Vappafaux 2014 Best Painted Crews

The standard of painting at Vappafaux very, very high and almost every crew picked up at least one vote.  Players were asked to choose their top three favourites in order.

I tried to grab pictures of every crew which you can see below.  Some of the pictures don't really do the crews justice as I was grabbing them on my phone while doing a million other things.

This one finished in third place:

This was the winning crew.  The photos don't do it justice, there was some amazing freehand on the back of each model:

And finally this was the second placed crew:

Vappafaux 2014 round up

I've been trying to put this post together for a few days, but work and being knackered after the weekend have prevent it.  Last Sunday was the Vapnartak convention in York at which I was running my first ever tournament:  Vappafaux.  We'd managed to sell all 30 tickets in about 8 days so there was already a good buzz about the event.  It was a long slog getting ready for the event as we had to build all the tables but we got there in the end.

We were lucky enough to be able to setup the day before so myself and my fellow TO And (@guildmonkee) had to get all the stuff together and head over to York race course where the event was taking place.  At 1pm Saturday we had boards and terrain at 4 different locations across York so a short road trip was required to get everything together prior to heading to the race course.

This is what a 30 player Malifaux tournament looks like when you load it into one car:

After a short unload (I've got a bag truck which I bought which meant we got all the boards to the second floor in one trip), we got everything laid out:

The top three tables are those nearest the camera.  Terrain-wise we had some "feature" tables with properly coherent terrain sets, and for the remainder we put out as much stuff as we could get together between And's terraclips collection and the generic terrain we had from the club.

Here's some of the feature tables:

Badlands Railway station by Sam (@Secondbreky):

  Desert board by me (cheap and looks pretty good):

Nicodem's Graveyard by me (see early posts for kit reviews on the Renedra church and grave stones):

Breachside Farm by me.  During the event, I was lucky enough to meet Walt from Commission Figurines who made the farm kit.

Ruined hamlet from Warlord Games, mine again:

Secret Mining Operation by And (@guildmonkee).  As you can see this board was a significant labour of love and alot of work went into it, but it made for an impressive result:

The Dreamer's bedroom.  This idea was stolen from Mike (@OldManMyke) who used a similar setup at 4M last year.  I partly put this together since it required very little expense or effort on my part ;)

The prize pool looked excellent in the end with excellent donations from all our sponsors:

bendyboards.co.uk
fenrisgames.com
tinyworlds.co.uk
Urban Construct (www.wargameterrain.co.uk)
warbases.co.uk

Eventually we had over £220 worth of prizes to give away, and ever single one was done by a raffle.  The tournament winners and painted prizes got small trophies:

...but every other prize was done by raffle so everyone had a chance at some swag.  There was 15 prizes I think in the end so half of all the players got a prize regardless of where they finished.

Warbases were good enough to cut us some Vappafaux tokens for the event:

We even had cake!

Overall, the event went very well and everyone seemed to have enjoyed it.  I took onboard some things I can improve on for next year and there's always things which are outside your control (the unknown unknowns as Donald Rumsfeld once said) but for my first event I was quite happy.

The full results for the event can be found on the Wyrd forums.

Malifaux: Tournament tie-breakers

As I've been working on the rules pack for Vappafaux recently, I've been giving some thought to tournament tie-breakers.  In most cases a Malifaux tournament is decided on the following scores:

-Tournament points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw)
-VP differential (I.e. Rewarding you for the big wins)
-VP scored

In a three game tournament like Vappa there's a good chance there will be plenty of people on the same tournament points, meaning that most places come down to VP diff.  But what happens if two players are exactly even on all three stats? This is an edge case but one I need to prepare for as it more likely in a 3 game event than a longer event.  I don't actually have an answer to this yet.

It could just go down as a tied result, but that then may introduce problems with the rankings points and prizes.  At the other end of the scale, a flip off is a totally arbitrary way of doing it and leaves one player feeling robbed.

I'm not sure what else to include here.  There's nothing much else in Malifaux which could serve as a count back since something like how many soulstones you've killed isn't a reflection on how the game works, neither is masters killed.  Time permitting a 20 SS hardcore game could do it since they're decided in 20 minutes but again not ideal.

Any ideas from other systems or Malifaux tournaments?  Let me know in the comments or on twitter @tigerstyle40k.

Malifaux: 70SS hiring pool

A couple of weeks ago I attended a tournament at York Garrison.  The hiring rules for the tournament were fixed faction using a 70SS hiring pool (they were 35SS games) as per the 2013 Gaining Grounds document.  I hadn't played in one of these type of events before as all the previous tournaments I'd played in were fixed faction so drawing up the pool was interesting.  I went with Outcasts as they're mostly my tournament faction of choice for 2013.  Outcasts suffer a little in this format, as there is almost no overlap between the crews.  For example, I went with Viktoria and Hamelin.  Viktoria can only hire Mercenaries, whereas Hamelin specifically can't hire Mercenaries at all.

If you've not read the selection rules from Gaining Grounds for hiring pools they're basically these:

• Masters don't cost anything to hire into the pool, but they must be listed
• You can spend 2SS from the pool for the option to manifest avatars for any master in the pool
• Models can only be included in the pool if they could be legally hired by at least one of the masters also in the pool
• Models hired into the pool cost their printed SS cost regardless of what they would cost when actually hired into a crew.

For the York tournament, the strategies were (all shared):  Land Grab, Line in the Sand and Beatdown.  The task was to come up with a pool which could cover all those eventualities.

I knew I wanted to take Hamelin to his first tournament so he was in.  However, Hamelin sucks at Beatdown so I need a second master; the Viks came into the pool just for Beatdown.  That was self contained, strategy specific, crew and looked like this:

Viktoria

Student of Conflict

Freikorps Librarian

Sue

Jack Daw

This was a slight gamble, as Jack Daw can really suck in some match ups (Collette's Mannequin Replacement and Levi's Entropic Transformation both ruin him), but I went with it.  That was the first 27SS.

Next was Hamelin's crew for Land Grab and Line in the Sand.  My plan for Land Grab is lots of models, move to the middle and have Hamelin stand there making the crew significant, and move between quarters as required.  So, into the pool went a basic Hamelin crew:

Hamelin the Plagued

Nix, the Bull Terrirer

Rat-Catcher

Obedient Wretch

The Stolen x1

Malifaux Rats x5

That's another 27SS into the pool and gives pretty much everything you need for Hamelin.  I didn't add any more rats or Stolen to the pool as summoned models don't have to be included in the pool, so this was just what I wanted to start the game with.  It gives me 10 significant models for Land Grab, provided they all stay together.

I then need to add what I would need for Line in the Sand.  Essentially for this I go for dominating one half of the board, which Hamelin is quite good at, so the list above gave me most of my options already.  I added into the pool 2 Night Terrors to give me some speed for grabbing dynamite.  I had 11 points left at this point so I stuck a second Rat-Catcher and Baby Kade, neither of which I ended up using in the end.

The final pool was 70SS on the nose.

I had mixed success at the tournament.  I'd played 9 games with Hamelin up to that point, but only 1 on the tabletop.  Managing alot of rats can be time consuming in a tournament setting so we went short on time in Land Grab and I lost it 4-1.  Another turn might have helped me here, perhaps not to win, but maybe pick up another VP or 2.

Game 2 went better with Line in the Sand, and I went onto win that one 5-3.  The Night Terrors made the difference as they went down the opposite side of the board to Hamelin, flipped a marker and then sat in my opponents deployment zone getting my Breakthrough and denying him Hold Out.

Game 3 was Beatdown with the Viks, against Marcus.  I made a big mistake which cost me the game in the end.  The Viks had killed a Ronin and Willie, but Gun Vik had been wounded by Willie in return.  What I should have done at this point was move back to the support group of the Student and the Librarian but I didn't.  I pushed on towards the Gunsmith (which Jack Daw was capable of killing and did so) and didn't realize I was now in Marcus' line of sight.  He then killed both Viks over two activations.  The game finished 6-4 with Jack Daw scoring 3 points for Stake a Claim and being alive at the end.

I finished 15th of 22 overall, and I'd won a game so it wasn't too bad.  My VP diff was only -2 which was also OK.  I'm definitely going to push on with getting more games in with Hamelin now after the tournament. I feel like I'm getting the hang of Nix, the rats and the Rat-Catcher, but it's Hamelin himself who still feels like I'm not using him to the best of his abilities.  I need more games in with him so I can work out which of his capabilities he needs to apply at which points in time.

Malifaux: Vapnartak Tournament

This past weekend I played in the first Malifaux tournament at Vapanartak in York.  Vappa is a one day, independent gaming convention run by York Wargames Society and is held at York race course (a really nice venue).

The tournament format was 35SS, fixed faction, using the new 2013 Gaining Grounds tournament rules (rules pack here).  There's some changes in this document with regard to proxies, time limits and things like that, but the major change is the new strategies.  For this tournament, strategies were not determined until on the day so I'd only played a couple of them before and we didn't know what we were playing until the start of the tournament.  In the end the strategies were shared land grab, shared line in the sand and shared beatdown.

I played the Viktorias for all three of my games.

Game 1 vs mythicFOX (James) - Shared land grab
Me: Viks, von Schill, 3 ronin, student of conflict
James: Perdita. Enslaved neph, von Schill, 2 wastrels, 2 witching stalkers, watcher

Me: Stake a claim (hill on his left side) and kill protege on wastrel
MythicFOX-  Raid! and stake a claim (fence in my deployment zone)

Von Schill didn't get off to the best start in this game, being red jokered by Perdita in the first turn.  I kept him alive with his Slow to Die healing flip, only for the exact same thing to happen in the next turn.  Von Schill went on an ultimately unsuccessful hunt for my Kill Protege target (who got Drain Soul'ed).  Perdita eventually did for him when she shot him, triggered anticipation then put the Black Joker on top of my deck for his healing flip.

Things went well on the other side of the table for the Viks.  Von Schill, a wastrel and a witchling stalker pushed down that flank, and I was thinking of Vik bombing them turn two, but I held back until turn three to hit them with both Viks.  Gun Vik proved to be the star of the show and did for the witchling stalker and Von Schill before completing my Stake a Claim.  Sword Vik killed the wastrel.  Perdita completed Stake a Claim but I had the models left to continue to claim the table quarters.

Result 4-3 win to me.


Game 2 vs Ben  - shared line in the sand
Me:  Viks, von Schill, student of conflict, Lazarus, Freikorps Librarian
Ben: Seamus, Molly, 2 belles, 2 desperate mercs, hanged, grave spirit

Me: first blood, hold out (unannounced)
Ben: hold out and army of the dead

Ben won best painted, and it was well deserved as his Seamus crew was really, really good.  Shared line in the sand was probably my favourite strategy on the day.  For this one, I decided to take Lazarus as he's the only model I have who is Immune to Influence.  Much of the spell casting power in Seamu's crew (like all of Mollly's spells for example) are Wp resist, plus Lazarus is non-living and so immune to terrifying.

I thought my plan was to arm and hold 3 of the markers and ignore the other two so I set up on my right hand side to do this.  Von Schill did his thing and got three markers armed before getting the red joker on a damage flip against him and getting removed from the board (The Hanged has made sure he couldn't heal).  Sword Vik did what she does best killing two Belles, the grave spirit and the Hanged.  I got both my schemes and three turns worth of having the most markers armed.

Result: 6-2 win to me


Game 3 vs Rhinobuster (Paul):
Me: Viks, von Schill, student of conflict, Freikorps Librarian, Lazarus
Paul:  McMourning, chihuahua, bête noir, Dead Rider, Izamu

Me:  steal relic, bodyguard on von Schill
Paul:  breakthrough and something else (can't recall)

I was on table two for this one, so I was punching well above my weight.  Paul is currently the UK number one ranked player as well, so I knew this was going to be hard.  It looked even harder when I saw the list he'd chosen.

McMourning was on me quickly in turn two as the Dead Rider dragged him forward.  Lazarus quickly fell to the doctor.  Sword Vik has identified the Rotten Belle as easy pickings so knocked her down to 1Wd turn 2, before finishing her turn 3 and flipping back to Gun Vik with Sisters in Spirit.  Bete Noir then appeared, Dead Rider rode down the student of conflict and Izamu was closing fast.

The Dead Rider was exposed on a hill close to Von Schill who unloaded with his Clockwork Seeker and killed him.  McMourning slammed into Sword Vik, made her Easy to Wound 2, and then went for the coup de grace Dissection.  Fortunately I resisted this.  By the close of that turn, a melee between the Viktorias, McMourning, Bete Noir and Izamu was kicking off.  The initiative flip for turn 4 was crucial and I was lucky enough to win it.  The Viktorias companioned and killed McMourning and Bete Noir before doing the same to Izamu in the following turn.  I'd got my Steal Relic off McMourning and Von Schill was still alive.

Result: 7-1 win to me

So I ended the day on 9TP/17VP/+11 and took first place on VP diff!  I was as surprised as anyone else really, but I was very happy with the result and the way I'd played.

The prize vouchers are going towards building up my Viktorias crew.  It seems only fair since they'd won the day for me.

Malifaux: UK GT 2012 round up

I thought I'd share some thoughts on the UK GT.  I'm not going to go play by play, just give my overall impression of the event and the five games I played.

The format for the event was five games, fixed faction, with sizes varying from 30SS to 40SS.  Three games were played on Saturday and two on Sunday.  I played Outcasts as my faction, and I ran the Viktorias for all five of my games.

My aim for the tournament was to win 1 game, with my stretch goal being to win 2 games.  I managed to surpass this and actually win 3 games!  On Saturday I managed to get 3 wins in a row which was pretty surprising.  Going into Sunday I was on table 4, but I went on to lose both my games on Sunday.  The final results aren't published yet, but I think I'm somewhere in mid-table which was a good showing for me.

All five games were really good, and I played some masters I've not played before.  I played Ant with Kirai, Chris R with Von Schill, Graham with The Dreamer, Joel with Zoraida and Collodi, and Bram with Ophelia.  All 5 were great games, the one against Joel was the standout one.  It was one of those games where I was having to think hard about every move and it swung in both our favours throughout.  Joel went on to win 5-0 and finish 2nd overall.

The event was an absolute blast, I had a really, really good time.  If you're in any doubt about attending a Malifaux GT or a tournament, then you shouldn't be.  Everyone I played was really nice, and I'd play any of them again in a heartbeat.  The GT was very well run and well organized by Jo and James, and I will definitely be back next year.

Edit:  The final results are up now, and I finished in 24th place of 54 players meaning I just squeaked into the top half of the table.

Malifaux: York Garrison Doubles Tournament

A couple of weeks back, I played in my second Malifaux tournament, this time at my local club and run by And (guildmonkee on the forums), our local henchman.

The format was a 40SS brawl with a shared fate deck.  Each team had to nominate a single Boss master that had to be used in every game but then were free to use any other Brawl compatible master for each game.  The 40SS could be split in whichever way the pair wanted.

My original plan was to play Pandora with Lilleth, but my original partner was unable to make it which left me at a bit of a loss three week before the event.  Fortunately, clubmate Jake was short of a partner and was playing Lady Justice.  The only master I have that was compatible were the Viktorias, so it was decided that would be what we would play.  In the event we pretty much ended up playing a Guild crew with the addition of the Viks.  This was a bonus all round as it meant I could learn about both the Viks and Lady J in one.  The downside of the Viks in Brawls is that they cost 5SS to use.

In the tournament run up, I got in a couple of games with the Viks, taking two wins at 35SS singles vs Colette and Kirai.  We also played one doubles warm up game which we also won against And and Sam.  That game took a long time as And and Sam were running McMourning and Kirai and so had a ton of activations.  Since the tournament was 90 minute rounds, and the game took the best part of three hours, And and Sam decided to switch faction to run guild.



On the day, it was a great turn out.  There were 12 teams in total, from both local and further affield (Harrogate, Norfolk, Manchester, Leceister, Sheffield).

Our games panned out like this...

Tournament game 1 - Shared Treasure Hunt
We knew the draw for game 1 in advance so we knew we were drawn against James and Craig (mythicfox and ukrocky), and so we also knew this would be a tough game as they're both very, very good.  They ran Marcus and Colette.  We had Lady J, the Viks, Von Schill, couple of Witchlings, Nino and something else that I can't recall.
It was a great game, and we came pretty close to getting the treasure at the end.  Colette is so fast, she had the treasure in her hand and was half way back to her deployment zone in the first turn.  Both Viks had a good go at taking her down, forcing several Slow to Die healing flips from her but she slipped away.

The best moment in the game was Sword Vik getting stuck in combat with a Jackalope by failing her disengaging strike.  Sword Vik turned round and hit the Jackalope and got a double severe on the damage for 12 wounds.  Turned out though, they'd taken an unannounced Frame for Murder on the Jackalope...

In the final turn Collete was holding the treasure in her deployment zone with Von Schill bearing down on her, but it closed out an 8-2 loss to us.  We got our 2 points from the Raid scheme.  There's also a brief write up of the game on James' blog at mythicfox.com.


Tournament game 2 - Shared destroy the evidence
We'd dropped to table 5 now, and we were matched with another Harrogate team, this time Adam and Steve (Iron Skies and scurry on the forums).  They took Hoffman and Leviticus, along with Collodi and 8 Marionettes.  We took Lady J, the Viks, Von Schill, Nino, Sam Hopkins and some other bits.  Scheme wise we took Breakthrough, Stake a Claim and First Blood.  This was the only game where we took 3 schemes, figuring First Blood would be easy given Levi would almost certainly be killing the Canine Remains he'd bought with him to get a second Hollow Waif.

I've not played against Collodi before, so we were in for a shock.  First turn, first activation, Collodi activates, companions every marionette, makes them all Fast, and two of them melee experts.  He then dances across the table with his puppets, destroying every evidence counter, and putting a serious hurt on Nino (who'd they'd grudged) and Sam Hopkins (who'd they'd got Kill Protege on).  It was an incredibly impressive move since neither me or Jake had seen it before, and they were very sporting about it.  Collodi had done his job and got 4 VPs straight off, but it had left him within a few inches of Lady J and both Viks so he didn't last any longer than turn 1.

The remainder of the game saw us move across to engage Levi and Hoffman.  We managed to get the drop on Levi about turn 3 or 4.  Von Schill killed him and then we managed to take out the Waifs on the same turn ensuring he couldn't come back.  Hoffman went down as well due to some back luck on their part as they failed to get Protect on him from the Guardian.  Lady J and the Viks went to work, and we cleared the table, acheiving all our schemes and destroying the remaining evidence.

We won 9-6, and we'd achieved our goal of winning a game.


Tournament game 3 - Shared claim jump
This was the last game of the tournament as the fourth game was dropped due to time constraints.  We didn't really struggle with the times but alot of people did, especially people playing Ressurectionists, or with alot of activations.  With dropping the fourth game, it meant this one could be played to a conclusion by everyone.

In this one we played the last of the three Harrogate teams, Ant and Liam (Stryder and Shut Up on the forums).  As with all the Harrogate guys, these guys are great players (Ant is ranked number 1 in the UK).  They played Kirai and McMourning, both with their Avatars.  We went with Lady J, the Viks, Von Schill, Executioner, 3 Witchling Stalkers and Fransico.

The game seemed to be going pretty well early doors.  We got our Kill Protege early on (Sword Vik killed Datsu Ba) and Von Schill managed to Steal Relic from McMourning but subsequently died.  We then consolidated around the claim marker, but of course being Rezzers they'd spent the early turns getting prepped for the manifesting of their avatars.

Turn 4 it went down hill...  McMourning and Kirai both mainfested and ripped us to pieces.  McMourning's "Crawling Doom" ability which gives negative flips when you're near him meant we really struggled to put him and the Simulacrum down.  I think in the end they pretty much tabled us.

Result was a 10 -3 loss to us.

Overall, we finished on 3TP and a -10 VP difference so we ended up placing 11th of 12 teams.  We faced three very tough teams though, and it turned out we'd played the winning team (James and Craig) and the second place team (Ant and Liam) so I think we did pretty well overall.

We didn't come away empty handed, as we did take the Best/Worst luck prize.  Not sure which one we got it for as we had some heavy doses of both!  Prize was a cool certificate and a retro fate deck.

I'm looking forward the the GT now.  I'm going to be taking the Viktorias to that as I really like their fast, beat face style of play.

If you want to hear other's experience of the tournament, check out the Malifools episode 14.

Malifaux: Ice Breaker Tournament Report

At the end of April, I played in a one day tournament at Harrogate Wargames Club. This was a 35SS, fixed faction event, played over four round.

I'll admit, I was pretty nervous about the day. I'd only signed up about 10 days before after my buddy hunter_b had told me about it, which didn't give me much time to prep. I got some stuff painted up (Belles and the Rogue Necromancy) and managed one practice game at the club against Steve's Leviticus crew (Steve smashed me 8-4). So with 7 games ever under my belt, I was a nervous as I didn't want to spoil anyone else's tournaments with my noob playstyle. The round were 90 minutes as well which I thought might cause me issues since I'm not the fastest Malifaux player in the world.


Anyway, on the day my fears proved unfounded, and I had a great time. The time limit never really proved to be an issue with most games getting to the end of turn 5 anyway.

This is how the games broke down, as far as I can re-call anyway:


Game 1- vs Lady Justice

This was against guildmonkee who is my local club henchman so it was a friendly face for the first game. It was shared destroy the evidence. He had a elite Lady J crew, with the Judge, Executioner, Samael Hopkins, Santiago Ortega and a Convict Gunslinger. I had Nico, grave spirit, Bête Noir, some belles, couple of Crooked Men, 2 dogs and a punk zombie.

Nico was giving out paralysed like candy, which protected my crew alot, and I got 2 Flesh Constructs and a Rogue Necromancy summoned which kept Lady J busy. I didn't manage to destroy the evidence, but got both my schemes (hold out and bodyguard) and managed to kill Lady J will a belle on the last flip of the game.
Result - 4 - 2 win to me. Achieved the win I wanted to get, so happy days.


Game 2 - Vs Avatar Seamus
I was on table 4 now so I was punching above my weight. This was shared slaughter against Mike3838 from Musings of a Malifaux Noob, I took a similar crew to game, except I took a Hanged figuring I might get the negative twist on WP triggers on to Seamus. Didn't work, I lost pretty much everything except Nico at the end and Mike took the well deserved win.

Result - Loss, something like 5 - 3.


Game 3 - Vs The Vicktorias.
This was against my friend hunter_b on table 6 (of 7). This was shared treasure hunt.  Hunter_b got Von Schill to pick up the treasure turn 2 but he didn't move after that as he was paralysed or in melee. I had grudged Taelor which I got for 2, didn't get the Kill Protege which was my other one. Hunter_b got his eye for an eye scheme and 2 for carrying the treasure (irrc).

Result - Loss to me, 4 - 2 I think.


Game 4 - Vs Predita
This was shared reconnoiter, so I took a massive crew to spread out over the board. My opponent, Jamie,  took the Perdita family minus Abuela, plus an enslaved nephilim and the Executioner. I didn't play too well,  forgetting to Bolster Undead in the turn 5. That would have given me better chance to kill Perdita who was on 2 wound with no stones and in melee with a punk zombie. Didn't do it, punk zombie died. Final nail was on the last turn, I needed to flip a 3 or better to summon a model and deny my opponent one of her schemes. I flipped a 2.

Anyway, I got one scheme and 2 of 4 table quarters. Final result was a draw, 4 each.

Great event, I really enjoyed it and it was a good chance to get 4 games in a single day.  I ended up finishing 10th of 14 which was 4 places higher than I was expecting to finish.

Uriah Jacobus, Protector of the Faith and Tournament Update

I had a mad rush on to get the last model painted up for my Sister of Battle army for a small Freebootaz tournament which took place at Warhammer World in early February.

The final model to paint was Uriah Jacobus:

The tournament I used my Sisters in was a 1000 points per player doubles tournie (Saturday was singles when I played Chaos). My list was:

HQ:

Uriah Jacobus, 9 Death Cult Assassins (225)

Troops:
Battle Sister Squad, 1 Melta Gun, 1 Heavy Flamer, Rhino (190)
Battle Sister Squad, 1 Melta Gun, 1 Storm Bolter, Rhino (173)

Fast Attack:
7 Seraphim, twin inferno pistols (140)

Heavy Support:
Exorcist with searchlight (136)
Exorcist with searchlight (136)

I had been due to team up with an IG army, but my partner was ill and couldn't make it down. Fortunately, someone else stepped up and I teamed with his Grey Knights which proved to be a pretty good combination (since we won!).

Uriah Jacobus was awesome as a force multiplier, for several reasons.

Firstly, he gives you a re-roll of your dice to generate Faith Points each turn. At 1000 points, I didn't find this particularly essential as I rarely used more than one or two points per turn, but since the Faith mechanic doesn't really scale that well, in larger games I can see the re-roll being important.

Secondly, he carries the Banner of Sanctity. This gives his unit +1A and Feel No Pain. Combined with Death Cult Assassins this is brutal. FnP is handy since they only have a 5+ save (and assuming you can make FnP rolls which I never can), but +1A is also pretty nasty.

Thirdly, he has the Righteous Rage special rule. This is identical to a Space Marine Chaplain's Liturgies of Battle rule, so it gives re-rolls to hit on the charge.

Fourthly, he's Stubborn and Ld10. Being an IC he confers this on any unit he joins.

The unit I ran above (Jacobus and DCA) had 45 I6, WS5, S4 power weapon attacks on the charge, with re-rolls to hit. Against a 5 man GK terminator squad, this ended up causing 27 wounds with no armour saves. Next game, they carved through a SM tactical squad like they weren't even there. The weakness of this unit is that if you can be out Initiatived (like assaulting into cover) you are going to get hurt as DCA are not that survivable. You're also vulnerable to getting left in the open after an assault and then being shot to pieces.

Freebootaz Open Tournament

I played in my first proper tournment last weekend at Maelstrom Games. There was a 1750 point singles on Saturday and a 1500 point doubles on Sunday, so I played at 1750 and helped out with the running on Sunday.

We had 34 players in the singles tournament, and there were some top flight players there including ETC team members.

Here's the list I took, using Codex: Chaos Space Marines:

Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime
Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime

7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with Power Fist, 2 melta guns, personal icon, rhino
7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with Power Fist, 2 melta guns, personal icon, rhino
7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with Power Fist, 2 flamers, personal icon, rhino
8 Summoned Lesser Daemons
7 Summoned Lesser Daemons

2 Obliterators
2 Obliterators
Vindicator

It's not too far from my usual list really. The problem was I was playing it....

With hindsight, I'd change the list around to drop the Vindicator and take a unit of Chosen instead. Normally I won't run without Chosen in a rhino, but I've only got 3 rhinos in my collection so I had to leave them out. The Vindicator pretty much did nothing in every game.

I had 4 good games, and everyone I played was very nice and sporting. The tournament scenarios were a little unusual, and some favoured certain armies over others.

Game 1:
The was called "Head Hunter" and was kind of like kill points but you had to kill all the squad leaders in certain sections of the FOC. I was drawn against a Space Wolves player, running Logan, rune priest, scouts, 10 Wolf Guard, 3 small Grey Hunter units and 3 packs of Long Fangs. I got stuffed. I had some pretty rotten luck, losing both Daemon Princes to deep strike problems, gifting him 5 battle points, but I also played pretty badly as well. I lost.

Game 2:
The was objective based, but your deployment was at one end of the table and the objectives were at the other. I drew Eldar, probably the last army you want to play in this mission. You could only deploy HQ and Fast Attack at the start, and since I didn't have any FA I reserved everything. This meant my Lesser Daemon were destroyed as there weren't any icon deployed when they arrived. 200 points and 2 troop choices gone. I didn't play so badly in this one, and I contested all the objectives expect the big one at the other end of the table and it was relatively close on victory points. Still a defeat though.

Game 3:
This was a loot counter mission where you had to pick them up and get them back to your deployment zone. I played one of the guys from the Claws and Fists blog, who was running a Vulkan list. He easily took the game on battle points, getting 3 loot counters to my one (I was carrying the fifth one but didn't get it back in time), but we were in about 10 victory points of each other so we were drawn on that part.

Game 4:
The pairing had been random to this point, but in the final round they were seeded, where first played second etc. Unsurprisingly, I was on the bottom table. This was mission was "Retrieve the Spy", where you had a spy hidden in your opponents army which you had to reveal by destroying the unit and get him off your table edge. I was up against a fellow UK Freeboota so I knew were going to have a laugh, and he was playing Chaos. We both revealed the spy but neither of us got him off the table edge (he just died too easily). There were also two objectives as well. I did better in this one, taking an objective and killing a load of stuff.

Overall, 3 losses and 1 win put me 25th out of 34, but I had 4 good games of 40K so you can't get better than that. My stated aim was not to finish last and I did manage that. Next time, I'll be striving to finish in the top half.

Display Board

I'm playing in a Warhammer 40K tournament at Maelstrom Games this weekend, where I'll be using by Chaos Space Marines. As part of the tournie, there is a "Best Painted Army" contest, which is being done in a beauty pagent style on Saturday lunch time. I really don't expect to win that, but to give myself the best chance of doing so, I needed to make a display board.

My main aim was to keep it cheap, so basically it was built with stuff I already had lying around. It's not fancy, it's not got anything cool like magnet to hold miniatures, and it's really too heavy to be lugging around to transport miniatures on, but it'll do the job for the painting contest.


It's been made to keep in with the ash waste/moonscape style basing I decide to use on both my CSMs and Witch Hunters.

To give you an idea of size and how it fits with the basing style, here's it with some minis on it:




I did a dry run at the weekend with my CSMs, but I'm not going to show you that as I'm sure some of the guys who will be playing at the weekend will be reading this and I don't want to reveal my list yet (mind you I don't think it'll help me much ;).

Construction of the board was done using stuff I found lying around the house.

-Base of MDF left over from when we had a new kitchen last year
-Bit of broken cork sheet (about 5mm think) I found in the loft
-2" foam offcuts left over from a club terrain project
-Cork bark hills (the previous owner of my house had a model railway in the loft and he left some bits behind)
-Lots of filler (the kind of stuff you use for filling in holes in walls eg Polyfilla), sand, gravel

Construction and painting was probably a couple of hours in total, though spread over several days.

Step 1: Cut two 2" foam triangles to go into the corners, PVA them on to the board. Hot wire cutters are ideal for cutting foam, but I didn't have any so I used a box saw. Use a sanding block to smooth off any rough patches.
Step 2: Glue cork bark to the front of the foam
Step 3: Glue bit of broken up cork sheet to the base to create an uneven surface
Step 4: Mix filler with sand and gravel, spread liberally over the base. Hands work to do the spreading, but I found a lolly stick to be better.
Step 5: Use filler mix to blend cork bark into the foam hills
Step 6: Leave this to dry for several days
Step 7: Mix PVA with a bit of water and paint liberally. I gave it a couple of coats to ensure all the sand and gravel is well stuck down. Make sure you cover the foam well with this mix if you're going to spray prime it.
Step 8: Prime it black
Step 9: Paint it black with household emulsion. I bought a couple of black tester pots for this which I finally found in Homebase. Black doesn't seem to be that popular for household walls...
Step 10: Drybrush dark grey using household emulsion (this was from B&Q and is called Soft Black).
Step 11: Mix some white emulsion with the grey, keep drybrushing until you are happy.

Obviously my intention was to create an ash waste theme, but the same technique can be applied to any surface. For example:

-Churned mud: Build in the same way, painting using dark brown with lighter drybrushes. You could use gloss varnish or water effects to create pool of water.
-Grass: Leave off the broken cork sheet, and leave out the gravel from the filler mix. Paint light brown and flock to taste.
-Snow: Depending on what effect you were after, you could do it as churned mud and add snow effects after. Alternatively, you go less rough like the grass method, paint the board pale grey with white highlights and then add you're preffered snow effects.

Nurgle Obliterators WIP

I've got a 1750 point tournament coming up in November, so I've been putting some work in on my Chaos Space Marines. The heavy support choices that I currently have I didn't really fit in with what I wanted to do. One Defiler is pretty much toast, so I initially thought of going with 3 of them but financially I just didn't want to do it. In the end I decided to go with some Obliterators, four in fact.

I really don't like the official model that much. It's expensive, and not that nice, plus I hear they are a pain to build. What I decided to do was get some AoBR and convert them.


A terminator is slightly smaller than an obliterator, I've tried to bulk them up a bit so they're now more of less the same size. The rest of the conversion was bitz and green stuff. These ones will be next on the painting table.

Battle Report: 500 point tournament

Following on from my post yesterday about the list I used, here's some details on how I went in my three games. The tournament was held at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield, and it's a really great gaming venue which will be even better when the whole area is open:



Game 1: Vs Space Marines

I was facing off here against two 10 man tactical squads, with heavy bolters and melta guns and one Rhino, led by a librarian with Might of the Ancients and Gate of Infinity.
This one was a table quarter's scenario, and the Space Marine ability to combat squad meant he was able to hold two quarters and contest a third. I only held one quarter by the end of the game but I scored an extra point for getting more victory points (a minor victory). This was mainly due to a good round of shooting from my Rhino and it's occupant destroying a whole combat squad and a librarian. Overall, a draw but a reasonable start.

Game 2: Vs Imperial Guard

In this game, I faced off against a Company Command Squad with an Autocannon and grenade launcher, and couple of veteran squads, one with Harken and two armoured sentinels.
The was the King of the Hill mission from 4th edition, so we had to capture the centre of the table. I got my marines onto the objective quite quickly and then had to whether the fire from the IG army. My Lord started well, breaking a veteran squad and then killing the command squad in assault. From this good start for me, the IG pulled it back round. My ability to destroy either of his armoured sentinels was gone thanks to a Get's Hot! roll on my plasma gun so I was relying on krak grenades. This meant the IG could get in close to the objective with his Sentinel and a scoring unit to contest. The other sentinel charged my Lord in assault as I'd taken the bait and got near it and slowly wore him down. The IG won this one on victory points, so a very narrow loss.

This was the final battle around the central objective:



Game 3: Vs Imperial Guard

I had a strong game in this one. The mission was capture and control, so I parked a Marine squad on my objective. The second squad in a rhino and the Lord advanced down my left. Harken then appeared on that flank right next to them with a veteran squad and destroyed the Rhino with a demo charge, and then charged the occupants and the Lord in combat. The IG were rapidly destroyed by the Lord's Daemon Weapon. That squad then advanced on his objective, destroying another veteran squad in assault. His Chimera advanced on my objective, but I got a lucky roll and blew it up with my plasma gun. The game ended with me holding both objectives (for full battle points), and a massacre result in victory points.


Overall, I managed to finish in first place, which was a real surprise to me. I had a blast in this, and I'll definitely want to play in some more tournaments in future.

With three games under it's belt, the short comings of my final list were clear (I should really have playtested it, but I didn't get time).

It's main problem was I only had one way of destroying armour of any kind: one plasma gun. That meant that in game 2, I was really struggling to take on the armoured sentinels after the loss of the PG. The second problem with it was it only has two scoring units, meaning that at most I was going to hold two objectives. This cost me in game 1. On the plus side, the rhinos with havoc launchers worked well causing quite a lot of casualties, and making my army quite mobile.

500 point Chaos Space Marine tournament list

Yesterday I played in the first UK Freebootaz Open Tournament. I played in the one day 500 point tournament, which had list restrictions similar to the Adepticon combat patrol rules:

Only ONE HQ allowed
2-3 Troops
0-1 Elites
0-1 Fast Attack
0-1 Heavy Support
Maximum of 3+ armour save
Maximum Armour Value of 33 on any individual vehicle (front + side +rear)
Maximum of 2 Psychic Powers
Monstrous Creatures are NOT allowed


I spent an age throwing lists together before I finally settled on this one:


Chaos Lord, Mark of Slaanesh, Wings, Daemon Weapon, Melta Bombs

7 Chaos Space Marines, one flamer, Icon of Chaos Glory, Rhino with Havoc Launcher
7 Chaos Space Marines, one plasma gun, Rhino with Havoc Launcher

Total: 500 points

My thinking for this was that the Lord would be there to hit things hard in CC, plus use his instant death causing Daemon Weapon to deal with multi-wound models like Nobz or Tyranid Warriors. He'd be supported in this by the flamer squad who I gave an icon to as I thought they'd be getting into combat more often and might need the re-roll. The other squad was an objective holder. The two rhino would use their havoc launchers as long range support to thin out units.

The tournament was a mixture of different scenarios, including the table quarters and king of the hill missions from 4th edition.

I'm just writing up some details for the battle reports, so stay tuned.

15th already....

Blimey, it's got to the 15th of the month and I've managed a sum total of zero posts...

Work and home have been pretty manic so far this month so not much hobbying has been done. I've managed to paint for about an hour but that's it really.

This is going to have to change this week, as I've got a tournament coming up this week (UK Freebootaz Open). I'm playing in the one day 500 point tournament, which follows similar list restrictions to the Adepticon combat patrol rules. I'm going to be playing Chaos Space Marines, but the list I'm going to be using isn't actually painted fully yet. Between now and the weekend I need to finish off a new Slaanesh Chaos Lord (formerly a Sorcerer then I changed my mind and just went for a Lord with wings) and magnetize two Havoc Launchers to two rhinos. Painting this Slaanesh Lord has reminded me why I've always failed with painting Slaanesh stuff before: I suck at it.

Final tournament list

With the quick game I played on Wednesday, and the advice I've received here (thanks!) and elsewhere, I've refined and submitted my 500 point Chaos list for the doubles tournament. I've submitted it now, so there's no going back.

Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime (175)
6 Plague Marines, 2 with melta guns (158)
Rhino with dozer blade (40)
Vindicator (125)

From the general chat around the club, I think most people are going to be bringing small model count armies, with ridiculous vehicles or characters (I suspect we'll see alot of Land Raiders for example), hence I went with Warptime rather than Nurgle's Rot. Mark of Nurgle gives him an extra push so he won't be so easily wounded.

Having experimented with plain Chaos Space Marines, I decided to go for Plague Marines, even though I get fewer models. I intend to keep these inside the Rhino as much as possible and snipe with the melta guns. Finally the vindicator gives me both anti-horde and anti-tank capabilites.

There we go. It's the practice games next week, then the tournament starts the week after.

Upcoming Tournament: Need some help

My local club is running an informal tournament over several weeks in June which I'm going to enter (first tournament for me). There's a couple of twists:

1- It's a doubles tournament
2- It's only 500 points per player
3- You won't be able to choose who you are paired with, it'll be chosen by the tournament organizers (not sure on what basis, hopefully something sensible like shooty paired with assaulty).
4- The only compulsory requirements are 1 HQ choice and 1 troop choice
5- It will be scenario based

There's alot of unknowns there so it's going to make choosing a list a challenge. I've also never built lists for such a small number of points.

First thing, I've got a choice of armies! I could probably scrape together 500 points of Witch Hunters for this which will be their first outing, and clearly I've got my CSM's already to go. I'm favouring WH currently, as I'm itching to get them on the table, and this will push me to them going.

Second thing, I've only got a limited selection of models to choose from and I won't have time or money to get anymore.

Here's a couple of lists I threw together last night:

Chaos Space Marines
Daemon Prince, Wings (130)
5 Chaos Space Marines, 1 meltagun, Icon of Chaos Glory, Rhino (130)
5 Chaos Space Marines, 1 meltagun, Icon of Chaos Glory (95)
Vindicator with daemonic possession (145)
Total: 500 points

This would be played aggressively with the DP spearheading the charge and dealing with big stuff. Meltagun drive-bys would be possible out of the Rhino. The Vindicator can bust armour as well as killing infrantry with it's demolisher cannon.

Witch Hunters
Canoness with jump pack, bolt pistol, power weapon and cloak of St. Aspira (96)
Inquisitor with psychic hood, bolter (42)
3 Gun Servitors with heavy bolters (75)
9 Battle Sisters with Veteran Sister Superior with Book of St Lucius. Squad has 1 meltagun and 1 storm bolter (144)
5 Seraphim, with Veteran Sister Superior who has Book of St Lucius and melta bombs. Squad includes 2 pairs of twin hand flamers (144)
Total: 501 points

The battle sisters, along with the Inquisitor, shoot anything which comes close to them (took a Storm Bolter as it's longer range and one point cheaper than a flamer, plus I have the model). The Inquisitor has an unlimited range psychic hood to protect against psychic powers and the unit can put out 9 BS4 S5 AP4 shots per turn from the servitors. The Seraphim are there for counter assault or to protect against Infiltrators. Depending on the allies they can also assist in a close combat charge and tank hunt. The canoness is a tar pit for tying up any unit which looks nasty. She has a 2+ save which can be made invulnerable with an act of faith.

List drawbacks
CSMs: A power armoured Chaos Lord would probably be better and cheaper and I could take some more CSMs, but I don't have the model for this. My other model alternative would be my Chaos Sorcerer/Lord in terminator armour which would probably end up as expensive (or almost) as the DP anyway.

Witch Hunters: The Inquisitor choice isn't optimal, I just like them alot. If I had an Excorcist, I'd swap them for that probably, but I haven't. I've taken a storm bolter on the BSS squad to give them a little more range than a flamer or melta. Overall it probably needs another troop selection, but I'm stuck with the models I actually own.

Any got any tips or comments on the lists? Or any better suggestions for the list, or for building lists at such a small points value?