Dark Guardians first born

 Alongside the recent games, I have been spending some evenings, when I have time!, trawling through my backlog of grey plastic and working towards my 2024 goals. The latest round of models to get painted are my Dark Guardians and more specifically the first born terminators, although this lot aren't terminators at all!

The first models on the paint tray were the non terminators or bikes and form the core command structure of the army, fluff wise at least. This little core units of 6 models contains, lore wise, the company master and his command squad with the companies champion, banner and apothecary alongside two veterans for some protection. Alongside the scout squads, they form the foot mobile core element of the army.

The complete command squad

Company master

This, as far as I know, is an original Assault on Black Reach captain, who's terminators will feature in the next post. 

The command squad

The command squad, now part of legends, form the bulk of the power armoured section here. 

Ancient

The ancient with his combi-plasma and chain sword (aka combat weapon) with his Deathwatch Insignia just visible on his right shoulder pad. 

Apothecary and Champion

The apothecary is actually an old metal model and weights a ton compared to the new plastic models, I'm always surprised when I pick it up how heavy it actually is. The Champion is technically lacking his shield but I don't think this is an issue. He has his sword and pistol and all the trappings of a company champion, with his fancy back banner and flash shoulder pad plus a rather swanky hoodie. 

Champions fancy banner and shoulder pad.

Next up are the two vets, one with the standard boltgun and one with plasma cannons. The boltgun marine is basically there as some ablative wounds for the other models and the plasma cannons is there for some heavy firepower, even though plasma cannons aren't quite what they use to be.

Lastly we're moving in to the "Ravenwing" with two land speeders. The first is land speeders Tempest with heavy bolter and assault cannon but can also be run as a Ravenwing Talon Master as well. The second is a land speeders Typhoon, with it's missile.lanchers and multi-melta. These for part of the mobile element of the list along side the bike squads that are currently on the painting table.

2024 League Tau Vs Grey Knights

 So this was my son's second game in less than 24 hours! After the previous nights marathon game we were hoping that this game would be a lot quicker. The opponent for this game was playing Grey Knights with a baby carrier heavy list. 

The list contained 5 carriers, including ......

You might notice some different terrain on the boards. This was at the request of the opponent, as with his mostly mech suit army it would have been difficult to get in to the building that were on the board, so he fetched some of his terrain to use. 

My boy deployed quite well, using his infiltrators to screen out any possibility of the Knights deep striking up the board and this did give his opponent some issues during his first turn. 

And that's all the photos I got! Deployment and scout moves! Again I was pulling double duty with child care and various errands, so was only popping in occasionally to see how things were getting on. 

The main issue faced by my boy this game was the same as he faced against the Custodies, a 2+ save and 4+ invulnerable, meaning that his big guns with their -4ap were negated a lot of the time and his little guns were struggling to do anything. In turn 1 he encountered another problem, the teleportation shenanigans of the Grey Knights. After taking one down to just a handful of wounds, three I think, it jumped across the board and hid away from more shooting, getting healed up the the Tech-priests. On three separate occasions he got a dreadknight down to just a couple of wounds (a single wound on one occasion) for it to just away and get healed up. 

There is no doubt that his opponent did play well, and was lucky in some long bomb charges and on at least one occasion my son was very unlucky with his dice rolls. Dropping in all his suits on one flak to overwhelm the 4 voidsmen, two Grey Knights and an injured Dreadknight (on 7 wounds). With 36 burst, 6 fision, 2 plasma and 3 ion blaster shots he managed to remove a single voidsman and drop 3 wounds on the Dreadknight from a single fusion shot. To top it off, he failed both charges including using a reroll for one of them. 

He did play very well and made very few mistakes this game, maybe just being a little too aggressive in his deployment being his biggest. All in all though, despite the final result and the fact that he was tabled turn 4, the opponent said that he did not find the game easy. A lot of the time my son failed to get his cards by the narrowest of margins and then was denied by the Knights shenanigans, such as bring it down where he got the Dreadknight down to a single wound before it jumped away and hit. 

Despite the lost again both players seemed to enjoy the game and despite to loss again, his third in a row that is now his hard games done. Two of these the players, this one and the custodies player, are two of the best players in the club, one winning 4 out of 4 games (3 major and one minor victory) and the other having won 4 out of 5 games ( 2 major and 2 minor victories and the loss being to the minor victory for the other player!). His remaining two games should be a little easier and even if he doesn't win then they should be a lot closer. 

2024 league Tau Vs Ultarmarines

 This was my sons second game in the 40k league and it was a mammoth one, after 7 hours and approaching 11 o’clock, we called the game at the end of turn 4. My son did very well to keep his concentration for as log as he did but there were quite a few errors made, due to both a lack of concentration and also tiredness as the game was played on a Friday night after a full week of school and clubs. This will also be quite a quick write up as I wasn't pulling double duty, keeping an eye on the games, babysitting the youngest and also dealing with general house stuff.

The ultramarines army was a fairly troop heavy army and contained a lot of proxy units. The army was lead by Roboute Guilliman, with Marneus Calgar and Cheif Librarian Tigurius, backed by a nameless Lieutenant. Two ten man Tactical squads, loaded with grav, three 5 man Scout squads, a Sternguard and Devastator squad (also with grav) made up the bulk of the troops along with the Company Heroes. These were backed up by a Land Raider Redeemer and a Whirlwind.

Deployment was a tactical battle in itself as both of the players tried to out manoeuvre each other with their infiltrating units. 

The game started well, with the land raider getting knocked down to just a single wound, where it remained until its demise in turn 4. 

It was in turn 2 that the first mistake from my son popped up. He deployed both his crisis suits in a very bad position at the front of his lines, mostly due to the fact that there wasn’t anywhere else to drop them. He could have placed them on a flank and done some more with them or just have waited until turn 3, but we had been played for the best part of two hours by this point already and he just plonked them down without much thought. 

Unfortunately placing the crisis suits down without thinking left him open to quite a difficult second turn with his opponent making the most of it and destroying a number of vehicles and gaining quite a few secondary points. This was a theme through our the match, with my son just plonking units down with our thought and suffering for it.

There were also some unfortunate dice rolls, with farsight charging the remnants of the stern guard and librarian only for his opponent to make four 6 up saves out of six dice.

The Ultarmarines ultimately gained the momentum early on in the game and never let up. 

By the end of turn 4 the Tau were on the ropes and I suspect that if we had gone to tur. 5 it was have been a tabling, as there was only dark strider and two broadsides left on the board. 

The ultramarine were really geared up for a vehicle heavy army, with all the grav, cannons, guns and pistols, which for a very vehicle heavy list like the Tau, is deadly combination. Combine this with the fixed secondary of bring it down, which count per model and not per unit, means that there is a lot of point up for not a lot of effort. Each crisis squad with character gives up 8 points for bring it down and 4 for assassinate, for a total of 12 points or 24 for both squads, all for 495 points. Over half the available points for just two units and a quarter of the army points.

Overall I think this game was a very bad match up for the tau list, the number of grav weapons with the anti-vehicle 2+ and the number of vehicle models in the army combined with the fixed secondaries was always going to make this a hard game. As far as I know this is the only player in the tournament to take fixed secondaries, so hopefully that should not be a problem in future games. 

The game was not a great game for my son, with several movement and tactical errors, most of which were due to tiredness and lack of concentration over the mammoth game, which might well have ended up being a 8 plus hour game if it had gone to it's conclusion. His next game is against Grey Knights and will be another hard game as his opponent is another very good player.

Balance data slate and MFM

So the latest balance data slate and Munitorum Field Manual (MFM) have arrived, and there are some highs and lows as far as the guard are concerned. Overall I think this is more of a side move than either a buff or a nerf, it is however, forcing us in a certain direction whether you like it or not but I'll say more about that later. Firstly let look at all the bits that I think will affect the guard.

In the balance data slate, we got quite a few changes to our core rules and stratagems. One of the biggest changes (outside the detachment rule) is that the Reinforcements stratagem is no a one use only stratagem. This will have quite an impact on many player and I for one will feel this as I generally bring back 2 to 3 units a game. This will limit my willingness to throw a unit forward early game on a suicidal point scoring mission or blocking action, as I now won't be able to just bring them back. A minor change to note is to 0cp stratagem abilities. These are now just -1cp and don't give you the ability to double use a stratagem. It's not a big deal, as only Kreed had this ability and while she was a popular take for many people, she is still only one model, unlike space marine captains.

 As I said earlier the real change here is to Born Soldiers. Gone are the old rules in their entirety and now we have a new version. The new version give Regiment units lethal hits against all non-monster and vehicles and Squadron units lethal hits against vehicles and monsters. However there is a small caveat, the target has to be visible. This impacts all indirect weapons and along with the changes I'll discuss later, may well kill artillery parks for guard. There are some quirks to this new rule though. Sentinels are both regiment and squadron so get everything, yet things like rough riders only get regiment, so those melta Lance's are not nearly as useful. Another quirk is that Tank commanders don't get any benefit as they are not squadron vehicle yet the normal Russ is. In addition, something like the LR Punisher, an anti-infantry vehicle are going to be quite good at taking out monsters, just because of the number of shots they can push out. In total over half of the guard units can't take advantage of this ability, someone worked it out to be something like 45 out of 81 units. That's a lot of units that can't use the army doctrine, granted attaching some of these units to squads get around this issue but still, when half your units, including things like the super heavies, tank commanders and most characters, cant take advantage of the detachment rule something's not quite right. 

The Munitorum Field Manual also dropped and gave us a few points drops, not surprisingly most of these were to artillery units, such as basilisks and Manticores, but Royal Dorns, armoured sentinels and Kasrkin also saw points drops. Are these points drops enough to balance out the other changes, I don't know. 

There were also some core rules that changed that will impact on the guard. One I’ve mention above, is the change to the indirect fire rules, now along side the modifiers to hit and save, there is also a flat rules that 1 to 3 always miss, so no more artillery hitting on 2’s re-rolling. The best we can ever get now is hitting on 4’s re-rolling 1’s. This is going to make a huge difference to many players, but wont do massive to my armies, although along side the changes to Born Soldiers it will relegate my wyverns even further. So are trying to argue that the scout sentinels abilities remove both the -1 to hit and 1-3 always misses but it only say to remove the penalty, which I read as the -1 to hit.

Another change is to movement, with new rules for pivoting vehicles. This is designed to make movement easier and no doubt will. It means less messing around with measurements and simpler movement, hopefully meaning less arguments and quicker game. However, it will also mean a lot of models moving in very funny ways, as the model only has to move in straight lines and not forward, so moving sideways or diagonally is a thing. With no facings or weapon arcs there is no need to rotate a vehicle if you don’t want to, so if you just move it sideways you can and not pay for the pivot. 

Another change sort of affects two different rules, both Devastating wounds and Hazardous rolls are now mortal wounds. Devastating wounds is now back to being mortal wounds, but specifically states that the wounds do not spill over, so no more wiping out infantry squads with a single Devastating wound shot. The Hazardous roll also now inflicts mortal wounds rather than just removing models. It now inflicts a straight 3 mortal wound. The result of both of these rules is that any rules that enable you to take saves against mortal wounds, either abilities or FNP saves, can be taken against these. For most models this wont make much difference, a guardsman failing a hazardous roll is still going to die but a terminator or similar might well survive, anything bigger could survive several failed hazardous rolls. The changes to both of these rules means that many units are going to be far more resilient. In terms of guard, it means that we still don’t have to worry about whole units being removed by devastation wounds. The changes to Hazardous mean that we might have a chance to keep characters alive, a platoon commander may not kill himself outright, like mine did recently, when he fails his hazardous roll. The is also a change to the order in which you have to apply the hazardous wounds, non-characters before character is the basic gist of the rule. 

There were also a couple of bits on the rules commentary that were interesting and I’m honestly not sure if the ruling on base to base is new or just a clarification. This states that for models that don’t have bases or overhand their bases, if you move as close as possible you are counted as being in base to base, even though you might not actually be touching the base. One other point of this that was new to me is that you can be underneath the model. I have also ways assumed that you could not be places underneath the hull of a vehicle, such as under the overhand of the LRBT track or under the hull of a Tau Devilfish but apparently this is fine. The other rule clarification, that upon looking at the actual ruler, was obvious. Big Guns Never Tire specifically states that it happens in your shooting phase, I had just applies it to every time the unit fires, so in over watch or even on the tank commanders ability. This is why reading the actual rule in its entirety is always a good idea!

One final note is that there has been a subtle change to orders. Each officers data sheet states the number of orders they can issue, previously it was just the number they could issue in the command phase but now it is per battle round, so if you want to use inspired command, you have to either save an order on the off chance you'll need it or use it and loose an order in you command phase. This reduces the usefulness of this stratagem quite a bit. In addition there is lots of talk about changes to Kasrkin to stop doubling up on orders, say Take aim to get +2BS. I can't find this anywhere but as so many people seem to be mentioning it, I guess it's a think, just buried somewhere in all the documentation GW just dumped on us.

I’m sure there are many other rules changes that will impact the guard but these are the ones that I spotted on my read through or I have seen picked up in many of the videos that I have watched on YouTube