Christmas and Wargaming

Morning all,

Thought I'd roll on with the blog articles whilst it's quiet in the run up to Christmas. Just quickly to talk about Christmas and Wargaming... Now, for me, Christmas is a weird one for gaming - I've got more time to do stuff, lots of new shiny toys, but never seem to get around to getting stuff sorted or playing games..

Even Marines get festive...

Hopefully if I've been very good these year, I'll be getting some more Dark Eldar stuff, to flesh the list out to about 1500 - 2000pts. More Warriors are a priority, along with some boxes of Hellions to have a squad of those and also turn some into Beastmasters, since I love the idea of that unit and also have plenty of models around the place I can use for the Beasts.

I'll also hopefully get / buy myself a full new set of brushes. Painting my Guardsmen last week was a nightmare, since most of my larger brushes have been demolished through years of painting, so I had to paint the Black armour all with a detail brush. Not fun.

As for what I want to try and get done over the Christmas break. I've got 12 Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons teams sat on my paint desk, after finishing painting 62 Guardsmen over the last week. I really want to get the HW teams painted up so I can start using Platoons more in the army, as opposed to the current "Veterans as Troops" setup I've got going now.

I've also got 4 older Commisar models to paint up, which I figure can be used to spread around the Platoons.

On top of that, I'm then planning on organising my Guard Infantry into containers, with specific weapon loadouts and then do the squad markings. I'm hoping this will go some way towards helping with my dislike for masses of Infantry and trying to get squads together during deployment.

After that, I'll hopefully make a start on my first wave of Dark Eldar stuff (Warrior squad, Wych squad, 20 Wracks, 6 Grotesques, 6 Haemonculi, Urien Rakharth, Archon, 2 Raiders, Ravager and 3 Venoms). Undercoating the vehicles will be first, then make a start on painting the infantry from there.

I think I've finally set myself on a colour scheme, using the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue as a basis. I seem to do well at using Blue in my paint schemes, plus, I'm not really up for the Edging on armour, so that rules out most of the other Kabals. The Kabal of the Obsidian Rose was pretty cool (Red majority armour, Black plates for variety) but I just don't think Red translates well on the Dark Eldar vehicles, but that debate could fill an article in itself...

Anyways... what are you guys hoping to get hobbywise for Christmas? And what are you hoping to get done over the Christmas break?

If you don't hear from us in the meantime, have a Merry Christmas from MAWS40k!

Peace,
SB

The unloved Nids

Hey all,

It's been a LONG time since I last put up a post so I thought I would share my thoughts on my Tyranids that I have been trying. My lists have been made using units which at least at MAWS don't get used and as far as I know have been shunned in most gaming circles.

Firstly lets look at my favourite unloved Tyranid, the T-fex. This beast costs 250pts basic which is a hefty lump of points, but for that you get 6 T6 wounds with a 2+ save, plus a Strength 6 Ap4 flamer which can fire 20" (12" plus the 8" flamer) plus two other weapons (cluster spines and a thorax swarm) it can also fire all three weapons because it is so awesome. It can take some upgrades but the only worthwhile one is regen costing 30pts. The fleshborer hive just isn't worth the 10 points it costs.

Next I tried out the Harpy, I'm still unsure on this guy as he didn't really stand out, but he took out 2 war walkers and blatted a squad of guardians. But he is only T5 with 4 wounds and a 4+ save, which means Heavy Bolters will shred him if he is left in the open. He has some good abilities like his Screech which halves the enemy's initiative the turn he charges and he can drop spore mines (but only once). Having twin-linked Stranglethorn cannons is a bonus and it isn't worth upgrading to venom cannons. I would leave the regen at home even though it's only 15pts. As a distractive unit or a support for a Trygon, or the Parasite it is a decent buy at 160pts.

The last unit I tried which I personally thought was a bargin buy was two Venomthropes. I have heard alot of negativity about these guys but I loved them and will include them in every list I use from now on. Giving my big monsters a 5+ save makesa huge difference, It saved a tervigon from being blasted apart in turn one from a full Eldar shooting round and kept various others alive for a few turns. This frustrated my opponent greatly and took great delight in blowing them apart with missile launchers, I did however forget about various rules that these guys have, like when an enemy assaults a unit within their spore cloud range they have to take a dangerous terrain test!!! At 55pts I think these guys are a bargain and will definatly help keep Tervigons alive and spawning. Just remember they are not like most Nid units they are purely support and will do well being kept behind the Tervigons they are protecting.

Well they are the three units that rarely get used or considered at MAWS but I think we will be seeing more Venomthropes around.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on these three and if you like, dislike or would consider using them.

Enjoy!

Mobile Viewing

Morning,

Just a quick one, but hopefully if you're viewing the site using Mobile Web, you should now see an updated version using a mobile template.

It doesn't show as much extra content around the sides and such, but should optimise the blog posts and home page to allow for better viewing on mobile devices.

Fingers crossed it works... Let us know what you think!

Peace out,
SB

[Daemons] Belated Game Thoughts

Morning all,

Been a few days without a blog post, and due to a lot of illness and such on Monday night, there were no games. So I thought I'd get around to posting a few things from the week before, when I gave my Khorne Daemon army a run out (since a 2k list fits inside 1 shoe box).

Last Monday was a bit of a "reverse tournament army" night, where everyone seemed to use the army their opponent would normally. Sanguinius used his Orks against my Daemons and Angryman used Eldar against Col. Straken's Tyranid trial list.

The game was Objectives (4 I think) at 1500pts. My list was something along the lines of:
- Bloodthirster
- Herald of Khorne on a Juggernaut
- 3 or 4 Bloodcrushers
- 2 x 10 Bloodletters
- 3 Winged Daemon Princes off Khorne

In the end, I kneecapped myself in an objective based game really, by taking only 2 scoring units that were very easy to get killed off. So... lessons learnt from my most recent game with a Khorne Daemon army?

1. Think more carefully about the units you're placing and where to place them when Deepstriking.

As an example from Mondays game, I had 2 Daemon Princes come down in the first wave, which had the Death Strike shooting attack, which meant that I could happily plop them down and take out the 2 Trukks that the Orks had with relative ease.

What I didn't account for in that, was to attack the Trukks as such, I would have to land within range of all the Bikes (20 of them), 9 Deffkoptas, Wazdakka and the units from inside the Trukks.

I managed to destroy 1 Trukk and immobilise the other, but then both princes got mowed down by sheer amount of S5 rate of fire weapons from the Bikes and Koptas.

Now... if I had thought on, and remembered that I had paid the hefty points to give them Wings, I could have hidden them somewhere and used the Wings to get into firing / assault range later on.

2. Shooting Attacks

Leading on from point one, something else I learnt was that just because I have given a unit a shooting attack - Death Strike on the Daemon Prince - does NOT mean that he needs to be in a position to use that 1 shot per turn weapon, on the turn he drops in.

In my eagerness to use the shooting attack and try to destroy the Trukks, the princes were left open to getting shot to death.

3. Think more carefully about First or Second Turn.

Choosing to have the first turn as Daemons, was a stupid thing to do in this game. It meant I had to weather a full turn of shooting upon landing, from the centralised Ork army.

If I'd taken the second turn, then likely that the Orks would have dispersed from the cluster and moved towards the objectives, and I could have spread out around the board a bit more - who knows?

I find it weird to play Daemons and take into account denying the opponent a full turn of shooting.

4. Khorne Daemons and Combat.

In short, Khorne Daemons, when assaulting, are absolutely rock solid and can smash most units to pieces with little to no trouble. A half depleted unit of Bloodletters manage to smash a Warbiker mob to pieces and make them flee at the same time, losing 1 or 2 Bloodletters in the process.

Then when the Bloodcrushers came down, they managed to batter whatever was close by, before the opponents even had a chance to know they were in an assault. Khorne Daemons show up to drink milk and kick arse.. and they've finished their Milk.

5. Invulnerable Saves are pants against Volume fire.

As the title suggests really... The amount of S5 or S4 weaponry coming my way from Ork Warbikes, Trukks and Koptas meant that each Bloodletter was taking maybe 2 or 3 saves over the course of a turn. There's only so many that they can take.

I'm putting all this failing to make saves down to the fact my army isn't painted Blue...

6. Bloodthirsters

No matter how cool you think he is, how many people he's going to club to death, he always ends up being my opponent's public enemy #1. I need to think more carefully about how I deploy this fella since all the games I've played (still counting on 1 hand...) he's had his face smashed in by shooting, and some really bad armour save rolls.

As with the Daemon Princes I need to remember he has wings and also not to get trigger happy with my Death Strike attack.

7. Increase the amount of scoring units.

At the moment, I've got 20 Bloodletters bought and painted, but I'm starting to think I could do with a fair few more. 2 units of 10 just don't seem to cut it in most games I've played.

I'm not sure what would be the best option with it, either to expand to 4 units of 5, or buy some more bloodletters and go 4 units of 6, 3 units of 8 or maybe 3 larger squads of 10... Even more? What do you reckon?

Conclusion

That's all really... I just wanted to talk a bit about how I've been doing with the Daemons, where I'm really enjoying using my most "unloved" army a bit more. I've maybe shot myself in the foot somewhat by insisting on only using Khorne stuff but maybe...

Get a Soul Grinder in there?
More bloodletters?
2 Bloodthirsters?
Get rid of Thirster alltogether and have more Heralds on Juggernauts?
Or even give into temptation for new models... and expand beyond Khorne?

Peace out,
SB

Battle re-creations

Hi all,

Angryman here.  On January 2nd 2011 we're hoping to re-create 3 famous battles from the 40k universe.  the games will be 10K each (each side having 5K).  Between the club members we have at least 5K of most of the armies avaliable but the only thing we are lacking is a big list of famous battles that we can choose from and re-create.  We already know of the 3 wars for Armageddon, the battle for Maccragge and the battle on the Iyandan craftworld but we are drawing a blank after that. 

Can you help us and suggest some battles we can re-create and naming the armies involved.

All comments welcome

Scoring in competitions and Warlord 40,000

Morning all,

Whilst my work PC updated this morning, I began reading through an article on Bell of Lost Souls discussing Competition scoring and trying to balance this in favour of closer, more enjoyable games, as opposed to being completely crushed while someone goes for that 32-Nil massacre result.

You can find the article here: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/12/guest-editorial-why-battlepoints-are.html and I'd suggest having a read through the comments and see what people think. There's some good arguments for and against each method.

So what I want to think about here is what scoring system should we be using for the Warlord competition in the New Year...

The previous years, we've used the 32-Nil scoring system and had close games alongside crushing victories, getting tabled etc. etc. Is this something worth continuing, especially when we take into account the number of players at the club and how previous years have gone in regards to points.

What I would suggest in future would be the following, similar to Football League scoring:
Win = 3 points
Draw = 1 point
Loss = 0 points

In the event of a tie for any positions, these will be resolved with a Play Off game at that time between the 2 players tied for that spot. In the event that this is then a tie, we can either have a fight in the car park or continue playing into sudden death turns, where any Turn that the objectives are drawn, we continue until a clear winner has been decided upon.

This system cuts down on book keeping, gives clear wins to those who play to the mission and resolves ties in a better way than Kill Point / Victory Point difference. It should also mean that games are closer and more fun than removing your army piece by piece until Turn 4 when your last unit of Grots is pulled off the board and you face a tabling.

What do you guy think about it, and which scoring systems do you prefer when playing in events?

Peace,
SB

The results are in

Hi all,

Angryman here,  following a recent post regarding the naming of my space hulk and a 2 week poll the results are in

1.  Hellion Rex

2.  Red Dwarf

3.  Event Horizon

there you have it, my space hulk will now be called Hellion Rex.  any ideas on a colour scheme?

Breaking news

What has happened to Rob since he got married. We can only speculate but it would appear that as well being given the chaos gift of Kat (she seems to have rubbed off on him ;-p ) the Gods seem to have embellished him with some gifts of his own:

- the dice gods are now in his favour


- he has passed on the dice curse to his opponents


- as well as possessed him with a tactical daemon so he doesn't do anything stupid like move away from an objective on the last turn. If you look closely you can see the daemon within when it asserts its dominance over Rob's feeble mind.

(not actual footage lol)