Ignatum

Inaction

2011-12-05T06:48:00.001-08:00

Recently I have felt my interest in gamesworkshop and 40k on a low ebb. So I took a break from the hobby for a couple of months. I am just beginning to feel the urge to paint and game coming back. So I have started on my Tyranid force again.

My aim is to have the following 2000 point army ready by mid next year (I know that sounds like a long time away but I am a painfully slow painter)
Parasite it mortrex
Tyranid prime
3 x hive guard
3 x hive guard
3 x venom thrope
10 x termagaunt
12 x termagaunt
Tervigon
Tervigon
10 x genestealers
10 x genestealers
20 x gargoyles
Trygon
Trygon

I know it's not a competitive army list by a long shot, but it looks like fun to play. Have to see if it works out..

On the gaming front, I recently attended Bracknell Forest Gamers escalation competition. I took my Tau along for a soon as I haven't got another army painted to standard. The tournament consisted of four games each with an increase of 500 points on an initial 500 point force.

My first game was a kill points game against a Tyranid player with a large squad of gargoyles, a squad of y genestealers and a squad of normal genestealers. I eliminated his bugs before they got into combat giving me a win for no loss on my part.
My second game was against an Eldar player, he was wiping me off the table, my dice were letting me down on the armour penetration and damage rolls. However he was unable to complete the mission objective resulting in a draw..
The third game was a capture and control against an ork list. I managed to win after a heroic charge by the broadsides.

The final game was against my friends star wars themed guard army. This was an objective game with four objectives. With my armies 3 scoring units and the majority of his army scoring, I would have to more or less have to wipe him out, only I don't have the fire power to take out that,many guardsmen. I managed to get a bit of a lucky win in,this one, with 3 contested objectives and one in my hands by the end of the game.

This netted me fourth place overall with 18 points, but not many victory points. Given my lack of practice over the past few months I'm quite happy with that performance.

Tyranid Tervigon

2011-07-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

A few photos of my Tervigon for my Tyranid army.

Just got the rest of the 1300 points left to paint now :-(.

Blog Wars Game 1

2011-06-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

Capture and Control, Spearhead deployment.

My first game was against Siph Horridus of weemen blog and his pretty awesome looking Relictors space marine chapter.

His army can be found here although consisted of the following:

Terminator chaplain
Tigurius
5 x Sternguard veterans in drop pod
5 x Terminator assault sqauad
Rifleman Dreadnought
10 Tactical marines (missile, plasma)
10 Tactical marines (heavy bolter, meltagun) Rhino APC
5 x Assualt marines (Sergeant, Powerfist)
Attack Bike multimelta
Landraider Redeemer

Deployment:
I won the roll off for deployment and elected to go first, I wanted the opportunity to pop his landraider before the terminators got too close.
I set up in the corner that would give my railguns maximum fire arcs into his deployment area, pathfinders deployed into the building to make maximum use of their marker lights. The Devilfish deployed to the far left of my deployment area so I could make a push for his objective with the fire knife battlesuits late game.

Siph deployed the majority of his army behind the trees, landraider at the front, his tactical squad with missile combat squading one half taking the objective the other sitting on the hill with the missile launcher. His dreadnought sat in the trees.

Siph failed to seize the initiative.

Turn 1:
I mainly shuffled my forces round a bit to try and get better fire arcs on his army, a small squad of firewarriors embarked the devilfish and started moving slowly towards his objective but enough. My Shas’El started to move towards the ruins forward of my deployment to intercept the landraider with his meltagun if need be. My broadsides took advantage of their ASS to line up and shoot the landraider.

Shooting saw the pathfinders markerlight the landraider which combined with the broadsides to remove that threat, his assault terminators would now be foot slogging it across the board. On my left flank my squad of fire knifes immobilised the dreadnought in the trees. Hammerhead missed the Rhino. Everything else was out of range. My assault move was just moving battlesuits back into cover.

In Siphs’ turn his drop pod landed in my deployment area disgorging it’s cargo of sternguard with Tigurius. His terminators started the long march towards my lines. The assault squad moved behind the ruins my shas el was moving towards, closely followed by the rhino.
His shooting didn’t cause me any problems, with the sternguard turning one squad of firewarriors into fish pasta bake. The dreadnought, missile and attack bike failing to do any damage to my vehicles.

Turn 2:
I brought Farsight and co to bear on the sternguard, and doubled my shas el back to help. The large squad of firewarriors sitting on the objective moved round to fire on them as did the broadsides. The devilfish continued moving towards his objective followed by the fireknifes. The hammer head moved to bring its guns on the attack bike.
In the shooting phase Tigirius and co disappeared in a hail of pulse, plasma, missiles, and supersonic projectiles. In an epic display of shooting ineptitude the fireknifes and hammerhead failed to take care of the attack bike.

The Relictors continued their advance with the terminators running forward, his assault squad moved around the ruins ready for a charge into my lines next turn. His terminators ended in a position to charge next turn as well. The attack bike drove behind some ruins and shot at my hammerhead, failing to hit. His missile launcher bounced off of my devilfish.

Turn 3:
My spare squad of firewarriors and battlesuits turned up. The battlesuits landed near his dreadnought, with the intention of pouring fire into his combat squad on the objective, the additional firewarriors came on behind my objective just reinforce it. Movement wise, I placed the pretty much everything I had available in range of the terminators.
After pouring pretty much my entire armies worth of fire into the termintors they died. The newly arrived battle suits killed off two marines in the combat squad. In the assault phase I moved my shas’el into the open, closing the charge from the assault squad into the firewarriors. (meant sacrificing my Shas’el, but worth it to hold the objective). The fireknifes continued on to his objective behind the advancing devilfish.

Siph moved his assault squad to charge my Shas’El, closely followed by his rhino full of tacticals, his attack bike moved around to try for my hammer head again. Shooting saw his immobilised dreadnought fire at my deep striked battlesuits. His missile launcher once more proved ineffective against my devilfish, as did his attack bike against my hammerhead. His combat squad fired at my battlesuits stripping them of their drone protection.
In the assault phase the assault squad killed off the Shas’El for no loss.

Turn 4:
Farsight and the two squads of firewarriors surrounded the assault squad, while the devilfish, fireknifes and firestorm battlesuits moved to kill the combat squad on his objective.
Once the shooting had ended the assault squad was down to their sergeant and the combat squad was no more. Farsight charged the assault squad sergeant, killing him then consolidated so that the squad in the rhino couldn’t reach the objective.

Siph was down to precious few options now, he had half a tactical squad on a hill facing off against my squad of fireknifes, firestorms and devilfish and a full tactical squad in a Rhino which couldn’t reach the objective. He drove forwards and rotated his rhino, disembarking the tactical marines. He turbo boosted his attack bike behind the ruin where the rhino and assault squad had previously been. His shooting caused no casualties (that I remember).

Turn 5:
Farsight and my firewarriors moved to fire on the disembarked tactical marines, while the hammerhead and broadsides aimed to take out the rhino. On the far side of the field the devilfish moved to claim the objective with the fireknifes and firestorms running to surround it.
I fired the sub munitions round at the back of the rhino catching all ten marines in the blast, slaying four of them. Rapid fire plasma and pulse rounds killed all but 2 of the others. The broadsides wrecked the rhino preventing it from contesting the objective. Farsight finished off the remaining tacticals in combat. (kill tally of three marines thus far), consolidating so that the bike couldn’t turbo boost onto my objective.

I think Siph realised at this point that the game was more or less over. After measuring a few times his remaining combat squad couldn’t reach my guys on his objective, nor his attack bike my objective. He gave up at this point.

Conclusion:
Honestly, I think winning first turn and nailing his landraider was the deciding point in this game, with his terminators and chaplain left to foot slog it across a killing field, it made his hardest hitting unit ineffective and I was able to ignore them to concentrate on more immediate concerns (drop podding sternguard).

Siph was a fantastic person to play against and I would happily play him again at the next blog wars. I hope he had as much fun in the game as I did.

Blog Wars 2011: Result

2011-06-07T02:05:00.001-07:00

After a fantastic days worth of gaming with people around the UK at Blog Wars, I have to say a huge thanks to Alex at from the Fang for organising everything, you couldn’t have done a better job. It was a hugely enjoyable day and everyone that I spoke to seemed to be really enjoying themselves.

After my 3 games I ended up placing 3^rd with 2 wins and a draw separated from second place by a narrow margin in victory points. This is far better then I expected to place, given the inherent weaknesses in the Tau codex I would have been more then happy with a mid table finish. I have to admit that given my performance in the recent ASMOH tournament I was feeling a little underwhelmed with my Taus recent performance.

Every opponent that I faced was a great opponent to play against and I hope to play against them again in the future. I will include full battle reports and photos over the next few days as I get chance to write them, but for now I’ll just write-up a quick summary.

Game 1: Spearhead, Capture and Control.

Vs. Siph Horridus of Weemen blog (Relictors space marines) **Apologies for incorrect information**

This game started off well for me, I crippled his army in the opening stages by destroying his landraider leaving his hammer terminator unit to foot slog it across the board, I was pretty much able to concentrate my fire on individual units as they became a threat. Allowing me to secure my own objective and make a dash for his. Unfortunately Siph wasn’t able to recover from his earlier losses and handed in the towel at turn 5.

Victory and 30 points for the Tau

Game 2: Dawn of war, kill points

Vs. Ginge of need more tanks (Orks)

Whenever I play Ginge and we roll (or get given) Dawn of war games, I have a habit of always winning 1^st turn, this game was no different. Ginge was unable to seize. By targeting his transports early and leaving the majority of his units stuck far from combat I was able to more or less dictate the course of this battle. Ginge seemingly being unable to make a 4+ cover save didn’t help him at all though as his bikes dropped like flies to anything that shot in their general direction.

Victory and a further 30 points for the Tau

Game 3: Pitched battle, 5 objectives

Vs Andy Pattison, Sons of Sanguinius

After losing first turn I knew this was going to be an uphill battle (hell it’s bad enough playing Guard with Tau as it is). Andy more or less dominated the game, with me taking heavy casualties in the first couple of turns (couldn’t make a cover or invulnerable save at all). With the game coming to a close, I had a squad of fire warriors clinging onto one objective for dear life, while Andy held 3. I was able to charge into combat with one large squad to drag them off their objective while contesting another with gundrones (got to love them drones for that). Game went the full 7 turns, and on the final round of combat I failed 4 out of 5 armour saves. Andys consolidation roll was too low to get back into range of the objective.

Draw and 10 points for the Tau

So despite my final third place position, there is still stuff that I would have done differently. The main thing though would have been to avoid taking Farsight. Had I known about the allowance of forge world goodies, I would have taken Shas’O Ra’ail (sp?). This guy would have had a bigger impact on the games then Farsight by a long shot. The XV9 armour and specialist ammo would have had a greater impact then the dawn blade.

Overall though, I had a fantastic day and would definitely sign up for the next one.

How awesome does this look!!!

2011-05-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

Video of the space marine game, coming out on an Xbox 360 near you soon, (not want a 360 yet Ginge :-P

Blog wars army list 2011

2011-05-26T16:32:00.001-07:00

So here is my army list for Blog Wars 2011 with about 47 hrs to go before the deadline.
This army has had absolutely no play testing. Nor has it been designed to face any particular army. It's just been a case of hashing my ASMOH list to fit O'Shovah in and moving points around till I hit 1750.

My plan is to not die too horribly. Although I would have liked to have added kroot and piranhas to the list. I don't have any built or painted. With working on my Tyranids I wouldn't have time to build or paint them regardless.

O'Shovah (170)
Bodyguard, plasmagun, missile pod, multi-tracker, hardwired drone controller 2x shield drones (102)
Bodyguard, plasmagun, missile pod, multi-tracker (72)

Shas'El, fusion gun, missile pod, positional relay, Hard wired target lock, hard wired drone controller 1x shield drone 1x gun drone (119)

3x Crisis Suits (211)
Plasma gun, missile pod multitrackers
Leader with hardwired drone controller and 2 gun drones

3x Crisis suits (179)
2x Burst cannon, 3x missile pod, 1x fusion gun, multitrackers
Leader with hardwired drone controller and 2 gun drones

6 firewarriors (60)
6 firewarriors (60)
6 firewarriors (60)
9 firewarriors (90)

6x Pathfinders (72)
Devilfish, disruption pod (85)

Broadsides (305)
Advanced stabilisation system
-Leader, plasma, hardwired drone controller 2x shield drones, hard wired target lock, hard wire multi-tracker
-Broadside with ASS and plasma
-Broadside with ASS SMS

Hammerhead (165)
Railgun, burst cannons, disruption pod and multi-tracker.

Sent from my iPhone

Tyranid prime conversion

2011-05-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the crappy iPhone photo but here is a photo of my tyranid prime conversion for tale of 8 gamers.

Blog wars army list part 1

2011-05-17T11:22:00.001-07:00

Given my recent kicking at the ASMOH tournament. I'm still of the opinion that my Tau army list needs revisiting. However the following army list isn't much changed list mainly due to the fact that I won't have the models to update my army with for quite some time yet alone have them painted. So I have instead made a couple of little tweaks here and there as it were.
Blog wars requires that your army include a special character, although for Tau they have stated that you don't necessarily have to take one, I thought it beat to take one, saves any arguments later also keeps my army to the same sort of theme as others then. Although the Tau codex doesnt have any givens when it comes to special characters such as marbo (boy does that guy get around, seen in every guard list this side of catchan) So let's look at the contenders.
First up. Farsight.
pros:
Everyone who can access the armoury gets free bonding knifes. Saving a total of 15 points off my army list. Woot.
Preferred enemy against the entire ork player that's gonna be there.
Has a plasma rifle,
Dawn blade giving better chance of punching through vehicles in combat and might scare a lonely marine squad that has no powerfists or melta guns in.
Cons:
Ludicrously expensive for what he brings to the table.
Takes away loads from the table when you actually pay the points for him. Total restriction on available unit choices.
You get confused into thinking he is a combat monster just because he has a power weapon. He isn't.

So Farsight, is pretty bad to be honest. Totally restricting your force options while giving precious little in return.

Shadowsun
Has fusion guns and the ability to target them at 2 different units a turn. Unfortunately being short ranged weapons this generally means that you need to get close to the enemy to use them. The command link drone is nice. Allowing units within 18" to use her leadership for morale and pinning checks. The stealth field is a nice benefit. However, most enemies are going to be closing on you pretty quickly and won't matter past the first two turns of the game. That's pretty much where the good stuff ends. Now for the bad. 175 points!! Not and independent character till her drones expire, but given she's toughness 3 a lucky burst of fire from an assault cannon could do for her entire unit. Surprising high odds (around 10%). So she wouldn't last much beyond the last drone regardless.

So too much for what she can do. A suicide crisis with twinlinked fusion and a targeting array could accomplish the same for far less points.

And finally Aun'Va plus guard.
Pros:
Erm. Well I guess he could die. And your entire army passes it's low morale checks, gains furious charge and preferred enemy (improbable)
Cons: 205 points, please I could nearly have another 3 broadsides for that.
No shooting ability
Sucks in combat.
He dies your army runs away. (probable)
No real use apart from to help your opponent.

Okay, not really much to say here. But the guy is going to cripple your army far more the farsight does. While approaching land raider costs, space wolves get Logan grimnar, angels mephisto, tau? Get this guy? Come next codex I'd be expecting someone in a dreadknight esk battlesuit with 10 railguns. I think it would have been better if his wheel chair could shoot mega death lasers like the prophets from halo and he came free if you took a second squad of firewarriors. Might have been worth gluing together at that point.

So for my list I will be playing Farsight as my special character. Not because I think he's awesome. Mainly because I think he's the lesser of 3 evils. Although I do think my conversion is pretty awesome.

ASMOH: what went wrong

2011-05-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

Edit: a quick hello to Rathstar who was also at asmoh as well and did rather well with his dark eldar. Was great to meet a fellow blogger and Tau enthusiast.
Well popular opinion is that you learn more from a defeat then from a victory. That being true, I learnt a lot from my games at the sad muppets society a small matter of honour tournament.
I can safely say that I did learn a lot. My games seemed to be pretty close but ultimately I couldn't get a victory in any of my games.

My first game was against an ork army. Mission was kill points, pitched battle deployment at 1250 points. First thing to say is that my opponent was a fantastic person to play against. However, the problem that I faced against his army were the low kill points in his force. Most of which involved killing large units of troops or hard to kill nob bikers to get kill points. The 3 relatively easy kill points his army had I got fairly easily. My bad rolling can to the fore in this game (as would be true throughout the tournament) however without meaning to make excuses for my game I could have played better. Having lost the roll for deployment. I should have placed the majority of my force opposite his bikers in a refused flank set up. Rather then mainly central. Admittedly this would have left me closer to his bikes they would have had to weather the storm against my entire force for two turns before being able to charge anything meaningful. My inexperience in facing nob bikers made me set up more centrally leaving me exposed to more of his army ultimately costing me the game.
Lesson learned- force the opponent to meet you on your terms. His bikers would have been a threat, but not with 5 vs my army.

My second game was against a null deployment tyranid force for capture and control. I made the mistake of bringing my army in on the first turn. His army arrived on the second turn, right next to mine. Although I took relatively few casualties from his shooting, my own shooting in the following turn was fairly poor. Meaning that his army could ravage mine with impunity. A could of mistakes that I made which could have given me a bit more of an opportunity to claw back a victory. If I had left my hammerhead off the board or more central in my force. Then I could have dropped a pie plate on the termagants holding his objective. Being as they were out of synapse range chances are they would have run for it off the board. As it was I ended the game on a loss as his termagants managed to get within 3" of my objective on their run move. By quarter of an inch. Curses.

Lesson learned: I don't have to deploy my army in this case it has done me more harm then good. I should have held the majority back for a counter attack. Maybe kept some of the pathfinders to come on first turn about 3ft from each other. Forcing him to separate his units to engage both of my units of pathfinders. Then as my army arrived in subsequent turns I could have dealt with whichever half of his force was the most dangerous.

My third game was against an outflanking scout army with a few thunderfire cannons and shrike to give the army fleet. With the majority of his army outflanking, their wasn't much to engage in the first couple of turns. I did eliminate the thunderfire cannons fairly quickly. But the rest of his army outflanked more or less straight into combat with my force, either tying me up or killing me. Both were just as bad as the other. The game ended with him managing to roll high enough on his fleet rolls for two units, 6 and 4 respectively, to get a 5th turn win, contesting my objective on a four and just getting within 3 inches of an objective. Given what was left of our armies at the end of turn 5 had we had a 6th turn I would have managed to finish off 2 of his squads, leaving me with the victory.
Lesson learned: in this game I should have been more aggressive. Despite my obvious disadvantages when he got close, had I been more aggressive I could have prevented him from tying my more important units up in combat.

My fourth and final game was pitched battle 6 objectives, against a blood angels player with 2 drop podding dreadnoughts and a couple of outflanking baals, etc. This game went alright, the only thing that really hampered my game was the inability to stop one of his ironclad dreadnoughts. With a few lucky difficult terrain rolls he made it into combat with my broadsides. From that point there was nothing I had to eliminate his dreadnought. Missile pod fire just pattered off it like a light summers rain. The game ended with both parties holding 2 objectives. He hadn't realised that one of my devilfish still had firewarriors in. Note if he had asked I would have told him, I hadn't realised he didn't know though.
Lessons learned. I need to increase my redundancy. Once my broadsides had been engaged by his iron clad in combat, my hammerheads having been taken out by his dreads when they first dropped.

Notes on battle and observations:
- my army performed alright. Two narrow losses and one tight draw, all of which could have easily gone to a draw or victory on my point.
- vehicles were useless, as soon as they took one penetrating hit they dropped from the sky.
- Broadsides were great but could have done with two units of 2 rather then one of 3, should have dropped the plasma guns from them as well. But I took what I had available.
- Firewarriors really are useless, less then. Despite having the highest hit rate in my army (in the last two games they actually hit half the time which was better then my units that I rely on to do damage). They lack anything remotely threatening to anything or anyone. A meltagun or two in a unit would have made a difference against most armies. Forcing my opponents to risk getting close or choosing discretion over valour.
-devilfish are rubbish, yeah it may be one of the better surviving transports, but is it has no offensive capability, no firepoints (not that that's a real concern when firewarriors have no decent guns). I think it sums up the tau army perfectly, over priced and a lack of offensive capability.
-I think I may have to get more infantry in my army, be it battlesuits, kroot or maybe some lighter vehicles such as piranhas only to be used for blocking and contesting.

Army List for ASMOH 2011

2011-05-06T01:12:00.000-07:00

As I will be attending ASMOH tomorrow, I thought I may as well post the army list that I will be taking. This army hasn’t had much play testing, however in the few games I have managed to play have chalked up a few wins for no losses. There are certain armies I think I will struggle against, mainly Space Wolves and Imperial Guard. This is due to space wolves being far better at shooting and combat, then my Tau, while also being more cost efficient. Imperial guard are better at shooting and can just fill the board with armour for very few points (comparatively), and while missile pods may be great for suppressing rhinos, they start to suffer against chimeras.

Anyway without further ado:

Initial 1250 points

Shas'El:

Plasmarifle
missile pod
multi-tracker
hardwired drone controller (2 x shield drones)
hard wired target lock
hard wired black sun filter
bonding knife

= 130

3 x crisis suits, plasma rifle, missile pod, multitracker, team leader, bonded hard wired drone controller 2 x gundrones = 216

3 x crisis suits, twin linked missile pod, flamer, team leader, bonded, hard wired drone controller 2 x gun drones = 171

6 x firewarriors = 60

4 x pathfinders = 48

devilfish, disruption pod = 85

3 x broadsides, 2 x plasma rifles, A.S.S. x 3, team leader, bonded, hard wired multitracker, Hw target lock, HW drone controller with 2 x shield drones, HW black sun filter = 313

Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, multitracker, disruption pod = 165

Additional 500 points

Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, multitracker, disruption pod = 165

7 x firewarriors = 70

4 x pathfinders = 48

devilfish, disruption pod = 85

2 x crisis suit plasma gun and missile pod and multitracker = 124

ASMOH: Practice round 2

2011-05-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to head down to my local Games Workshop again last night for another ASMOH practice game. I couldn’t get a game against the opponent that I wanted to play against (Grey Knights) due to the staff not making a note of my table booking. So I ended up playing a smaller game (1000 Points) against a newer player and his combined Chaos marine and Deamon list. So I trimmed a broadside and a hammerhead from my list to drop me to the 1000 points.

Not going to go into too much detail as the game was pretty painful to watch, suffice to say that over the course of the game my opponent hesitated too much over which direction he was taking his models, at first heading in one direction then the other. Ultimately leading to him only reaching a single squad of firewarriors, which I could have moved away but felt bad for him so let him take them out.

At the end of the game I had lost a gun drone and the squad of firewarriors for tabling him. This is probably one of the first times I have felt bad about winning a game. So I spent a few minutes after the game going through my opponents mistakes and trying to give him some hints and tips on how to beat me with his army. His crucial mistake was moving in one direction in his first turn and then doubling back. So I encouraged him to be more aggressive with his army, with his army as it stands he was never going to out shoot me, but he could sure as hell have given me a kicking in combat. Against my army he needed to ram his chaos marines down my Taus throat. Sure he’d have taken a few casualties on the way in, but he would have more then made up for it once he got there.

ASMOH practice game

2011-04-28T00:14:00.000-07:00

Due to my ongoing commitments I haven't had any opportunity to get some practice games in with my ASMOH list. So I headed out to my local GW to try and get a game in with my 1750 point list. I ended up playing a Demon army.

Deployment: Spearhead

Mission: Multiple objectives (5)

I won the roll for first turn and let him go first, giving me chance to rush objectives at the end.

My opponents list (from memory)
(non-preferred wave)
Keeper of secrets

Nurgle Deamon prince

Tzeentch Deamon prince

15 Deamonettes

(Preferred wave)

Bloodthrister
15 Bloodletters
5 Flamers
large unit of horrors

I castled up my army towards the back of my deployment area, keeping my small squads of firewarriors next to the devilfish for claiming objectives, but wanting to keep my pulse rifles handy for deepstriking deamons. My opponent rolled and got his non-preferred wave.

Turn 1:
He placed his nurgle deamon prince in cover next to the building on my right flank containing my broadsides and pathfinders. coming in on target, His keeper of secrets did likewise in an adjacent building, also landing on target. On the other end of my deployment area his Tzeentch deamon prince landed on target in another building. The only unit to scatter was his deamonettes who scattered towards the centre of the table, in the open, in front of most of my fire lines (oh goodie :-P). He ran his large deamons further into cover to try and keep them out of line of sight the daemonettes only managed to run an inch though so they scattered as far as possible.

My shooting saw mainly shuffling of units to try and get better fire arcs on his units (if I can see a bit of it i can shoot it, discounting weapons of course) One squad of firewarriors moved up to rapid fire at his tzeentch deamon prince (looked like he had wings=had to die). with the aid of four markerlights, a squad of broadsides and a devilfish I managed to kill him off. The deamonettes ate the majority of the rest of my units and perished, leaving 2 squads of battle suits to fire on his keeper of secrets dropping him to one wound.

Turn 2:
Rolling for reserves my opponent got his bloodthrister in near the building on my right flank (broadsides pathfinders) once again not scattering. His nurgle prince targeted my broadsides with some kind of toughness test which I passed. His keeper of secrets fleet of footed towards the same building. In the assault phase his keeper of secrets assaulted up 2 floors and across a couple of inches into my broadsides in the top of the building into a space where I had to move my broadsides to make space for the his greater deamon. His nurgle prince charged the pathfinders on the lower floor wiping them out. His keeper of secrets fluffed his attacks on my broadsides causing no wounds.

My army continued shuffling around to face the main thrust of princes and greater deamons. a squadron of fireknifes and drones taking a wound off the blood thrister.the rest of my army that could see his nurgle prince cast it back into the warp. In combat his keeper of secrets killed a broadside and put a wound on the others killing one of them off. With my return attacks my broadsides didn't get a chance to hit as my shield drone heroically flew into the deamons nether regions stripping it of its final wound (go drone :-P) now who sucks in combat?

Turn 3:
His flamers turned up in the middle of a group of battlesuits and the table edge, once again not scattering. his bloodthrister lept over the building landing in front of a hammerhead. His flamers shot at my battlesuits causing 7 wounds that I apparently don't get saves from (not sure how flamers mange this but apparently they don't allow armour saves) and 1 normal wound. A bit of wound allocation later and I had two battlesuits remaining on one wound each. His greater demon was left standing over the smouldering wreck of a hammerhead.
My turn saw me embarking firewarriors onto devilfish and racing forward to claim objectives. My fire killed of his flamers and bloodthirster, eventually. My rolling had dropped to atrocious an this point. around. Even with markerlight support my suits couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, from inside the barn. But even so I had more then sufficient firepower to kill his current forces 3x over meaning I scrapped the last wound off his bloodthrister with precious little else left to fire.

Turn 4:
Given that the store manager was telling people to start ending games, this would be the last turn. My opponent landed his bloodletters (scattering 4") and horrors (on target) on two objectives. that were quite close to me.

My turn pretty much consisted of me moving up claiming the objective closest to me and swinging my devilfish forward past his horros disembaking my firewarriors to shot them. My other fish charged towards the bloodletters camping on an objective detaching it's drones to contest that objective. (a brief debate was had with my opponent here saying that I couldn't disembark drones cos it had moved, them saying that they had to disembark from the drone holders, despite me pointing out that they act as a open-topped transport for the drones, finally settling the debate when I said that it doesn't matter either way as they are going to be able to contest the objective with their assault move in any case)

End of game

My opponent seemed quite surprised when I stated that I had won. with 2 objectives contested and the other firmly in my hands. Even with another turn. I had plenty of forces left to carry on contesting the two contested objectives while holding my own. Had I even bothered with my 4th shooting phase His horrors would have been wiped out.

So my practice game went alright, the army worked quite well on the restricted table size with probably too much terrain most of it line of sight blocking, ideal for his highly accurate deepstriking units.

Tyranids Colour Scheme!!

2011-04-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

Admittedly it's probably a little late to have just finalised my colour scheme for the tale of eight gamers, being well into phase 2 now. However I have now had chance to get down and do some painting without being disturbed too much.

However this is my final colour scheme for my Tyranids (note it isn't actually as shiny as the first photo looks, bloody flash :-P):

Brace For Battle

2011-04-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

(Shamelessly copied due to laziness)
One of my friends will be running a 40k combat patrol doubles tournament at his local gaming group in Portsmouth (UK) on the 28th May this year. The details are available here, though it will be following the very successful Winds of War format established by Bracknell Forest Gamers.

For those who wish to attend as singles he set aside a section of their club forum here so you can chat to like minded people and arrange teams ahead of the day.

Anyone who is interested feel free to ask him any questions you may have here, and other than that hope to hear from you soon with army list submissions :o)

I'll certainly be hoping to go. With ASMOH, blog wars and BFB coming up, looks like it's going to be a busy few weeks for me.

This made me laugh

2011-03-22T02:21:00.000-07:00

Saw the following on the gamesworkshop website a few days ago, brought a smile to my face.
How awesome is the carnifex ??

Not sure about you, but I personally would have expected the creature with the better stats and force weapon to win this one. Although, I would have forgone the hammerhand and instead took the 50/50 chance of wounding on 4 attacks, to use the force weapon to kill the carnifex outright before it could breath on you.

To me it seems GW have switched from one approach to the other and then back again, with the Guard codex they wanted to sell loads of Valkyries, which I can't blame them for as they are fantastic models, however as further incentive they made them (and variants) really really cheap, points wise.

With the Tyranid codex they wanted to sell loads of their new Trygon kit, once again a fantastic model, however the approach they have taken with this one is to make all other monstrous creatures unreasonably expensive.

Now, with the Grey Knights codex they have made the dreadknight really cheap.

Breaking in the Nids

2011-03-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

As I finally got my Tyranids for the first round of tale of eight gamers put together and have pretty much got no hope of getting them finished in time for the due date. I took the opportunity to play a couple of games of combat patrol against one of my mates. This worked out quite nicely as he wanted to try out some of my other armies as well.

My army for the first 500 points consists of the following:

3 x Zoanthropes

10 x Termagants

13 x Hormagaunts (with toxin and adrenal glands)

10 x Genestealers

We played on a 4ft x (just short of) 4ft table as it seemed reasonable for a 500 point per side game.

Game 1:

Vs My Tau, annihilation, Spearhead deployment. Tyranids going first.

Tau army, 3x fireknifes (with 2 drones and bonding knife), 3 x Firestorms (with 2 drones and bonding knife), 6x Firewarriors.

The game started off with my tyranids running across the open ground in the centre, the termagants heading into the comfort of a building and the Hormagants sticking behind zoanthropes for a cover save. The Tau fire removed a few hormagaunts from the back of the pack but not causing any significant damage. Then the genestealers came on directly behind his battlesuits, this pretty much put the game in the tyranids hands. Once the battle suits were engaged with the genestealers and then the hormagaunts piled in, the Tau were swept from the board.

Tyranids win!

Tactical Notes: This proved to be quite a good game for the Tyranids, the outflanking genestealers proving my opponents undoing, tying up the large majority of his firebase from turn 2 onwards. If I was playing my Tau I would have deployed slightly differently to minimize the effect of the genestealers outflanking at least get myself a turn of shooting before they would be in combat.

This was also a good opportunity to show my opponent just how bad Tau were for an apparent elite shooting army. Doesn't matter how good your guns are if you can't hit the broadside of a barn.

Game 2:

Vs my space wolf army from winds of war 2011, Night fight, multiple objectives (4)

5x long fangs 4 missiles, 5 x grey hunter MoTW meltagun, razoback TLHB, 5 x grey hunter MoTW meltagun, razoback L+TLPG, 3x wolf guard, MoTW 2 x storm bolter.

I deployed my Hormagaunts and infiltrated my genestealers after winning first turn. Paul, deployed a razorback, with an embarked squad in it exactly 18" away from my hormagunts. By some miracle I was able to roll a 6 for the difficult terrain test for my gaunts and a 6 for their fleet move enabling the gaunts to reach the razorback. Which they miraculously destroyed :-P. The genestealers just edged forward in the building to get nearer the enemies deployment zone. My termagants and zoanthropes came on centre back of the board and ran forwards to try and get the hormagaunts into synapse range quickly. My opponents army came on, the wolf guard and second razorback squad engaging the genestealers, the long fangs running into position and, squad from the destroyed razorback engaging my hormagaunts.

I managed to warp blast the long fangs back off the table, and the genestealers killed the wolf guard but were in turn killed by the second squad of grey hunters. Game ended up with a single grey hunter in combat with a zoanthrope over an objective. Zoanthrope had passed 7 invulnerable saves on his last wound. Ending the game in a draw.

Tactical Notes: Hormagaunts outside of synapse will normally run away after taking a couple of casualties. Also Termagants in combat with wolves will lose, made far worse by being fearless. I was losing models at twice the rate he was killing them and doing precious bugger all back. Not much else I could really have accomplished here. I could have held the genestealers in reserve to try outflanking again, then gone to ground with my army on the two objectives in my deployment zone. Trying to use the Genestealers to tie up on of his objectives. Not very Tyranid like though.

Game 3:

Vs Chaos Space marines. Capture and Control, pitched battle.

5 x Nurgle Marines (2 x flamers, champion with combi flamer), 5 x Plague Marines (2 x Plasma gun champion), 5 x Havocs (3x heavy bolters, 1 x missile, mark of Nurgle)

After taking a round of shooting while in cover, I ran forward managing to tie up his closest squad (plasma) with my hormagaunts, the genestealers outflanked again coming in on the right side to engage the havocs. He charged his flamer squad into combat with the genestealers. At the end of these combats he had 2 blokes left from the plasma squad, facing down four genestealers, 10 termagants, and Zoanthropes. He gave up at this point.

Tactical Notes: Think I did pretty well here, holding back from his flamer range till I was i a position to get the charge off despite going through cover. While the genestealers mopped up most of his firebase. Hopefully a greater learning curve for my opponent here though. keeping away from the edge if your opponent is outflanking and not moving too far forward with your troops against Tyranids. He knew his marines could beat my Hormaguants in combat, that wasn't my intention though. I just wanted to stop them shooting for a few turns. Complete success.

(Picture By Adrian Smith, taken from GW website, used without permission)

Blog Wars !!

2011-03-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

From the Fang, are looking at hosting a tournament amongst bloggers of the UK. I'll be game for it if it goes ahead, looks like some of the other bloggers I read on a regular basis will be as well. full details Here.

Winds of War 11

2011-02-28T13:41:00.000-08:00

After 3 weeks hard slog at the painting table/desk the Halo marines got their outing at Winds of War, their intended debut. This is the third event I have been to that has been hosted by Bracknell Forest gamers, Winds of War 10 and Escalation 10 being the first 2. Both having been fun events that were well run and were full of great opponents.
This was the first time me and Ginge had seen are armies side by side, apart from a brief look at Ginges warthog and his low quality photos on his blog (Seriously, Ginge, would you like a camera with a macro function for your birthday?) and living 120 miles apart meant that we took our own directions with our armies. Ginge was playing his Spartan/marines as Blood Angels, I was playing mine as Space wolfs. Final results are available here.

One of the more disappointing, (although expected) things of the day was the number of Imperial Guard players there with racks of auto cannons and chimeras and Hydras. As you'll see below we faced 3 guard players. I think this is because the Guard excel quite well in these games, no other codex has access to such useful vehicles as the Hydra, or Chimeras. While still being able to cram in loads of troops and autocannons which dice up the vehicles allowed in combat patrol.

Round 1:

Vs (Chaos) Space Wolves and Imperial Guard (Thunderwolf cavalry, with 5man squad in Rhino/Guard with Chimera Spam and an artillery piece with armoured sentinel for added fun)
Capture Your Objective from the centre of the enemies deployment zone.

We lost the roll for first turn, but being an objective based game, this wasn't too much of a loss. The Space wolfs thundered forward, heading towards their objective in our deployment zone. As the game progressed Ginge repulsed the thunderwolf cavalry

and the squad in the Rhino, with a little support from my long fangs. My two razorbacks advanced towards our objective, trying to survive the hail of fire from the Imperial guard. The razorbacks were eventually destroyed. With 6 marines left in two squads of 3, moving through difficult terrain attempting to charge the 2 squads of guardsmen between them and the objective. One squad failed to reach to reach the guardsmen. Leaving 3 spacewolfs to try and carry the day against 18 guardsmen. After killing 3 or 4 on the charge the guardsmen attacked back, causing a phenomenal 7 wounds on the wolves. Of which I failed 4 armour saves. (Damn my inability to make armour saves). Ending the game in a draw.

Round 2:

Vs Combined Tyranid Force (2x2 Zoanthropes, 3x Hive guard, 26ish Hormaguants, Genestealers and Y-Genestealers)
Killpoints

This started off badly being a killpoint missions, as we had twice as many as our opponents and quite a few easy kill points in the razorbacks and landspeeders. Made even more difficult by the copious amount of line of sight blocking terrain on the table. Great for the Hive guard, not so great for our ability to tackle the hive guard though. Unfortunately for us the game started rather badly, despite putting six wounds on a squad of zoanthropes with missile launchers they just wouldn't die. Where as Ginge pouring heavy bolter fire into the hive guard also resulted in no wounds. (in total over the course of the game I put about 10 wounds on them from missiles which they failed one of). Although one of the highlights of the game had to be the Longfangs decimating about 23 of the Hormagants after they all grouped up tightly on the approach :oP. After claiming the easy killpoints of the 3 razorbacks and two landspeeders, the tyranids were left with two hive guard a zoanthrope on a single wound and a few genestealers getting beaten up by a squad of grey hunters.

With the majority of our army intact, it was annoying to have time called on us at the end of turn 5. At the end of the game we lost 5 kill points to 3, but got the majority of the victory points, an extra turn would have seen us drawing with the Tyranids I think.

Round 3:

Vs Imperial Guard and Tau combined.
Objectives (3 in our case, dawn of war deployment)

After a quick confab, our opponents decided to give us the first turn, hoping for a last turn objective grab. Ginge deployed his razorback, with combat squad and chaplain as far forward as possible. The rest of our army came on from the back first turn. The Imperial Guard player came on slowly rolling two chimeras down the road towards the middle of the table. Ginge promptly blocked these with his razorback and proceeded to play merry hell amongst the imperial guard lines. Meanwhile my two razorbacks advanced with supporting fire from the long fangs, destroying one Chimera and immobilising another. A squad of Tau suits attempted to deepstrike next to my long fangs but scattered 6" away, leaving them to rely on their burst cannons for effect.

Unfortunately for them every shot missed (that's even worse then my average shooting), and they ate missiles next turn. In a long shot to try to draw the game, our opponents attempted the move onto the centre objective, next to my squad in razorback, and tank shock through the building onto another objective. Although this would still have lost them the game as we still had the 3rd objective. Anticipating this move, ginge had turbo boosted his speeder directly in front of the Chimera blocking his path. At this point our opponents gave up. Sensing that they would be tabled next turn, and wanted to save face. Netting us our first victory and 1000VPs.

Round 4: (The little sentinel that kept on going and the long fangs that forgot how missiles worked)
Vs Imperial guard and Space wolves (Armoured sentinels with plasma cannons and Chimera with veterans, Long fangs, skyclaws, wolf priest and grey hunters in razorback)
Kill points.

For this game, we were set-up in opposite table quarters to our team mates. We won the first turn Ginge headed towards the imperial guard player with most of his force, leaving a combat squad with missile launcher in his deployment. I sent one squad in a razorback towards The guard player, leaving the longfangs and other grey hunter squadron in razorback to try and harass the space wolf player. The Long fangs enjoyed some success early on when they hit the squadron of 3 armoured sentinels with plasma cannons. killing two off and stripping the cannon from the third. Ginge lost his speeder (Lost one, one immobilized) to the guard firepower, but proceeded to kill off the rest of the guard force in short order. Meanwhile the space wolfs had wrecked my razorback and killed off the squad inside with the skyclaws. From this point on my longfangs failed to hit anything, rolling a seemingly never ending stream of 1s'. Regardless, we had managed to kill off the enemy long fangs and razorback, leaving a grey hunter squad cowering out of sight, and the sky claws with wolf priest. Who were caught in combat with my grey hunters. I was losing combat slowly, although Ginges squad with chaplain in was nearby, ready to lend a hand. However they were stuck in combat with a shaken, stunned, weaponless, immobilized sentinel that refused to die. Totalling up kill points we came out just in the lead.

Overall we positioned 6th, with a good number of victory points for our position and not too far off the leaders.
Another enjoyable day out in BFG, thanks to the guys there for running the event. As they said at the time, this is the last time WoW is being run in it's current format, so have to wait and see what they have planned for next year.

ToEG: A Tyranid awakening

2011-02-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

Lub-dub..

Through countless millennia, the fleet, if you could call it such, had slumbered, the creatures that the fleet composed of, dormant. Vast leviathans measuring over 5 km in length, their carapace pitted and scarred from the vast distances travelled.

Lub-dub..

Huge columns of ice formed from the creatures’ secreted resin covered its exterior. No energy was wasted during the time it had plied through the void. A solitary heartbeat was the only indication that any sign of life remained.

Lub-dub..

Through the meters thick ice that coated it, unnaturally sensitive spines had detected the gravitational pull of a nearby galaxy, and the fleet had spent the last couple of hundred years moving relentlessly towards their goal, their journey now entering its final stages.

Lub-dub..

Slowly, by human reckoning at least, the creatures heart rate increased, the gestalt consciousness of the hive mind pulling the creature from it’s slumber, synapses in its cathedral sized brain, that hadn’t been used for millennia, started to fire. Sending signals to the other, smaller, brains to wake.

Lub-dub.. Lub-dub..

Within the creature, capillary veins and tunnels, that once seemed dead, started to come to life, small pebble sized beetles, started to move. At first one, then dozens, then thousands of them were crawling through the ship, clearing away the detritus left behind from millennia of neglect.

Lub-dub.. Lub-dub..

Great chunks of ice the size of frigates were sent tumbling away into space, as muscles capable of snapping a battleship in half began to stretch and contract on the creatures’ exterior.

Lub-dub.. Lub-dub..

Within the ship a great piercing shrike echoed throughout the network of capillary veins and tunnels. Deep in the bowels of the ship, the norm queen had awakened.

Lub-dub.. Lub-dub..

The hive mind, its control of the fleet, of all such fleets, undiminished by distance, its influence slowly waking the Tyranid hive fleet. The eternal hunger to consume all biomatter, driving it to consume galaxy after galaxy, since time immemorial.

Prey was nearby.

Spartans!!

2011-02-18T14:20:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the lack of posts lately, life and my current project have taken up all of my free time, no time for blogging. However thought I would post a few photos of my (finally) completed combat patrol force for Winds of War 2011 run by Bracknell Forest Gamers.
My team mate and I came up with the idea of doing Halo themed space marine armies, about 8 months ago, so me being me decided to start building and painting my force about 3 weeks ago. Given the average speed of my painting (painfully slow) this was probably a bad move on my part. However without further ado, here is Spartan II Wolf Company:

Gauss Warthog (Counts as Razorback with lascannon TL plasma)

Standard Warthog (Counts as standard Razorback)

Blue Squad (Grey hunters; meltagun and mark of the wulfen)

Red Squad (as blue)

Green squad (long fangs 4 x missile)

Gold Squad (wolf guard x 3)

So that's my halo themed space wolf army, comments / constructive criticism welcome)

Stromraven coming to a chapter near you soon

2011-01-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

Although a little late for the storm raven unveiling, I quite like the model. I think it looks quite fitting with the rest of the space marine vehicle range. Certainly the 360 view on the GW site looks fantastic.
The only downside is that I can't use one with my Black Templars, or can I?
According to a rumour that I heard, White Dwarf will be publishing rules for using the Stormraven within other space marine chapters. Given GWs number 1 selling army are marines of various colours and flavours, this move makes perfect sense on their part.
Here's hoping that I can add some Stormravens to my templars at some point.

Tale of (TBC) Gamers

2011-01-17T08:27:00.000-08:00

From November 2009 till February 2010 I took part in a ‘Tale of four gamers’ type event with a couple of my friends. Although my end score was relatively low, due to the steep learning curve of the Tau army combined with my slow painting and few opportunities to get practice games in, it was a great motivator to get the majority of my Tau army painted in a relatively short space of time. Far quicker then I would normally have be able to. Although I met relatively few of the deadlines and came last overall it was a fun challenge that I relished.

So when my friend suggested running another one this year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to make a start on my new Tyranid army.

I previously played Tyranids in second addition, though stopped about halfway through third edition, my Black Templars were my new favourite army at this point, although I still continued to collect Tyranids just didn’t put them together. I was tempted to start them on the previous ToFG competition, but fancied collecting a shooty army instead. Hence collecting my Tau. Although my desire to collect another Tyranid army has never dwindled. Unfortunately I sold my big pile of Tyranids a few years ago. So I’ll be starting my army from scratch.

I won’t reiterate the rules here, the event organiser has made quite a comprehensive post of all the details Here. There are a couple of differences for the latest event though. The major one that will help me out is the extended deadlines. With having approximately 8 weeks to complete the 500 point blocks rather then the 1 month which I struggled with previously.

One of my main concerns with collecting the Tyranids for the escalation (if I decide to go) is the first 500 points. Played using combat patrol rules, So no toughness 6+, no 2+ saves, no more then 2 wounds. So no Hive tyrant, no Tyranid prime, no Tyranid warriors, no Tervigon, no Shrikes and no Trygon Prime. Leaving me with only one option for synapse, Zoanthropes. Which aren’t ideal in a combat patrol army. If facing an opponent with a psyker in, they can get shut down far too easily, leaving me without any anti tank.

Any suggestions?

Black Templar FAQ

2011-01-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

As per the title, there has been an update of the Black Templars, bringing their equipment more in line with Codex marine armies. I'm highly tempted to dust of my Templars and try them with the new rules.

(Not, image sourced from Warhammer 40K wikia, by Kingmonk I believe, used without permission. But it does look awesome)

The Full FAQ is available here: Black Templar FAQ

I'll go over the highlights quickly.

Page 23 – Kill Them All, Ignore “and follow the normal rules for target priority in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook.” in the last sentence.
Edit- Just realised that this means you do have to take target priority tests. as previously. Bit strange though.

Page 27 – Cyclone Missile Launcher Change “as a missile launcher” to “as a heavy 2, missile launcher
With the ability to still take 2 heavy weapons in a 5 man squad, combined with the tank hunters veteran skill, This is going to be quite a nasty squad for about 260 points. Able to fire 4 strength 9 (effectively against vehicles) AP 3 missiles on the move, I may have to start replace my twin assault cannon squad.

Page 28 – Holy Orbs of Antioch Change “, rolling to hit as normal. If the Holy Orb hits, place the small Blast Template over a model in the target unit.” to “. The Holy Orb of Antioch is a blast weapon.
Not really a good or bad change, more chance of scattering but less likely to miss entirely.

Page 28 – Narthecium Change the second paragraph to “As long as the Apothecary is alive, all models in his squad have the Feel No Pain special rule.
Makes command squads a bit more worthwhile, especially if your putting lots of points into one.

Page 28 – Storm shield Change to “A storm shield is a solid shield that has an energy field generator built into it. The energy field is capable of deflecting almost any attack, even blows from lascannons and power weapons. A model with a storm shield has a 3+ invulnerable save. A model equipped with a storm shield can never claim the +1 Attack bonus for being armed with two close combat weapons in an assault.
About time, Combined with Accept any challenge, and furious charge, this is also going to be nasty. Unfortunately increased to 15 points for wargear But I'm not complaining.

Page 29 – Power of the Machine Spirit Change to “The vehicle can fire one more weapon than would normally be permitted. In addition, this weapon can be fired at a different target unit to any other weapons,
subject to the normal rules for shooting. Therefore, a vehicle that has moved at combat speed can fire two
weapons, and a vehicle that has either moved at cruising speed, or has suffered a ʻCrew Stunnedʼ or ʻCrew Shakenʼ result can fire a single weapon
That's more like it, none of this BS 2 nonsense either. This means a land raider crusader can now fire to full effect when moving 6" or less. Including firing the multi melta at another target at full BS. Also, vindicators can now fire their main weapon when moving up to 12" if equipped with the power of the machine spirit upgrade.

Page 29 – Smoke Launchers Change to “SMOKE LAUNCHERS Smoke Launchers are used to temporarily obscure the vehicle behind concealing clouds of smoke, allowing it to cross open areas in greater safety. See the Vehicles section of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook for details.
Ah well, all good things must come to an end.

Page 38 – Transport Vehicles Ignore the third sentence starting “The vehicles described here...” and ignore the last two sentence
Meaning dedicated transports can now carry other units like most other armies transports. How many landraiders can you squeeze into a 2000 point list now. :)

Page 39 – Land Speeder Typhoon Change all 3 occurences of “Typhoon multiple missile
launcher” to “typhoon missile launcher” and change “Range 48"; S 5; AP 5; Heavy 1, Blast, Twin-linked” to
“Frag: Range 48"; S 4; AP 6; Heavy 2, Blast Krak: Range 48"; S 8; AP 3; Heavy 2
That's better. Gives us more flexibility in choice of speeder units.

Page 48 – Shotgun, Strength Change “3” to “4
Making the combat shotgun a worthwhile weapon for neophytes now, Losing a strength 4 attack in combat. But gaining a strength 4 shot up to 12"

There are a few other changes, but these are the ones that I feel are going to have the biggest influence on game-play. Especially your terminators and land raiders (now assault vehicles for sure now by the way).

Bad advice?

2010-12-09T15:47:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately due to work commitments, I haven't have much time for anything hobby related recently. I did manage to get a re-match against my mate for the last game of escalation and managed to have a relatively decisive victory, although the scenario was in my favour from the start so kudos to Ginge for agreeing to a rematch (we will have a slightly more balanced game next time :-P).

Which brings me onto the topic for this post. While I was down that way I popped into the local gamesworkshop to pick a few bits up, naturally the guy working there started talking to me, asking what armies I collected etc. When I mentioned I play Tau, he started asking me what I thought of them. I responded saying that they can be quite good with a few tricks but could do with a new codex.

Saying I mainly played a battlesuit army with as many suits as I have, small squads of firewarriors, pathfinders and hammerheads. I was told that this was my problem, at this point I wasn't even aware I had a problem, I was advised that I should really take less crisis suits and broadsides, and more firewarriors and drone squadrons. Stating that one of the regulars at their shop filled up on stealth suits with firewarrior support.

At this point I wondered if the local Tau players had ever won any games, or were just considered the baby seals of the store. Is this the advice that employees are giving out to people who they think are struggling to win games?

I don't considered myself a WAAC player in the slightest, slightly competitive in so much as I play to win, or stop the other guy from winning if my dice fail me :-P. But I have enjoyed some measure of success using my standard army list against most of the newer codexes. I've beaten, and lost to, Guard, tabled Blood Angels a couple of times. Given I rarely get the opportunity to play I think my win/draw/lose ratio has been pretty favourable. However were I struggling and getting frustrated at the 'poor' performance of my Tau would his advice of helped at all?

No, firewarriors are one of the weakest units in the Tau codex, drones are on the same footing. Better advice could be found at places like 3++ is the new black or many other sources of solid tactical advice on playing the game. Stacking up on the weaker units of an army is a sure way to lose, sure you can get more feet on the ground, but they are more likely to be running away at the first sign of trouble instead of inflicting damage on the opponent.

In a Tau army, crisis suits and broadsides are the heavy hitters, missile pods, plasma guns and railguns the tools of their trade. Cram as many of these in as you can and always remember the dead can't claim objectives. That would be my advice at any rate :-P

Book Review: The First Heretic

2010-10-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

The First Heretic is the latest novel in the long running Horus Heresy series of books written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. The book explores the history of the Word Bearers legion, starting with the Emperors castigation of them for worshipping him as a god and ending with them preparing to assault the Ultramarines at Calth.

Over the course of the book the information about the origin of the Primarchs and the events leading to their dispersal throughout the galaxy is explained in more detail. There is a lot more background information on the nature of chaos and the enmity between the Word Bearers and the Ultramarines.

The book describes the fall of Lorgar from the Emperor and his turn to chaos. As he seeks to find something to worship, you get to see the fallibility of the primarch as the ultimate architects of his, and the legions, downfall is revealed.

Overall, this book is fantastic and certainly one of the better books of the Horus Heresy series so far.

5/5 - Awesome must read for fans of the series.

Black Library

2010-10-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Black Library have just started to offer free Ebooks. Which I think is absolutely brilliant. There are current 3 for free click here for the ebooks.
If you go to the amazon site, you can download a free e-reader software PC software here. All you need to do is download the .mobi version of the ebooks from the black library website and open them from your download file.

Thanks to Black Library for providing this content. Remember to check the site every friday for another free ebook.

Escalation 2010 Armies

2010-10-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

I managed to get a few photos of the armies present at escalation this year. so thought I'd put up a few photos of them.

An actual chaos army!

Chaos wolves!

Orkies with a rather nice trike mounted warboss

Space wolves!

Zombie horde army. (My round 1 opponent)

Tyranids

Although I think one of the best armies present was the Eldar army, shown below. Looks awesome, the judges must have thought likewise as well as it won best painted.

Escalation 2010

2010-10-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

I took my Tau to escalation 2010. Their first competitive outing. I didn't do quite as well as I hoped, but not as bad as I feared. coming 11th out of 24th with 1 win, 2 draws and a 1 loss in four games. Some of the missions were a little odd. With strange deployments and/or reserve units, certainly wasn't friendly for armies relying on firepower.

Game 1:

This was fought using the night fighting mission from the battle missions book. With the table split into four triangles diagonally across the table. Rolling for random deployment of units within the triangles. Mission was objectives with three objectives positioned towards the center of the battlefield, night fighting rules all the time.

My opponent for this mission was using a plague zombie army, I watched as horror as he positioned 83 zombies around the objectives in the middle of the table. For those that don't know, the zombies are toughness 3 feel no pain, S4 and fearless. So they can take a beating and not go anywhere.

Over the course of 6 turns I managed to drop about 50 of the zombies without losing a single model. However he held two of the objectives with his larger remaining horde of zombies. On turn 6 with a well positioned charge into his larger group of zombies I managed to drag them off the objective ending the game in a draw.

My opponent in this round was the same opponent I faced in the first round of the winds of war tournament earlier on in the year. This was an enjoyable game against a great opponent. However I didn't lose a single model in this round which was nice.

Game 2:

This was a spearhead deployment, kill point mission. My army was designed for fighting marines. So I was delighted to be fighting a space marine army.

This mission went quiet well for me, I made a few mistakes which cost me my Shas'O to a melta gun totting biker. The game ended on turn 7 with me wiping out the last remaining marines on my opponents side.

This game ended in a victory and 1000 VPs for the Tau. My opponent was a little new to his army and could probably have done with being a little more forceful in approaching my army. However he was a great person to play against.

Game 3:

Spearhead deployment again. with a slight twist, you are only allowed to deploy fast attack choices. Leaving me with a squad of pathfinders and their devilfish. When I found out my assigned table I noticed it was largely open. Which I thought would be nice, until I realised I drew an imperial guard player. uh uh. The game was 3 objectives, one in the center of the table and 1 in the center of the unoccupied table quarters.

My opponent deployed a vendetta against my pathfinders. With the rest of my army held in reserve and the guard player having the -1 to my reserves roll, I didn't hold much hope of winning or evening drawing this mission. The game went quite quickly, with most of my reserves turning up then being taken out by the guard player, or failing a morale check and running off the table. Worst of all, I took a wound on each of my broadsides and managed to failed 2 of 3 armour saves and both invulnerable saves on my shield drones. Leaving most of my army at the mercy of the guard battle tanks. My remaining railguns failed to penetrate any of the guard armour, although I managed to cripple enough of his chimeras to prevent him reaching the center objective, and had four firewarriors hiding on mine.

Game resulted in a draw, but I was grateful the game ended on turn 6.

Game 4:

I ended up playing against Ginge in this game, on the same table I played on game 3. It was a kill point mission against orks. A nice open battlefield and a good deployment for me.

Unfortunately I messed up on some of the tactics of this game, a few small changes could have won me this game. moving my firewarriors up towards his bikes to restrict his movement and get off a round of rapid fire at his bikes. I also could have moved around a little more effectively to keep out of the orks reach. Unfortunately I was tripping over my own deployment. Strung out across the back of the battlefield with limited space to move around. The dice also abandoned me on this game as well, Making up for the good luck in games 1 and 2 with bad luck in 3 and 4. With 3 penetrating hits on his battle wagons with railguns (open topped) I consecutively rolled 3 ones. Ginge had some quite good luck with his lootas as well, destroying 2 of my tanks in short order. However, not one to blame luck, Ginge played well and deserved the win in this round.

Result, Loss. 10 kill points to 9.

Things I would change:

Most of the missions are assault army friendly rather then firepower friendly. Be nice to have a better mix. Some of the deployment types were awful. In Ginges first game, his opponent conceded after Ginge won the roll to seize the initiative. He had deployed his boyz, literally surrounding his opponents rhinos and his opponent thought that there was no point playing beyond this point.

I would have changed my tactics in the last game, I should have won that one, and am now spoiling for a rematch :-P.

I would have made slight changes to my army list. A piranha squadron or 2 would have been quite useful.

All in all an entertaining day playing warhammer though. Thanks to the people at Bracknell Forest Gamers for an entertaining day though.

Escalation 2010: Army list

2010-09-15T15:24:00.001-07:00

Next month I shall be attending escalation at Braknell Forest Gamers. This one day tournament has four games with a twist compared to a normal tournament. Basically the first game is combat patrol, 500 points. The combat patrol rules prevent anything with more then two wounds, anything with a 2+ save or anything with a combined armour value greater then 33. After the first round each subsequent round adds 500 points to your army. Although these points can only be used to buy new units not add to existing ones.
My proposed army list is the following:
Round 1
-3x fireknife crisis suits. Team leader, bonded, hard wired black sun filter, 2x gun drones.
-3x firestorm crisis suits. Team leader, bonded, HWBSF, 2x gun drones.
-8 firewarriors. Team leader bonded. EMP grenade on leader.

In my previous combat patrol games, the missile pods were amazing, plenty of light armour to target. In order to balance this against armies that will consist of lots of infantry I have taken firestorm configured suits rather then deathrain. In further rounds, I will have pathfinders to compensate for the loss of twinlinked. The firewarriors make my one compulsory troops. The EMP grenades and filters are there mainly to fill up the points. Although given BFGs love of nightfighting (as shown at winds of war) they will probably come in handy.

Round 2.
For round 2 a standard force organisation chart has to be filled in and the combat patrol restrictions are dropped.
-10 firewarriors, leader with bonding knife.
-shas'el, fireknife, hard wired Target lock.
- 3x broadside. 1 SMS and target lock, 1 plasma and multitracker, leader with plasma multitracker 2 shield drones target lock BSF.

The broadsides help to give this list a lot of extra punch. I'm expecting quite a few marines players with rhino spam. So the target locks enable me to threaten three vehicles a turn. The shas'el can either join the firewarriors to help them hold or go with the other fireknifes. The target lock allowing full use of firepower in either scenario. The firewarriors are my second troop choice. Although they yet a lot of hate on the internets, I quite like firewarriors.

Round 3:
- railhead, burst cannons, dpod, multitracker, flechettes, target lock.
-2 x fireknife, leader bonded, 2 gun drones.
- 5 pathfinders, rail rifle, devilfish, dpod, flechettes.

Perhaps a little too much kit on the railhead, but once again, to fill up the points. A couple more fireknife suits mainly as an escort for my shas el. And pathfinders. If you only get once chance to hit the enemy, make sure it counts.

Round 4:
-railhead, as round 3
-pathfinders as round 3 devilfish, dpod SMS.
-6 x firewarriors devilfish dpod.
Railhead to fill up the last heavy slot. Another troops choice, just to have a fast(ish) moving unit with the potential to score one objective while contesting another.
More pathfinders just for fun.

Any thoughts on the list?

Battle Report: Tau Vs Blood Angels

2010-09-08T09:41:00.000-07:00

Battle report: Tau Vs Blood angels (rematch)

Playing against the same Blood Angel army as my previous battles, I’m actually getting quite bored of playing this guy. I think nobody else really wants to play him, so by the time I get there everyone else already has games. Nothing personal, but a bit of variety in opponents would be nice.

BA List:

Dante

Sanguinor

5 Sanguinary Guard

1 Priest with jump pack.

10 deathcompany in a landraider

Librarian dreadnought

Baal Predator TLAC

My list:

Farsight 3x fireknife retinue

3 x Fireknifes

7 Firewarriors

7 Firewarriors in devilfish

8 pathfinders in devilfish

3 XV9 with 2x Phased Ion Guns each

3 broadsides

Railhead

Mission was kill points (my 13 to his 9)

Set-up was pitched battle type.

The board was limited to a 4’ x 4’ as is normal for my local GW. However the middle of the board was bisected with a fortress of Redemption severely limiting my shooting into his deployment area and giving him a safe route to advance into my table half. There was another building in the centre of my deployment area and a little bit of cover in the far back right hand corner. Another building was along the left hand side of the battlefield in line with the fortress of Redemption limiting the width of the space left to just big enough to drive a land raider through.

I won the roll for table sides and first turn. I picked the side which the fortress was furthest from giving me a nice open killing field for any assault marines that decided to jump over the building. I choose to go first.

Looking at the terrain set-up his army would be pretty safe from my first shooting phase as the fortress blocked all line of sight. Once they were past the fortress I would have one shooting phase to cripple his army before they would be in combat. To this end I deployed my entire army as a shooting gallery at the back of my deployment area. Leaving me little manoeuvring capability but the chance to bring my maximum guns on my enemy on the second turn. From left to right my deployment was, Pathfinder fish, empty, XV9s behind, hammerhead hiding crisis suits, firewarriors in front of the center building, pathfinders in the top of the building, farsight and guard ready to go left or right, broadsides with a skirmish line of firewarriors to grant them a cover save, finally the other firewarriors loaded into their devilfish on the far right flank.

My opponent, as expected, deployed his landraider near the gap on the left (my left) his assault squads behind the fortress of redemption. With the librarian dread and predator on the far right, strangely enough out in the open in front of my broadsides, all of his units were as far forward as possible.

My opponent tried to seize the initiative and failed.

Turn 1

Tau:

I moved the devilfish on the left forward, ready to plug the hole the landraider was going to come through in turn 2. my suits on the left shuffled forward trying to get missile pod shots on dantes unit next to the landraider. Farsights squad shuffled forward to get in a position to rapid fire any assault marines that crossed the fortress and intercept the dread if need be.

The pathfinders on the building lit up the landraider with a staggering 6 markerlights. The hammerhead targeted the landraider using a markerlight and missed, the broadsides split their fire between the three vehicles, got to love target locks, I missed the baal predator, failed to penetrate the librarian dreadnought, however in an epic display of shooting prowess my third broadside used the remaining makerlights to up the BS by 2 and -3 from the raiders cover save, the heavy armour proved no match for the railgun and the tank exploded killing one of the embarked deathcompany.

Minor shuffling of suits in the assault phase in preparation for the make or break turn.

Blood Angels:

The dreadnought failed wings of sanguineous, so moved normally his assault marines jumped over the fortress and ran forward into my killing ground making sure they would be in assault range next turn. The deathcompany started the long march towards m left flank.

The baal predator shot at farsights squad putting a wound on one of my suits

Tau 1KP / BA 0

Turn 2

Tau: This would be it, make or break for my army, either I blasted his army to shreds or it would rip me apart next turn.

My suits positioned themselves into rapid fire range of his 2 sanguinary guard squads, Hopefully I could expose Dante to the tender mercy of my railheads railgun. The sanguinor would have to wait till the following turn. I markerlight dantes squad getting 4 hits. I applied 2 of these to the XV9s whose fire reduced the sanguinary guard to cinders (8 rending hits, ouch). The railhead took aim at Dante, missing him, but putting a wound on him with it’s burst cannons. My firewarrior squad in the building rapid fired their pulse rifles at him, stripping him of another wound. Using my last 2 markerlight hits I open fire with the fireknifes, getting 6 plasma wounds and 5 missile pod wounds on him. My opponent passed all his invulnerable saves yet failed two armour saves, killing Dante.

Towards the centre on the field farsight and friends opened fire on the remaining sanguinary guard squad, felling four of them with rapid fire plasma guns. The remaining guard and priest were killed by the devilfish and firewarriors in front of the broadsides.

The broadsides split their fire between the dread and the predator failing to damage either.

My fireknifes shuffled behind the XV9s who formed a line in front of them, to try and bait the sanguinor into charging them instead.

Blood Angels:

Everything (left) continued its advance forward the dread getting wings and landing next to Farsight the baal advance at combat speed trailing behind the dread. The sanguinor positioned to charge my XV9, as I wanted. The death company continued their advance towards my lines. Slowly.

Shooting consisted of the baal firing on the broadsides who lost two drones and narrowly passed their morale check.

The dread charged farsight, killing a shield drone, however farsight fluffed his attacks, failed his moral check and got run down for his trouble. The sanguinor charged the XV9s killing 2 shield drones but taking a wound, I passed my morale check and sacrificed the remaining drones to pass hit and run. Leaving the sanguinor on his own facing a wall of fire next turn.

Tau 5 KP / BA 1 KP

Turn3

Tau:

With a large portion of the dead, I concentrated on the remaining units, the firewarriors moved round the back of the dreadnought the hammerhead positioned to fire at whatever all units depending on what survived. The devilfish on the right moved to the side of baal predator.

I makerlighted the sanguinor giving 2 hits. The firewarriors in the centre fired on him causing no wounds, the fireknifes stripped him of two wounds and he was finished off by the XV9 suits, the Devilfish on the right fired at the predator causing no damage, the firewarriors on the right fired into the back of the dreadnought, wrecking it. With no other targets the broadsides wrecked the baal predator. The hammerhead fired submunitions at the deathcompany. Killing 2.

I forgo to move my devilfish on the left in this round virtually guaranteeing its destruction by the death company.

Blood angels:

The death company charged the devilfish losing one of their number to flechettes but wrecking the fish.

Tau 8 KP / BA 2

Tau:

Markerlighted the death company, killed them with rapid fire plasma guns.

Game.Set.Match

Tau 9 PK / BA 2 KP (tabled)

Thoughts: I don’t think I could have done much better in this game, I only made a few minor mistakes, forgetting to move the devilfish on turn 3, wound allocation on the broadsides would have prevented them having to take a moral check. Most of the mistakes were made by my opponent. Given the terrain set-up he could have spent the first turn moving right up to the fortress and then jumped over it in turn 2, this would have allowed him to fire his guns without needing to run. Or with the baal predator surviving the first turn, moved that flatout to create cover for the guard when they jumped over the building. Also his army list includes some of the hardest hitting units from the BA codex, but not many bodies. Plasma rifles kill Sanguinary Guard as readily as normal marines, making my weapons far more effective in kill / points ratio. A fact I took full advantage of.

Recent activity

2010-09-01T01:54:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately due to ongoing stuff at work my recent activity has been fairly limited. Mainly due to lots of overtime. Which is nice because I want a new TV soon. :P
I have managed to make a start on painting Farsight, but given the speed of my painting, slow, I wouldn't expect to have him finished before the end of the month. I did manage to get two games in against my friends imperial guard the other week. Suffice to say I lost both games. Partially due to bad planning on my part, concentrated more on trying to kill his hidden hydras rather then achieve he mission objectives. Poor rolling for morale and fall back didn't help much. Also marbo was a royal pain in the broadside.
Generally though I was outplayed by Ginge. I just couldn't get past his cover, even with pathfinder support. Although I did make about 80% of my disruption pod saves.
Highlight of the games include the following:
-Farsights bodyguard taking 3 wounds rolling triple 2. Third time I've managed this feat.
-XV9 suits losing 3 shield drones to rapid fire lasguns! Failing their morale check and falling back 16" off the table by 1" grr.
-Broadsides being wiped to a single man and a drone by marbo.
-broadside firing plasma gun at marbo who passes his gone to ground save, broadside follows up by charging marbo (stupid stupid). Who kills a drone, broadside is then swept leaving marbo no longer pinned (stupid).
I think a rematch might be in order. This time with me actually concentrating on the game.

Wound allocation:bols up?

2010-08-16T16:12:00.001-07:00

I've just been reading an article on bols about wound allocation. This seems to be in the same vein as the authors previous article about true line of sight. I'm not quite sure what to make of these articles. It seems like they are purposefully trying to stir up responses from the community.

Having looked at the example he gives he is an extremely lucky player. Every plasma gun shot hits and wounds? Awesome. 6 wounds from lssguns? Amazing. I wouldn't expect that many from a full squad of 10 on first rank, second rank order, Rapid fire range. The space marines with the lasgun wounds are likely to to lose 2 of their number. Moving on.

Considering 5th edition has been out a while now. I'm at a loss as to how this is plaguing the game.

However, lets have a look at the authors complaints about the system, as well as some of the commenters complaints.

- Squad can potentially survive by taking more incoming fire.

- 'wasted' wounds. Wounds that get allocated to models that have already recieved a killing wound.

- multi wound units with unique wargear.

I think this covers the vast majority of peoples issues. So what would be the best way round this? There is no real one solution that can cover every issue by itself. So in order to satisfy the complaints I prepose the following:

Wounds are allocated in order of increasing AP, starting at ignores armour then 1, finishing at -.

That deals with the first issue. I doubt very much that the bols author will be complaing about his missed lasgun wounds.

If a model has more then 1 wound it must be allocated the number of wounds equal to its wounds characteristic before wounds can be allocated to the next model. For example, a 5 man space marine squad (1 wound each) with attached chaplain (2 wounds). Takes 3 AP 2 wounds and 6 AP 5 wounds. The space marine player may elect to allocate the 3 AP 2 wounds to the normal marines, 2 AP 5 wounds to the two remaining, as yet unwounded marines. Then 2 AP 5 wounds must be allocated to the chaplain before cycling the 2 remaining wounds back round.

This helps rectify the second point about wasted wounds. As each model has to take their fill of wounds rather then 1 each. However in order to keep things fair:

When a unit with multi wound models takes wounds from a weapon that causes instant death, each model can only be allocated 1 instant death wound before wounds are allocated to the next model. Instant death wounds are to be applied to unwounded models if possible. For example, a unit of 6 ork nobz, T4 2 wounds, has one model previously wounded. The Orks take 3 wounds from missile launchers, 2 AP 2 wounds and 7 AP 5 wounds. The AP 2 has to be applied to the wounded Ork. The missile launchers have to be applied to un wounded Orks where possible. 4 of the AP 5 shots will be needed to fill out the wounds on the Orks that still need to be allocated wounds (to meet their wounds characteristic) before the final 3 AP 5 wounds can be allocated in the second cycle of wound allocations. Note, in the event of a unit containing a model of 2+ wounds when the majority of the squad has one wound, or an independent/upgrade character is in the unit. There is no requirement for the model or character, with two wounds to be allocated the instant death shot. This is to prevent unscrupulous players that may take advantage of wound allocation rules from 'sniping' characters in squads with missile launchers.

This should hopefully solve the major issues that have cropped up on wound allocation. As you can see it is an extremely simple system that should take virtually no time during gaming.

Either that, or don't bother firing the lasguns as well.

Battle report: Tau Vs Blood angels

2010-08-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

I finally got the opportunity to head to my local GW last night for a quick game of 40K. I ended up arriving just after 20:00 meaning there was only one table left and one opponent who wasn’t matched up to anyone. This was the same Blood Angels player I played last time. He was determined to get me back for the last time we played, game ended in a draw but was heavily one sided in my favour an extra turn would have seen is army wiped out.

Note, this post my contain a few rants about my opponents conduct throughout the game. You’ll understand why as you read it.

My army list was written towards 1500 points (actually 1511 as written), Given that my opponent wanted to play 2000 points, I upped my list to just over 1900 by adding some rail rifles to the pathfinders and putting in a squad of basic XV9 battlesuits plus 4 shield drones. This isn’t really fluffy in a Farsight list but what the hey. So it’s my 1900 points Vs his 2000.

My List:

Farsight

Bodyguard: 3x XV8, 3xPlasma, 3x targeting array, HW Drone controller 2x shield drones

3 x XV8, 3x TL missile pods, 3x Burst cannons, Team leader with HW Drone controller 2x Gun drones

7 firewarriors, Shas’ui (Squad x 3)

5 pathfinders, rail rifle (squad x 2)

Devilfish (flechettes, Dis pod)

3x XV9 (3 x DC, 4 x shield drone)

2x Broadside, team leader, 2 x plasma, 2 x multitracker, HWDC 2 x shield drones.

Hammerhead, Railgun, burst cannons, MT, DP, Flechette

His List:

(From memory)

Dante

Sanguinor

6x Sanguinary guard, banner, melta pistols (squad x2)

Priest with jump pack

Death company x10, 2x power weapons 2x thunder hammers.

Baal Predator TLAC, heavy bolter sponsons

Landraider

Deployment and Mission:

We rolled for deployment and mission type. I won the roll for deployment; mission was spearhead one objective in each deployment zone.

Rant 1: During deployment I was getting my army out of my case, despite the fact that I got first turn he wanted to deploy first (getting first turn) while I placed my army. He got annoyed when I said no.

Rant 2: At my local GW the standard table size is 4’x4’, he started arguing that this enabled him to deploy within 6” of the centre rather then 12” in the rulebook. Obviously being as this meant he would be able to get into combat much quicker I refused. Obvious advantage to his army. To end the argument after about 5 minutes I relented and let him deploy 9” from the centre.

Rant 3: Before deploying his army he rolled for and got steal the initiative. I couldn’t even be bothered to argue at this point. Told him it wouldn’t matter because I was going to table him anyway :-P.

Shockingly, he deployed as close to as feasibly possible.

Turn 1:

The blood angels took to the skies and landed 12” closer to me. The landraider started moving between two buildings. All the sanguinary guard were within 12” of the priest for the feel no pain. The baal predator advanced slowly peppering my normal battlesuits with assault cannon and heavy bolter fire killing the two drones and causing a wound on one of the battlesuits. The storm bolter on the libby dreadnought killed two pathfinders in one squad. The guard and associated characters ran forward. The landraider shot at my hammerhead but failed to penetrate.

I moved the devilfish to block off his landraiders advance between two buildings, mwhahaha. This would hopefully hold up his death company for a couple of turns allowing me to deal with his army in two parts. Farsight and friends jumped out from behind the building with the intention of hitting Dante and co with plasma death.

My return firing wasn’t as effective as I would have liked. The 2+ save combined with the priests feel no pain mean that the sanguinary guard and Dante survived 12 wounds from the XV9s burst cannons, the firewarriors shooting at them (I left two units in reserve), two shots from the rail rifles. Gun drones, burst cannons. All without taking taking a single casualty. Farsight and friends opened up killing 3 of the sanguinary guard with their plasma rifles, broadsides followed up by taking out the last two guard and putting a wound on Dante. My deathrains (kinda) shot at the dreadnought shaking it.

Rant 4: After taking 3 wounds on the remaining 3 models in Dantes squad my opponent went to put 2 wounds on Dante without taking a wound on one of the guard. I pointed out that he had to take a wound on each model before putting a second wound on Dante. After I explained it to him calmly, then pointed out the rule in the rulebook, then got the store manager to reiterated it to him. He spent a few minutes complaining about it and saying how he has always played it like that before finally grumbling and accepting it.

Turn 2 Onwards:
The blood angels moved onwards towards my lines taking heavy casualties from my plasma rifles. The other squad of sanguinary guard and the sanguinor died quickly enough. Dante fell to mass pulse rifle fire. However his vehicles survived lots of penetrating hits with nothing more then being stunned.

Eventually the Librarian dreadnought took out the broadsides hiding in the building, but was taken out by a charge by farsight. The death company carried on eating through my units, which I fed to them to prevent them hitting my main line at the same time as the rest of his army.

I was able to prevent his characters from charging into farsights unit by blocking his move with a squad of firewarriors. They were killed by the sanguinor though. Farsight managed to take out the sanguinor with plasma rifle fire, while dante was taken out by another squad of firewarriors rapid firing at him.

On the last turn of the game all my opponent had left was his landraider, which blasted my squad of firewarriors holding my objective. Who failed all their cover saves, they did however roll high enough to fail their morale check and run far enough to fall back of the table. So at least I was rolling about average :-P. With my last scoring squad gone, I had to take out His landraider to table him and win the game with no broadsides and no fusion blasters....

Farsight leaped onto the building, the strange looking dreadnought was discarding the remains of his Broadside like a kid throwing away an unwanted toy. The dreadnought looked at Farsight, a strange energy playing across its weapons. It charged forward with surprising speed for such a clumsy looking Gue'la machine. Farsight was ready for it though. With a quick coded command to one of his guards, a shield drone flew forward to meet the dreadnoughts heavy combat fist. There was a burst of energy as the two energy fields collided the feedback wrecked the drone but was enough to deflect the dreadnoughts blow. Farsight ignited his thrusters in a controlled burst landing his suit expertly on top of the dreadnoughts sarcophagus. With two quick blows he disarmed the dreadnought the dawnblade cutting effortlessly through the machines thick armour a third blow went straight down into the machines main body killing the occupant. Farsight jumped from the top of the falling machine, a short burst from his suits jetpack bringing him to the ground the recoil compensator's in his legs absorbing the impact without difficultly. On his left his suits sensors detected a squad of black armoured marines butchering a squad of firewarriors, the plasma rifle on his shoulder combined with those of his squad making short work of them.
He looked ahead, sprinting towards the last of the Gue'la forces. The behemoth bearing down on the remains of his forces, a landraider. Farsight jinked to the side as the sponson mounted lascannons opened fire, the heavy beams of coherent light missing him by mere inches the heat scorching the paint from his armour. Feeding power to his jetpack he launched himself into the air, the landraiders heavy bolter stitching a line through the air behind him. Farsight landed behind the landraider swinging the dawnblade to the hilt in the machines power plant his suits servo motors straining, Farsight started to draw the blade down into the landraiders vital parts. The landraider exploded, the force blowing Farsight back 15 meters.
Picking himself up from the ground, he scanned the surroundings no more Gue'la forces were nearby. The day belonged to the Tau.

WIP: Farsight build completed

2010-07-31T13:06:00.000-07:00

Here is the final Farsight build. All that really remains to be completes is a little tidying up of the green stuff. I wanted this to look significantly different to a standard crisis suit. To this end I have given him double jointed legs, to give him a greater sense of agility, which isn't really conveyed by the standard GW farsight model.

I moved the plasma rifle to a shoulder mount with a little bit of a standoff from a normal standard backpack mount, predator style. The back-pack was made from a space marine jump pack and standard Tau Jet pack. His shoulder pad has been bulked up to make it look a bit heavier armoured along with the front part of the suits body.His shield is made from a standard shield generator with four pulse rifles coming off it. The aim of the pulse rifles is too support a clear plastic 'force field' insert. But I don't want to add this till I have finished painting the model for obvious reasons.

Forge world rules: Shas O' R'alai

2010-07-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

Forge world have now released the rules for their Tau XV9 Character, rules are available Here. There are some interesting elements which Forgeworld have written into the rules. The most notable of these are the ammo options for the pulse sub-munitions rifle. The Ionic cluster shot providing a nice 5" rending shots for use against marines, the sabot round for light anti tank duty (up to armour 13), the EMP round for armour 14 (additional chances for glancing), while the standard round provides 2x3" templates that ignore cover (this is different to the usual Pulse sub-munitions round in imperial armour apoc 2.

The eclipse shield seems like a little bit of an oddity though. Counting as having a stealth field generator if you remain still that turn. However if you have joined a unit then the enemy could simply target the unit bypassing the shields bonus. The only way around this is to join a stealthsuit team. Or stay independent, which could prove disadvantageous if they manage to see you.

WIP: farsight conversion

2010-07-17T16:15:00.001-07:00

This is a quick photo of my current project. Commander farsight, hopefully have him finished at some point in the next few weeks.

Given that I like the background for this character, but hate the model, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to try my hand at kitbashing. Fingers crossed that it will turn out alright.

Spearhead Vs Bloodangels

2010-06-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

Game Rules: Spearhead, Get into the oppositions deployment area.

Points: 2000

Opposition: Blood Angels

Dante

Tycho (not death company)

Standard Chaplain

2 squads of sanguinary guard

1 tactical squad

Baal Predator

Vindicator

Shadowsword super heavy battle tank

Note: The tables in my local GW are limited to 4’ x 4’ in size as opposed to the 6ft tables recommended for spearhead, this meant that the blood angel player would be in combat with me a turn earlier then would normally be the case for spearhead. It also meant that the long range of my broadsides and hammerheads would be redundant.

The blood angel player won the roll for deployment and elected to deploy his entire army on the table with the exception of the baal predator which would be outflanking.

I kept my battlesuits in reserve with the intention of deepstriking behind the blood angels advance. Note, during deployment I forgot that the shadowswords strength D weapon would make the hammerheads disruption pods as useful as a sheet of wet tissue paper.

Deployment diagram

Turn 1:

Before the start of the turn I rolled for the damage to his shadowsword and rolled a 6 followed by a 3, losing a structure point my opponent made his primary weapon save for his volcano cannon though. The main blood angels force raced forwards forgoing their shooting and running instead. The shadowsword opened up with its volcano cannon taking out one of the hammerheads, as expected, the heavy bolters on the side taking out two pathfinders.

Two squads of firewarriors embarked the devilfish, and moved a few inches to the side. The broadsides opened up on the shadowsword failing to penetrate its armour. The remaining hammerhead shook the vindicator preventing it from shooting next turn and the remaining squad of firewarriors took out a solitary sanguinary guard from the squad on the right flank.

Turn 2:

The blood angels continued to move forward as fast as possible, Dantes squad took out all but one of the remaining pathfinders causing the survivor to flee towards the table edge as fast as possible for the tau. The shadowsword attempted to hit the second hammerhead but scattered off the board. the squad of sanguinary guard on the right flank blew the burst cannon off the devilfish in front of them

BA Turn 2

The XV9 battlesuits dropped in behind the shadowsword destroying it with their fusion blasters losing one of their escorting drones. the hammer head missed the vindicator. The battlesuits turned their railguns and plasma rifles on dante and his squad taking out three of the sanguinary guard despite their cover. The devilfish deposited their firewarrior cargo within 12" of the other sanguinary guard squad, combining their fire with the devilfish and crisis suits missile pods to take out the guard.

Tau Turn 2

Turn 3:

The Baal predator turned up on the left flank blasting away at th broadsides bringing down one of the shield drones. Dante and friends charged the broadsides wiping them out to a man (Tau?). Tycho separated out from the tactical squad bringing the nearest devilfish down with his meltagun. The vindicator shook the remaining hammerhead.

BA Turn 3

The battlesuit commander and escorts turned up firing up the vindicator, blowing the demolisher cannon off it and shaking it. the other crisis suits killed Tycho. The squad of firewarriors next to the remaining devilfish embarked and started making a bee line for the enemies deployment area while one of the other firewarriors and drones from the devilfish fired on the tactical marines killing 3 of them. The firewarriors at the back killed to of Dantes guard.

Turns four and five:

Over the next two turns Dante managed to kill the firewarriors in combat, though it took him two rounds He followed up by taking out the crisis suits on the right flank. The Shas'O and Suits finally took out the vindicator while the predator survived about 6 penetrating hits (curse my tendency to roll ones on the penetrating hits table). meanwhile my devilfish (tank=scoring unit) and firewarriors moved to become scoring units in the enemies deployment area. The remaining firewarriors and XV9 battlesuits whittled the tactical squad down to one man and killed the chaplain.

Conclusion: I think I performed quite well in this battle. Had I remembered the D weapon rules at the start of the battle then I would have deployed the hammerheads on the right flank and moved them around to fire at the shadowsword, or used the sky drop style spearhead.

Battle Fleet Gothic

2010-05-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

Been a bit quiet on here as of late, unfortunately work has been taking up the majority of my time so haven't been able to work on any modelling projects for the past month or so.

I am considering getting back into BFG again after a few years of not playing as a few friends have taken it up again. I have always considered BFG to be one of the better game systems that GW have come up with and enjoyed playing it a few years back.

My current fleet is a space marine one, consisting of 1 Battle barge, 3 Strike Cruisers and 4 Cobras. I am looking at expanding this with another battle barge, 3 more strike cruisers and a further 12 escorts. Probably get them all from forgeworld with the exception of the battlebarge.

Images are taken from this rather awesome site Sci-fi ship comparisons.

Blood angels

2010-04-20T23:58:00.001-07:00

Managed to get my first game against a blood angels player yesterday evening. Suffice to say that I got my rear handed to me on a plate. Even in a battle missions scenario that slightly favoured my Tau (Tau mission counter attack). The lack of marker lights on the board to start with hampered my firing and by the end turn 3 most of my units were dead or dying.

Although I did do a lot better then his previous opponent playing codex marines. The basic marine player killed about 6 blood angels before dieing, I managed about 20 and a land raider. So not all bad.

New XV9 Battlesuits Available

2010-04-19T12:49:00.001-07:00

Forge world have released new variants of the XV9 battle suit. One with Phased Ion guns, one with fusion cascade guns and another commander variant with what I would presume to be a pulse sub munitions rifle with a heavy duty shield generator.

These battle suits look awesome. Photos are used without permission from forge world, but I’m sure they won’t mind as I fully intend on buying 3 or 4 of these puppies.

The red sea

2010-04-13T15:48:00.001-07:00

Managed to get down to my local GW this evening for a quick game. I arrived relatively early so I could book a table and have a look at the games being played. Of the 8 players present, there were no fewer then 3 blood angels armies. All of them barely past basecoat stage of painting.
So I guess this means I'm going to be seeing a lot of red in my local metagame. The game I ended up watching was between an eldar and BA army. I felt sorry for the eldar player as the blood angels decimated his army. At the end of the game. The remains of the eldar army was being smacked around by Dante, the Sanguinator, Lemartes with a full death company and a baal predator in their lines. The tactical squad and veteran assault squad seemed to be getting quite bored with having nothing to do.
With two seer councils, eldrad, two squads of dire avengers, wraithlord, pathfinders, banshees and a fire prism. This didn't seem like a pushover eldar list either.
From what I have seen, it seems the Blood Angels are the army to have at the moment. As a tau player I don't think we have many options to counter the blood angels. Outflanking Baal predators means side shots, maybe rear, into your hammerheads. Kroot walls would be largely ineffective against marines that can accurately deepstrike then charge. Piranhas may have some joy at slowing down fast rhinos for a turn. But assault marines just laugh and jump over you. On the brighter side however, strength 5 basic weapons hurt mephisto more. On the whole, Blood angels are more survivable then regular marines (assuming feel no pain) can get to you quicker, and hit a hell of a lot harder. Have to try atnd get a game in against them, shouldn't be too hard to find a player.

Tale of Four Gamers: Apocalypse

2010-04-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

For the conclusion of our Tale of Four Gamers event, we decided that an apocalypse game would be in order. For this event my Tau would be allied with Chris' Imperial Guard force. While Ginges' Orks would be 'Allied' with Richs' chaos marines.

The Orks set-up as a huge mass as close to no mans land as possible. Some of the chaos forces set-up hidden behind the orks, the rest waited to outflank (although me and Chris didn't know this at the time).

Turn 1: The ork and chaos forces on the board surged forward as fast as possible. the Stompas' pyscho-dakka-blasta opened fire first. Half hour later, when Ginge eventually rolled a double, relatively few models were actually removed as casualties. The rest of the Ork and Chaos shots caused few casualties among the good guys, although a lucky shot by the chaos baneblade destroyed the disruptor beacon. With a rare outbreak of 5 and 6s my firewarrior and Pathfinder squads broke and headed (extremely swiftly) for the hills.

As the Evil forces ended their turn the Tau and Guard readied their guns, however at a sign from the stompa the orks launched a blind barrage before their advance, obscuring the majority of their army form the Tau and imperial retribution. Leaving wazdakka and his bikers exposed on the flank. The Tau remote drone network picked out targets for the seeker missiles. Unfortunately it was not enough. By the end of the Good guys shooting phase, wazdakka was left on one wound with two trukks and a soul grinder taken out.

Turn 2: Chaos forces outflanked behind the forces of good while with a loud waaghh the Orks crashed into the front. By the time turn was over the casualty rate among the Tau and Imperials was catastrophic. With Shas O'Kunas and his battle suits dead or fleeing, one hammerhead down, the remaining squad of pathfinders dead. The Imperial forces casualties were even higher. The mortars died all 3 hydras were killed. while the large stubborn squad was flamed by the stompa then wiped out by the burna boyz. Not much remained from the forces of good.

At this point me and Chris were thinking the result was pretty much a done deal. With precious little left to deal with the chaos marines running rampant through our lines and even less left to deal with the Stompa. The outlook was grim.

The Tau and Imperial forces took stock of their situation deciding that we lacked the firepower to take care of the chaos forces running through our lines we decided that all we could do was try to hold them up and try to secure the objectives in the opposition deployment zone. The Tau barracuda and XV9 battlesuits arrived from reserve. The Tau forces concentrated on the chosen marines. Leaving a few alive but pinned. The blue hammerhead damaged the drive on the stompa slowing it's advanced. The barracudas seeker missiles didn't cause much damage. But the barracuda took out a few of the looters hanging out near the back of the Ork lines. The rest of the fire from the Allied good guys was scattered causing light casualties.

Turn 3:

The rest of the Chaos reinforcements turned up, slaughtering what little remained of the imperial and Tau forces. In the assault phase the deamon prince charge the hammerhead with one squad of deamons assaulting the XV9 battlesuits and another squad charged into the broadside. The terminators destroyed the hellhammer.

The XV9s took out 7 of the assaulting deamons (3 from fearless), taking no casualties themselves. While the broadside crushed two of the deamons attacking him.

Another Hammerhead and squad of firewarriors arrived on the field. Firing on a squad of chaos marines near the XV9. The Firewarriors killed a grand total of 0 marines but the hammer head killed two. The Other hammerhead moved behind the stompa and fired on the remaining soul grinder, missing. The Baneblade immobilized the stompa.

Over the next couple of turns, the XV9 battlesuits finished off the deamons and flanked round the field, securing one of the objectives in the ork deployment zone. The railgun armed hammerhead was destroyed by the remaining soul grinder, while the Ion cannon armed hammerhead secured the other objective. The last devilfish was destroyed by the stompa, It's drones contesting one of the center objectives. The two surviving imperial guard veterans contested the other centre objective, with the chaos forces holding the remaining two. It fell to kill points to decide the winner. Giving the win to the ork and chaos forces. See Ginges Blog for full details of the scores.

The Board at the end of the game. Not much left!!

Shas O'Kunas coughed up a mouthful of blood, the stimulant injectors in his suit taking the edge off his pains but it was still agonising. He looked up at his attacker powerless to do anything. As the chaos marine raised his blade to finish his existence, it's shimmering energy field seeming to hunger for his blood. O'Kunas looked out of his shattered visor, determined to face his death head on. The chaos marines' head disintegrated before he could land his blow. The rest of his squad was perforated by fire from the XV9 battlesuits, forcing them to go to ground. He sent a coded message to the XV9 thanking them. But advising them to secure the objective and get out of there, the battle was lost. With that O'Kunas blanked out.

Tale of Four Gamers: Situational Update

2010-03-16T05:56:00.001-07:00

+++++ Incoming Transmission +++++

++Source [Planet-side]: Stealth Team – Silent Death++

++Destination [High Orbit]: A Whisper in the Void – Shas’O Kunas++

++Priority: Urgent/Operational++

[Unintelligible]... Deamon Prince appeared above Ork shanty. Witnessed talking to largest ... [Unintelligible]… appears a truce has been reached between the Ork and Chaos forces. Chaos and Ork reinforcements have been witnessed entering the camp. Composition unknown. Large vehicle construction … [unintelligible] … completion estimated 15 Rotaa. Large road being made in the rough direction of the Gue’la bastion, estimated completion time 10 Rotaa. Run’al discovered …[unintelligible]…

Pursued by Ork forces … [unintelligible]… compromised…

++[/Transmission Ends – Terminated at source]++

================================================

+++++ Incoming Transmission +++++

++Source [Vior’la]: Aun’el Vior’la Shi++

++Destination [Galactic sector 065:034//System 43B]: A Whisper in the Void – Shas’O Kunas++

++Carrier: Messenger Drone LR56-3BA-89++

++Reference: Reinforcements++

Greetings Shas’O Kunas,

I am pleased to hear the campaign is progressing well, although I grieve for the loss of your fallen warriors. I find solace in the teachings of Commander Brightsword, remember a life given in pursuit of the Tau’va is a life well spent and a worthy goal of any Tau.

I have been keeping abreast of your campaign. It worries me that the composition of the enemy forces is greater then we first estimated. To this end you are authorised to use any and all means to achieve our objectives. However it pleases me to inform you that I have been able to despatch a small contingent of elite forces to aid your efforts. They should be arriving shortly after you receive this message. In your absence the Fio have been developing a new, improved battle suit. I believe you will find it most effective. Its current classification is XV9.

Fight well and with Honour

++Transmission Ends++

=========================================================

+++++Incoming Transmission+++++

++Source [Planet-Side]: Imperial Bastion++

++Destination[Error##Unknown::Broad Beamwidth Transmission] Intercepted++

++Priority: Error#041 Code not recognised/unavailable++

Add++ Translational subroutine [Alpha01-B// Imperial Gothic Low]

This is Major Koenig transmitting on an open channel to all blue arsed xenos that may be listening. I have received your information regards the alliance of the filthy orks and chaos scum that is polluting this planet, our scouts have confirmed your findings. Even though it pains me to have to say this, you are right that their combined strength will overrun our defences. Although I’d rather wrestle an angry grox then fight with you skinny [Untranslatable], the defence of the civilian population of this planet forces me to accept your offer.

Koenig out.

Thought for the day: Innocence proves nothing

++Transmission Ends++

Battle report: Tau vs Death Guard (Reloaded)

2010-02-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

I managed to get a quick 1500 point game in against my friends plague marine army last night. Last time I played against this army with my tau I lost loads of models and the game, while barely making a dent in his forces. This time I made a few modifications to my list. One of my main mistakes in the last game was to try and play like a space marine army. With my previous army for the last few years being Black Templars I was trying to play the Tau like I played them.
It wasn't pretty.
This time, with a few more games under my belt, I was hoping the result would turn out differently.

My List:
Crisis Shas'El with Missile pod, plasma gun, Multitracker, Hard wired drone controller and 2 shield drones bonding knife.
2 x Crisis Suits with missile pod, plasma gun and multitracker
3 x Crisis Suits with Missile pod, plasma gun and multitracker, leader with bonding knife HWDC and 2 gun drones
Pathfinders x 4, Devilfish with flechettes and disruption pod
Pathfinders x 5, Devilfish with flechettes and disruption pod

Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, disruption pod, flechettes, multitracker
Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, disruption pod, flechettes, multitracker

Broadside Vre, Plasma guns, HW targetting array, HW MT, DC and 2 shield drones, bonding knife

7 Firewarriors, Shas'ui with bonding knife
7 Firewarriors, Shas'ui with bonding knife
7 Firewarriors

Plague Marines

5 plague marines, 2x plasma gun, champion with power weapon, rhino transport
10 plague marines, 2x Flamer, Champion with power weapon and combi flamer, Rhino transport
10 plague marines, 2x Meltagun, Champion with power fist, Rhino transport

6 Terminator Champions heavy flamer nurgle icon
1 Terminator lord

3 obliterators

Mission: Capture and Control, His objective is in the building to the left of his rhinos. Mine is opposite with a squad of firewarriors sitting on it
Deployment: Pitched Battle, Plague marines win first turn, I fail to seize the initiative.

Plague Marines 1
The Plague marines deployed as above. The rhinos were laden from left to right as follows: Plasma, flamer, melta. This was a short turn for the plague marine player as his rhinos charged forward 12" and popped smoke.

Tau 1
I started by trying to get a chance glancing hit with the objective holding firewarriors, I manage two but both are turned aside by the smoke. The Pathfinders open up on the rhinos, the first squad try to mark the melta gun one only to miss 5 of 5 marker light shots. The other squad manage to get 4 hits though. The Battlesuits with my commander manage to destroy the rhino killing a single plague marine in the process. The rest of the army try to take out the flamer units rhino but they are either turned aside by the smoke or ignored because of possession (grrrr).

Plague Marines 2
The obliterators turned up and destroyed one of the devilfish. The firewarriors escaped unscathed though. The other two rhinos moved up and killed one of my firewarriors holding the objective, however one of the plasmagunners killed themselves (two down 23 to go)

Tau 2

The firewarriors on the objective fired on the rhino again with no effect. The pathfinders put a total of 7 markerlights on the obliterators. The firewarriors from the destroyed devilfish, shuffled around to get a shot off at the obliterators.

Although it took most of my army to kill the obliterators they eventually fell over. The Rest of my army managed to immobilize one rhino. It was essential that these were killed as I was planning on sweeping my devilfish diagonally across the field to grab their objective.

Plague Marines 3

The plasma gun squad dismounted from their rhino and shot at the firewarriors on the objective, leaving one alive. The Flamer squad dismounted their immobile rhino and managed to shot one of the nearer pathfinder squads who promptly ran off the table. The meltagun totting plague marines killed 2 of the firewarriors by the destroyed devilfish.

Tau 3

The Tau redirected their fir at the meltagun totting plague marines leaving 2 alive. The sole survivor from the fire warrior squad on the objective forgot to fire his gun this turn. Obviously daunted by the approach of the plague marines out of the setting sun.
The drones from the downed devilfish moved up to the two surviving plague marines to prevent them closing too quickly.

Plague Marines 4

The flamer bearing plague marine squad advanced on the other pathfinder squad in the crater, felling all four of them. The plague marines from the other squad killed the two drones in front of them. The still mobile rhino moved up towards my castle.

Tau 4
The Tau divided their fire between the two plague marine squads, wiping out the last to marines from the meltagun squad and knocking the flamer squad down to 6.

Plague Marines 5
The terminators finally arrived, deep striking within 6" of the flamer bearing plague marines. They opened up with their combi bolters at the crisis suits moving towards the plague marine objective. Their heavy armour protected them from the light shells though. The flamer squad fired on the firewarriors near the wrecked devilfish killing 3 of them. The 2 remaining firewarriors legged it from the field.

Tau 5

The Massed firepower from the tau killed off 3 terminators and most of the plague marines from the flamer squad. The Firewarriors embarked on the devilfish continued their advance on the enemy objective. With nothing able to stop them.

We rolled the dice it came up a 6. So we would have carried on into the sixth turn.
However because my friend had to go and collect his wife we ended the game at this point calling it a draw.

Had the turns continued, the plague marines wouldn't have been able to reach my forces, and would have been subject to massed fire from the tau forces.

From the position that we were in at the end of turn 5. I think I would have continued to dominate the nurgle forces. He couldn't catch up with my forces, and couldn't match my maneuverability or firepower. If it wasn't for his uncanny ability to make 5/6 normal armour saves and 3/4 feel no pain saves. His forces would have been almost exhausted by the end of the game.
I was quite pleased with my performance in this game. I lost a combined total of 14 firewarriors, 9 pathfinders and a devilfish (plus drones) this was 6 kill points of 15. The plague marine player lost 3 of 8. So I am quite pleased with this performance especially when compared to my last game.

Winds Of War

2010-02-22T06:02:00.001-08:00

The Winds of War tournament went alright this weekend. With a few minor things that could have been improved on with regards the missions such as clarifications on how reserves worked and any special rules that were in play etc. For example the second mission only allowed one troops choice, then everything else in reserve. What wasn’t mentioned in the briefing was that everything else could come on from the second turn dawn of war style and that only one troops choice quite literally meant only one unit of troops. So that instead of 3 squads of guardsmen with missiles and 3 chimeras my firewarriors would have been facing 1 squad of guard. Aside from this though however I think a good time was had by all of us that went.

Game 1:

The Set-up for the first game was pitched battle set-up with a 12” square in the middle. Each player could set-up their forces to each side of the square without mixing their forces. Night fighting for first turn.

The First game that we played was against a pair of dark eldar players. From my memory they had 3 raiders with two units of warriors and wyches on them and 2 ravagers with so many pinning weapons they even brought a pile of their own pinning markers (which were some rather cool looking space marines with actual pins stuck in them).

They won the first turn and elected to go first. First turn was very brief for both armies, with them zipping across the field to surround our objective almost straight away. My fire warriors managed to roll a 3 for distance they could see. (I think given my average rolls for night fighting my tau are extremely short sighted). Ginges men mounted the Chimera and started heading towards the objective in the middle of the enemies deployment

Despite a strong start the dark eldar started to lose a lot of momentum as more reinforcements showed up. The most effective unit for us turned out to be the crisis suits with missile pods. Which took out 1 ravager and 2 raiders, not to mention numerous wyches. The other crisis suits took out the other ravager as they arrived but were then killed by the wyches.

All in all the game ended in a draw. With the dark eldar players having nothing left to claim our objective and our scoring units being a good two turns short of reaching theirs.

Unit of this match for me had to be the missile pod crisis suits. They were pretty much unstoppable and took a heavy toll on the dark eldar.

Game 2:

This was a very confusing mission set-up with facts left out of the briefing that could have been handy from the start. We played against a combined guard and space marine army. This game went pretty badly for us, with our reserves turning up piecemeal and everything seeming to go right for our opponents. We pretty much got our asses handed to us.

Game ended in a loss for us shockingly enough.

Game 3: Dawn of war. (or rather Yipee nothing for my firewarriors to shoot at in the first turn)

In this game we played a rather annoying sisters and guard team up. Who tried to claim that tanks could climb vertical faces to get to the second level of a four tier building. Also that I couldn’t shoot at him because I had to shoot through 2” of area terrain??? Anyway, this game took the longest by far. With lots of shooting at immolator spam causing no real damage. My battle suits once again proved their worth by taking out two immolators and a heavy weapons team, as well as some guard and sisters of battle.

Of special note has to go to the gun drone in one of the crisis squads, having charged a unit of sisters this gun drone decapitated two of them, flying saucers of doom indeed.

Game 4:

Another imperial guard and space marine pairing, this time wolves and a fast guard player with some very nice rough riders.

Game was kill points and table quarters. Finally a game where I can deploy my entire army and no night fighting or objective grabbing to worry about. They had a total of 8 kill points to our 10

Game started badly with the wolves player managing to seize the initiative. They took full advantage of this. With the rough riders wiping out one of the penal squads and my burst cannon crisis team fleeing the field after the drone and one of the suits was killed. Meaning that we had lost a considerable portion of our firepower and were 2 kill points down, instead of having the chance to thin out their numbers before they got close. This was going to be tough. The return fire was enough to send the rough riders packing and put a single wound on the attack bike. Not enough really. The space wolves second turn saw the destruction of our chimera by the attack bike charge forcing the embarked storm troopers to get out. The storm troopers returned fire on the bikes and thanks to some excellent rolling by ginge only two of their number remained alive. The third turn saw them charge and destroy one of my firewarrior squads. Only to be killed in return by my other squad (who put 9 wounds on them). The crisis suits finally took out one of the chimeras, and spent two turns thinning out the squad that hunkered down in the crater. The unit of the match though had to be the penal legion squad though that took out the grey hunter squad then went on to get the long fangs in an epic fight.

The game ended in an extremely well fought draw. With our opponents agreeing that it was probably the closest fought game throughout the tournament.

All told it was a fantastic day with a lot of extremely close games and some great opponents to play against. I’m quite happy with our overall position of 12 out of 24. Being as our lists were fluff based.

If I had to change my army list I would have done the following: Dropped the crisis suits with twin linked flamers and burst cannons and replaced them with another team with missile pods and black sun filters dropping some of the firewarriors to pay for it. The missile pod armed crisis suits were awesome and worth every taking a heavy toll on most opponents while surviving quite a bit in return. The Suits with the burst cannons on the other hand didn’t perform as well as expected. Their short range proving to be their undoing, with only getting a couple of shoots off during the course of the tournament.

Anyway, hopefully be doing escalation next.

Thanks to BFG for hosting the event I had a great time, also congratulations to my team mate for winning one of the best army awards for his aliens based army.

Tau: Barracuda

2010-02-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Admittedly I am going to be late with my tale of four gamers this month. So i have been working on my barracuda instead as this is going to be more interesting then painting pathfinders.
I am intending to paint the top of it in the same colours as my second hammerhead with the bottom of it painted in sky colours.

Winds of War

2010-02-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

On the 20th of this month, me and a few friends are heading to Bracknell to participate in their Winds of War competition. This is made up of two allied 500 point armies based on gamesworkshops rule-set for combat patrols (no 2+ saves, no more then 2 wound models, no combined armour value greater then 33 Front +side +rear etc)

Because of these limits I expect to see lots of horde and light vehicle armies. So my list will consist of the following:

8 x Firewarriors, Shas'la with bonding Knife ..............95
9 x Firewarriors, Shas'la with bonding knife ...............105
3 x Crisis Suits, Twin-linked missile pod & flamer, Leader with HWDrone controller 1 gun drone and bonding knife............................................161
3 x Crisis Suits, Twin-linked flamer & Burst cannon, Leader with HWDrone controller 1 gun drone and bonding knife............................................137

total 498pts 4 kill points.

Any thoughts?

ToFG Month 3: Another Failure

2010-02-08T08:04:00.001-08:00

Unfortunately for this months ToFG requirement I have been unable to meet my requirements again. However despite not meeting my target I am still more then pleased with the progress I am making with my Tau. Never before would I have been able to paint an army up in such a short time span. Going from nothing painted at the start of November to a nearly fully painted 1500 point army in 3 months is nothing short of a miracle when compared to my usual painting ‘speed’.

Tale of Four Gamers: Tournament army list

2010-02-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

For the third month of the tale of four gamers, there was a mini tournament between the competitors; Ginge, Soundwave & Noveltyboy. Full details of the tournament rules can be found here.

For this list I would be using the models that I have painted over the last three months. So my list for the tournament was as follows:

Shas'el: Plasma Rifle, Missile pod, multitracker, hardwired multi tracker with 2 shield drones, bonding knife 122pts

Crisis Team 1: 2xShas'ui with plasma rifle and TL missile pod

Crisis Team 2: 2xShas'ui, 1xShas'vre, 2flamers and TL missile pod on the ui, AFP, missile pod, HW drone controller with 2 gun drones, bonding knife and multitracker on the vre.

Firewarriors x 7 shas'ui with bonding knife (x2)
Firewarriors x 7

Pathfinders x 5 railrifle x1 (x2)
Devilfish, disruption pods, flechettes (x2)

Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, multitracker, flechettes, disruption pods (x2)
Broadside shas'ver, plasma rifles, HW targetting array, HW multitracker, Drone controller 2 x shield drones bonding knife.

This was the list i took to the tournament. Think i might have to mix it up a little for the apocalypse game.
Any thoughts?

Tale of four gamers: Hammerhead number 2

2010-01-26T05:10:00.000-08:00

Photo of my second hammerhead for tofg. I think it looks pretty good.

Battle report: Deathguard

2010-01-25T09:47:00.001-08:00

El’Savon watched as his forces deployed around the ruined building, O’Kunas had advised of a small Chaos detachment heading this way and had ordered El’savon to intercept and destroy them. The Starships scans had detected a Landraider leading the Chaos forces, with this behemoth of a Gue’la vehicle on the way El’Savon positioned the Hammerheads and XV88 under his command in a position to get a shot of it before it had chance to disgorge its passengers amongst his forces. The pathfinders attached to his Cadre also took up positions in the building to mark targets for destruction. With His forces prepared. El’Savon awaited the enemy.

Mission: Objectives. (5 objectives nominated as the building on the board one in each quarter and one in the middle)

Deployment: Spearhead.

The photograph shows how the forces were set-up. With the broadside plus shield drones in the building along with a squad of firewarriors and two squads of pathfinders. The hammerheads were deployed to the side of the building. With the battlesuits hidden behind them. The other two squads of firewarriors were deployed with the devilfish with the intention of boarding them to claim objectives.

Turn 1:

Tau: I probably should have elected to take the second turn in this mission. However I was hoping that by taking the first turn I could disable the landraider and force the plague marines to come at me on foot. So I could cut them down with plasma guns on my crisis suits. However, no plan survives contact with the enemy, or in this case my rolling.

I embarked the firewarriors onto the devilfish and started to move them up to the unoccupied table quarter building to claim this objective. The Hammerheads moved apart to allow my suits to target whatever fell out of the landraider. With That I opened up with my shooting. The 2 pathfinder squads got 3 markerlight hits on the landraider. The Broadside hit, Penetrated then rolled a 1. Due to being possessed, this was ignored. One hammerhead missed, the other hit but didn’t do anything. With the landraider still intact, the crisis suits rained missiles on the plaguemarines hiding in the far building, causing no casualties (Damn Feel no pain).

So with no casualties caused I ended my turn.

Plague Marines: The Landraider and Rhino moved forward, Rhino popped its smoke launchers. Short turn.

Turn 2:

Tau: The Hammerheads Space themselves apart to provide 2 targets for the Plague marines. The Crisis suits separate, one going for the rhino. The other hoping that I could crack the landraider and target the enclosed terminators. The Devilfish moved in front of the other building. The Pathfinders targeted the landraider again, getting a total of 2 hits (out of 8). The broadside hit and did nothing, hammerhead 1, hit, penetrated and rolled a 1. The second hammerhead missed. The crisis suits fired on the rhino with twinlinked missiles. Scoring 2 penetrating hits, which stunned it.

Plague marines: The 3 obliterators turned up and slagged my first hammerhead. The Landraider moved up for the terminators to assault next turn. The plague marine squad in the rhino stepped out into the central objective.

Turn 3:

Tau: The Fireknife suits and the Shas’el moved into position to rapid fire at the Obliterators, killing 1 and causing a wound on another. The Firewarriors in the building opened up on them as well, but all armour saves were passed. The surviving crisis suits opened fire on the rhino scoring 3 penetrating hits. Immobilising it, blowing the bolter off it and shaking it

Plague Marines: Typhus and terminator friends stepped out of the Landraider.. Typhus separated from the terminators in the movement phase to charge my fireknifes. Killing them and my commander but taking a wound. Terminators heavy flamed my firewarrior squad in the building them finished off the rest in combat. Lost one of their number in the fight though. (Thankgod for the bonding knife :oP, must have pierced one of their armour as they stomped them into the ground).

Turn 4:

Tau: The pathfinders fired their pulse carbines at the terminators doing nothing. The rail rifles fired at the Rhino doing nothing. The broadside targeted Typhus hitting with his railgun and two plasma gun shots, rolled a 1 for wounding with the railgun, and double 2 for plasma guns (this is why I never collected a shooting army previously). The firewarriors disembarked to run into the building, they made it 1 inch before getting hopelessly confused. The burst cannons and drones on the fish opened fire on the plague marines. Doing nothing (I’m sensing a theme here) The missile pods from the crisis suits finished off the rhino.

Plague Marines: Typhus charged the broadside killing it. The terminators flamed the lower of the 2 pathfinder squads leaving 1 alive, which they subsequently forgot to charge. The landraider stunned my remaining hammerhead. The plaguemarines in the central objective moved forward and fired their melta guns unsuccessfully at the devilfish. The obliterators fired lascannons at the devilfish but didn’t have any effect.

Turn 5:

Tau: Knowing that I had to contest his two objectives, I moved my devilfish up to them to and detached the drones. I didn’t expect them to survive but if there was a 6^th turn I could get the fish close enough to contest. The remaining pathfinders scooted up the building hoping to draw typhus up there, the only real target of opportunity for the hammerhead was the landraider, which it blew one of the twinlinked lascannons off., and the lone pathfinder managed to kill one of the terminators that forgot to charge last turn. The other firewarriors disembarked from their devilfish and rapid fired at the nurgle marines on the central objective, along with the other remaining firewarrior squad killed two plague marines. The remaining crisis suits rained missiles on the obliterators, who made all their saves.

Plague Marines: The Terminators had their vengeance on the remaining pathfinder. Typhus attempted his psychic power against the other pathfinder squad, only to get injured by a daemon. So he charged the squad only to get injured by his deamon weapon., in return the pathfinders scored two wounds I watched as my opponent rolled the dice knowing that a single 1 would kill typhus, much to my dismay, he passed both of them though. They passed their morale check, but didn’t have a bright future. The plague marines on the central objective tried to shoot at the devilfish again doing nothing. The obliterators Fired plasma cannons at the disembarked fire warriors killing 3 of them. His two Squads on the objectives finished off the drones with no problems.

Game ended,

Chaos 2 objectives

Tau 1 Objective.

Although to make it clearer how much I got killed. A quick compare of casualties

Tau; Hammerhead, Broadside +2 shield drones, 2 x Fireknife, Commander + 2 shield drones, 2 squads of pathfinders (5 man), 1 squad of fire warriors (7 man), 3 firewarriors from another squad, drones from both devilfish.

Chaos; 1 obliterator, 1 rhino, 2 terminators, 2 plague marines. (wow!)

I think my primary mistake in this game was my set-up, again, I should have deployed the hammerheads In front of where the devilfish where. This would have meant he would have to hide his rhino behind the landraider, meaning he would be further away from the central objective. He would have also have had to come further before being in combat. The Broadside should have been along the back edge of the building. The Firewarriors should have been outside the building to the back. Meaning they could move forward at the end of the game to claim/contest.

Thoughts?

Battle Report.

2010-01-20T04:51:00.000-08:00

Tuesday night battle report.

Went to the local gamesworkshop this evening to try to get a little more practice in with my tau before the tournament at the end of this month. With my 1500 point army just about finalized. I arrived at the shop to find they have started a table booking system. Meaning I wouldn't be able to get a game till 8.

When I did finally get a game it was a 3000 point a side match up with two players a side. I ended up playing alongside a space marine army against a necron and chaos marine army. Here are the army lists from what I remember.
Chaos:
Daemon prince.
Dreadnought
10 man assault squad
5 terminators
Terminator lord
Tooled out chosen x 9
Two small chaos marine squads

Necrons:
Nightbringer
Necron lord
2 scarab swarms
3 heavy destroyers
At least 2 large squads of necrons (they were all piled together behind a building
Monolith

Marines (allied)
Landraider
Dreadnought
Ironclad
Sternguard
Terminators
Chapter master
Drop pod
Landspeeder typhoon
Razorback
2 squads of tactical marines.
(not even sure this list is legal)

Tau (me)
Shas'el
2 crisis suits PG + MP
3 Crisis suits F +TLMP
Drones for above.
3 squads of 7 firewarriors
2 squads of 5 pathfinders 1 rail rifle in each.
Devilfish x 2
Hammerhead x 2
1 broadside

Pitched battle game type anniliation.

Turn 1:
We won the roll for setup and opted to set up first. However they managed to steal thr initiative and get first turn.

C&N: The prince and chaos jumpackers shot forward. The mainstay of the necron army remained hidden behind the building. While the heavy destroyers started taking potshots at my devil fish.
The only shooting from the chaos marines killed one sternguard while the necrons blew the burst cannon off one of my devilfish. (I think its important to note here that i didnt make a single one of my 6 disruption pod saves in this game).

T&M: Massed fire from the marines and tau killed of the assualt marines. While the broadside and hammerhead failed to damage monolith the other hammerhead missed a heavy destroyer. Missile pods from one of the crisis teams manages to shake the dreadnought. While the only disembarked firewarior squad shot up 3 chaos marines from one of the smaller squads.

Turn2:
C&N:
The daemon prince moved in position to charge my deathrains and a tactical squad the ctan shot at and stunned a dreadnought. The heavy destroyers continued to shoot at my two devilfish with no effect. Other then that there was no shooting on the chaos or necron part.
The prince charged my deathrains which I foolishly forgot to pull back last turn, along with the marine tactical squad. Slaughtering 5 marines causing my suits to flee off the table. Not before they caused 2 wounds back though, got to love strength 5.

T&M:
The space marines and tau arranged themselves to take full advantage of the chaos marines they could see. The terminator squad prepared to join the fray against the Deamon prince. Shooting.g wise the chapter masters orbital bombardment destroyed the monolith. (being as the heaviest ground based guns failed miserably last turn). The only real shooting was the two hammerhead failing to hit the heavy destroyers the broadside failing to hit the destroyers. The firewarriors failing to wound the destroyers, the missile pods on the other crisis squad doing the same. (although this want helped b the necron player saying they were T6 when I think the are 5, unintentional though I think) and the landspeeder typhoon took out the chaos dreadnought.
In the assault phase the terminators finished of the prince losing one of their number.

Turn 3:
C&N: The chaos chosen and terminators managed to turn up this turn. The chosen outflanked behind one of my firewarriors squads. The terminators deep striked near one of my devilfish. The heavy destroyers fired at my fish again taking the burst cannon of one and shaking the other. The newly arrived terminators unleashed hell from their combi bolters including melta gun at my pathfinders. Killing a total of one. :-P.
The chosen decimated the firewarriors shockingly enough. And consolidated towards my crisis suits.

T&M:
The marine army started to swing round to face the newly arrived chaos forces. While the crisis suits moved forward to rapid fire on the terminators. Feeling sneaky. I rotated the fish and tankshocked the chosen. To my delighted they broke. At this point I forgot about the trapped rule meaning that the chosen would have been destroyed. However as it was they spent the rest of the game running. The pathfinders opened fire marking the terminators for the plasma guns of the crisis suits which killed 3 of them. The commanders missile pod killing off another. After the space marines killed the final terminator and took a wound of the lord. The broadside opened fire killing the lord outright. The hammerhead fired submunitions at the Necrons that were visible. Knocking 5 off their feet (3 didn't get back up again) the other railhead missed the heavy destroyers again.

Turn4:
C&N: The necron player finally decided to start getting his hands dirty with the ctan destroying a razorback then the embarked squad in assault. The heavy destroyers finally cracked one of the fish. The resulting explosion. Wounding each of my 3 remaining suits.

Due to time constraints that was all we got to play. So despite an extra turn the C&M players could not pull anywhere near our kill points. Tau for the win.

Units of note.
Hammerheads for repeatedly missing.
Broadside for splatting the chaos lord
The devilfish that shocked the chosen.
The fireknifes for their kills.
The railrifles for their complete inability to hit anything.

Any thoughts?

Tale of four gamers: Hammerhead WIP

2010-01-18T14:02:00.001-08:00

Picture of my Hammerhead in its current state. haven't had time to finish the camo tonight. Rented house inspection meant a lot of the night has been spent tidying. Ugh.

Tale of four gamers:Hammerhead No2

2010-01-18T09:52:00.001-08:00

So far this month progress on ToFG has been relatively slow. The pathfinders are largely assembled and are basecoated. The hammerhead is assembled with rotating turret and has received the second base coat last night. Hopefully i'll be able to finish off the camo scheme tonight.
Photos soon

Titans!

2010-01-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

Decided to post something a little different to my tau today. So I thought I'd put up some pictures of my Warhound Titan for your viewing pleasure. There are a few chips and scratches in the painting that will need to be re-painted This will have to wait till some point after ToFG though.

The Titan is painted in Legio Ignatum colours, although due to my main army being Black Templars the Warhound is on active deployment with them. To mark this one of the shin guards is painted in Black Templars insignia

There are two individually switched LEDs on the top to act as shield counters. There is a further red one in the cockpit.

Angels and turrets

2010-01-11T15:37:00.001-08:00

As pretty much everyone who reads any blogs and/or subscribes to the Gamesworkshop newsletter knows by now, blood angels are on their way.

While the news of another marine chapter isn't remotely unexpected I would have hoped that it would be time for a Templar update. Admittedly there are far older codexes out there, it seems that the templars are reduced to a one trick pony.

From the email it seems that blood angels are set to be a deep striking army with a good smattering of furious charge. Basic assault marines as troop choices. Which would be handy for objective grabbing. I would also imagine some ability to charge on a deep strike ala vanguard veterans.

With all the latest releases for marines (chaos included) I'm hoping that they haven't exhausted their creativity for combat marine armies by the time they reach templars.

For my tofg this month I have so far been working on my hammerhead. I have been working on a way of making the turret able to rotate, detach and accept different weapons. This will see full use in my next vehicle the skyray-ion-rail-head.

ToFG: Month two (and a half :-P)

2010-01-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

So for my ToFG for december I did 1 broadside, 2 devilfish, 10 firewarriors and 3 Crisis suits. For other participants entry's check out the following links: Ginge - Orks Chris - Imperial Guard and Rich - Chaos Marines

Tau Broadside, From Forgeworld with plasma rifles

Tau Crisis Team 2

Tau Crisis Team 1

Tau Devilfish

Tau month 2 family photo

Game set-up

2010-01-08T04:32:00.000-08:00

Sent from my HTC

ToFG: Late, and late again!

2010-01-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

Well despite the two snow days, my tau army is still not going to have the last things added for the the December painting by the late date. By the end of this evening I expect to have the gun drones for the devilfish yet to do. As well as guns for the crisis suits and the basing to do. It has been an epic attempt over the past few days though to try and get it completed.

I think the mistake I have made is trying to do one devilfsh the same as my suits. I'll post pictures later and you'll get the idea. It has taken about 6 times as long to complete the main body of the devilfish this way. (the main colours on the first DF took my approx 45mins. By the time I had finished highlighting the second one it had taken nearly 6 hours!!)

On the plus side, the broadside looks amazing as do the crisis suits and firewarriors. I'll post pictures soon.

Tale of Four Gamers: Games!

2010-01-04T06:30:00.001-08:00

As month 2 of ToFG included a bonus point for getting a game in at 1000 points, I decided it was time to introduce myself at the local GW for a Tuesday night session.

I used the same 1000Pts list for both games.

Shas’el: Plasma gun, TL missile pod, HW multitracker, HW Drone controller 2 shield drones, bonding knife

Crisis suits x 2, TL Missile pod and plasma gun

Crisis suits x 3, TL Missile pod and flamer, Team leader with HW DC 2 gun drones, Bonded.

8 x firewarriors, leader bonding knife

Devilfish, disruption pods flechettes

8 x firewarriors, leader bonding knife

Devilfish, disruption pods flechettes

Hammerhead, rail gun, burst cannons, multi-tracker, disruption pods, flechette discharges.

First Game:

The first game I played, (ever with my tau) was against a space wolves player.

From what I remember of his list:

3 x greyhunter squads (2 in rhinos 1 in drop pod)

Rune priest. (In with grey hunters)

Landspeeder tornado (MM + HF)

Wolf riders.

We played on a 4’x4’ table dominated by a fortress of redemption. (this would severely hamper my ability to add long distance support to my units) Dawn of war set-up he gets first turn. Capture and control.

My first mistake was keeping everything except my commander in reserve, I should have deployed nothing on the table to start with and brought it all on first turn. However as it was my army came on piecemeal and was taken apart in the same manner. I did do numerous things wrong in this game though. For instance, after the hammerhead blew up the first rhino, I should have retreated my battlesuits to the top of the building, admittedly a difficult terrain test, but would have prevented them getting charged and killed by the rune priest and friends.

If I had brought everything on in the first turn. Then I could have dealt with the squad that drop podded onto my objective straight away. Leaving me free to chase the rest of his army.

But hey ho, live and learn. Highlight for me had to be the flechette dischargers on the hammerhead wounding two of the wolf riders, then killing one on its death. Fun, although my opponent might disagree. Also the dinner plates of doom from the fish managed to successfully block the wolf riders advance for two turns. Died in the process. But still fun.

Game result: Space wolves 1 objective, 1 contested.

Second Game:

The second game I played was against an ork player.

From what I remember:

2 deff dreads.

2 Buggies (TL Missile)

Looted wagon, with Gazkull and nobs (7 total I think)

Small squad of grots

Shoota boy squad (15 IIRC)

Slugga boys (9+nob IIRC)

Table quarters deployment. Multi objective, I got first turn through seizing the initiative.

To start with we deployed at the same time (due to time constraints) which took away my primary advantage. So I attempted to seize the initiative with success. From 5 turns of raining TL missile pods into dreads, I successfully blew one of the arms off, and stunned it. (fantastic rolling eh!) The big fortress blocked most of my shooting and the hammer head scattering by an average of 6 inches a turn. Coupled with appalling rolls for armour penetration meant the ork lines reached mine without many casualties. (1 buggy, couple of grots, 9 boys killed with 5 turns of shooting). Crap eh?

Game ended in a draw though. I managed to keep enough models between my FW and gazkull to stop him reaching my objective. And we both contested a third objective.

Have to keep practicing.

December Painting

2010-01-03T15:26:00.001-08:00

Due to lots of distractions over then past few weeks, I have been unable to meet the deadline for this months tofg. I am attempting to achieve the late deadline however have 3 models and only 4 nights left. Main problem with this is that the 3 models in question are a battlesuit and 2 devilfish. I think I am unlikely to meet even the late deadline. But I will try my best.
Januarys painting hopefully won't be as much as a problem. With only 10 pathfinders and a hammerhead to paint.
(probably be late for that as well)

A bit of background

2009-12-17T14:51:00.000-08:00

As two of the other participants in ToFG are writing a bit of background for their armies. I thought it fitting that I do the same for my tau army, not to mention that it's entirely fluffy. So here is my attempt at creative writing.

O'Kunas watched carefully as the scenes of battle replayed on the viewer. As much as he told himself it was to gain tactical insight into his enemies, there was a slight sense of satisfaction in seeing the barbaric Orks and vermin Gue'la butchering each other in the ancient ruins of the previous human settlers of this planet. He wondered briefly what brought the humans back here after so long. Whatever it was they wouldn't succeed.
   There was a tense moment on the Tau stealth-ship when the Imperial Valkyrie had nearly crashed into the stealth shielded reconnaissance drone. However the humans remained ignorant of the Tau's presence.
   "Shas'O?" Enquired a respectful voice from the back of the command deck, "It seems the Gue'la and Orks are determined to kill each other. How do you wish to proceed?"
   "Their conflict will serve to sow confusion amongst the Gue'la forces, it will shadow our movements, allow us to strike hard and fast where they least expect it. Commander Shadowsun has ordered us to secure this planet within the next three months. We will succeed."
   O'Kunas turned to face his second "So El'Savon what news from the pathfinders teams to the south?"
   "They have engaged and destroyed a small Gue'la outpost, opening a small hole in the humans defensive grid. The Fio estimate that it will be several weeks before the Gue'la have the time and resources to rebuild."
   O'Kunas considered this for a few seconds. "That is our opportunity then, we will land a spearhead, take out whatever resistance remains. Our forces will then engage in hit and run attacks against both the Gue'la and Ork forces."
   "Would it not be more productive to allow our foes to destroy each other?"
   "I have considered this possibility, By my estimates both sides are fairly evenly matched, If we allow this conflict to continue we risk not being in the strongest position when their reinforcements arrive."
   "Very well Shas'O." Replied El'Savon, He hesitated before asking his next question. "What of the marines? the ones that don't follow the humans corpse god?".
   O'Kunas paused, the so called chaos marines presence was worrying. They were an unknown variable, their attacks seemed to lack any sort of military cohesion, appearing at random across the planet. How they had gotten onto the planet also remained a mystery. Their own ship was equipped with an advanced Cloaking Field and sensor technology which kept them hidden from the ork junker floating near the edge of the system and the Gue'la orbitals. However no sign of any chaos starship had been detected.
   "They are of no concern for the moment, we pursue our goals first. We force the humans to quit the planet, engaging and destroying the Orks as we encounter them. Once we have Established a strong military presence we deal with the chaos marines when their agenda becomes clear. El'Savon, you will lead the spearhead."
   "As you wish Shas'O, For the Tau'va"
   "For the Tau'va"

ToFG: No games and painting update

2009-12-14T00:57:00.000-08:00

Well as you probably expected due to the lack of a battle report this weekend no gaming took place.
Have to head to the local GW see if I can get a game in there at some point.

Painting thus far this month hasn't really been going too well thus far. With the only day I have realy had off work been spent Christmas shopping. However in the little spare time I have had available. I have managed to assemble two devilfish, 12 firewarriors, 3 crisis suits and cleaned most of the mould marks off of the weapons and firewarriors. The Crisis suits have also had magnets glued into drilled recesses at certain points. All of these have also been undercoated and base coated. Hopefully when I start my holiday I'll be able to start painting proper.

Death Guard saturday

2009-12-10T15:46:00.001-08:00

I have been having a look at the models I have available for this weekends game against death guard. After looking through the dex I think my best net against the plague marines are fireknife configured crisis suits. followed by an ion cannon armed hammerhead gunship.
so my list will consist of the following:
-ShasO plasma rifle, missile pod, multi traker, bonding knife, stimulant injector 127
-2xShas'ui plasma rifle, missile pod, drone controllers, 1 shield drones, 2 gun drones 154
-Shas'el cyclic ion blaster,missile pod,bonding knife, 2 gun drones 102
-2xShas'ui missile pod TL, fusion blaster, 110
-8 firewarriors teamleader, in fish with pods and multi tracker 185 (x2)
-Ion head,dis pods, multi tracker, burst cannons 130
total 993

I'm expecting the fireknifes to get one round of shooting in before they attract attention. The army is quite manoueverable and should cover 12" a turn quite easily. hopefully allowing me to deal wiith o.e elememt of the opposition at a time.

well thats the plan anyway. :-P

First ToFG game

2009-12-10T06:10:00.001-08:00

This weekend should see my tau facing their first match. 1000 point game against my mates death guard.

I think to be fair to myself I am going to struggle in this game. With it taking on average 24 pulse rifle shots to kill a single plague marine. I am going to have to put my faith in fireknife crisis suits to get the job done. I think I may also have to get some path finders together to help with the to hit rolls.

Should be fun anyway.

ToFG: End of Month One

2009-11-30T15:34:00.000-08:00

Well it has been a long old slog this month for ToFG, and I regret to say that at the end of the day.... I still couldn't find any sand to base the crisis suits with. So I'll leave whether my inability to but sand in the only weekend I've had off this month go against me.

Anyway, without further ado onto the photos:

Well now I let the judges decide my worth. Have at it guys

Firewarriors

2009-11-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

Right then people, time for some more ToFG photos. This time as you can tell by the post heading, I will be showing some photos of my firewarriors.

Comment and constructive criticism more then welcome. Work on the battlesuits and drones continue. Hopefully be able to bring pictures of them on monday.

Magnetic Attraction..?

2009-11-26T03:57:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, for my ToFG army I'm constructing a Tau army. My original intention is to have magnets to hold weapons in place, due to the nauture of tau battlesuits and, when constructed, my ever evolving game-plan. I thought it would be nice to be able to switch the weapons.

Over the past few evenings I have constructed three battle suits each with 6 little magnets at strategic locations. This has proved a royale pain in the arse to do, the magnets are fidely and have a tendency to not stick to plastic with super glue. But an amazing ability to stick to me. Whats really annoying though is when you finally get one in place and then realise the polarity is wrong. Which has happened numerous times.

Oh well, least its done now, just got to paint the things (and four drones) in 5 days. Working 3 off them. 12 hour shifts. I'll guess a roughly 40% chance of it happening

ToFG month 2 painting list

2009-11-23T03:06:00.001-08:00

For next month. I shall be painting.

2xdevilfish approx 200points
10xfirewarriors approx 120 points
3xcrisis suits approx 150 points
1xbroadside approx 90 points

List in on time was the easy bit. :-)

Apocalypse

2009-11-22T12:11:00.000-08:00

Last saturday I had a 5000 point apocalypse game against Ginge. Black Templars and titans vs Imperial guard.

I had written my army list based around an anti tank force. Knowing Ginge owns quite a few baneblades and variants (about 6). I decided the heavy hitters have to come out:

My Army:

Reaver titan (bols variant rules)
Warhound titan

Helbretch
Terminator chaplain
2 x Landraider crusaders
2 x Rhinos
2 x Multimelta dreads in pods
Dreadnought
Terminator assault squad
Emperors champion
Terminator Squad with assault cannons/tankhunters

3 x 10 man crusader squads
predator annaliator.
damocles rhino
6 man crusader squad

Rules:

Troops can only claim objectives
Anything can contest
Troops have to be above 50% to claim
Can attempt to seize the initiative

Deployment:
After sorting out the deployment lines, the black templars won the roll for table edge and also bidded the lowest for deployment time.

We played on a 6'x6' table

After deploying most of my army, with the exception of the two drop podding dreads. Ginge announced that he would be playing a guard infantry horde list. Darn.

We used paint pots as objective markers. Lacking anything to use as an objective at this point

Ginge had 5 callidus assassins which he used to move my transports into difficult terrain. Knowing my luck with difficult terrain tests (I tend to roll a lot of ones when making them).

Ginges army was literally a forest of men.

Turn 1:

As expected the rearmost landraider immobilised itself on the first difficult terrain tests, effectively crippling its effectiveness for the rest of the game. The rest of the difficult terrain tests were made with no problems. The rest of my army advanced relatively slowly pouring fire into the guard defence lines (3+ cover save is annoying). the titans turbo lasers wiping a couple of squads from existence (I'm not sure about this but I think the turbo lasers remove the barricades but we forgot if that is the case).

The heavy firepower took a heavy toll on the guardsmen. it was like a drop in the ocean though

The guardsmens return fire wasn't as effective as ginge would like. The most effective shots immobilised 1 rhino and destroyed the second one. Of great amusement was the two primaris pyschers (spelling?) both rolling double 6 for their perils of the warp test, leading to them both promptly being shot by commissars. It's for their own good though :-P

Turn 2:

The templars steadily move forward hosing down waves of guardsmen

On my second turn my army moved forward hosing down swathes of guardsmen. The titans continued to pour fire into the massed ranks causing horrific casualties.

High note: Yarrick was cut down due to fearless wounds when his squad was massacred.

On the guard second turn numerous callidus assassins and psyker battle squads turn up. Ginges (admittedly brilliant) idea of using the PBS to reduce my leadership to 2 then hit me with the flamer template gun of the callidus (meaning 2s to kill). Combined with the callidus subsequent charge more or less wiped out one squad of templars and the terminators, the third smaller squad of templars luckily weren't effected by the PBS but were still charged by a callidus, the lone surviving marine and callidus spent the next three combat phases trading blows in an epic show of ineptitude on both parts. Yarrick stood up again and charged my 6 remaining marines from the other squad. Killing 3 of them.

Over the following turns the templars continued to waste guardsmen by the bucket load, while ginge was more surgically taking out anything I had left to claim objectives. The straken bomb was dropped off of the green valkyrie wiping out the remaining squad of black templars with the help of marbos demo charge. They were subsequently taken out by the reavers turbo laser.

On the final turn the heavy weapons squad near the dead valkyrie (green) claimed one objective, while the other valkyrie positioned itself to drop off the embarked convict squad in the event of another turn.

Looking at the remains of ginges' army; I valkyrie with penal troopers, 1 lascannon and a lone assassin. In comparison to my 2 dreads, drop pods, four terminators, (immobilised) landraider, predator annaliator, (immobilised) damocles rhino, and two titans. i was clearly in the stronger position.

Despite this ginge still lived to claim the objective.

All in all a good, and different, game. Congratulations to ginge for the win.

Shinier

2009-11-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

Look what forgeworld have just released. Would buy some however the burst cannons put me off. Burst cannons and twin linked heavy flamer would be nice though.

Ooohhh ...Shiney..

2009-11-12T09:09:00.000-08:00

Having recently received £20 of GW vouchers for my birthday from my lovely sister (thanks Caroline!) and with the other money I was given. I decided to take advantage of the Games-workshops on-line stores free delivery for this month.
To that effect I have ordered the following:
-1 Blister pack of pathfinders with rail rifles
-1 Devilfish transport
-1 squad of firewarriors
-1 Hammerhead

So can anyone guess what I'm going to be painting for the next month of tofg?

This leaves me with not an awful lot left to buy for my tau, the one danger I have is rumours of the new dex being around march time. Bet they release all the cool new models the month after we finish tofg. joy!

Decisions Decisions

2009-11-11T00:22:00.000-08:00

Look what I got for my birthday. An amzing present from my lovely girlfriend. I get the feeling that this is going to have an unfortunate impact on this months painting however. That is until my girlfriend gets addicted and I can't get access to my xbox.

At least I managed to basecoat 11 firewarriors at the weekend, so all is not lost yet.

Tau Hammerhead

2009-11-08T02:22:00.000-08:00

Well as promised here are some photos of my hammerhead gunship. This is nearly completed, a few minor details need to be added here and there but nothing major.

I decided to go for the 'speckled' camouflage effect as I prefer this method to the block/stripped effect.

After seeing the orange stripes on Adams (of warhammer tau) vehicles I though this would look striking next to the green camo. Certainly more so then the blue I originally tried.

The Railgun is held in place by a magnet to allow easy swapping of weapons. So if the Ion cannon is worth taking in the next codex I can.

Email blogging

2009-11-06T11:35:00.000-08:00

Apparantly I can update my blog via email. Seems pretty cool to me. So
of I'm on the move I can update my blog via email. Be useful for
battle reports.

TOFG; So far this month

2009-11-04T03:30:00.000-08:00

So far this month I must admit I haven't made any real progress on my painting. With a high priority project at work taking 13 hours of my day for the next 9 days at least. This trend looks set to continue.
I have however managed to basecoat my hammerhead, I'll try to get some photos up of it as work progresses, although it would probably work out better to do this with my devilfish.

So not looking good so far

Tale of Four gamers November painting list

2009-10-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

So my 500 points worth of Tau for the November stage of TOFG consists of the following:

Crisis Commander
Two bodyguards
10 Firewarriors
Hammerhead

I may, depending on time paint another 2 firewarriors to have a legal army and a couple of gun drones to additional firepower (read ablative wounds) for my suits.

I figure that with this selection in the first month I won't get bored of painting too many of one thing at any time. It will also force me to choose a colour scheme for the main components of my army; suits, vehicles and firewarriors.

My intention is to have variations of a theme for each different facet of the army, while keeping the same general colours on each, this will keep the army varied yet uniform. Also, it might help to test my painting skills.

See how it turns out eh?

2009-10-11T03:43:00.000-07:00

In a competitive move and for something completely different my friend has decided on a tale of four gamers style competition.

Being as I have had boxes of Tau Stuff sitting unassembled and unloved in my cupboard for the last 12 months. I thought it was time to give a different army a go. Plus it'll also prove to some of my critics that I can paint colours other then black (templars).

This will also be a slight tactical challenge for me now. Given the Tau philosophy of war (play style) instead of charging towards the enemy shouting die at the top of my lungs, interactive warhammer, I'll now have to outmanoeuvre and outgun my opponent.

Here are the rules for the competition (I take no credit for writing them out as they are a direct copy and paste form This Blog )

"Here is a basic rundown with dates where they are known. Please get your 500 point starter lists to me by the 31st October.

Month 1 - 500 points by the 30th November. 5 points for on time, 3 for late (7th Dec), 0 for unpainted.

Month 2 - 500 points by 31st December. 5 points for on time, 3 for late (7th Jan), 0 for unpainted. Bonus 3 points available for getting a test game against someone (not necessarily a ToFG competitor, anyone will do. Get a couple of pics if possible.)

Month 3 - 500 points by 31st January. 5 points for on time, 3 for late (7th Feb), 0 for unpainted. Also, will play a mini-league with each competitor playing each other competitor. League rankings will determine 5, 3, 2, and 1 points. This will take place late january (date TBC)... as such unpainted models from that months batch will be allowed (as it should take place before the deadline.) We will look to book the club for a Sunday to get the games in.

Month 4 - 500 points by 28th February. 5 points for on time, 3 points for late (7th Mar), 0 for unpainted. Bonus 2 points for modelling an objective marker. Further bonus 1 point for a further objective marker.

Month 5 - As much extra as you wish for Apoc. Legendary Units, Super Heavies, whatever you like. Deadline is the day of the apoc game, probably late March or early April (date TBC). There will be no points available for painting, but simply put if it isn't painted you can't use it. Any units dropped from earlier 500 point blocks can be put back in here. All forces will join our standing 2000 point armies. The sides will probably be Rich and I vs Chris and Ken (Chaos and Orks vs Guard and Tau makes most sense from a fluff point) but if anyone has any particular objections we can negotiate that later. Any difference in points will be covered by additional strategic assets for the poorer party. Scoring for this month will be 5 points for each person on the winning team. There will be an additional 5 points for the "Champion" of each team. This will be decided by completing a secret personal objective (so secret even their team mate isn't allowed to know!)

I believe these rules are as fair and clear as I can make them, but any questions either comment below or email/text me and we'll sort it out. I believe the armies will be the following, but feel free to correct me if you have a sudden change of heart.

Ginge - Orks
Chris - Imperial Guard
Me - Tau
Rich - Chaos Space Marines

Best of luck to all the competitors. And don't forget to have your first 500 point list to me by the 31st October."

Why So Serious

2009-08-19T14:52:00.001-07:00

So just watched the Dark knight again, brilliant film. One of the few chances I’ve had to relax lately. So much work to do. With two people in my department and the one with the most experience on holiday. I now have to do a set of tests that I’ve never done before on a unit I don’t know that well.

Oh well, at least I get to come home and do report writing, Joy!!

Paintball

2009-08-01T14:00:00.001-07:00

I spent today paintballing for my mates stag do. Was a fantastic day. Highlight of the day for me had to be winning the flag raising game within the first minute by sneaking up near the enemy base and raising the flag while they weren’t looking.

However things were a little onesided most of the time with our team being outnumbered near 2-1. we still won with 85-79 points despite the marshals giving copious bonus points to the opposition to keep things close.

Anyway got to go watch prison break now.

Compliance 3 Immunity

2009-07-28T05:51:00.001-07:00

As anyone who uses this software for EMC testing knows it can be a royal pain in the arse to get up and running. from the writing of equipment drivers to the flowcharts of the EUT sequencer. Kudos to the people who wrote the software initially for making it so powerful and flexible. However it’s very flexibility can make it hard to use as even the most simple tasks such as monitoring a multi-meter can seem hard at first. So If anyone out there is struggling to get certain aspects of this software up and running they should contact teseq ;-P.

However, knowing that it can sometimes be time consuming to get some things up and running. I will be making anything I write freely available to anyone that wants it. Just leave a comment with an e-mail address.

My current list is:

EUT Sequence for doing Mil-Std / DO160 modulation, selectable modulation. Dwell times entered in seconds. Note: the pulse modulation for Mil Std is achieved by reducing the drive level by 6dB then making the modulation depth of the square wave 99.9% using a marconi 2024 sig gen.
Driver for stanford research DS345 function generator, currently just controlling the level and frequency of the sine wave, intended for use by me for CS101 style tests.
User device driver for solartron 7150 plus for voltage measurements.
User device driver for Kinetiq PPA power analyser to take Total KVA/ Voltage frequency / power factor and VRMS.