NI24 warm up game - Guard Vs WE

 This was my first warm up game, played against the current, NI23 champion. His list was slightly different this year, bringing some of the same units but also bringing something a lot more fun, at least for him. His list consisted of a squad of Jakhals, two 5 man berzerker squads, two helbrutes, two maulerfiends, a defiler, Angron and a Lord of Skulls. Not a meta list for sure but still very scary and a lot of armour.

We played the new Pariah Nexus missions, using Take and Hold, Tipping points and Raise banners. This was the first time using the new deck for me, although it really isn't much different to the old leviathan one.

For this game I had decided to run the Inquisitorial Agents, as I really liked the idea of these boys. I was really hoping they could do some work in combat and to that end I had made sure to put them somewhere they could get some action. In this case, opposite a squad of Berserkers.

Deployment and board.

The arch enemy

The forces of the imperium

Deployment was simple, stay away from the big scary stuff, although I was keen to try out some of the new units and see how they got on.

The plan was pretty simple, push up early on to the midfield objectives and try and hold them. The Kreig have proved pretty good at this in the past, so even though the centre was open, they pushed up. Details are a little hazey now, given the time since the game occured, but I do remember that my first turn of shoot was rubbish, basically everything went on to the defiler and I only just managed to take it out! The only other wounds were put on one of the maulerfiends by a rhino. The 2+ to hit for the rhinos HK missiles Vs the 4+ for the guard makes a huge difference to the hit rate!

Turn 2 saw the WE advance and charge, with maulerfiend taking on the DKoK on my left and Angron charging up the centre. The Kreig proved their metal again, just taking the punishment, even as their numbers were whittled down. Angron tried to demolish the Deathwatch vets but after splitting attacks between the vets and the Armiger, failed to take out either, although the vets were somewhat diminished. In return everything that could shot Angron before charging in and ultimately killing Angron, but only when one of the armigers went BANG! Many mortal wounds were dispensed, from both the Armiger and Angron!

This destruction in the centre allowed the Lord of Skulls to charge in and alongside a helbrute or two, they took down the last Armiger and deathwatch vets plys my LRBT. The maulerfiend on my left was finally destroyed after taking down my DKoK but the vets came to the rescue after dealing with the Berserkers. 

Overall, even though we only got to turn 3, it was a good game. Part of the reason we only got to turn 3 was because we had a lot of discussions about options, possibilities and issues around our lists. 

So what did I learn? Inquisitorial Agents are not that good, especially against power armour. They just don't have enough attacks, even with the -1ap to really damage MEQ units. Even against a depleted unit of Berserkers they didn't make much of a dent. Additionally the armigers didn't do as well as I had hoped but they did alright. Some terrible dice rolling on my part didn't help at all. 

Positives were that the lost worked as I had hoped for most part. It's the last couple of hundred points that still need adjusting.

I had a couple more games lined up at this point but they were against my son and his friend, so we're going to be more of teaching games then anything else.

NI24 guard list options

 I had decided to take guard to the tournament again, I was thinking about taking my blood angels but there are a couple of units that I want before I do that, mostly the brutalis dreads. So guard it was but with the release of the Imperial Agents codex, there was going to be a definite Inquisitorial element to the army. 

There were several units that were locked in, namely the DKoK, Knights and Deathwatch, the rest was still unknown. So the base list, which came to just over 1800 points in the end consisted of;

Characters

- Death Korps Marshal: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

- Death Korps Marshal: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

- Primaris Psyker: Force Weapon, Laspistol, Psychic Maelstrom

- Primaris Psyker: Force Weapon, Laspistol, Psychic Maelstrom

- Regimental Enginseer: Archeotech Pistol, Enginseer Axe, Servo-arm

The Marshalls and Psykers go with the DKoK squads and the Enginseer goes with the LRBT, simple.

- 20x Death Korps of Krieg: medi-pack, 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Sniper Rifle, 2x Plasma Gun, 2x Watchmaster: Chainsword, Plasma Pistol

- 20x Death Korps of Krieg: Medi-pack, 2x Vox-caster, 2x Flamer, 2x Meltagun, 2x Watchmaster: Chainsword, Plasma Pistol

- 5x Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

- 5x Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

The guard battle line units are simple. The DKoK units will form the main units, pushing up on to the objectives in no man's land to score the primary points. While one squad is more focused on long range shooting and the other short range shooting, both will be used in similar fashion. The Scions will stay in reserve, dropping in to score objectives or secondary points as they are drawn. They are armed for some offensive work, but this is secondary to Thier primary points scoring purpose.

- 3x Heavy Weapons Squad: Mortar

- 1x Leman Russ Vanquisher: HK Missile, Lascannon, Heavy Stubber, 2x Heavy Flamer

The obligatory mortar squad for sitting at the back, holding the home objective and dropping random shots on people. The LRBT is there for the anti-armour and anti-monster firepower. It's only 1 shot so it's a bit hit or miss but when it hits, it really does hit.

Next up are the allied units;

- 1x Armiger Warglaive: Reaper chain-cleaver, Thermal spear, Questoris heavy stubber

- 1x Armiger Warglaive: Reaper chain-cleaver, Thermal spear, Questoris heavy stubber

These are here for their anti-armour capacity, the thermal spears should be able to deal with vehicles, especially with the LRBT and following up with the chain-cleaver.

- 10x Deathwatch Kill Team: 2x Astartes shield + Power weapon, Black Shield blades, 2x Boltgun + Power weapon, 2x Thunder hammer 2x Infernus heavy bolter, Sgt: Combi-weapon, Xenophase blade

- 10x Deathwatch Kill Team: 6x Boltgun + Power weapon, 1x Frag cannon, 1x Infernus heavy bolter, 1x Stalker-pattern boltgun, Sgt: Combi-weapon + Xenophase blade

- 1x Imperial Rhino: HK missile, Storm bolter

- 1x Imperial Rhino: HK missile, Storm bolter

- Inquisitor: Blessed wardings, Inquisitorial melee weapon, Combi-weapon

- Watch Captain Artemis

The Deathwatch form the real punch of this army, being power armoured warriors and also battle line. There is a combat squad, tooled up for smashing things in combat and a shooting squad for backing them up or taking down other threats at range. They will be driven around in their rhinos for the extra mobility and the squads will be joined by the characters, the combat squad by Artemis and the shooting one by the inquisitor.

This gives, in my opinion, a solid core to the army, that should be able to take on a range of opponents apart from maybe very vehicle heavy lists such as knights. It comes to 1810 points, giving me 190 points to play with and this is where I have some options. These options fall in to three categories, more guard, more Inquisitorial or more power armour.

The more guard option consists of;

- Militarum Tempestus Command Squad: Regimental Standard, Plasma Gun, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Grenade Launcher, Tempestor Prime: Command Rod, Tempestus Dagger, Warlord, Enhancement: Grand Strategist (+15 pts)

- 5x Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Fist, Plasma Pistol

- 5x Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Fist, Plasma Pistol

The prime has to be the warlord, to turn the scions in to battle line, enabling me to take the 4 squads. The command rod and enhancement enables me to buff the unit nicely each turn.

The next option is adding more Inquisitorial units;

- 12x Inquisitorial Agents: 2x Tome-skull, 2x Eviscerator, 2x Mystic stave, 2x Plasma pistol, 2x Servitor: 1x Multimelta, 1x Plasma cannon

- 1x Inquisitorial Chimera: HK missile, Heavy flamer, Heavy flamer

This adds a very multirole unit to the army with some decent combat punch. The addition of the double flamer chimera could also be very useful for taking some wounds pre-charge.

Lastly we have the extra power armour;

- 10x Sisters of Battle Squad: Ministorum heavy flamer Artificer-crafted storm bolter, 1x Sister Superior: Power weapon, Boltgun

- 1x Imperial Rhino: HK missile, Storm bolter

This option adds some extra 3+ saves to the army and also another rhino. This option possibly adds the least to the force, as it adds nothing different, nor gives me options I didn't have before.

So that's the list options, as it was I managed to play a few games before we had to submit lists and got a good idea of what would work and what wouldn't, as we'll see over the next couple of posts.

Northern Invasion 2024

 So, this will be the first in a number of post about this year's Northern Invasion, a little late as the tournament took place at the begining of November! 

This is the second year in a row of attending and alongside my son we also travelled down with one of his friends. This resulted in a number of weeks of rapid preparation for all.of us, from tidying up paintwork, finishing models and magnetising bases for storage. 

There were seven of us that travelled down for the weekend, joining eight from the local clubs and another travelled up from the mainland to join in.

There are a whole range of armies, with 3 guard, all very different, two Tau, Blood Angels, Thousand Sons, Necrons, Genestealer Cults, Imperial Knights, Chaos Knights, Sisters, Tyranids, Drukhari, World Eaters and finally Death Guard. A good full range of armies, with lists that ranged from meta netlists through to fun and interesting lists.

In general this is a fun and enjoyable tournament, but this year there was a bit more of a competitive edge to it, with a number of players using it as a warm up even for one of the bigger Scottish GT's down south.

Even so, it was a good experience for us all, even for the Necrons player, who lost all his games, yet was already planning next year's list before we had got home!

First up, I'll go through the lists, and even though the games are long gone, I'll talk trough the plans and ideas and later, in another post I'll give the thoughts and ideas for next year's list. 

Guard previews

Despite having a whole host of post sitting in my draft folder, I though that I should get this out in some sort of timely manner, otherwise it it would be so long past the even that the actual codex will probably be out!

With the latest reveals show, we got a whole host of new guard models, some expected and some less so. On the whole though I think we were all braced for a host of new Kreig. 

The launch box is another exceptional box, and no doubt high on the list of any true Kreig fan, if not any guard fan in general. With two squads of death riders, an engineers squad and and artillery gun, all let by the new Kreig Character. Completing the box are the new codex and the new data cards. This really is a nice box, however, I don't think I will bother with it, for one simple reason, the 10 death riders. I have 10 rough riders and don't need, nor want any more horses, plus I'm not overly fussed about the command model, as beautiful as it is. If there was more engineers and a command squad instead of one of the horses, then I would be far more interested, but as it stands, a large part of this box is not of interest to me. 

The new codex looks very nice though, if anything I like the standard version better than the limited edition box, however, I will be keeping an eye on eBay for the new book and cards when they come out. I suspect that I will not be able to pick them up for cheap like the BA book and cards, but I will be looking nonetheless. 

The sole character model (except those in the command squad) was Lord Marshall Dreir. Mounted on his Kreig steed he can join his fellow Death Riders and charge headlong in to battle. He is apparently one tough cookie, with a 4+ invulnerable save and a revive on death special rule, possibly even a FNP save as well. He comes armed with a fancy sword and grants Death Riders devastating wounds on the charge, which could be very useful against tougher models. 

He is a stunning model, decked out in all his finery and will make an amazing centre piece model, especially whem surrounded by his fellow Death Riders.

Which are also very nice models. These boys come with options for either lances or swords. The Lance's seem to only be frag tipped and no option for melta, the power swords seem to be standard power swords. I believe both come with lascarbines for some shooting action as well. 

Additionally these are supposed to have rules that enable them to make a reaction move when enemy units get within a certain range, useful for denying charges and the like. 

I think these are really nice models but I really don't think I have any need for these. I think they have there place in the army list but I have my rough riders, who do the job I want them to do better than the death riders can. 

Next up is a unit I am very keen on, the Command Squad.

While we don't know many rules here, there are a few bits we do know. There are six models, lead by the Commissar. 

The alchemist is the medic equivalent and while we don't know what he does, I suspect that it will be a FNP save, whether this is a 6+ or a 5+ is unknown, but here's hoping for a 5+.

We don't know about orders yet, but hopefully, despite being a Commissar, he won't be limited with which orders he can give. As for the others, the vox and standard will no doubt do the same thing they usually do and the Commissar Cadet will most likely have a boosted combat stat line but little.else is known at this stage. While I am excited by the new command squad, I really was hoping for a new Marshall model, no I have to hope that they don't remove the Marshall from the Imperial Armour list.

The heavy weapons teams are another model on my wishlist list, especially the flamers! At 18" S5 AP-1 D2 and presumably d6 shots, they are looking very tasty. I am hopeful I can get squads of the stubbers and flamers, possibly using some 3rd party models (looking at you Wargames Atlantic). The lascannons are less appealing at the moment. They unit also comes with a Fire Co-ordinator which we don't know what he does but seems like it might be a fire on death type mechanic.

Engineers have been reborn in plastic, although they have changed a bit in the process. They have gained a mini Cyclops, in the form of the remote mine. This will have the ability to deal mortal wounds to a near by unit, and when combined with the free grenades stratagem, could be quite devastating. The unit also has the scout ability, which could be useful for grabbing early game objectives. In addition to this they look like that have fairly limited options, with shotguns and a flamer or laspistols and trench clubs being the only options. I am really not sure on the load out for either option, the limited special weapons could be problematic and combat guard are not really much use, however, it really depends upon the various weapons profiles as to how effective the units is. 

Lastly we have the big boys of the Kreig, and I mean big, on 130mm bases they are a substantial size and will not be easy to hide away.

We don't know which weapons are direct fire and which are indirect but I would be surprised is any of them didn't have indirect, as they are Kreig artillery pieces. Firstly the Quad Launcher, the updated version of the classic Thudd Gun. While we don't know any rules, I suspect that this will be a lighter weapon, somewhere around the standard mortar profile, and similar to the wyvern with 4d6 shots. The only issue is the next weapon.

Multiple Rocket Launcher is a very similar weapon and we know that this one will have the Anti-infantry 3+ ability. This means that it will cut through pretty much any light armoured infantry units, such as Tau, Guard and even Orks, however, I suspect that it will have quite a low strength and ap values with lots of shots. There will be some difference between this and the Quad Launcher but I suspect that this will be the better option of the two.

The next two weapons are also similar. We don't know anything about the heavy mortar but I suspect it will be hard hitting with high strength and damage, maybe even d6 damage but few shots and short range.

Opposite to the siege cannon which we know is a 3 damage weapon and I suspect a long range, probably table spanning and presumably more shots, maybe d6 to the mortars d3? 

Right now, without knowing the rules for any of these units my wish list is pretty large! So far I definitely know I need at least one command squad, if not two, also two engineer squads and two heavy weapons squads all backed up by two artillery pieces, either in heavy mortar or siege cannon form. I am not planning on getting all GW kits, most likely I will get one of each of the infantry kits and both artillery kits from GW and then kits from Wargames Atlantic, a grognard infantry and a command\heavy weapons kit, which I will kitbash with the spare GW bits to form the other units I want. Along with some of the bits I already have I should be able to bash together everything I need\want. I am really liking the new GW releases and who doesn't want more Guard infantry in their collection! Now I just have to wait and see if I can grab the codex at a reasonable price!

Dark Guardians Bikes contin

Last post was about the main bulk of the bikes, this post is about the characters and assault bikes of the chapter. 

There are really only two characters in the raven wing section of the army, the Captain and the Chaplain. These are both minor conversions/kit bashes and nothing special, The captain has a power sword and the chaplain a power fist. The chaplains bike also got some additions, such as the servo skull and the book, plus a skill of some foul Xenos strapped to the back.

Captain and chaplain 

The chaplain has a few extra details on the bike, such as shields on the tanks, to hide the chaos origin of the bike, can’t be having a chaplain driving around on a bike with an eight pointed star on it! The skull on the front however works in well enough.

Next up are the command squad, with champion, standard and apothecary. Again these are more kit bashes rather than proper conversions. 

Champion, standard and apothecary 

These three are very basic kit bashes but I really like how they turned out, they should stand out nicely if they ever his the table. 

Lastly we have a personal favourite of mine, the attack bikes. Here is a full unit of three of these boys, all of which are now firmly in legends. These are all armed with multimeltas, for some anti-tank goodness.

Two of the bikes are bog standard, but the third has a few extra details and plays the roll of sergeant, even if the unit doesn't actually have a Sgt position.

Flashy pauldrons for the Sgt.

This should be the last of my first born marines all painted and sorted. While a number of them are not yet varnished or based, I'm not in a hurry to get this done, although I plan to at some point, mostly just to preserve them over their inevitable long slumber. Next up should be some more guard and a couple of special projects.

Blog update.

 Ok, so there has been a bit of a quiet period for the blog recently. Again, as will previous quite periods, I haven't stopped blogging or fallen out of love with the process, rather there has been several events over the recent months that have meant that blogging time has been reduced, yet content to blog about has increased!

The first big change has been a change in jobs, meaning that I have increased my working hours from 18 across two jobs to 35.5 hours across two jobs, with the majority of these hours now coming while the small ones are at school. This means that I don't have any time during the day to sit and blog while the kids are out and when I am home, I am busy with kids clubs and house work. 

A change that has gone alongside this is the youngest starting school, which has enabled the above work expansion and not enabled the extra hobby time I thought it would!

Another change has been due to shifting around kids clubs and also my other hobbies. The my daughter is a keen swimmer and her pool sessions have changed to take up more time including weekends plus I have switched one of my clubs, from said weekends to weekday evenings, eating in to yet more hobby time.

Additionally I was away south at Northern Invasion 2024 a few weeks ago and I spent every spare moment in the lead up to that event painting and sorting my list, plus helping to sort out my son's and also his friends list, who joined us for the weekend. With all the painting and practice games I didn't get much of a chance to blog and now have nearly 20 posts sitting in the draft folder waiting to get properly written about the warm-up games, list thoughts, the actual weekend and games plus my thoughts and the others thoughts on then lists and improvements form next year. 

I have also been working on a couple of other projects, just small side projects but they have been fun. I'll try and get some pictures up of them when I can. I have also started on a bigger project for my AdMech\Knights army which I hope to get some pictures of them up as soon as I can. 

There is also some extra special news going on but I can't say anything about that yet, as soon as I can I will.

So, all in all, there has been a lot going on behind the scenes, even though there has not been a lot of movement up on the blog. I will hopefully get a chance to play catch-up before Christmas, if not I'm hoping the Christmas holidays should give me time.

Dark Guardians Bikes

Here are the first lot of bike from my Dark Guardians. This post contains all the ‘standard’ bikes, from the base Ravenwing squads to the Company Veterans and Black Knight stand ins. First up are the standard bikes and there is a lot of plasma!

First Squad

First squad is a three man squad with just a Sergeant and two bikers with plasma guns. This is the base set up for all three squads.

Despite appearances, this is actually the second squad!

The third squad, which I’ll probably call the First squad in games, given that the Sgt in this squad has the double wings at the back, making him a little bit more special than the others.

Third squad

Next up are the extras, the three bikers with bolt pistols. These could for a squad all of there own but will most likely always be joined to one of the other three squads to max out the number and help protect the plasma gunners. Given the current lack of granular points, you either have to min or max the numbers, not that it really matters to these guys, as they have been moved to legends.

Pistoleer squad

Next we jump from the base bikers to their more experienced brethren, the Company Veterans. Again these have been passed to Legends, so their appearances on the table will be somewhere between none and never, but here they are.

4 Veterans

Two of the veterans have listed their chain swords at some point in the past, and i had planned on adding power weapons to these two but given their current place in the game, it sort of seemed to much effort to go through, I mean its not like painting a whole army that no longer exists is a lot of effort! Oh, and there is four of them when the squad size is 2 or 5, so again, if they were ever fielded they would be in pairs. 

Lastly for this post I have the Black Knight proxies. These are some old school bikes that I got in a bunch of models that I brought a hill back. They even have the classic banners out the back, well two do anyway.

While not actually being black knights, they are sufficiently different from any other bikes that I want to use them as something different and I had planned on switching over the bolters for plasma guns but I couldn’t be bothered in the end, so musta lefty them as they were. Again, like pretty much all this army, they are not going to be played very much, if ever and so I’m not going to invest a lot of time to switch over the weapons. 

Next up are some of the characters and attack bikes to finish off the force.

Reinforcements ready!

While there has been a bit of a slow period on the blog, the painting has been trundling along nicely. Over the majority of the year, I have been playing catch-up with my pile of opportunity (aka pile of shame) but recently I have been painting up some new models, to fill out collections and bring other squads to legal standards. 

Firstly there are the two last Dark Guardians terminators and the Chaplain. The two terminators are a partly new, as I had both sets of legs but no torsos to add to them! 

Champion and librarian 

These are the last two terminators to add to my Dark Guardians force, completing the deathwing command squad and characters.

The last Dark Guardians non bike unit is the Chaplain. This was originally a metal chaos lord model but had been repurposed as a chaplain, which he does quite well with all the skull and big mace. 

So now that these models as the bikes are all completed, that is the entire first born Dark Guardians force completed, ready for boxing up and putting on to storage!

Next up we're some Adeptus Sororitas model. These are the three Imperium Magazine models, that while not 100 percent complete, they are missing transfers, complete the squad of sisters to a fully legal squad. I will have to look at getting these finished completely and quick shaded as I intend to take these to the Orkney tournament with me.

In addition to the sisters of battle models, I also painted up the Repentia and Arco-flagellant. The Repentia will go in to my Inquisitorial henchmen unit, which will also be going to Orkney with me.

Lastly we have Inquisitor Draxus, the only actual named inquisitor I own and will be likely to own, mostly due to weapon and mini dragon options being quite hard to kit bashing from stuff I have available. 

This model was painted using a mix of contrast and normal citadel paints and I think the mini dragon and shoulder skull have both come out very nicely with the contrast paints. The shoulder skull is actually a lot clearer in real life and does not blend in quite so much as it does in the pictures.

The last bit of contrast was the cloak. The contrast gives it a nice leather look which would have taken a lot more work just using the classic paints. 

I'm currently painting up some reinforcements for the DKoK, so I'll get them up here as soon as I can but hopefully next up will be the Dark Guardian bikes.