2023 review

As we move from 2023 to 2024 Its time to look back on the year and the hobby resolutions I made almost a year ago. My track record with these things has been average at best and I suspect that this year will continue along similar lines, however, I do find that it is good at keeping things moving in generally the right direction. So what resolutions did I manage to achieve and which did I fail miserably?

So here is the list I wrote for 2023;

1) update Dagr Ormr scions.

Done. All models updated and fully legal, twice! After updating to the new 9th edition guard book the force was tweaked to 10th a d I now actually have too many scions!

2) New guard models

I'll count this one as a yes. I picked up some of the new models, getting gifted some rough riders and field ordnance battery for my birthday and picking up some Wargames Atlantic Bulldogs to proxie as Kasrkins. The FOB and Bulldogs are completed and the rough riders are waiting for a coat of primer.

3) Eagle Knights first born

Yes and no. All the original models I had for the Knights first born have been painted but after acquiring some additional models mind year, I have not finished painting these up. I still have an assault squad and command squad (I think?) plus land raider and drop pod to finish.

4) Dark Guardians first born

This is a definite no. I have t even started to look at these guys yet. They are ready waiting but I have not even touched one model 

5) No new models

Sort of? I didn't actually purchase any new models, just a bunch of second hand ones. So I guess that it will fall in to the failed category? In my defense, it was a bargain I couldn't refuse and I gained some good models.

6) lore update

Unfortunately this is a no. This was one I was really hoping to get done this year but for various reasons I just haven't managed to get this sorted. The lore for all my armies and the general narrative for my forces does need a good reworking and general tidy up. I'll put this on the list for next year and see if I can actually achieve it.

7) play some games

Again, yes and no. I initially thought that this was going to be a straight no, as I didn't think I would have played 12 games this year. It turns out I have played 13 games! So yes, I have played at least 12 games, unfortunately only 9 of them were at the 2000 point mark, the other 4 being at or around 1000 points. Most of these games (8 of them) were thanks to the two tournaments I played in this year! Either way, I'm going to count this as a yes!

So, overall I have actually achieve 3 of these completely, 2 of them sort of and I failed at 2 of them. I don't think that this is two bad really, better than some years, maybe even my best year yet (haven't actually checked!) There's a couple that will be carried forward to next year, hopefully to completion this time!

Imperial Guard Vs Tau - game 2

 This was the last and final game I played in the run up to the Northern Invasion tournament. It was the second match I played against my son. This time around we decided to play a mirror match of sorts. My son took a Longstrike Hammerhead, Devilfish, Piranha, Broadside, two strike squads and a breacher squad, plus pathfinders. I took a Leman Russ Vanquisher, Chimera, a Scout Sentinel, two Armoured Sentinels, three Cadian Squads and Kasrkins. 

While this isn’t an exact match, as Longstrike should have been mirrored by a Tank commander, but the cost of the tank commander meant this wasn’t possible. Another issue was the Piranha, as there is not comparable model in the guard, a Tauros might have been an option but I don’t have one, so a scout sentinel was the closest I could get. This is similar to the Broadside, the closest I could get in terms of firepower was two armoured sentinels. The last issue was the Strike and Breacher squads, as with the removal of shotgun vets, the only option was infantry squads. I could have chosen any of the battle line units, but went with Cadians in the end. So, while not an exact mirror, it was as close as we could get with the models we had to hand.

Guard Deployment

Tau Deployment

We were both quite cautious first turn, neither wanted to expose their big hitter, the Hammerhead and Vanquisher, to the others vehicle. This was sort of proved as the two vehicles that we did expose, my chimera and his devilfish, suffered, although only my chimera was destroyed, as opposed to his only being crippled down to just a couple of wounds. His piranha was taken out by the hunter killer missiles from the sentinels.

Turn 1

Having taken his devilfish down to just a couple of wounds I decided to try and wrap and trap the devilfish with my sentinels and infantry, however, I failed to take the last wound off amend the devilfish was able to retreat due to being able to fly.

Turn two was pretty much the same with the big guns trying to stay away from each other while the rest of the army started taking chucks out of the other. While i managed to get an early lead by grabbing some objectives early, it wasn’t enough to pull any sort of sizeable lead.

Turn 2

While I didn’t take any more pictures of the game, mostly as I was trying to move the game along to get the young man in to bed at a reasonable time, the game stayed pretty level throughout. When we did decided to engage each others heavy hitters, the Vanquisher went first and proved to be the lesser of the two by failing to knock out the hammerhead in one turn, unlike the hammerhead knocked out the Vanquisher with one shot. However, the hammerhead was taken out next turn, so there was no real advantage. 

When we ended the game, the guard were in ascendancy but it was a close run thing. I had more models on the table and greater board control, however my son still had a broadside on the table with full wounds and I had little that could take it out with. So if we had gone on further, the guard would have increased their lead but the broadside will be able to wonder around at will smashing three guardsmen a turn. 

Guard End game

 Tau End Game

This game was really good fun but did prove that most of the guard stuff was actually out gunned by the equivalent Tau units. I really think guard are not in a good place at the moment, yes they can compete but i still think several units are over priced and the rules underwhelming.

Anyway, the game ended in a draw, which is how it should have finished. I think there was little that I could have done to change the outcome apart from using the reinforcements stratagem to recycle a unit of guard. We’ll have to get the last tournament game played soon and see if I can actually beat him, which would give us a W/D/L of 1/1/1!

Imperial Guard Vs Tau - game 1

 During the run up to the tournament my son and I played a few games of 40k to get him use to the basic rule for 10th, as although he’s played a few games of 10th with mates, he has always had some one to coach him through the turns, usually myself but sometimes other adults. So for these games, we were going to play and I wasn’t going to tell him anything, just let him play and then talk through stuff after, as it turns out, this might have been a bad idea! 

This game was just a 1000 point game, both to keep things simple for my son to learn the game and also for time constraints, to get the game done before bed time!

The Tau list consisted of devil fish, hammer head, piranha, a couple of strike squads and a breacher squad, with a cadre fire blade. My ;list consisted of infantry and the flyer.

Deployment

Deployment was pretty standard and I put my flyer in hover mode again, just to have it on the table turn 1.

Turn 1

By the end of turn 1, I’d lost a full squad and my flyer, which was destroyed by the rail rifle fire of the Tau. 

Turn 2

Going up against the tau armour with little in the way of anti-armour fire power was a mistake, as they just started gunning down my infantry at will.

Turn 3

By the end of turn 3 I was completely on the back foot with nothing I could do. The hammer head and devil fish were just gunning down my guardsmen in droves. 

Turn 5

By the end of turn 5 I was all but tabled with just a few models left on the table.

At the end of the match it was evident that the tau had secured a resounding victory. When you put a shooting army up against a very good shooting army, expect the shooting army to loose and so the guard lost. It wasn’t quite the learning lesson that I was inviting and it was more of a slaughter but he used his units well and showed a good grasp of the rule, which ultimately was the aim of the game. We decided to see if we could have another game, but this time we would try a more evenly matched game, as much of a mirror match as possible and that turned in to a very different game.

Imperial Guard Vs World Eaters - Tournament warmup game 2

This was actually the third game that I played, the second game was against my son and his Tau but they were played as eternal war type games rather than leviathan games and so the scoring system was different and they were not really tournament warm up games and more learning games for my son. This game was against World Eaters, the same player i played against in the tournament and who went on to win. This list was very similar to his winning list, with Eightbound, hellbrutes, rhinos and jakhals. 

For this game, I ran a Valkyrie in hover mode, two chimeras with cadians, a Leman Russ with demolisher cannon and a big squad of guard on my home objective. 

Guard deployment

World Eaters deployment

Turn 1

The game started very slowly, with both of us being very reserved in our deployment and turn 1 movement. I held back, trying to keep away from the WE’s and their combat potential and my opponent wanted to keep out of line of sight. This hindered me far more as it meant that i really struggled to get any momentum from my side. 

Turn 2

It didn’t take long for the WE to get in to my lines and that’s where my problems really started. So Eightbound got a long charge off and started combat in the centre of the board. Through some lucky rolls and also some command point re-rolls he managed to keep some Eightbound alive for several turns, holding me up and allowing his berserkers to come sweeping across the board.

It was also at this point that I realised that no matter how bad aircraft flying around the board are, they are even worse when in hover mode, as my flyer got charged by the hellbrute and completely destroyed. 

Turn 3

By the end of turn 3 I had scored no primary point at all, I was really struggling to take and hold any of the objectives. I shouldn’t have split my forces so much at the beginning, instead pushing for just one objective in the centre and then moving out from there. I also think the cautious approach at the beginning really didn’t help either.

Turn 4

I didn’t manage to get a few bits and pieces killed but the World Eaters are a really strong army against guard. I just didn’t have a real answer to the combat abilities of the WE units. The blood surge for the Berserkers caught me out and the ability for the hellbrute to shoot or fight out of turn was also a real issue for me. 

Despite having tried something different for this game, I don’t think it worked at all. The vehicles were not as resilient as I had hoped. The fire power of the leman Russ was good and did do some good work on the table top but I just didn’t think it was so good to be an auto take in my tournament list. The Valkyrie in hover mode is just a bad idea all round and I wound be doing that anytime soon! Over all, this just cemented my ideas that an infantry heavy list would be the way to go and just swamp the enemy on the objectives and just ignore lots of the big threats. As you know this didn’t quite work out as I had intended, mostly as the heavy hitters I did have didn’t really pull their weight (looking at you Valkyries and Vindicare), as I mentioned in a previous post, I think there is some more work needed to refine my tournament list, to make it a bit more competitive that it was.