Admech update

So, I haven't actually posted about actual teams in a while and this one has been sitting in the draft box for so long that it's now actually out of date, so instead of being a small update about the AdMech kill team it will include a general update about all my teams. 

I'll start with the AdMech team as I've a few pictures of them at there WiP stage, although they are actually finished now. 

Skitarii Vanguard

Skitarii Rangers

The AdMech team are formed of just Skitarii models, nothing fancy, mostly as I don't own the models. However I don't really think this is an issue as I don't like the other units very much. You'll have noticed that the units are different colours, red for Rangers and blue for Vanguard (didn't really fancy violet cloaks) and while this might not work for a big force, it works here and makes it very easy to identify who's who on the battlefield.

So with these guys complete and also my Inquisition (militarum tempestus) force complete, more of that to come soon, I have decided to move on to the next team. Now I haven't settled yet but I have started to paint up a few chaos cultists, just the base colours, not that I'm going to spend much time on them anyway. I've not started the chaos Marines yet but I do have a plan for them.

I've also put my Marine scout kill team in the detol to soak, about a month ago at this point! Once there out I'll look to prime them and get them painted up. My other Marine team is starting to take shape with about 10 models collected together, 3 primaris easy builds alongside a bunch of mini Marines, forming sternguard, vanguard and company vets. I plan on putting the rest together at some point but not sure when I'll get around to it.

Lastly the Deathwatch and new models to build here to. I've plans for 5 vanguard vets and have all the necessary pieces, I now just need time to build and paint. These will likely be the next team to paint and I've already started, having done all their arms silver, just there arms though, so still a long way to go yet.

I almost forgot to talk about the Nids. Yes, I have a full roster and a bit of nids, both gaunts and wants, plus a warrior and lictor, all of which should be pretty easy to paint up but I think my eldest wants that job, so I don't think I'll be painting them at all.

Ease and convince says to paint the chaos or Marines next, as both will need lover levels of detail than the Deathwatch but I really would love to get the Deathwatch up and running but we will have to see.

Blog update

So the blog posts are still trickling in and will do for a while yet I think. Don't worry though my enthusiasm for the blog has not diminished at all but rather circumstances over the last few months have meant that the blog has had to take a back seat and will probably continue to over the next few as well.

With my wife being on maternity leave, I though that I would get plenty of time to blog and paint, however the opposite has been true. Firstly in a change to the planned home renovation schedule, at the beginning of summer we decided to rip out the existing kitchen and utility room and install a new kitchen, utility room and also a pantry, which included reconfiguring a chunk of the house. As you can imagine, I spent a lot of time sorting and fitting everything and I'm still not finished yet. This coupled with the long holiday south to visit family, has meant that much of the summer passed with little time for blogging.

Additionally over the past month I have had to deal with a couple of minor health issues, with what started out a a cold and turned in to a series minor chest infections (suspected to have been Whooping cough). Although nothing serious at all, they have been aggravating my Asthma, causing me to have coughing fits and as a result I've damaged all my chest muscles, so I'm on pain killers for that. While none of this has been anywhere near serious, it's just been one annoying thing after another and it's been sapping my energy and morale. Hopefully I'm on the way out of it all now but it's been a slow process.

Lastly, my final little price of me time and my last bit of weekly hobby time has disappeared. The littlest one is now taking bottles occasionally, so my wife's Monday night outings to dancing are now a solo affair, as the little one stays at home with me. Now the big two go to bed quite happily but the wee one will only sleep on top me! That's means that I'm usually relegated to sitting on the sofa watching rubbish on Netflix.

So all in all hobby progress has been very slow of late, however I did manage to paint the up so early models when the wife was away south at a meeting with the wee one, more on them later.

Kill team update

Kill team, along with a few other GW publications received an update a short while ago. This update included all the supplements, although some we're more comprehensive than others.

We have received updates for the Kill Team core manual before, so this time I will only look at the updates made this time around, for both the Errata and Designers Comments. On the whole there have not been any game changing updates and much of the updates are just cleaning up the rules further.

I'll start with the Errata and then move on to the Designers Comments. The Errata really doesn't have much new content to it, as most are simple clarifications and not really updates to the game, stuff like the changes to guard orders and stratagem, which just adds in OFFICER, to take account of commanders or slight reworking of tactics, like the level 1 combat tactic and tyranids metabolic overdrive. There really are only two changes that I think are worth mentioning and they are the GSC mining laser update to D6 damage and the rewording of Tau saviour protocol.

I'm not sure how much the change to the mining laser will make. I'm assuming it has changed from D3 to D6 but I haven't actually looked. Maybe this makes it more worth while taking? Who knows, all I know is I don't come up against GSC very often so I don't really care. As for the rewording of the Tau ability, it is clearer on how it's supposed to work and is still very strong. Luckily, Tau are another army I rarely face, as in never, so I haven't had to deal with this at all. Hopefully it will stay that way!

The Designers Comments has quite a few more updates to it and as per usual there are quite a few simple answers in there, ones that only seem to need an answer because someone is trying to play the system, when everyone else knows exactly what it means already. The first couple of entries are actually pretty good ones. If you declare multiple targets but don't make the charge, you can't use the pile in move to get in combat and attack, now, if you do that make the charge distance, you can't attack, whether you can pile in or not. Also, if the target of your charge kill themselves such as overcharging plasma, you cannot charge anymore. And then we get a silly question,n you cannot shot in to combat, pistol or otherwise and no, you can't shoot across the battlefield from one combat to another. Also, how hard is it to figure out what half your team is? It still works the same way if you have an even or odd number of members. The next amendment was a good clarification and clears up the fact that using the tactical re-roll means re-rolling all the dice from that roll, so, if it's a 2d6 roll then you re-roll both dice, not just one.

Now, we get in to the individual teams, and the first update clears up that you can use the move! Move! Move! Orders on units that fell back, which is useful. Next up is an update for Tau and "For the greater good", meaning now you must declare who's firing straight up at the beginning, not as you go along and once you do, that's it, no more overwatch that turn. This goes in to the next one, which says that using the point black overwatch tactic from Rogue trader and arena means that you can't use the "for the great good ability". Next up area DS8 turret questions. There is now doubt now that you can only take 1 turret, not 1 for each datasheet. Also, if you use the replacement tactic to replace the DS8 turret, it has to be the same as the one it replaced.

Lastly we have the changes to Tyranids and GSC. I've lumped these together for ease, as there pretty much the same faction anyway. The nids question is pretty simple and self explanatory as far as I can see. If you roll a 6 to wound for a model with toxin sacks,the damage 8nstantly increase by 1. I don't see how there was a question about that. Lastly we have the GSC Aberants "bestial vigour" ability and clarification that it drops the damage of the attacking weapon by 1 (to a min of 1) for all purposes not just the actual damage taken, is for injury rolls too.

So that's a breif look at the commented, again not massive amounts but some good clarifications and the usual stupid question or two.

The elites update is rather short, especially when you take out all the updates removing stealth as a specialist. Now, I might have missed something with the "stealth" specialism but I do wonder what it would have been. I'm guessing something along the lines of negatives to hit or advance moves, similar to the vets tactic. It could have been interesting but as none of my units would have had the option it's a bit irrelevant. The other updates to note are the correcting of the Wracks data sheets to the correct strength and toughness profiles and the clarification that vanguard veteran sergeants can't be taken by Deathwatch. In addition we learn that Banshee's are the way to go against Tau, as it shuts down all overwatch.

The only point in the whole update that interests me is the one concerning Bullgryns and Ogryns. This change means that they can no longer be effected by orders, which to be honest, I expected. Orders made these already strong units, very OP. Being able to strike in combat with so many strong attacks before you opponent even has a chance to do anything was to good to be true. Now, I've never thought Ogryns we're much good in kill team anyway but Bullgryns were and even now, they are still very strong units. I'll still be looking at tagging a Bullgryn on to my roster, even with this change.

While I do little with commanders, the updates received are worth mentioning, well 1 of them is anyway.

Q. Since all Commanders have a specialism, are they treated in
the same way as specialists in matched play games (i.e. can only
be taken at level 1)?
A. Yes.

This to me is a big change and might actually bring commanders more in to mainstream play. Ok that's a bit of a stretch but I think it's a good clarification and brings some of the power combo's back to earth. I still won't be playing commanders but still it's a good change.

Kill team elites - part 4, the final part.

Right, I promise that this will be the final part! Today we're going to look over the new AdMech and Chaos units and then we'll can this one done!

Starting with the AdMech units. Now there are only two units, the Electro-priests. The Corpuscarii priests are useful for both shooting and combat but the Fulgurite priests are solely combat focused. With the other options available I don't know if these are really worth taking over the sicarian variants. Yes there slightly cheaper and have a slightly better invulnerable save but they are weaker with less wounds. While there are some good rules for the units, such as Voltagheist field that both units have and Siphoned Vigour that the Electro Priests have. These rules are useful but don't in my opinion make up for the lacking in profiles. I don't have either and I've no plans to buy either so it really makes no difference to me, however, from the bits I've read, I'd take the Sicarian's, probably the infiltrator version for some shooting.

Next up, are the Chaos units. Again I'm not going to include any of the newer units, which is quite easy, as they are all commanders and the possessed units are not really a new unit, just a new model.

Anyway, we'll start with the Khorne Berserkers. These are for all intensive purposes regular marines, just with an extra attack. They have standard rules, Death to the False Emperor giving the ability to gain extra hits and Transhuman Physiology, ignoring the first flesh wound. However, the most interesting rule is Blood for the Blood Good, allowing the model to fight twice. This would be even more effective is they could take some other options for wargear. However, it's very limited with only the champion being able to take anything more powerful than a chain swordaxe. I still think this is a good unit and against weaker units it could carve a bloody path.

The next up are the possessed. Now, if you think the options for Berserkers was limited then this is even better! There are literally no options at all. Now I het that they are supposed to be possessed by daemons and all that but you could at least give them a couple of weapon options. Anyway, they get the standard death to the False Emperor and Transhuman Physiology, as well as a 5++ daemon save, all of which are very useful. They also get an additional rule whereby you role a D3 every fight phase to determine the number of attacks the model has. Now this could be very good (3) or very bad (1) and leaves you at the mercy of the dice gods every turn. Yes, the weapon profile is pretty reasonable but if you can't actually hit the target it's a bit useless. I'd have preferred a straight 2 attacks rather than D3, just for the certainty but the units is still quite a good unit nonetheless. I may have to think about building one or two at some point, just not anytime soon.

The last unit to look at in this whole review is the Chaos Terminator. Now this unit has the standard stat line, same as 40k proper, and the same points cost I believe. So while this is not a cheap unit, it is a versatile unit with the ability to take both Combi weapons and power weapons. The means that you are not stuck with bolters and power Fists when facing guardsmen or Tau, wasting the cost and potential of the weapons. Taking a Terminator with Combi flamer and something like lightning clawing will do just as well. One advantage that this unit has over the similar loyalist units, is the choice of support. Loyalist Marines have to deal with 10 point scouts as the cheapest support units. Meaning that even with 1 Terminator in the team, you are only looking at 6 bodies on the table. With CSM, you have 4 point scouts, meaning you could have 15 or even more bodies on the table, meaning you'd have lots of support and ground coverage. I still think these are too expensive for most games though maybe throw one or two in your roster for good measure, but on the whole I'd probably take a Berserker or possessed.

So that's it the finish of my little review, which has taken so long we've had an FAQ for kill team come out. I will take a look at this FAQ at some point soon, although there really haven't been many changes.