and his Tau army. Neither of us are expecting big results in the tournament. My main aim is not to loose every match or come last and my son's is to just experience his first tournament. 

After several warm up games, to get use to the rules for 10th and try some of the new rules for the guard, I have decided to go back to basics and go for an all infantry list. 

The force (almost!)

I put in the list the other day, after laying out all the units to make sure I had all the models I needed. However, I made a small mistake that I didn't notice until I was writing a post here. I have been using the new Warhammer Battle Forge list builder (which was actually very good until they put it behind the pay wall) but I've had to revert to Battlescribe, which is throwing up some errors at the moment, mainly with characters. So when I was adjusting my list I added two special weapons and a vox-caster to a squad but forgot to take away 3 guardsmen!

This meant that I had a 13 man squad, which you can't have and what's more it had charged me points off a full 20 man squad. So a quick email to the tournament organiser to ask if I could adjust my list, which thankfully he said I could. This resulted in an additional 7 guardsmen (including 2 special weapons and a Sgt), taking the squad to the max 20 man with 4 special weapons. 

Now, this isn't what I would have preferred, as it now means I have a 20 man squad of cadians, which I would have preferred two separate 10 man squads, one of which would have had to have been a Cadian squad and one most likely a standard infantry squad with heavy weapon but I'll get more in to that in the next post when I talk through my list in more detail.

My boy is taking his Tau down with him, as in all his Tau plus a couple of borrowed models, mostly down to the recent balance update dropping his list from around 2100 to just over 1800!

The two models are in the back right and are from a defunct gaming system (of French origin I believe) but will work well as a pair of broadsides. 

Oh, and don't worry about the grey models, they will be painted up by the time we go down, they have already been primed blue (thanks to Color Forge Tempest Blue). He would have liked to have taken more battle suits and less troops, maybe if we go next year he'll be able too!