Welcome back, Eldar!

   It's finally happened- I got my wife to play something other than her Sisters!  For years I've tried to convince her to try a different army as this provides perspective that can help with her normal force.  After all, it's hard to consider the uniqueness and power of a single army when you never experience another.

  She chose the Necrons... of course she did!  We planned for an Incursion game (1,000 points) so that she only had to learn the stats and rules for a couple of units.  And we know that I'm a fan of the smaller games, even if I never get to play them.  After a quick review, she built her army list and I was proud.  Just based off the 'what looks cool' rule, her choices were rather good.  Tons of choppy-choppy on a small board?  How did she know!?!

  I decided that the War in Heaven had to get its due, plus the new Eldar codex came out.  With the retirement of my T'au due to overperforming, it was time to give the next xenos in line their go at battle.  I chose my old theme of Iyanden-style with a little support from Reapers.  Tons of guns versus blades for days!   

  I don't remember the name of the mission as I don't have practice with the Incursion scenarios, but I do remember that there were six objective markers.  The shocking part, to me, was the size of the board.  At half the size of a standard 2,000 point game, there seemed to be very little room to maneuver on this board size.  This made terrain even more important as one good round of shooting could result in an army being wiped out.  Block that line-of-sight to have a game.

  The game started with the Necrons clanking forward and the Eldar shuffling up or taking shots downrange.  Unfortunately, it resulted in the Immortals suffering and little in trade from the space elves...

  Round 2 was absolutely brutal as these two ancient enemies unleashed their powers.  The Necrons had long forgotten how adept the Eldar are at reading their movements and committed just to see their enemies respond perfectly.  With pinpoint accuracy, Immortals and Destroyers were immediately annihilated from shuriken and wraithcannon.  After the fusillade, the ghosts charged in and chopped down the survivors.  Even the Necron warlord found himself facing a massive Wraithlord!

  While the Eldar were ruthlessly effective with their shooting, the Necrons weren't going to be defeated by their foe so easily.  Trading robot for pointy-ear, Immortals and Scarabs swarmed Guardians and eventually pushed through to steal the objective.  The Necrons paid dearly on that side, but objective points matter.

  Meanwhile, the Destroyer Lord laughed mechanically as the Wraithlord struggled to get through his phase-shifting shield, only to gleefully dice up the construct and begin to move toward the Guardians standing on the other objective.  Shuriken storm from those Guardians ended the warlord, but it was still sweet to chop down the big baddie in front of them.

  In a last-ditch effort, the surviving Necrons camped their characters on their objective points and sent the Wraiths forward.  Their last protocol was to hunt down the glowing leaders of the Eldar and so they stalked the ruins until they found and killed the Spiritseer leading the ghosts.  With the loss of most of the ghost units and now their commander, the Eldar decided to quit the battlefield and minimize losses...

  The game ended with an Eldar victory by points, but it was just great putting the new Eldar on the tabletop AND seeing my wife try out a new army.  She noted that it wasn't as difficult as she thought it would be and she found it easy to remember the rules and stats.  The entire game just became more accessible to her, and that perspective change is something I was hoping for.  While she didn't get to really take advantage of the Necrons' abilities, she enjoyed playing a different army and actually likes the cute robot guys.  Of course.

  I found the Eldar to be awesome!  While an Incursion game isn't exactly scaled properly, it was still really cool to feel those new abilities.  Battle Focus is pretty strong, especially on those Guardians that spent 2 command points every round to shoot and dance around.  But the real surprise to me was the Wraithguard.  Their longer range and devastating guns make their offensive output ridiculous, and then you add the 3 wounds, toughness 6, and 2+ armor save (with Protect from the Spiritseer) and a FnP (with Fortune from the Farseer).  Add some Battle Focus from the warlord and those units can be oppressive.  They may be dead, but they aren't useless!

Happy Gaming!

More Gold!

  While the T'au continue to tear their way across the sector, other armies are mustering to stop them.  In other words- I did some work on other stuff!  This is mostly because I don't have the primer color needed to continue painting the xenos AND GW released new points updates that affected a few of my forces.  This includes the Adeptus Custodes.

  My army was 2,000 points until the most recent update.  Since I don't have a lot of stuff painted for that army (which doesn't have a lot of options in the book), that meant that I suddenly needed to add some units.  Luckily, the new points worked in a way that I needed a fourth small unit of Custodian Guard and an ancient Contemptor Dreadnought.  That brings my Custodes list to exactly 2,000 points- dangerous!

  If you've kept up with my blog at all, you'll already know the paint scheme that I used.  For a little reminder, visit this link.  Here's the rundown of this new effort after applying the gold spray:

  Now here is where I got so excited that I forgot to take pictures.  I followed that old post with every step and color (except Gorthor Brown and Macragge Blue, which were out and had to be replaced with Baneblade and Kantor, respectively) and this is the result:

  And with that (and a little work on the bases), the army was finished and back to 2,000 points!  For those that are interested, here's the army list:

Adeptus Custodes 2000pts

HQ- Trajann Valoris

HQ- Allarus Shield-Captain w/axe

HQ- Shield-Captain w/axe

Elites- Vexila Praetor w/spear

Elites- 3 Allarus Custodes w/axes

Elites- 3 Wardens w/axes

Troops- 3 Guard w/spears

Troops- 3 Guard w/spears

Troops- 3 Guard w/spears

Troops- 3 Guard w/spears

Fast Attack- 3 Vertus Praetors w/1 salvo launcher

Fast Attack- 3 Vertus Praetors w/1 salvo launcher

Heavy Support- Contemptor Dreadnought w/multi-melta

  And that's it!  Now the Emprah's Bodyguard can get back out there and be the second-cheeziest force in the galaxy again.  There's more work to do on other armies and I'll be posting about them in between battles.  Until then, Happy Hobbying!

Over the top with T'au

   My last post was about the fear that I feel every time my son threatens to pull out his Death Guard.  The terror that strikes into my tactical heart is disconcerting (obviously) and I have to build armies that specifically consider the opponent.  For someone who builds "take on all comers (TAAC)" lists, this is a pain.  

  But the laws of the pendulum apply and I have the opposite feeling with one of my armies- the T'au!  These upstart aliens seem to be DOMINATING the battlefields right now both in the tournie scene and casual corners.  If you look at the BCP app or follow the results-tracking blogsites, you'll know that this new codex popped up only a few weeks ago and has already generated more trophies and musings than any codex I can remember.  

  Here's the crazy part- this army was TERRIBLE in the last edition!  I've mentioned it before, but it's insane the flip in this case.  I was reminded of this in two ways recently.  The first is when I played a game against my son's Dark Angels.  It was only my third game with this new book and he built a list that was more focused on infantry and big guns to take down my big robots.  I got the first turn and annihilated his force immediately.  The second is a video that was posted illustrating how good a particular T'au unit is.  Let's discuss.

  In the game, the T'au were lucky enough to take the first turn.  The Dark Angels had a ton of bolters and happened to include Eradicators, Hellblasters, Devastators, some Inceptors, Suppressors, a couple of lascannon squads, a Venerable Dreadnought and a Strike Speeder all full of big guns.  This was a list that could alpha strike just as well as mine could.  But I aimed my Hammerhead at the Dreadnought at one-shotted it.  I aimed my Broadsides at the speeder and one-shotted it.  I aimed my Pathfinders and a unit of Fire Warriors at the Eradicators and destroyed them.  My Fireblade focused a couple of Fire Warrior squads at some Intercessors and destroyed them.  By the end of the first turn, more than half the Dark Angels had been removed from the board.  It wasn't fun, it was oppressive.

  I tend to build my armies to the fluff and always include 'a little of this and a little of that'.  I have this 'display cabinet' mentality from my days in the service of the Emprah.  This tends to hamstring my armies and force some of my friends to balk at the ridiculous choices that I make.  The T'au are no different in army build, but they wildly outperform my typical outcomes.  This edition seems to be set on 11 in a power scale to 10.  

  This morning, a video was posted by a very prolific creator that illustrated how powerful the Broadsides are.  This matters to me because I was, for a very long time, the only T'au player that used Broadsides with their rail rifles.  I always liked the Macross-themed robots with shoulder-mounted cannons, but they were never anywhere near as effective as the missile-spam bot.  This is still true when firing against basic Space Marines, but everything else now explodes when the rail weapons smack them.  Everthing.  The ability to add mortal wounds to everything, plus playing the T'au sept to get the reroll, Mont'ka to move-and-shoot without penalty, and Pathfinders nearby improving their ability to hit...  oppressive.  

  This video triggered me to write this post because I'm benefitting greatly while my opponents aren't.  After the recent performances, I think I need to retire this army until GW comes out the nerf bat and hits some home runs on this codex.  Have you had the same experience, from one side or the other?  Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Gaming!    

Fear in 40k for Me

  I noticed something the other day as I continued to ponder my T'au (and all my other armies- gamer ADD is a pain!)- I'm scared of Death Guard! My son is definitely my most common opponent and he owns quite a few armies himself. Each time we play, I have to choose who I'm playing, ask what he's playing, and then downpower my army a bit so it's not oppressive. You see, my armies are typically stuffed with everything, meaning that I can really cheeze my armies out. My son has a lot of everything for his forces, but he's more limited in many cases. 

  That is, of course, unless he uses his Death Guard.  He has EVERYTHING, and multiples of.  My biggest fear is that he saves up some coin and buys another box of Terminators.  Just like the tournie-bros out there, he knows that mobs of termies are just broken.  Worse, he has three of all the war machines.  Those Plagueburst Mortars are ridiculous!  

  However, my fear of his Death Guard has less to do with what he has and more to do with the army's special rules.  Ignoring cover and counting as stationary when moving makes their shooting (especially with bolters) great and they get all the buff auras that Imperials do with their characters.  But two rules in particular really strike fear into my forces.

First comes the 'minus one damage' rule.  

  In an army where every model (in power armour) has at least two wounds and Terminators have three, plus the characters and war machines and their copious wound count, multi-damage weapons suddenly lose effectiveness.  Let's look at the armies I depend on for this: 

  Adeptus Custodes- the 9th edition codex has been very kind to this army.  Unfortunately, the new book did reduce their damage while making it consistent (damage d3 to damage 2) for most of the weapons.  The Custodes should kill a Plague Marine with every shot and swing, but not with that special rule.

  Grey Knights- this is another 9th edition victory with a codex that upgunned everything about this book.  More wounds, more psychic options, more powerful weapons... oh wait- those weapons are damage 2 as well!  Against Death Guard, the mortal wound-spam is the answer, but Death Guard also have a plethora of psykers to shut some of that down.  So the sparkling blades have to do twice the work to chop down those Plague Marines.

  Necrons- "first is worst" is the old adage referring to 'codex creep' and the metal skeletons definitely suffer that.  But I play a pretty strong army with C'tan shards and Destroyer love.  And I do this for the high damage.  Just as above, this reduction special rule for Death Guard really neuters my undead-in-space and forces me to depend on AP and single damage weapons.  Thank goodness for attrition...

  Orks- the greenskins used to be my go-to army to crush any foe.  I spam Power Klaws in every unit that I can because that's all the damage the Orks can cause (and rokkits- lots of rokkits!).  Those klaws used to have random damage and could do up to three.  The new books have reduced them to two.  This is illustrated by my big mob of Meganobs getting into combat with anything in the Death Guard and underachieving.  

Then comes the Death Guard Lord of War, Mortarion.

  Luckily, my son is hesitant to use this model against me most of the time.  I encourage him to use the Daemon-Primarch, but I know I won't stand a chance.  Why?  Because this ancient warrior has the ability to shut down auras.  Some of my armies depend on those auras:

Mortarion from ArtStation

  Ultramarines- the chosen foe for the Death Guard in 8th edition's rollout, the blue-marines were really powerful.  But the Death Guard were updated in a big way while the Ultramarines only received a couple of units and this resulted in Morty being able to completely shut down those aura buffs the Imperials depend on.  Oh, and I focus on plasma weapons, making those rerolls key.  Did I mention that my plasma has a stat of damage 2?

  Word Bearers- Chaos Marines are still waiting on their book while Death Guard have been modernized.  This forces me to focus on Possessed and characters to keep pace.  Guess what- the Possessed and Daemon Engines depend on aura buffs from Daemon Princes, Greater Possessed, and Masters of Possession!  Morty denies all of that.  And that's why that army is retired (plus waiting on the new book).

  If you add the terror that is indirect fire of high power coming from extremely tough platforms infested by daemons as well as scary shooting from the regular troops, you'll see just how important being able to cause damage really is.  And Death Guard are ridiculously good at hampering that.  When an army can kill a model per shot and suddenly it takes twice as long (or longer when you depend on just the dice rolls), that army starts to feel the fear.

  This is probably the second most powerful rule in 40k (Transhuman being the best).  I am not a fan.  And that's where the T'au really come into their own- their weapons are higher damage and often cause mortal wounds!  Those ponderances the other day reminded me of why the T'au are feeling pretty good at this moment.  For almost all my other armies, the Death Guard and those rules really strike fear.  I wonder how my Eldar will fare...

Happy Gaming!