Blog Wars Three Round Up

WARNING... this is going be a long, and texty post.

So, Me, Pete, Dan and Ian went to Blog wars 3 today. Awesome tourney, I think I actually preferred it to throne of skulls. The guys at Malestrom were excellent, and Alex Brown who runs From the Fang was a great host/organiser. Kudos to him. Check out his blog, for everything, ever. http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/

The Games, in Summary. So, of the four of us, I placed last. Good stuff. I finished 20th out of 26th, with loss, draw and draw for 28 points. Pete got Loss, Win, Loss for 30 points (I think) Dan came 5th with Loss, Win, Win and the Mr Ian King placed 6th with Win, Loss, and Win, only three Game points behind Ian. Pete faced big bugs twice and got a bit frustrated, Dan got run over by the defending champion on the way to his victory, and Ian continues to punch very hard, and very fast at tourneys.

My Day.

First Game, I faced James from Sheep of war. An excellent opponent, he had a Jokaero themed list, with purifiers. Despite the fact that it was completely monkeys, he had a pretty hardcore list with three psyfldreads, Coteaz and lots of rending Lasscannons. I ended up going down 9 – 11 bottom of turn 7. I was winning bottom of turn 5, and drawing bottom of 6 I think. Highlight for me was charging Luke Skywalker into Coteaz, chopping his head off with a lightsaber and eating a Deamonhammer. Only to get back up in my go.

So I strolled back to where I belonged, in the bottom half. Game 2 saw me face a really cool guy (who I am really sorry but can’t remember his name! It may have been James I think) they were very pretty Tyranids. Lots of BIG bugs, including two Trygons, Swarmlord, Two Tervigons and 4 Hivegaurd. Highlight would have been blowing away two Trygons with the right amount of shooting. Yes, it was a lot of plasma and Lasscannon, but it was nice that it works! I should have lost this game. I know this feeling so well from the other side, you are all over your opponent, then they just realise that actually they can still get something out of the game. About my turn 4 (of 7) I realised that a draw was the best I could probly get. Whilst I was winning on 1 table quarter bottom of turn 5 (love love love going second with this list!) it ended in a draw, and after a couple of crucial roles I was able to get a draw. Which was very hard earned, and in some respects felt like a win. Total respect for the guy I played, he was brilliant with everything and I couldn’t fault him.

My Third game saw me jazz dance one table down despite my draw to 10 of 13. This time I faced a chap who I believe may have been called Scott, friends with Alex. His painting was simply beastly, total respect to him for that. He had three Predators, Mephiston (my auto loose choice) and land raider (can’t hurt those) and some other mech MSU stuff. He was I think, expecting me to outflank, but I don’t think he was expecting me to spend literally every turn chasing his predators around his back field. What units did I use for this you ask?

On their last outing for a while, I used Penal Legion. 240 points of Wesley Crusher, Starbuck and Daniel Jackson kept 540 points of Blood Angels Tanks occupied for 6 turns. Two squads with fleet, furious charge and counter attack plus Wesley rending for fun killed one and stopped the other two shooting for at 70% of the game. Brilliant. I have to say, he is the nicest opponent I have played probably all year. As for the result, it ended in a draw, but I think that is slightly because every single one of my units punched well above their weight. That is the stuff that dreams are made of.

So I ended with 28 points, in 20th place. Not too shabby. I wasn’t last, I didn’t win but I had loads of fun and really enjoyed a day out with guys. Congrats to the defending champ, the steamroller with nothing but a kill setting... Atreides from SoS! Are we going next time? If Alex will have us, hell yes.

Blog War 3

Blog Wars 3 So. The Dream Team that is Me, Pete, Dan and Ian (I like to think of us as Luke Fogg and The Shadows) are booked into Blog Wars 3. I'm quite excited, because I wanted to go last year, but was really not quick enough to the drop. So here we all are. My List is going to be Project Far Far Away, (partly because I cant be bothered to rush out 1500 points of howling griffons in two months) and partly because they look awesome. I've already started on improving the paint jobs, because I really rushed the storm troopers in the closing stages.

Here’s the Original List:

Yarrick

4 Squads of Penal Legion

2 Squads of Vets

2 Vendettas

1 Valkyrie

2 Squads of Storm Troopers

1 Leman Russ

I'm thinking about dropping the Leman Russ. My concerns stem from it does not fit in with the character of the rest of the army, and also it doesn’t look like it’s from star wars at all. Id probly replace it with a command squad with Astropath and lots of plasma in a chimera, and another Chimera for the second squad of Storm Troopers. This means I get the drop earlier (turn two with everything) as opposed to relying on luck to score what I want, where I want.

My issue with that is that I may start using my one nemesis. Tactics. This one word cripples me when it comes to wargames. Playing with what is pretty much a full outflank army nerfs that completely, as I just place them where the dice tells me works both with and against me. Regardless, I'm not going to get any games in this week as I have to work a late shift in Christian bookshop land. Just theoretical. Not yet practical.

Fighting Fire With Fire

Fighting Fire With Fire
So, in the last two days I’ve painted 3 models (including a new “me” – more on that later) and won twice whilst drawing once. I’ve been using this list.


1st game against stranded ninja

We played spearhead with 5 objectives. However, since we were playing 1750, I added 3 Hydras. He had a Land Raider, 2 Storm Ravens and far too many blood angels for my liking, and some terminators with Tyberos. He didn’t realise that all of my penal legion were outflanking, and then three squads jumped the Terminators in turn two. I think I killed like, 2? Eventually it came down to the fact that I was holding 1 objective, which he couldn’t reach because of the terrain, to his two. I finally managed to shoot both his scoring units dead and kept the death company off mine. A win on the mission objectives, but I did spend some amount of time playing keep away to be honest.


2nd game against World Eaters at GW Leicester

So, this was dawn of war with 5 objectives. Again, this guy had never seen this army before (barely even played me) so I let him deploy first and kept everything off. He had 3 squads of Berserkers, Khan, 2 Squads of Summoned Daemons, 2 very cool transformer type defilers and 2 squads of chosen.The random element of the penal legion is something I'm beginning to fall in love with, especially when it comes to getting knife fighters off right. I came on with my Vendettas on my left flank and began to pull his army away from the centre, which was where most of the objectives were. His chosen came on and popped one of my Vendettas. My favourite point in this battle promptly followed as my outflankers outflanked him, and promptly murdered him.




I managed to contest the objectives he was scoring, and drag him off the ones he was on to charge me, so I got a draw! Kudos to my opponent really, because he didn’t have to charge me, and didn’t have time to get back to his objective.


3rd game against Ian’s Ravenwing

This ended up being a dawn of war, kill points game. I reserved everything, and thought that I would really be screwed as everything in his army could move as fast as mine. So, a ran over to my extreme right this time, and over the course of three turns he ran at me in about 3 waves. This was great, as my plasma death storm troopers and Lasscannons made him wade through his own superhuman blood. Yarrick didn’t even get out of his Fortress of Flying Arrogance until the 6th turn when his Vendetta moved flat out and they all successfully jumped without dying in front the last biker squad.



I promptly received the charge from Chaplin and his dress wearing buddies, and was wiped out to a man. Though it did make for a suitably epic end to the game! The highlight for this game was killing Sammael with Penal Legion. I literally killed the Master of the Ravenwing with a Knife, blowing his flying Land Raider out of the Sky.

And, as promised, here is a picture of the new “me.” As you can see, he is wearing yellow! (My favourite colour.) And I thought that it would be cool to have a pink las pistol!

Cry God For England, Harry, and St George!

The Defence Of Hades Hive

So. Imagine the scene. Your home is under attack, you need to defend yourself from your most hated enemy. Following a rousing speech given by your commander, you mount up into your gunships and head for the war. Sounds like Apocalypse Now don’t it? Well, it is in fact the Defence of Hades Hive, which is this week’s army list. This list is themed around a couple of key bits of text from Armageddon Lore. These mainly include, at the Hive Gangers fought vicious tunnel wars with the Ork burna boyz and looterz as Hades Hive fought to a man during the Second Armageddon war, and that Tanks were rolling of the production line and straight into the fire fight.

So the idea is that Yarrick has gathered around him a strike force to try and breakthrough in a key position in the defences. Check it out.
Commissar Yarrick
Storm Troopers (8) 2 Plasma Guns, Plasma Pistol and Power Sword Sarge
Storm Troopers (8) 2 Plasma Guns, Plasma Pistol and Power Sword Sarge
Storm Troopers (8) 2 Plasma Guns, Plasma Pistol and Power Sword Sarge
Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta
Penal Legionnaires x5


The whole force has scout, representing the home turf advantage that Hades Hive gives. Where the army theme really comes into its own is the Penal Legionnaires are original Necromunda models. Beyond awesome I know. Follow that up with some vague steel legion styling on the Vendettas and jobs a good un. The main way this would work is to outflank probably most if not all the Penal guys. They are no good in your deployment zone, and so much fun with rending. Seriously, using them as though they had a death wish is hilarious.

The Vendettas all fly around together, using their speed to hunt as a pack. If I were to try this army, I would consider swopping Plasma out for Melta, but it depends. I rather like the idea of cracking the plastic boxes open with lots of lasscannons and then jumping out and shafting its juicy insides with a small white hot sun. If I decide not to take the Custodians to the GT, then I would take something like this, because it is so different to anything I have. Plus there is a theme, which is really important for me this year. I want to have models that people look at and actually go “wow” or “neat idea” so its gotta be good, you know?