Wednesday night gaming - how to I cheated my way to victory

Yup. That's right. On reflection I'm pretty sure I unintentionally cheated at game club this week. We'll get to that, see if you can spot it on the way through. 

 

Nom nom nom

So on Wednesday I played topher at 40k, and in a habit that happens after every 40k tourney I played with my salamanders, because I like them, but they just aren't as competitive. Here's the list I ran:

Vulkan He'stan 190
Librarian 65

4 Tactical Marines: flamer; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (power weapon) 90
• Drop Pod 35
4 Tactical Marines: flamer; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combi-flamer) 85
• Drop Pod 35

4 Assault Terminators: 4× thunder hammer and storm shield; + 1 Terminator Sergeant (thunder hammer and storm shield) 225
Venerable Dreadnoughts
• Venerable Dreadnought: power fist (built-in heavy flamer) 135
• Drop Pod 35

1 Thunderfire Cannon: + 1 Techmarine Gunner 100
Land Raider Redeemer: multi-melta 250

Inquisitor Coteaz 100

Callidus Assassin 145

1,490 points

So a pretty fun, pretty non competitive list. Toph had lots of big tyranids, 2 flyrants, a tervigon, a big squad of zoanthropes, some squads of gaunts and squads of gargoyles. 

The mission

We played an interesting mission which I've never played before but thouroughly enjoyed. Basically, there are 6 objectives evenly spaced on the board. 3 on each side, with them 16 inches on and 18 inches apart. They also 18 inches in from the sides. You score one point for each you control in your turns only but right before scoring them you roll a d6. The number objective that this corresponds to moves 2d6 plus scatter. If it's a bt symbol you choose the direction. If they go off the table, tough. It's really fun! And also means you can't camp your shoot stuff on them turn 1. 

The game

I got first turn, and deployed basically nothing. Just the land raider (with terminators and vulkan) and the thunderfire cannon. Chris deployed evenly opposite me, with lots of horde everywhere, supported by bigger scarier things. 

In my first turn I burnt some gargoyles (scoring me first blood) with my drop pod marines and moved the rhino up. Then Chris basically charged me with everything. I was surprised not to loose everything, although I think this was in part because i was invisible on one of my squads. Because Chris had charged his gaunts into both small squads it was one massive combat that involved a flyrant, tervigon, and a big squad of gaunts. 

 

They were picking on Coteaz and the one remaining marine so I duly obliged and charged in the assassin and thunder hammer terminators. This combat lasted for a good long while, probly 2-3 game turns. It was eventually won by me, with the Eversor using his fleshbane&shred&power weapons to basically kill everything. 

Whilst his was going on Vulkan had tried to kill the 2nd flyrant and got stomped on. In return im used my multimeltas to fry the big bug before it got away. By the time the combat had finished there wasn't a whole lot left on either side. My thunderfire cannon was chasing objectives unsuccessfully and the zoanthropes had zapped my land raider. 

 

The assassin, Coteaz and two thunderhammer terminators proceeded to slog through the cornfields towards the zoanthropes, and reached them locking them in combat (Although coated blew his own head off on the way in). The mawlocs contained to try to Sarlec pit my poor marines and assassin, but failed miserably. One of them did charge the assassin who over two combat ohases efficiently sliced all his wounds away using power sword+fleshbane+shred. 

The game ended with the 2 remaining zoanthropes locked in combat with an assassin and thunder hammer terminator whilst my dreadnought claimed objectives. I think one of the mawlocs may have been burrowing around somewhere. I rolled out a 12-8 victory on the evening. 

The mission

I actually really enjoyed the mission, it's a lot of fun without being to much hassle. I might reccomend it to Alex if he's looking at new style of game for double trouble. 

Where did I cheat?

Where did I cheat? Well, if you've read all the way through you may have figured it out. The Eversor has a power sword, and a weapon that's fleshbane with shred. But not a weapon that's both! So I'm pretty sure I should have been choosing one or the other. Instead I was wounding, with a re roll and not allowing a save! Rematch needed. Sorry toph! 

Army Review: Double Trouble

The hobby continues! I'm keen to review the performances of the units within my army on the blog! Partly because I enjoy the reflective process, but I'm always interested to see what others think. Its a bit like chasing the White rabbit - it can be a deep hole to fall down!

 

Librarian on a bike (original model!) 5/5

This guy was pretty badass. In the first game he didn't do a great deal, but then tbh most of my army didn't do a great deal in the first game. Games 2&3 taught me to love the psychic power Terrify, as units left the board in both games. I'll definitely be using that more often. 

He has intrinsic value to the list in that he makes the bikes objective secured. This saves points elsewhere in the list and gives me two very fast super scoring units. Overall I would keep the librarian. 

Boltgun Scouts & Landspeeder Storm 4/5

These guys performed well, needlessly dying in the first game but in the second and third game they really put in a shift. In the second game, they helped play a part in the refused flank tactic that contributed to our successes in that game, before flying away rather swiftly.  

 

In the third game their scout and infiltrate is limited by the deployment, but they could have gone in my partners deployment zone. However! They did well, using their scout move and our first turn to "drive by" a unit of dark Eldar, rapid firing them to their doom. The objective secured landspeeder is a huge boon to the army, I would definitely take these guys again. 

 

2x Grav Gun Bikes (3 man units) 4/5

These guys are really what made my list tick. They are also objective secured thanks to the biker librarian, and have lots of grav. Whilst their shots aren't as reliable as the centurions, I really like these guys. Being able to move 24 inches in one turn is something that again really helped with securing objectives. 

The one issue for me is their size. At 3 models you only need to blink at them and the lose their effectiveness. Perhaps at next year's double trouble I'll try bigger squads, but I don't know if they then loose their points efficiency.  The funny thing is that I could broke the rules a bit by having a command squad on bikes. That would have given me three squads of bikes and been totally legit. 

 

Grav cannon Centurions in a drop pod 2/5

So these guys are badass, and i got called all sorts of things for bringing them. Spending 1/3 of my 750 points (plus the cost of the drop pod) on them is the closest I've ever come to fielding a "Deathstar" in the late 5th early 6th tradition of death stars. I was worried that I would be surrounded by fluffy, deliberately teeth less lists and look out of place, but there were some equally competitive lists, so I didn't feel bad. 

However, in the 3 games I played they didn't feel useful to a 285 point equivalent. They killed a lot less than normal, i'm not sure if that's because they are to far towards being a white elephant at 750 points. I faced a reasonable amount of armies where their grav weapons would have been useful, but they just weren't quite all that. That could be situational, we'll have to see!

Tactical Squad with missile launcher (original models!) 3/5
These guys performed reasonably, mainly just holding an objective and being in the backfield, allowing us to double up on points all the time. They were the only unit to get destroyed in the first game. In part I think that's due to them being 5 marines with a missile launcher (and therefore not a threat) but their presence meant that we always had an objective, in every turn of every game.

For me there was something very encouraging to use these models. They are "me", they're a massive part of where my hobby started. To use them where my hobby is now was a big encouragement! And I've gotta say, I got a real kick out of seeing other people's 1st time models there.

Conclusion
So there you are! my short review of something that happened 2 weeks ago. Overall, I think the army performed well, as you can see from the ratings. Nothing was that big a suprise, the faster units were really what allowed me to do so well. I'd be tempted to trade the grav cents out for maybe 2 units of something. Perhaps a bike command squad and something arriving from reserve. Maybe even wheel out the legion of the damned! Love those guys. 

The big learning point for me was how much i like terrify. I'm going to be using terrify a lot more i think! I've already fielded a librarian conclave once since. I'll be fielding it a lot more in the future! 

Battle Report Double Trouble Round 3 - Darksun Life 23

Watch out! You're playing the TO!

So, final game of the tourney and who do I end up facing but Alex Brown and Dave Weston. Their respective blogs (http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/ and http://www.40kaddict.uk/) are part of the reason that I blog and I've never played either of them before, so it was a really cool suprise!

My partner Mathew had some very nicely painted Tau, and we did pretty well, executing our plans and our oppenants forces with a bit to much enthusiasm. Anyways, enjoy the vlog!

Battle Report Game 2 - Darksun Life 22

"Drop me near them, I want to hit them with my Grav Cannons!"

Yeah. The heading pretty much says it all. In a continuing theme for these Battle Reports, my Grav Cents spent most of the game in combat with Grots who repeatedly refused to break and run away. I mean, I can't be bitter because we did pretty well all things considered. But those were some mighty, mighty grots.

Double Trouble Round 1 Battle Report

"Don't get cocky kid"

If only I'd listened to Han Solo before this game. It may have gone better... opps, spoilers! Thanks to Rob, Ian and Matt for a great game :) Tune in over the weekend for the 2nd installment!

Don't worry! It's on its way! Battle report updates

Apologies for the delay in posting my battle reports from double trouble. I've decided to go down the vlog route, but break it up into a mini-series and have a 2 min vlog for each game. Which means more editing, more topping and tailing, more introductions. And more time! 

I've got some time on Friday night, so I'll or ably work on them then and "release" them over the weekend. How that's ok with you guys :) for now, I'll leave you with a picture from my second game :)

 

Double Trouble Interviews Vlog - Darksun 20

As you may be able to guess from the title, this is a Vlog from Double Trouble on the 10th of June. Its basically a bunch of fellow like minded geeks chatting about how the day went for them. A short Vlog at only 3 mins, hope you enjoy :)

Missile launcher conversion: to done!

Finally! A painting update. This major project has taken months of my time and has been a real labour of love.

 

So just in time for Double Trouble, I've painted this missile launcher rack to indicate that my old school Ultramarines have a missile launcher. 

 

I've used blue stripes as a spot colour to tie it into the first founding chapter, but ive painted the base a yellow colour to tie it in with the Howling Griffons.  

 

The base, coupled with the little dots on the control panel all help to brighten this model up a bit, I was concerned that it was all just shades of mechanical gray to start with but the spot colours have worked that out nicely. In a pinch I might be tempted to use this as some form of fortification add on or something. It's generic enough.  I can't find the 2016 "40k addict" hobby stamp that indicates this is "to done", but I'm signing this little project off as completed :)

Possible double trouble lists

Dear readers! I am slightly undecided on which configuration of howling griffons to take! Having pinned my colours to the mast in terms of using an old model or two, I will of course be taking space marines. Lucky for me, the howling griffons are a succesor chapter of the ultramarines, and in this case for me it has more than one level of significance. As already mentioned, the bad boys in blue represent the first models I ever painted. 

 

As you'll see, there are a couple of different configurations of army in these pictures. Basically, I probably can only afford 1 drop pod, so I'm torn between sternguard and another squad of bikes, or simply grav cannon centurions. The grav centurions and the bikes were both massive players for me at the last 2 Blog wars and I'm thinking that actually they will have proportionally more effect at 750. 

 

There is a way that I can squeeze both in, but it does leave me with not a lot of room for much else. I have to start sacrificing my speed and that is something that this force is reliant on. Lots of bikes, with a librarian on a bike making them all super scoring is sorely tempting, considering the objective nature of the missions. 

 

Another option would be to get rid of the scouts and thunderfire cannon to fit them both in, but again I think that they bring more to the table than a squad of sternguard. If I wanted to go really left field I could run the ultramarines on foot as legion of the damned. That might be quite characterful as well, something about thier unwillingness to die coupled with a 3++ save is quite appealing. 

Anyway, these were all the thoughts rolling round in my head whilst I listened to Man U secure a mighty 5th place last night. I've done some number crunching and most of these different building blocks fit together quite well, it's just the centurions. So over to you! Which unit that I've listed would you least like to see? How speedy do you think my force needs to be? Would you take legion of the damned? I look forwards to hearing your thoughts. 

Deathwatch Killteam review

Last week at club I played Deathwatch: Killteam. Read on to find out how I got on.....

Ian had brought Killteam with him, and I'll be honest the models are beautiful. As much as it pains me to say it, games workshop are doing an excellent job with the quality of thier miniatures, and the ruleset isn't that bad either. The game plays basically like how Soace Marines are in any of the books you read. Ian described them as being are superhuman "movie marines". 

The way that this is borne out in the basic game is that the marines go first, and shoot twice. So each turn looks roughly like this:

• Space marines move
• Genestealers move 
• Space marines shoot
• Genestealers shoot
• Space marines shoot again

This means that as a marine player you can wade through hordes of cultists and stealers as you achieve your objectives. Having only played the one game, I'm not going to go deep into the rules, but they are very simple. They've removed "to wound" rolls entirely, if you hit, that's a wounding hit. 

The game plays very fast, with the phases cycling through very quickly each turn. What's interesting for the tyranid player is that you get cards to lurk with every turn, similar to space hulk. You draw from a deck every turn and place those cards facedown, not revealing them until after the space marines have moved. It's tough to bring down a marine, and I found that they were taking out smaller groups of 6-7 cultists with ease. The cool thing is you can leave one card lurking for another round, especially as you can only place what models the game comes with. 

This creates a balancing element, as you can never have to many purestrain genestealers running around. It's nicely balanced though, as the marines are so tough you might cycle through the same models every round. 

The thing that I realised very early on was that I needed to swarm the marines to stand any chance of killing one. You need at least 5 or 6 to 1 to stand a chance of taking one down. And that's after thier attacks! So you probably need 8/9-1!  It feels very cinematic, games workshop have got that bit spot on. There is desperation on both sides and it really turns into a swirling blood bath!

Springing the trap is all important. The cards that give you cultists also give you abilities such as "attack twice" and combining these factors is the only way to take down a space marine. Even with that ability and all of these guys I was only able to take down 1 marine. They're tough!

Overall, I'd reccomend playing this game if you get the chance. It's fun, fast and cinematic. I don't know that I'd buy it, as £118/$160 is quite a lot, and I don't play tyranids. But if you have always planned to do a cultist army, then the models are amazing, and if you've got a group together you could play through the missions quite nicely. If you can, give it a go!

Double trouble: 8 weeks and counting!

Double trouble is only 8 weeks away! Have you bought your ticket yet?!  f not, why not? Of course,my  potential excuse for that would be that the last time I played 40 was February, but we can't all use that. And I have bought my ticket. 

I've been musing on what to take, and I'm torn between two armies. The first, as you can no doubt geuss by this photo, is Space Marines. Howling Griffons to be exact. I really fancy some bike based shenanigans, as you could take two full bike squads and a bike command squad before breaking any of the comp rules. 

Taking a HQ on a bike gives you interesting options as you can take bikes as troops. Combined with the combat squads rules it gives you interesting opportunities to have lots of small units. You could couple this with some scouts in a land speeder storm, and maybe even throw in a thunderfire cannon. 

It would also give me an excuse to finish painting this guy, who is one of painting goals for this hobby season. I'm not sure of how competitive the whirlwind is really (it's completely not). When you compare it to the thunderfire cannon, or imperial guard wyvern it doesn't match up favourably. 

My other choice would be humanities true protector in its hour of greatest need. The Imperial Guard. I strongly believe that they function really well at lower points values. After all, for 200 points you could get 40 of them! There is however, something that we need to discuss. 

I may have a bit of an imperial guard sized problem. Which may seem trivial to you, but it really isn't to me. I mean, in a 750 point game, which heavy weapons do you take? If we pan out on the previous photo, we can see that I really do have a conundrum.

All these heavy weapons together would work, right!?!  My main problem with Guard is that they are to squishy, and don't really hit hard. Eldar and thier darker kin are both really squishy, but both hit a lot harder. Guard are much more about being the sum of the parts. Which is why I think they could be good for double trouble. 

One of the reasons they wouldn't be good for double trouble is that it's very objective based. And sure, they can swarm around, or mount up, but my guard army isn't very speedy. Unless I break out the old X-wing vendettas. Which I could, they haven't seen play in a while. But something about the fix bayonets, and "win by having more men than they have bullets" approach really speaks to me. Plus I could take mortars!

Love these guys. They're so cheap and not really that useful. 

Overall I can't decide. I really like the guard idea, but it's more characterful than competitive. I've spent my time in the trenches with fluffy lists in the past and they are fun. But I do like the bike idea. That's one I've not tried yet. So I'll see! I don't have to paint a thing to take the guard I don't think, so that would be nice! Thanks for stopping by! Until next time, Let me finish by asking; Have you bought your ticket yet?!

Space Marine Bike HQ: Complete!

Huzzah! Knocked another little milestone on its head. I've finished what was one of my modest hobby goals for 2016. My space marine HQ choice. 

Hardcore power gamer that I am, this guy is modelled in a way that makes him ambiguous. Is he a captain? Is he a librarian? Could he be a chapter master? Or maybe even a high elf prince riding a dragon?* Who knows. 

Anyhoo, there are a couple of things with this guy I'm reasonably pleased about. The first is his cloak. I took the time to put a couple of extra layers of highlights onto his cloak. It's not amazingly different, but you can tell the difference when you see the model up close. 

The second is his elevated position. Whilst you can't tell because of my mad skillz, his front wheel isn't touching the ground. Not a lot, but enough that it raises his profile when compared to other bikers:

This has been achieved by a small clear piece of plastic, the type that are the sprue for flying base stands. I've covered it up with grass, but because it's clear plastic unless you actually know it's there it's really hard to tell. 

And finally, the sword. To indicate that it has "power" of some description (be that otherworldly or just a power sword - like i said I'm a wannabe power gamer) I painted several thin white coats in a lightning like motif across the blade. What's more, I then went back and put gloss varnish on just the lighting strike. A small detail to catch the eye, but one I'm pleased with. 

So there you have it! I'm giving myself a completed stamp for this bad boy! Hooray! Now, if only I knew people who played 40k......

*not this one

Double trouble life hack: objective cards

A quick one today. A little life hack for practicing with objectives for the June tourney:

Playing cards! Whilst I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, I came up with the idea all by myself, and didn't have to find it online or anything. You can get two sets of the double trouble cards out of one pack - using the suits to define which deck they belong to. I actually went for cutting the numbers in half, so 1-6 is one set, and 7-queen is the other. 

The really enjoyable thing is that this has a lot of practical excuition for practicing. You just need the corresponding table and it means you then don't have to roll on it every turn. We've found that you can sometimes need to roll multiple times to just generate a new result. 

It also works with the picture cards as well. Alex has the past generously sent out the PDF for the cards, but I thought instead of bothering him I'd try this out and see how it gets on. 

It's not a long term solution, and I'm sure won't look as professional as the official gw ones. But at £1 a pack it's a darn site cheaper! 

Support your local blogger: Webway Lamentations

A friend of mine has just started a blog called Webway Lamentations. As I'm sure you can geuss, it's all about the mechanicum, and how they casting a spider like web over the tau empire. 

Just kidding! It's about dark Eldar. It's only got two posts so far, but he's blogging towards double trouble in June, so It should be a good read. I've added him to my blog roll, but why not head over to http://webwaylamentations.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1 to check it out! Here is a picture of Aaron to prove that he's a real person:

Until next time!

Battle Report: Howling Griffons vs Eldar

Earlier this week I played a guy called Ross at our club (Leicester sabres) for the first time. He had a lovely looking Eldar army, and I took my howling griffons. I didn't have as many bikes as I thought I would, partly because I don't own as many painted bikes as I thought I did!

My army consisted of:

Librarian: Psyker (Mastery Level 2); combi-grav; Space Marine bike 120

2 Space Marine Bikers: 2× grav-gun; + 1 Biker Sergeant (combi-grav; melta bombs) 108

4 Scouts: + 1 Scout Sergeant 55

• Land Speeder Storm: multi-melta 50

9 Tactical Marines: meltagun; lascannon; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combi-melta) 180

3 Space Marine Bikers: 2× grav-gun; + 1 Biker Sergeant (combi-grav; melta bombs) 129

9 Sternguard Veterans: 2× combi-melta; 2× combi-plasma; + 1 Veteran Sergeant (lightning claw) 275

• Drop Pod 35

Drop Pod 35

Drop Pod 35

2 Devastator Centurions: 2× grav-cannon and grav-amp; + 1 Centurion Sergeant (grav-cannon and grav-amp; omniscope) 250

1 Thunderfire Cannon: + 1 Techmarine Gunner 100

Inquisitor Coteaz 100

Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband

• Acolyte 4

• Acolyte 4

• Acolyte 4

• Death Cult Assassin 15

1,499 points

Not completely optimised, partly due to the lack of bikes but also due to my wanting to try the acolytes. I could even put them in a drop pod if I wanted to! Great for siezing objectives. Especially in a hammer and anvil set up. But we played kill points. And Ross had two wraightknights. So they weren't a lot of use!

A rough breakdown of Ross' list (I think) was as follows:

• Farseer on a jetbike
• 2x small squads of jet bikes each with a warlock
• 2x 3 man jetbike squad without a warlock
• 3 hornets. 
• 2 wraightknights 

So pretty min maxed. He got a bunch of psychic powers (including guide and eldritch storm) and I got psychic shriek for both, with the Coteaz getting preseince and the librarian getting forewarning (4+ inv) to round things out. I went into the game reasonably confident. It wasn't going to be easy, but at least it wasn't to difficult!

I was lucky enough to get first turn, and with a drop pod army took it!  Ross had mainly castled on to one side and I decided that I had to grab first strike, a wraithtknight and something else in the first turn.  So I went after his castle with my sternguard and centurions. And actually did reasonably well! 

All three of the units of jetbikes (including the farseer one) on this side of the Board failed thier moral check following my alpha strike. However, he rolled his flee numbers the right way around and they all stayed on the table. I killed a hornet and got this wraightknight down to one wound. 

In Ross' first turn he used the wraith knights to "D" off my grav centurions despite thier 4++ and the rest of his army took a big bite out of the sternguard  and the bikes who were with the librarian. I was also then charged by both wraightknights (one into a squad of bikes, and one into some sternguard). For the record "charged by both wraightknights" is not a experience I'm looking to repeat in the near future. However, to my glee the squad of four bikes (read, "my right flank") held a wraithtknight and that flank up for 3 successive combat phases. For thems that don't know what that looks like, here's a quick picture:

In my turn two I used what grav I had left to drop the other wraightknight and try and add further pressure onto where I was pushing in his deployment zone. I killed some more jetbikes, and thunderfire cannoned the life out of the farseer/warlock/jetbike.   My drop pod with added acolytes turned up and stayed out the way. Literally nothing for them to do. 

In his turn two Ross was beginning to consolidate and push back. My scouts got pinned down and then killed by the farseer, and the hornets continued to do nasty things. My inability to finish of the farseer and warlock was beginning to cost me dearly. 

Over turns 3&4 I didn't actually score a kill point, whilst the purple Eldar continued chipping away st my forces.  I made a bad call with my librarian, forgetting that I was withdrawing to leave the scouts to die so that I could have a go at the other wraightknight. I doubt it would have affected the result but it did mean they were in range of both hornets and able be brought down by them at the bottom of turn 3. 

Despite my thunderfire cannon being great value for money and a constant threat, my back line very quickly collapsed when the other wraightknight got in there. This a shot of the wraightknight charging into what remained of my flank:

And this one combat phase after the previous shot. 

This one tactical marine was pretty much all I had left by the bitter end :( poor guy. Oh, plus a 1 hull point left on a drop pod. The game ended as follows:

Me: 5 kill points and first strike. 

Ross: 10 kill points, slay the warlord and line breaker

After game thoughts

I didn't make a few key decisions in the early game that could have helped me in the longer term. The hornets were much nastier than I thought they'd be for example. I also probably should have put the tactical squad in a drop pod and suicided after one of the hornets on turn 1. Tbh that's all my sternguard ended up doing. 

Ross was a real pleasure to play against, I was worried I might be bringing to powerful an army but I think we were quite balanced on paper. We both hadn't played in a while and I think myself I particular was a little rusty. 

Army list changes

I think overall I'll need to go back to the drawing board and make this list a bit leaner if I'm going to use it again. Add more bikes maybe, or strip stuff out so I can put wyverns in. We will see!

Howling Griffons Bike Captain

For the first time since November I will be playing 40k this week, and I thought I'd try and tick out a space marine captain on a bike. Or he might be a librarian. I haven't quite decided. 

The main advantage for me is that my bike squads become super scoring and troops choices, meaning I can madly dash around for objectives in maelstorm games and also that I can scrimp on the force org chart. 

So I spent some time over the last couple of days painting him up. He's at the advanced colouring in stage of painting a model. The bit after basecoating, but before highlighting where I often loose the will to live. Does anybody else get that? I think It's because it still hasn't started coming together enough to see the outcome, but actually I've now put quite a bit of work into the model! Plus, he's riding a bike, which is double the surface area. 

Having said all of this, I've taken a couple of pictures to document the process :) it's a good way of keeping my eyes on the prize as it were. 

As you can see from the pictures, he's an old ravenwing biker, with a flowey cloak which denotes that he is in charge! I might have some fun with the cloak, try and to put some extra detail or something- to push my painting skills. At the moment he's nowhere near done obviously. 

 

From the front. Note the wobbly line down parting the red and yellow. Totally looks better in person. 

Side shot. The cloak really gives this model a sense of motion. Even thou it's more of a kilt (skirt) because it's only up to his waste. Perils of buying stuff off eBay, I suppose!  It can be a bargin price, but it can come pre-assembled. Maybe I'll give him/her a Scottish girls name. 

I'm wanted to do a bit more to him before my game on  Wednesday but I don't know if I'll get time now because of other commitments. Also, the more I write the more I realise he's probably a librarian, and not a captain. All those books he's been reading. I tried to find a funny meme about space marine librarians for you, and all I could find was this:

Double trouble 2: Space marines

Hello reader! Continuing our musing on what to take for double trouble l, I thought I'd address what is probably the elephant in the strike cruiser. The skyhammer formation. 

Alex has updated the page since last I posted about this, and there are a couple of interesting things that both encourage and discourage me to take it. I don't quite know how well it will work in teams, where as I am sure that in the 3rd deployment type it would be awesome. That's because each 750 starts in a different corner, allowing you and your team mate to gang up completely on one side.  In a later post I'll discuss my thoughts on the mission. 



Tickets and attendance

Happily, I've already achieved first place at this tournament! Check out the link here: http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/p/double-trouble-doubles-with-difference.html?m=1 to see who got ticket number 1! At the moment only 4 of the tickets have sold, I'd really encourage people to buy tickets if they can make it, Alex's events have always been well run and the vibe is usually excellent. If you're reading this and you're a Leicester sabre, ask me about it - we can always take a couple of extra ppl in the cars. Otherwise, get on board!

Skyhammer Draft 1

As you may or may not be aware, a fully decked out skyhammer formation comes in at around 800 points, so it's not hard to reduce that to 750. Let's take a look at my first stab at it:

 

9 Assault Marines: flamer; eviscerator; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combat shield) 175

5 Assault Marines: flamer; eviscerator; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combat shield) 119

9 Devastator Marines: 4× multi-melta; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant 180

• Drop Pod 35

9 Devastator Marines: 3× missile launcher; lascannon; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant 205

• Drop Pod 35

749 points

The main thing to note here is that the assault marines aren't big enough to both combat squad, with only one being 10 men. The devastators however are, making handy use of thier 3d6 morale check rule.  To stick to the format, here and some of the brief pros and cons.

Positive 

1. The special rules that this formation gets. All turning up turn 1? Yes. Relentless devastators and assault marines charging on turn 1? Yes. 
2. Board Control. Deploying my entire force after my oppenant is almost guaranteed. Not 100%, but most of the time I will get to choose the engagements, overwhelming specific flanks or areas. 
3. Mission types. Good for objectives in the first few turns, but even better for collapsing your opponent. 
4. Other deep strike armies. This combos nicely with other deep striking units. Got some swooping Hawks? Another skyhammer even?

Negative

1. It's only 35 marines. Not a lot of men so you'd need to be careful with them. One loose battle cannon shell and you're done for!
2. Anti armour. I'm not sure how well it would do against Knights. I've got eviscerators and multimeltas I suppose, but no grav, and no plasma for terminators. 
3. Hordes. Tyrannids and orks would love you to drop right in front of them and maybe kill a unit or two. 
4. Fearless. One of the hidden strengths of the skyhammer is the pinning effect the devastators can have. If your oppenant is fearless, that strength is taken away. 
5. Other skyhammers. Or people just reserving their stuff. It's then almost the battle to go second!

I am honestly unsure as to how competitive a taking a Skyhammer would be. As you can see from the negatives, it basically fails on paper against most things. Im not convinced that it would play very well in maelstrom missions either. Part of the game here is to make your opponent do something different and make a mistake because of what you're presenting them with. It would also had much more of an impact at 1500 than 1850, especially when everything has the potential to be much more disjointed.


I think for me overall, the skyhammer will still make your oppenant sigh as they look at your army, even with 30k, knights and other things all being allowed. So do I want to be that guy? And just as importantly, can I be bothered to paint 15 assault marines (that are pretty useless apart from this formation!) Its the trap that Games Workshop try to get you with all the time. Most of the time, I'm ashamed to say, they get me hook line and sinker. We will have to see. I might start getting some practice games in my local club now Alex has released the missions!


Until next time!



Eisenhorn Gameplay Trailer

In all honesty, I didn't even know this was a thing! But apparently GW are allowing somebody to make an Eisenhorn PC game. I love the Eisenhorn books, I have some of the original paperbacks, signed by Dan Abnett himself, so I'm in the target market for this game!


Having now watched the trailer, my observations would be that its quite a dark trailer. And by that I don't mean grimdark, I mean hard to see. I don't know if its the setting of my work PC, but I was struggling to see what was going on. I'm sure you could adjust that though. It also looks quite a bit like the Space Marine game mixed with Assassins Creed. Stealth with button bashing.


Inspite of these two things, I'm cautiously optimistic about it. If my PC/ Xbox 360 will run it, I might consider it. Those books were one of the things that really got me into the 40k universe in a big way, and I did quite enjoy Space Marine and Firewarrior. Im not a massive Assassins creed fan, but I suppose you've got to use different tactics if you're an Inquisitor compared with being a Battle Brother of the Adeptus Astartes.....

2016 Hobby Resolutions

It's 2016! I wanted to set down some goals for my hobby. I've been really looking forwards to this post, because people keep asking me about what my resolutions for 2016 are and I don't have much to say that isn't related to war gaming. So hopefully this post will be good!

Bolt action 

I received some flak for my dismissive comments about bolt action. So I thought I'd better put it on the to do list for 2016! For my brits Id like to conservatively aim for the following:

1. Having painted the 20/30 models I have assembled (inc 1 tank)
2. Assemble the commandoes that I have (should take my army to around 50 men)
3. Become competent at the game. I've not played very much and I'd like to have a reasonable grasp at it! 

Not much to aim for, but at the moment I've only played 2 games and haven't painted a single model. Part of me is really tempted to paint them all wrong. Eg pink and purple, or with American squad markings. My hope would be is that it would be to much for the historical pedants. But I don't know if I could take them being to far off the beaten track!

40k

A lot has changed for 40k in the last 12 months. What can we expect in the next 12?! In all honestly it makes me a bit nervous. Games workshop's approach to 40k at the moment appears to be something of a blender that you put your debit card in. And can only pick out whilst the aforementioned kitchen applicance is on. Heaven forbid you ask to adjust the speed (ruleset) or to mix it yourself (trying to balance the game). 

With that badly mangled metaphor in mind, here is what I'd like to achieve in 2016 for my 40k:

1. Attend at least two 40k tournaments (should be easy with fluffagedon and double trouble). 
2. Sell my space wolves. An odd goal, but with the vague prospect of games workshop blowing up 40k in the same way that they did with fantasy, I don't need 4 full sized 40k armies. 
3. Paint some stuff (see below). 

X-wing 

Yes, X-wing. Pew pew pew. I've really fallen in love with X-wing over the last 12 months. It flirts with being my primary hobby system, which is something I never thought would happen. How nieve of me! Here are my X-wing goals for 2016:

1. Attend at least 3 weekend warlord events this year. 
2. Attend 1-2 store championships. How refreshing that the games developer supports structured tournament play!
3. Start an imperial fleet. Dangerous, (especially for my wallet!) I know. But I think I'd quite like an imperial fleet. I'm thinking triple ace or tie swarm. I'm sure I'll be terrible at flying it!
4. Run a version of the outryder cup between Leicester sabres, weekend warlords and somebody else. It's basically a team event where you pair against other stores/clubs. (More on this in another post)

Vlogging

It's going well! 10 so far. I'd like to get to 50 vlogs this year, and 200 blog posts. That's about 2 posts a week of some nature - I'll be signposting the vlogs on here so in terms of content it's not to daunting. Hopefully more painting, more tourney reports, and maybe branching out to the other areas of my life occasionally as well! 

Everything else

I've got a blood bowl tournament on my birthday weekend that I'm really looking forwards to. But to compete, I still have 9-10 men to paint. Better get a move on with that then! I don't know how good I'm gonna do, but being wood elves I'm aiming for 16 touchdowns over 8 games. And being wood elves, not end up with my whole team dead!

Painting

So, instead of listing the stuff in each of their areas I thought I'd do a list here:

1. Paint my whirlwind
2. Complete a second thunderfire cannon & techmarine
3. Paint more bikes for 40k, so that I have enough to field 10 bikes plus a captain/ librarian. 
4. Paint my bolt action stuff
5. Paint IG-88s for X-wing (a specific goal within number 9)
6. Paint my old models that I've found
7. Paint my blood bowl team. (Needed by the 16th of January!)
8. Paint commissar yarrick
9. Get up to date with the Horus heresy stories. (Possibly a laughable goal, we'll see!)
10. Have all my small and large base ships painted for X-wing by the end of the year

So, that's all in all a good collection of things to aim for! 

2015 in review

Love a good graph!

Back to Blogging
Since I rebooted my blog, in October I've been averaging just over 1000 views a month. I'm reasonably happy with that, although in April this year my blog got 800 hits by itself! I've got plugged into two networks (40k kings and international house of paincakes) and they've bumped my hits up a bit. plus I've been putting it on twitter and Facebook groups as well. I'm not obsessed with page views, but I need to figure out more networks to be a part of and how to keep people coming back. Does anybody have any suggestions? 

40k

I think my 40k year has gone well. Painting wise, I now have a decent sized howling griffons army. A big step up from splashing them with salamanders. Gaming wise, I've survived the choppy last 12 months reasonably well, only "needing" one new codex. That doesnt mean to say i havent bought models, but as much as i can i try not to buy directly from GW. At least if i buy from a FLGS then it gets a cut, or from ebay where im helping the secondhand market.

They did not hit that flyer at all

I'm still a bit nervous that games workshop are going to blow up 40k like how they did with fantasy, but if they do that I'll just keep playing 7th ed. I feel tactically I've improved quite a bit, thou I am still slow at playing the game I'm speeding up little by little. I wouldn't say I win every game by any stretch but in 40k tournaments this year I have had a very happy return- Winning 9 and drawing 2. I'll expand more on the competitive and painting side of things below. 

X-wing 

2015 was a year where I really took the plunge into a new games system for the first time in a long time - X-wing. Not since 2010 when I played warhammer fantasy have I tried a new non-40k system in any depth and never have I picked up a non games workshop game. It turned out to be a great boon for my hobby, giving it a new lease of life as well as a new concern for my wallet. In general, the reason I would now recommend maintaining a second different system to anybody is variety. Having to think differently has really developed my tactical thinking, allowing me to see beyond the you go / I go 40k-ness. 

This is what it feels like to play X-wing

In addition to this, X-wing is a great game and I love it! The rules make sense, there isn't really any opportunity to abuse loopholes and there isn't the laziness that games workshop are guilty of with thier ruleset.

Bolt action 

Whilst yet to feature in a blog post, I do have fledgling bolt action force. British army, with some paratroopers. My main problem is that they are very fiddly to put together. I really like the ruleset, and the idea of having some sort of historical wargame. I also quit enjoyed the rule book (I know that sounds odd!) But it is currently third choice, especially when it comes to wallet or painting. 

I don't know where this will go in 2016, a lot of the guys at my club (leciester sabres) have it - in fact they very generously gave me a free hit of plastic crack to get me into it. It's just not grabbing me as much right now.

Vlogging

Something I've been trying out this year, and it seems to have gone well. Part of the reason i got back into blogging actually, I felt the two tied together quite nicely. My top viewed vlogs so far are my review of the x-wing mat i bought and my k-wing repaint. Overall, id rate this as a success. It's been positively received and is a good way to interact with people - be that those i see regularly or hardly at all.

In the new year i'd like to expand a bit, maybe doing more tournament reports, and prehaps the odd battlle report. its quite difficult to keep fresh actually, being in front of a camera puts you under a bit of pressure! I think generally speaking they've improved dramatically even over the last 10. If there is anything you'd like to see, let me know and i'll see if i can vlog about it :)

Us at BWX (me on the far left)

Tournaments 

Ive had a reasonably successful 2015 tournament wise, having used many relationship points to attend tourneys far and wide (doesn't help when you play more than 1 system let me tell you!) I did reasonably well, finally getting the monkey off my back and placing in the top 3 on a couple of occasions (something I've never done). Here's a summary breakdown:

1. Placed 3rd for 40k in the student nationals 
2. Placed 4th and 14th at blog wars 9 + 10. (It also means that I only ever lost 1 game at blog wars tournaments, and that was my first ever game. Damn space monkeys!) so my total return at blog wars was W16, L1, D1 across 6 events. 
3. Attended 2 X-wing store championships, making the cut the first time and then getting knocked out. That means I ended up somewhere between 5th and 8th out of 32. For the second one I came like 7th out of 8 ppl. 
4. Place 3rd in an X-wing store competition in November at weekend warlords in Loughborough. Gotta love tlts :)

I feel likes there are more events that I've gone to but I can't remember. That's 6 at least! Blog wars are the still the highlight in my calendar, and it's really nice accross the events to meet new people and catch up with old friends from other blogs. I'm really looking forwards to Double Trouble that alex is planning to run in 2016.

 

Painting

Not really sure how I got on with this one. I pretty much paint as my main pastime now so I'm painting almost everyday. I didn't set any specific goals but I feel like I've moved away from being the guy who is proxying unpainted models so much. At least in my mind anyway. 

I know I've painted loads (probly most of my howling griffons army) but I didn't have a to do list. I haven't operated like that for a long time, I'm much more a buy it, paint it, buy the next thing kinda guy. So actually I paint for the love of it. I'm going to try making a list for 2016, but I then might ignore it on a day to day basis as I think it'll add pressure. 

Until I went home and grabbed a bunch of old models from boxes at my parents, I didn't have a list of models that I wanted to paint. I do now! Most of them won't serve any key game purpose but are cool models, such old games day models - I even found a model from the "skullz" campaign that they did.

So there we have it! Tune in over the next few days to catch a look at what ive got planned for 2016 :)