Red vs. Blue

  It was time!  My constant opponent and gaming buddy picked up the Daemonkin codex and we decided to play a game with it.  I abandoned my Orks so he would have some kind of challenge, and I looked forward to this.  Plus, it would be the first 2,000 point game that we've played in a while.

  First, the table:  Let me tell you, I spent a couple of hours just staring at it.  Having everything with colour on it (if not fully pointed) made the battlefield look so much nicer.  I enlisted my wife to help with the craters, and my buddy even noted that they looked good.  I passed the compliment on to the wife, and continued to admire even as we played.  Painted terrain matter!!!  

  I actually felt really good about my army list.  I still do and want to use it again.  But it's a really simple alliance between the primary Ultramarines and the allied Grey Knights.  I even brought a fortification just because...

-HQ- Captain of doom with Artificer Armour, Eternal Shield, and Burning Blade, leading a Command Squad with the Champ, Apothecary, Company Std with Pwr Swd, dude with Power Fist, and dude with Meltagun coming out of a Rhino.  This squad was meant to punch some 'zerkers in the face and cause a headache for any big things.  

-Troops- 2 Tactical squads, one with Pwr Fist, Flamer, and Hvy Bolter and the other with Pwr Swd, Plasma Pistol, Plasma Gun, and Missile Launcher coming out of Rhinos.  I wanted to use Rhinos because Bloodletters have another layer of crap to get through and I can react to his craziness.  

-Heavy- Devastator squad with 2 Plasma Cannons and 2 Hvy Bolters, to kill marines and cultists alike, and a Thunderfire Cannon- I've never used one before and I hear they're great at killing Daemons...

-Fast- Stormtalon, to take down his stupid Hellturkey.

-Fortification- Aegis Line with Quad-gun, again to take down that stupid Hellturkey

-HQ A- Grand Master with Cuiriass of Sacrifice, Shard of Solonar, and Warding Stave- his job was to tie up the big things and 'thump' them so the Grey Knights could soul-zap them before dying in the second round...

-Troop A- 5 Terminators with 3 Halberds and a Hvy Incinerator, to zap big things and fry little things

-Heavy A- Dreadknight with full kit- bring that Bloodthirster on!!!

That battlefield with models on it...

My deployment.  The Aegis Line was a bit of a pain...

His deployment.  Wait, where's the Bloodthirster?

This doesn't look good!  The sky is red!

  I brought stuff to kill things that my buddy didn't bring, which really hampered the army.  I wanted to go second, but my buddy made me go first, and I didn't have too much to do.  I moved around a bit, took some shots (and realized that the Thunderfire Cannon is actually really good!) and killed about a half-dozen 'zerkers.  But I didn't have much to try to pull of just yet.

  He ran his force up, including the Maulerfiend on my left flank and his Daemon Prince on the right flank.  No shooting saw me worry little and suffer no losses.  Great first turn?

  I tried to Deep Strike my Grey Knights behind his Daemon Prince.  That Daemon Prince was very wisely guarded by a 'blanket' of 16 'zerkers, which meant that I needed my Tactical Squad and Dreadknight to break it.  My buddy's not a bad player, and makes me work for it.  Sadly, the Grey Knights scattered to the back corner of the table, allowing the target to just wander off unmolested.  So I used Gate of Infinity, only to mishap (trying to land on top of my own dudes!) and go back into reserves.  No worries, I'll have the Dreadknight go kill stuff.  This is where Khorne took notice of the battle, however...

  My freshly arrived Stormtalon took some shots at the Maulerfiend careening at my gunline, only to put a single hull point of damage.  That happens.  But it spelled doom for the left flank.  A Devastator Squad and a Thunderfire against that?!  Behind a defensive line that it crawls right over?!?!  Yeah, not so good for that side...  But no worries, I still have a Dreadknight!

  So the Tac squad opens up with their bolters at the 'zerkers.  With a roll of 16 dice, I get three hits.  THREE!  They do wound, though, so they were serious hits.  One 'zerker falls, and the Dreadknight suddenly needs to get involved.  With creative placement of the Incinerator template, he's able to fry another two 'zerkers, which gives him just enough room to charge.  That Daemon Prince sees the tall exosuit light up the blade and dash right at him.

  The Daemon Prince grabbed the Terminator in the middle of the suit mid-strike, brought the Axe of Ruin down with three hard chops, two of which simply sliced the champion in half.  Without time for even a scream, the Daemon Prince had dispatched the biggest threat.  Just to drive it all home, the 'zerkers charged the squad, now completely unsupported, and managed to kill the guys in only two rounds (the second was overkill as four were left, and the Daemon Prince wanted to get some kills too).  The Maulerfiend took a Krak Grenade to the face before chopping down a Devastator, but that was the last stand for the Ultramarines.

  The azure Captain, seeing he and a Thunderfire were about to face down almost 48 'zerkers, a Daemon Prince, a Maulerfiend, and a squad of Possessed on their own, took the codex training of 'discretionary valour' and quit the battlefield.  More importantly, my gaming buddy broke character and actually suggested that the game end.  He likes to play to the end, and even he could see that it was the end.  That's bad dice.

  I'm so sad about this battle because I didn't get to fight the things I wanted to fight.  His Daemon Prince had the ability to ignore my Force weapons (Eternal Warrior on the Blood-forged Armour), but that's cool.  Besides, he pays for it.  Unfortunately, that was the only Daemon that his army included (the Maulerfiend and the Possessed don't worry about the Force power), so that meant that my Grey Knights were utterly nullified.  Well played, buddy.  Well played.  But I'm most upset about the dice.  This could have been a good battle if I had rolled well on the right flank.  The poor Deep Strike (in an already tenuous position) followed by the epic failure of the Tac marines followed by the punking of the Dreadknight... that was fast.

  The adjustment to this army for next time we play (and assuming he doesn't change it up too much) is dropping the Aegis Line and adding a Librarian to the Command Squad.  More psychic stuff against Khorne can't possibly fail, right?

  Sorry for the lack of pics, but the battle happened that fast.  It was just that kind of a game.  Next time, though.  Next time.  Happy Gaming!

Mo money, mo money, mo money!!!

  On top of all my other gaming addictions, like Wizkids stuff and Infinity, I still have to keep up with 40k.  As it turns out, GW knows this all too well and they continue to abuse me.  Am I upset?  Nope, not at all.  I chose to adopt this hobby and now I have to suffer...

  40k has been my game since DnD started to wane and since before college destroyed all my gaming habits.  I even worked for the Emprah for a while and was the champion of 40k we were supposed to be.  But even I have my focuses.  My main army always was and will always be the Ultramarines- paragons of order and competence, noble integrity and unshakeable honour.  My second army was, and will apparently always be, my Eldar.  I've not mastered the Eldar in any way whatsoever, but I definitely do dig them for some strange reason.  But I'm an Elf fan in DnD, so I guess it makes sense.

  And then what do I find out?  Apparently, GW is going to release new Eldar and Ultramarine stuff here soon!  Check out the pics of apparent new releases just in the next week or so:

Allegedly as large as the SM codex and maybe addressing the different craftworlds...

We were tricked a decade ago, but maybe this is real now?

Finally!  I HATE converting these!  That's why I only have one right now...

Nice model!  But I already made my own, so I'm fine, I guess...

   Admittedly, these pictures have been on the interwebs for a moment and these may even be released by the time you read this, but it still means that I have to buy a ton of new stuff very suddenly.  Darn you, GW!!!

Then we get to the Ultramarines.  Later this year, FW will be releasing the Battle For Calth book and the decals alone look awesome, much less the amazing models.  Then the rumour is that GW is going to be releasing a new Marine codex this year, which means that I may have to keep an eye out for that.  Does that mean I'm going to be spending money on more marine stuff (considering I already own too much that I don't even use)?

  Yep.  And they know it.  Well played, GW, well played!

One step backwards...

  Late last night, one of my buddies called me about a rules question...  Let's jump back to 

Rules I hate!!!

  So I don't know if you guys have seen, but GW released this little thing a couple of weeks before the Machine God came back.  To the wild acclaim of so many of my old-school gaming buddies, this book became very popular really fast.  You see, minus Kharne the Betrayer, this book took everything 'Khorny' and tossed it onto one army.  

  Enter the Khorne Daemonkin codex, probably the best book to be released by GW in a looooong time.  As a couple of my buddies noted, "I finally get to use my OLD Khorne army!".  I tend to have a lot of Chaos fans in my entourage, and Khorne is usually their favorite (we're all a bunch of angry people).  They used to use 'zerkers and Bloodthirsters to do terrible things to my army, and I was looking forward to it again.  

  
  Enter the artifacts...  The most powerful piece of wargear on this list is the Blood-forged Armour.  I say that because I wanted to use Grey Knights (finally) to kill me some daemons, and it turns out that a Daemon Prince can pop this little chestplate on and DESTROY all hope of my GK soul-zapping that bugger.  Wow!
  When my buddy and I played our game, he admitted that the wargear was really powerful and sort of apologized, but I advised that my Dreadknight pilot wouldn't have known better.  If there were other daemons on the board at the time, I could kill them instead!

Did you see the new model!?!  Damn, GW!!!

  Enter the Bloodthirster!!!  I want to kill him so baaaaaaaad!  My buddy chose not to bring one in the standard army list, instead relying on the Axe of Ruin to bring one in.  That is the second best piece of wargear on that list above.  I was excited by that because I would get to see a Bloodthirster on the table again.  Unfortunately, the game didn't work out anywhere near the level where we could have seen that, but that's another post...  In any case, what was going to be cool was seeing a Daemon Prince go down and a Bloodthirster replace him.  It was meant to be totally scary!!!

THAT'S precisely what I expected to see...

  And now back to my other buddy calling me.  Lacking his rulebook, he had a rules question.  This guy is desperately trying to avoid AdMech and he's focused on his Daemonkin army, and he got into a rules discussion with his gamer circle.  It was a rule I never thought about.  Like ever.  

  When the Bloodthirster arrives, does he arrive in Gliding mode or Swooping mode?  In other words, does he deep strike to the ground or does he pull a Goku and teleport directly into midair?  If I had to guess, he deep strikes onto the ground, like everyone else.  When the model is deployed at the beginning of the game, he starts on the ground.  Besides, Deep Striking and Swooping are both 'special' movement modes, and you shouldn't be able to do two 'special' modes at the same time.  So I open up my rulebook and search through the rules for Deep Striking (pg 162), Conjuration (pg 26), and finally Flying Monstrous Creatures (pg 68).   

  "Deployment...  If a Flying Monstrous Creature arrives via Deep Strike Reserve, it always counts as being in Swooping mode."  

BOOM!  This means that the character with the axe dies, then the Bloodthirster rips a hole in the air, has to spend the next turn landing, them finally get to charge the turn after?  Ouch!  In fact, this applies to the Daemonology power Possession- all Conjuration powers follow the Deep Strike rules for all intents and purposes!  I no longer fear, for at least three turns, a summoned Bloodthirster or even Daemon Prince.  

  Remember back in 3rd edition where Daemons popped up and immediately charged?  I hated that and then planned to use it for my cheezy army until the rules changed.  Remember the previous editions where Daemons are simply summoned and have to wait one turn before they can charge?  Yeah, that's normal.  Now we have Daemons that are summoned, then have to wait two turns to charge?  Wow, one step backwards each time...

  Now I'm supposed to be on the receiving end of this combo and actually looked forward to seeing it happen (I just have to get my Ultra-boys back to the range, apparently), but not like this.  This actually makes that combo very unscary (in that competitive way) and kinda ruins the point of this codex.  I mean, zerkers led by a Bloodthirster that might join the fray at some point?  That's not 'Khorny' at all.  That's just a rule I hate...

Let me know what you think!  

Da Waaagh is Green Now!!!

  A bit ago, I apparently got a bit of a 'bug' and started to build and paint like crazy.  And my focus on getting my Orks finished has finally, finally, FINALLY paid off.  If you've been following, you know that I have been using the same 1000 point army and refused to change it until I got this part painted.  Now that I'm finally caught up on that, it's time to start taking some of the good stuff.  But that's for later.  In the meantime, let's look at my Ork force and just marvel at a goal being accomplished:

The first unit of Boyz, painted for a demo board by a GW Manager.  I added the Boss Nob later.  But it should be noted that my buddy painted the rust on all the models and that drove my paint scheme.  I also want to point out that I REALLY want to repaint the skin, as I'm doing Boy-skin Gretchin Green.  But I left it alone in the interest of homage to my buddy's effort.

The second unit that you should all be familiar with.  To see how they were painted, visit here.  Note the difference in skin color between the Boyz and the Boss Nob?  That's going to be a continuing theme borrowed from Fantasy- older, meaner Orks are darker!!!

Every Ork army MUST have a unit of Lootas.  In addition, I also add a Painboy to this unit to keep them alive longer.  Right now, I find the unit too small for this to matter, I always forget to use the Grot Orderly, and rarely do they get shot.  So I have some adjustments to this unit as I grow the Waaagh...

C'mon, a giant Deff Dread to put rust all over?  Yes, please!  I actually taught my son how to paint rust on this model.  And worry not, there is so much more that could be done.  I just like rust...

This is the scariest unit in the whole force as it is the only one that has the ability to kill a tank.  Not quite as efficient as a unit of Tankbustas (half a hit less per turn for same number of wounds and 20 more points, DARNIT!), but still scary considering that they Outflank and blast rokkits into people.  Plus, I like the models.

Here's the point of almost every Ork army I've ever faced- da Warbikers.  No, these are NOT Nob Bikers, mostly because I have respect for da Boyz themselves.  In addition, da Warboss of Awesomeness is part of this unit.  It's where all my Power Klaws currently are, and it's the best armor saves in the whole force.  There will be more...

And the whole army together!  The look on my opponent's face when I tell them this is only 1000 points is priceless.  Of course, it hasn't worked out so far.  Oh,  and ignore my iced tea in the background...

  I am so excited!  I wanted this force to be fully painted so I could feel accomplished and bring some of that luck into my games.  Unfortunately, the army is 1-4 by this point, playing against Chaos Marines three times, IG once, and a slap-together Necron force.  But hey, the army was just warming up, right?

  Now don't forget that this army is 'tabletop standard', meaning block colors and possible shading (wash is a wonderful thing!).  As the army grows and my list develops to find 'good' options, those units will receive layering and highlighting (tournament standard).  But for right now, well-placed colors look better on the tabletop than plastic-gray, so I'm satisfied.

  Are y'all working on anything good right now (even AdMech, since it is now released)?  Let me know and I can't wait to hear about your elation over finished models.  Happy Hobbying!