ASMOH practice game

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!!

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

(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

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

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 !!

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

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.