Malifaux: Learning Lessons

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants - Sir Issac Newton

Let me preface this post by saying much of what I am talking about here has been said in one form or another by others, particularly the gaming legend Joel Henry on his blog and on twitter hence the quote at the top of the post.  

I wanted to talk about a game I played on Wednesday night this week against my friend and clubmate Sam and some things I took from that game on both sides which I'd like to apply to more of my Malifaux gaming.

The game was 50SS Squatters Rights with a scheme pool of Line in the Sand, Breakthrough, Bodyguard, Cursed Object and Murder Protege generated by everyone's favourite lazyfaux panda @malifauxschemes.

Me:
Jakob Lynch (Rising Sun, Expert Cheater, Woke Up With a Hand)
Hungering Darkness (Fears Given Form)
2 Illuminated
1 Beckoner
Doppelganger
Mature Nephilim
Schemes:  Bodyguard (Huggy, unannounced), Breakthrough (unannounced)

The Doppelganger I took as she can Interact when engaged, the Mature was there to fly about Wing Buffeting people away from markers and going for Breakthrough.

Sam:
Rasputina (Arcane Reservoir, Black Joker is Red Joker, Super Ice Mirror)
Ice Golem
Wendigo
3 Ice Gamin
2 December Acolytes
Schemes:  Line in the Sand (unannounced), Murder Protege (Mature Neph, unannounced)


I got off to a really bad start when I lost the Mature and Huggy on turn 1 due to some bad positioning which Sam punished me for, quite rightly.  This then developed into one of the closest games of Malifaux I've had for a long time.

I wanted to pick up on some things from the game in the way we both played and how they relate to things that Joel has talked about in the past on his blog and on twitter about being a better Malifaux player.

The best laid plans
My plan for the Mature Nephilim went out of the window by the end of the first turn (it was probably a half arsed plan anyway).  That meant I needed to re-focus and re-plan what it was I was doing.  The Doppelganger had to switch away from the Squat markers and on to getting Breakthrough leaving Lynch, Beckoner and the Illuminated to get my Squat markers and guard them.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Have a plan but be prepared to change it.


Don't ease up
After the first turn, Sam was destroying me.  He'd killed Huggy (who buried) and his Murder Protege target.  My crew was reeling, on the ropes.  What did he not do?  Let up on me.  I was battered but he didn't stop pressing his advantage.  His crew moved up to the Squat Markers and started to lay his Line in the Sand markers.  He pressed home his advantage, eventually leading to Lynch getting killed by a December Acolyte and most of my crew being mopped up.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Don't ease up off the gas.
My Extra Lesson:  December Acolytes are awesome.


Play to the last flip
Related to the point above, both of us played hard to the last flip of the game.  Turn 5 I was down to Huggy, Doppelganger and 1 Illuminated.  Huggy was alive but on less than half wounds, denying me a VP.  So last turn Huggy spent hitting the Doppelganger and trying to heal himself up to get VP.  Sam spent the last turn trying to get my Squat markers flipped and throwing an Ice Gamin at Huggy to try and getting him either dead or more wounded (which he did).  Both of us played hard down to the wire.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Want it.  Push yourself to win.
My Extra Lesson:  Remember Huggy has a trigger to heal 2 wounds...


Focus
I had Bodyguard on Huggy who I foolishly got killed on the first turn.  With some effort on turn 2 I managed to Lure over the Wendigo and Lynch made it Brilliant and killed it bringing Huggy back.  Hooray!  Just needed to keep him alive now for the VP.  With that in mind, what was the first thing I did?  Charged him back into Sam's crew to attack a December Acolyte.  I iz dumb.

I didn't focus on what was important:  scoring VP by keeping Huggy alive.  I realized this quite quickly and was lucky enough to win Initiative on the next turn (yay for Doppelgangers) and get Huggy to safety.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Focus.

The conclusion of the game was a surprise, neither of us genuinely knew who had won.  It shook out as:

Me:  Squatters Rights: 3VP, Breakthrough: 3VP, Bodyguard: 2VP
Sam:  Squatters Rights:  3VP, Line in the Sand:  2VP, Murder Protege: 2VP

8-7 win to me.  A close finish and a result that was very much against the run of play in the game.

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.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines Vs Blood Angels

I got my first game against the new Blood Angels Codex (I know it's been out for a while, but I've mostly been playing Fantasy) on Wednesday night. The games was at 1350 points, annhiliation with the spearhead deployment.

The BA army was something similar to:
-Mephiston
-5 Sanguinary Guard, with +1 Attack banner
-5 Assault troops with jump packs, power fist, infernus pistol
-5 Death Company with jump packs, power fist
-10 Tactical Marines in a Rhino, melta gun, missile launcher
-5 Scouts
-5 Devastators with 4 heavy weapons

I was playing a couple of different options with my list. I took Wind of Chaos on my Daemon Prince instead of my usual Warptime, took 2 squads of 2 Obliterators, and a small unit of Lesser Daemons. I was trying some stuff out to crystalize what I'm planning for a forthcoming tournament.

I had some decent luck right at the start. I got to pick the table quarter, and chose one with some high buildings for my Oblitz to go in. I also opted to go second and then stole the initiative.

It was a good game and I emerged the winner with 6 kill points Vs 3 kill points. Mephiston was pretty scary, but his lack of an Inv save hurts him. He lost 1 wound to a perils of the warp, one to a power fist, one to a melta and the final one to a bolt pistol (!). He'd chewed up a whole squad of Plague Marines before this, and was just out of range to chew up my Daemon Prince, though the Sanguinary Guard managed to do that anyway.

With regard to my list tweaks, Wind of Chaos I only got to use once and I really could have got more use out of Warptime. With Warptime I'm pretty sure my Daemon Prince could have annhilated the Sanguinary Guard in combat and then taken on Mephiston, so I'm going to take that in future.

Oblitz are definitely in. They're excellently flexible, and took out a rhino, 3 devastators and 4 Death Company before they ran out of targets.

Summoned Lesser Daemons I've used before and like them alot. They're useful to bolster your lines where they're needed, in this game that was to support the Plague Marine squad who were taking out the tactical marines, and they're the cheapest thing I've got to hold objectives.

I just need to get a few games in with the list at 1750 points before November now.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines Vs Imperial Guard

I had been planning on playing 8th Edition Fantasy at club night last week, but I couldn't find anyone with a small army so I ended up playing 40K instead. I haven't played 40K for a while so it was a nice change.

I was playing an Imperial Guard player, who's army had more heavy weapons than I've ever seen in one army. He must have had about 20 or so heavy weapons teams, plus 3 Leman Russ (one ordinary, one exterminator and one punisher), plus some veterans. There were so many gun teams in fact, I'm not wholly sure how he?d managed to get them all in, but then again, I don?t know the IG codex that well. Anyway, it was Annhilation with Dawn of War deployment.

In my list, it was more or less my usual 1500 point list, except that I dropped the Defiler and Vindicator in favour of 2 squads of 2 Obliterators. This was one of the driving forces for me for the game, as I've got a tournament coming up in November so I thought I give them a try and see what the fuss was about.

My plan was fairly simple: get close and kill IG in assault. This is exactly what I did. My units suffered a bit on the way over there, but once I got there I was able to tear units apart. IG have nothing really against a unit of Plague Marines up close, even two of the Leman Russ were of limit use. The Punisher cannon was pretty useless against T5, FnP Plague Marines. Even my Rhino got in on the act and tank shocked 3 heavy bolter teams off the table. So the end result was a win for me by tabling him in turn 6.

The obliterators worked fairly well, while they didn't kill much they felt pretty threatening throughout the whole game. I had lost three of them by the end, but not one had died to enemy fire. No, my dreadnought had gone into a fire frenzy twice and killed three of them. The game helped me with some thoughts around what will we be in my tournament list (Obliterators) and what won't be (Dreadnoughts, of which I had thought about taking three).

Battle Report: Ogres Vs Dark Elves

I played two 1000 point games last week, both against the same player who was running Dark Elves. I can sum both games up in a short phrase: I got mashed.

Here's my list:

Brusier, Heavy Armour, Great Weapon, 2 Gnoblar Thiefstones, Fistful of Laurels
Buther, Bangstick and Dispell scroll

4 Ironguts, Standard with Look-out Gnoblar and a Bellower
4 Bulls, additional HW, Standard with Look-out Gnoblar and a Bellower

2 Leadbelchers
2 Leadbelchers

The Dark Elves were all mounted, led by a lvl 2 magic user. He had two units of Dark Ridesr, a unit of Cold One Knights and a repeater bolt thrower. In the first game he include a unit of Shades with an Assassin. For the second game he swapped the shades and assassins for a hero on a manticore (which was brutal).

Dark Elves are a tough list, they had a fair amount shooting and fast moving cavalry which meant it was hard for me to get into combat with them. I killed the Cold Ones in both games, since they were the only unit he had that really wanted to get close to me. The shades and assassins also got killed to some decent magic from the Butcher (bang stick and bone cruncher). Other than that he took me apart with shooting and magic.

With 8th Edition around the corner, I suppose alot of things I took away from these games will change in 8th. One thing that will be better is ranked Ogres, since they are monstrous infantry the second rank get up to 3 attacks each, plus the Stomp attack. So with 6 Ogres with no upgrades you're getting 18 S4 attacks, plus Bull Charge (at S5), plus the Stomp attacks. Add in the rank and the standard and you're potentially getting some decent combat res.

Probably what I will do is expand my Bulls to a 5 Ogre unit and add a character to it, or put it at 6, and throw 2 characters in with my Ironguts.

In the new White Dwarf, Phil Kelly has picked an Ogre list for 8th Edition. He's got a 6 wide horde unit of 15 Bulls, which is clearly going to be pretty nasty. The drawback is going to be that it's massive (so hard to manoever), it's 575 points, and Ld 7. I suppose if you stuck your general and BSB in there you'll be testing on his Ld with a re-roll but it's a lot of points to risk panicking of the board on turn 1.

What won't change in 8th is the Gut Magic miscast table will still be brutal.

Battle Report: Ogres Vs Bretonnians

Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates to the blog. Over the last few weeks, I've been working really hard so I haven't had much time for hobby. What I have had time for has been cleaning, assembling and priming models, none of which are very exciting blog topics.

Anyway, I did get a game in last night, my third game of Fantasy. I've only got 1000 points of Ogres, so a club mate was good enough to lend me some extra models. I grabbed some models from his case which I approximated to be around 2000 points (I think, it was in that area anyway), so this was going to be the largest game I've played on my own. I was lining up against Bretonnians (hi Ryan if you're reading this!), and I didn't have much chance of winning from the kick off, mainly because my opponent is a far better general than me, but the game was a good chance for me to learn some basic stuff and have a laugh.

So the result was pretty inevitable. The Bretonnian army wasn't the usual one you picture when you think of that army, as it had a load of peasant bowmen, a trebuchet, a couple of big infantry blocks, all support by a unit of Knights led the general and 3 Pegasus knights. I was worried about getting too shot up so I deployed behind some terrain for a good half of my army, which did protect me from shooting but prevented me from getting anywhere. I'd probably have been better just deploying the whole army infront of his gun line and running at him, and taking whatever he was throwing at me.

I have to say, in this game, I could not roll a dice to save my life. I rolled 2s and 3s to run away from combat, I miscast on two dice twice and then my Butcher's lost all their spells for the whole game, my Tyrant was held for two rounds of combat with a unit peasant bowmen as I could only kill one per turn. Rubbish. To be fair, the best luck in the world probably wouldn't have saved me from my tactical errors.

For my character loadout, I tried the Daemon killer scars on my Tyrant (meaning he caused terror), but it didn't pay off that well. On the Butchers, the bangstick was the only thing which actually managed to kill any knights so that worked well.

Good game though. Roll on 8th Edition, just placed my order from Maelstrom Games for it yesterday.

First time out for the Ogres

I took my newly assembled Ogres out to club night last for their first game. Now, I haven't played Fantasy since 2nd Edition so I wasn't exactly expecting to win. I'd put together a 1000 point list out of the Bruiser, Butcher, Bulls, Ironguts and Leadbelchers I'd made out of the battalion box.

I teamed up with another Ogre player who had about 1400 points worth of troops, and we squared off against Tomb Kings. I made some pretty elimentary mistakes thanks to my inexperience and lack of knowledge, but we actually ended up winning the game, surprisingly.

Having played 40K exclusively for so long, adjusting my mindset to a game where you don't have a 360 degree field of vision took me a couple of turns to get used to; along with getting used to a game which is won and lost in deployment and the movement phase but I enjoyed it alot, I'm really looking forward to 8th Edition.

Just playing this one game really helped me to develop ideas about what is good and bad in the list I'd built, and how Ogres are played, built and deployed. Probably over the next couple of months, I'll be adding a couple more units to bring me up to 1500 points. I'll probably pick up another box of Bulls and possibly a gorger or a giant (I love the giant model).

Wave Assault

It was Wednesday night club night last night, and I got a game in playing a mission from the new Battle Missions book last night. I had been a bit skeptical about the book before, but I was definitely wrong, and this game was really fun.

I was playing my usual Chaos Space Marines, and was playing against Orks. We rolled of the for mission at random and ended up with the Wave Assault mission, which is a Tyranid mission. The Orks took the role of the Tyranids as the attackers in waves, I acted in defense.

The mission is objective based, with 4 objectives on the board which are in fixed position dictated by the book, and the attackers (Nids normally, Orks in our case), come in three waves in each of the first three turns. The units in each wave are decided on by the player, but it's random as to which wave you get. The attacker does get to choose which board edges (their side, or either of the two short edges) they come on from and each wave comes on completely, ie. they aren't in reserve as such.

Tactically, it was a challenge to decide how to deploy, and I made an error at the start. I spread myself out a little too thinly to cover the objectives with my three scoring units. This meant when the second wave of 3 loads of Ork Trukk boyz and a Warboss came on in turn 2, they could get a charge in and destroy one of the units, and then go on to roll over another one, whilst the rest of my army was too far away to help.

For this mission, I should have castled up a little closer together and looked to defend three of the objectives and leave the other. That would have meant my harder hitting stuff would have been better able to support my scoring units. As it was I'd lost two of my scoring units by turn 3 which meant it was looking dicey.

Towards the end, I castled up a bit around the centre of the board where two objectives are close together and tried to protect my surviving scoring unit of Plague Marines but against the tide of remaining Orks. I was only holding on for a draw rather than a win. Had the game ended on turn 5, it would have been a draw as all the objectives were contested. Unfortunately it went to an extra turn, and my Vindicator which was contesting one of the objectives was destroyed, giving a win to the Orks.

I'm definitely looking forward to playing some more missions from the Battle Missions book.

Battle Report: Witch Hunters Vs Space Wolves

I got a game in on Thursday night, and for the first time I played my Witch Hunters army.

The list was a little cobbled together, and I managed to get 1200 points together:

Canoness, Jump Pack, Cloak of St Aspira, Blessed Weapon, Frag Grenades, Bolt Pistol, Litanies of Faith

Inquistor Lord, Divine Pronoucement, Psychic Hood, Bolter
3 Gun Servitors, Heavy Bolters
Acolyte
Chirugeon

Eversor Assasin

10 Battle Sisters, VSS with Book of St Lucius, Heavy Flamer, Meltagun, Rhino with Smoke Launchers
10 Battle Sisters, VSS with Book of St Lucius, Storm Bolter, Meltagun, Rhino with Smoke Launchers

9 Seraphim, VSS with melta bombs, 2 twin hand flamers

Exorcist

My opponent was playing Space Wolves, so it was always going to be a difficult battle. His list was something like:

15 Blood Claws, Wolf Guard with power fist, Wolf Priest

10 Grey Hunters, Wolf Guard with power fist and combi-melta, one melta gun, rhino
10 Grey Hunters, Wolf Guard with power fist and combi-melta, one melta gun, rhino

6 (might have been 5) Long Fangs with missile launchers
5 Long Fangs with heavy bolters

We played Annhilation with the Spearhead deployment. He chose his quarter and chose one with a lot of cover and set his Long Fangs up in a ruin where they could see pretty much the whole battle field. My quarter had very little cover in it.

Overall, I got absolutely smashed. My Canoness and Seraphim were good, they managed to tar pit his Blood Claws and a Grey Hunter squad for three turns before their martyrdom.

The Battle Sisters I just wasted on nothing really, and the Exorcist was totally useless thanks for diabolical rolling on my part, and some poor target selection.

The Inquisitor was not much use either, the lack of synergy between his psychic power (18" range) and the heavy bolters (36" range) was clear. Back to the drawing board with him, I need to balance my desire to have a cool Inquisitor character and his usefulness in games.

Don't get me wrong, it was a fun game and a learning experience. I didn't play that well, and had some poor rolls when I really needed them (Exorcist and a melta gun failing to even scratch the paint work on a Rhino for example), so the result was an absolute tonking.

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.

Battle Report: Chaos Vs Chaos

I played a game last night at the club, helping one of the other club members warm up for a forthcoming tournament. I've played him a few times before, and it's always a good game. He runs an all Nurgle Chaos Space Marines army which is pretty similar to my own.

It was an 1800 point battle, capture and control with the dawn of war setup.

His list:
DP, MoN, wings, warptime
DP, MoN, wings, Nurgle's Rot

4 Terminators, 3 combi-meltas, reaper AC, chainfist

7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, 2 melta guns, rhino
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, 2 melta guns, rhino
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, 2 plasma guns, rhino

3 Obliterators
Defiler with one extra CCW
Defiler with one extra CCW


My list was the usual mish mash of stuff, manly built around stuff I either like or find entertaining. As it was a larger points value I threw in a couple of other units than my usual list. I took:

DP, MoN, wings, Warptime
Sorcerer, MoS, Lash of Submission

Dreadnought with multi-melta
6 Chosen, Icon of Chaos Glory, 3 flamers, 2 meltas, rhino

7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, flamer, melta, rhino, personal icon
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, flamer, plasma gun, personal icon
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, flamer, plasma gun, personal icon
17 summoned lesser daemons

Defiler
Vindicator

I threw in the lesser daemons and lash sorcerer to try them out really and see how they did, as I'm thinking with using them in a tournament myself.

He won the roll to go first, and chose to go second. I deployed my lash sorcerer and a squad of PMs in cover on my objective. He deployed the Nurgle's Rot DP and some PM's on his objective.

Turn one I rolled everything else on (Chosen were outflanking), but there was no shooting as I couldn't see anything. He rolled on two rhinos with PM's and the obliterators in the centre along with the warptime DP, and the two Defilers opposite my objective. The obliterators started the game by blowing up the vindicator with their lascannons despite my smoke launchers.

Mid-turns, I started to come around from this set back. My Defiler dropped a battle cannon blast on the Obliterators and instant killed two of them, effectively neutralizing them in the game. My Chosen arrived on the flank near to his objective and summoned the lesser daemons, before jumping out and shooting a wound of a DP on his objective . My opponent responded by moving his Rhinos full of Plague Marines towards his objective in support. This was a mistake as effectively there was no pressure on my objective. In the centre my dreadnought and Defiler advanced towards his objective.

On the other flank, he killed 4 Plague Marines with a battle cannon shot, whilst my Daemon Prince ripped apart one of his Defilers. Meanwhile, the 4 terminators arrived to try and destroy my defiler with their combi-meltas in the rear of the thing. They failed and were destroyed in the following turn by the Plague Marines.

In the late game, my Daemon Prince rolled the other Defiler over and then moved on towards his objective, killing the last Obliterator on the way. My lesser daemons and Chosen were attacked by both his Daemon Princes. The lesser daemons showed their worth by killing one of the Daemon Princes (mainly due to him failing three out of four 3+ saves), and tieing the other one up for several turns. My Defiler got bogged down in combat with 2 units of Plague Marines, whilst he can kill them quite well, he only has a few attacks.

The game ended in a draw on turn 5. If it had gone to turn 6 I think I could have won it, as I had my Defiler, dread and Daemon Prince closing in on his objective. However, it was not to be and a throughly enjoyable game ended in a draw.

Looking at my list, I know well enough it's not exactly tuned to the highest degree, but it's got units I like. Of the two new units, the lash sorcerer was pretty useless as for most of the game their were no non-vehicle units in range so he was wasted. My lesser daemons did well, I think the daemon bomb of 17 turning up at once caused a big enough distraction to drag two very scary units into a protracted combat.

Apocalypse!

On Saturday, I played in York Garrison's Ten4Ten Apocalypse event and it was seriously fun. Just seeing that amount of miniatures and that amount of carnage made it for me. This event was the climax to a campaign which has been running each week for the last couple of months or so.

The teams were around 15K points per side, with 4 players on the Imperial team, and five on the Disorder team.

The Imperial team consisted of a mix of Space Marines, Grey Knights, Black Templars, Guard and Sisters of Battle. They also had 5 Baneblade chassis tanks, and 2 Masters of the Chapter formations.

The Disorder team consisted of a mix of Chaos Space Marines (that was me who acted as team captain), two Ork armies, Space Wolves (evil for this game), and Traitor Guard. We had a Doomsday device, a Baneblade variant and 2 Gargantuan Squiggoths.

We had an independent GM overseeing things, and the GM was in charge of objectives. He placed three fixed objectives on the table after deployment. Each side also had a number of secret objectives to complete. For our team, we had to destroy 3 Land Raiders, destroy a Baneblade in close combat, and take the entrance to a bunker which was on the table. For the Imperial team they had to destroy 3 Basilisks, kill a gargantuan squiggoth in assault, and take a landing pad in our deployment zone. Now, killing 3 Basilisks is easier than killing three Land Raiders, but bear in mind the Basilisks were right at the back of our deployment zone. Finally, each army had a general character which was an objective for one side or the other depending on whether it was alive or dead (both ended the game alive in fact). We used 4th Edition objective holding rules.

The final quirk was that there was a load of Inquisitor games running simulatenously. Depending on who won these, there would be bonus strategic assests awarded to either side. The GM was also free to award assests as required.

This was the table we played over, which was 3 6'x4' tables:



It was possibly a little small for the points we had, as some players arrived late after we'd already starting to setup, although the small size meant we were on top of each quickly so the carnage could begin as swiftly as possible.

We bid 18 minutes to setup, and ended up setting up first and assumed we'd get the first turn. Unfortunately, the Imperial side stole the initiative which left us on the Disorder side on the back foot given we looked to have a truck load less models on the table, and we had setup assuming we'd be going first. The table looked awesome after deployment:

A marine's eye view:



Ultramarines, Black Templar, Guard and Sisters hold the Imperial right flank, faced with the evil Space Wolves and my Chaos Space Marines. You can see the heavy concentration of Imperial armour as well. The bunker we were trying to take is at the end of the road. In the centre, a general BT/GK and Marine advance continues. There was a particularly brutal unit of 10 terminator with Lightning Claws, a terminator Librarian, terminator Chaplain, and a Chapter master here:


Orks and Grey Knights clash in the centre of the board during Disorder turn 1. On the left is a squiggoth with a Rhino hull howdah. The Grey Knights had a Captain in their unit, and destroyed the Orks and the squiggoth easily. The following turn they were annhilated by Orks, Guard and a Defiler:


One of the Imperial secret objectives was to destroy three Basiliks on the Disorder side, a task made much easier by the unexpected gain of the Flank March assest from the Inquisitor game. This meant we had a load of Grey Knights and BT terminators supported by Marine terminators suddenly appear at the rear of our army and minced the Basilisks. Later in the game, Orks led by Gazghkull Thraka, arrived and extracted their revenge.


The combat was fierce around the central objective of the board. This was about turn 3. The Imperials had clear control of this objective by the end of the game after I'd fed 7 Plague Marines, 5 Chaos terminators, a Chaos Sorcerer and 20 Lesser Daemons into the meat grinder.


One of the static objectives was only held by a handful of Grey Knights by the late turns of the game, who were forced to face their nemesis, a Daemon Prince of Nurgle supported by Ork boyz. This objective was finally held by Disorder despite some hairy moments in the last turn:


Serious carnage by the start of turn 5. The game ended after this turn:


Death on a massive scale. By the end of the game, I still had 2 Daemon Princes (one of whom was hiding as he was the general), my Doomsday device and one Plague Marine from a 3300 point army.

We used a number of amusing assests which the GM sprung on us. On the Disorder side we got the Rok 'em Boyz assest from Apocalypse Reloaded. This is where the Ork hulks in space starting throwing meteors down. These scatter D6 feet which was entertaining. They always scatter unless you roll a hit and a 1 which I managed to do with the first one (we got 3). They're a 10" balst destroyer hit when they land. One took a structure point off an Imperial super heavy, one destroyed a Land Raider, a squiggoth, some other infantry, and the last one killed 12 of my newly arrived Plague Marines.

The Doomsday device proved pretty amusing as well, it was a turn highlight to see what it would do. I activated it first turn (making an outrageous demand of course), and then rolled a 6 which meant it started firing straight away. Over 5 turns I got 4 Apocalyptic Barrage(4), S8, AP3 shots and 4 S10, AP1 10" blasts. I could have done with it going super nova towards the end of the game as the only things near it were Imperials. For some reason, no one shot at the thing for the whole game despite it being a very obvious target.

Anyway, the final result was a draw as we ran out of time at the end of turn 5. Had some dice rolls not gone our way, the Imperials would have won it at the end, and a sixth turn would have seen them take it I think. We both completed two of our secret objectives (both the destroying/killing things ones), and held one static objective each.

The overall campain result was a victory for the forces of Disorder, as we held more planets than the Imperials.

I'll probably post some more things I learnt from the game later in the week.

Pure Fun Battle

I played a couple of quick 750 point games this past week, which were just intended to be pure fun games. My opponent had lent his army to someone else who just wanted to try out 40K, so he just pulled out the only stuff he had left in his army case which turned out to be Marneus Calgar and 10 Terminators including a sergeant, an assault cannon and a heavy flamer. I was short of an opponent so he agreed to play me with these models.

I quickly toted up 750 points of Nurgle Chaos Space Marines, and it was probably the list I'd take regardless of the opponent:

Daemon Prince, Wings, MoN, Warptime
7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with a power fist, one melta gun, one flamer
7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with a power fist, one melta gun, one plasma gun
Vindicator

There was no mission, we just decided to run eat other and beat each other to a bloody pulp until there was only one of us left standing.

We actually played through the game twice. In game one, the Vindicator wore down the approaching marines, before they got into assault. Once there the daemon prince and Calgar slugged it out until Calgar was dead.

Second run through, I played more aggresively and got a second turn charge in on the terminators with my flying Daemon Prince who subsequently died (power fists make him cry). Calgar managed to advance close to me and destroy a Plague Marine squad before the other squad gunned him down.

A couple of fun throw away games, and we had a good laugh playing them at some epic luck like Calgar making three invulnerable saves in one throw, and epic fail such as Calgar's orbital bombardment scattering 10" of my Vindicator, hitting two Plague Marines and then rolling double one to wound.


Apocalypse prep has slowed over the last few days, as I'm having a new kitchen fitted so I've been staying with my in-laws and therefore away from my minis. I've done most of the GS on my new Daemon Prince, and he's looking good. Unfortunately, the pinning on his waist is poor and so I need to redo that.

Preparing for an Apocalypse

We're playing a campaign currently on club nights, and I got my first game in last night as part of it. It's a fairly simple structure, with two teams "Good" (Imperial, Eldar) Vs "Evil" (Chaos, Orks, Necrons etc). The Imperial hold a number of planets in one sector, and the evil team is fighting to wrest control from them. Each planet has a points value according to it's value, so a forge world might be 12000 points, but a barren moon might be 2000. The points value is how many points of games the evil team needs to win to take control of the planet, so the barren moon could be capture in 1 2000 point game, or 4 500 point games. After each game, your units can get extra skills, experience provided they lived. That's the system, but there's also a Battlefleet Gothic portion as well, where BFG fleets battle for control of the space around a planet.

In last nights match-up, I played 1500 points of Chaos Space Marines, and took on 3 young players who had 500 points each which was a mixture of Imperial Guard and Space Marines. The mission was capture and control. Setup was pitched battle, and the Imperial side setup first. I was feeling relatively confident, there was nothing in the opposing force that was worrying me to much, with the exception of some Space Marine terminators and some scouts with sniper rifles and Telion high up on a building (power fists and rending weapons make Plague Marines cry).

Now this match is part of the campaign, and last week the evil team had taken the first planet and rolled onto invading the next one. However, the BFG battle between Chaos and Imperial was still raging, so the Imperials still held the space around the planet. This doesn't stop the invasion but it means the Imperial got a number of orbital lance strikes to use, 6 in total to spread between all the tables. These things are S9 AP2 ordnance barrages. I'd forgotten about this, and of course, I setup packed in behind cover. Before the game even starts, the orbital barrage arrives and hits my packed in troops, and naturally doesn't scatter, killing an entire squad of Plague Marines before the game even starts!

As you might expect, this put me on the back foot from the kick off, and as I'd declared my Chosen were outflanking I was starting the game almost 500 points down on my opponents. Fortunately, I managed to pull a draw out of the bag, with my objective firmly controlled by a Plague Marine squad and a unit of Catachans holding the opposing objective having shot my Daemon Prince's last wound away who had been contesting it. My Chosen didn't arrived until turn 4, and the game ended on turn 5 as we ran out of time. Possibly had we gone to 6 or 7 turns I could have got them as far as the opposing objective and killed the Catachans around it, but it ended in a draw.

Anyway, the climax of the campaign is an Apocalypse battle in November. Likely this will be more than one Apocalypse battle rather than one large one, so I need to get prepared for this. There will be no minimum force size requirement I wouldn't have thought, but I would like to get my Chaos army up to the 3000 point Apocalypse minimum. Currently, I have just over 2000 points built and painted, and I have a Daemon Prince and at least 2 more Plague Marines squads to give me another 600 points or so. I'll probably try and get either another PM squad or some obliterators, or maybe some lesser daemon to found it up to 3000 points. Once I'm there I'd ideally like to have a Super Heavy, ie a Plague Reaper but this might be just to many minis in too little time to get painted. I've just been flicking through the Apocalypse Data sheets on the GW website, and I'd forgotten all about the fairly recent Doomsday super heavy. I could probably make something suitably Nurgly for this, mwahahahahaha!

So here's the list of units that need building:

-Daemon Prince
-2 Plague Marine squads
-Doomsday Device

...and the units that need buying:
-More Plague Marines
-Obliterators?
-Lesser Daemons (I'm going to use zombies for these)
-Plague Reaper

Alot to do, wish me luck!

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Orks

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, I've been really busy with work and stuff. In fact, I've only managed 30 minutes of painting in the last ten days. I did get a couple of games of Last Night on Earth with my brother-in-law which was fun, and last night was regular club night.

I got a 1500 point game in against an Ork player. My list was my current Nurgle Chaos list. My opponent was running an Ork horde list, which isn't a particularly good match up for a small elite all Nurgle force. His list was something along the lines of:

Warboss with big choppa, with 5 Nobz in a trukk
Weirdboy
10 Tankbustas with a couple of bomb squigs
5 Burnas
10 including a Nob with a power klaw Sluggas in a trukk
20 including a Nob with a power klaw Shoota boyz
20 including a Nob with a power klaw Slugga boyz
15 including a Nob with a power klaw Slugga boyz
3 Deffkoptas
3 Warbikes
Squiggoth which was carrying the tankbustas. This could have been a baby Squiggoth.
2 Deff Dreds

As you can see, he was running a squiggoth (just a little one) using Forge World rules which was fun, and it was only a friendly game so I was happy to let him (the squiggoth isn't on the picture below, there wasn't an icon for it in Vassal).

The mission was a straightforward annihilation with the spearhead deployment. I opted to go second. At deployment, things looked something like this:

I figured that to deal with this many Orks I was going to have to use the two large blast templates from the Defiler and the Vindicator to take out as many as could before they close to me, as well as denying as many kill points as possible. I also wanted to concentrate on some of the smaller units which would be easy to take down (like the bikes, the burnas, the Deff Dreads) rather than trying to wear down the big units of Boyz. As usual, I held my Chosen in reserve to outflank.

I setup well back in my table quarter to make the Orks cross the table in front of my big guns. My opponent setup as close a possible to me ready to get to grips with me.

Early Turns: The Orks rushed towards my lines, and one of the trukks sped into the top right corner of the map. My first round of shooting saw shots from the Vindicator and Defiler scatter, and killed 14 Orks from two of the mobs. The rest of ones of those squads thought better of the battle and legged it off the table. My Daemon Prince saw the chance of a kill point and crushed the trukk, forcing the boyz out and killing a couple in the wreckage. The Orks responded by rushing the Daemon with boyz from the trukk, the Warboss and his nobz, killing him. Everyone else advanced, with the warbikes charging the vindicator and destroying it.
My Chosen arrived from the flanks, close to the Warboss and blew up a trukk from the safety of the rhino. My Chaos dreadnought killed the warbikes, avenging the death of the Vindicator. Things looked pretty evenly balanced in these early turned.

Mid-game: The Warboss and Nobz saw the chance of a kill point and destroyed the Chosen Rhino, killing two of the occupants in the resulting explosion. The Chosen responded by repositioning themselves to maximize their three flamers, fired on the Nobz and Warboss, killing all of them. At the bottom centre of the board, one of the Deff Dread got into combat with the Defiler, a combat which lasted three turns and saw the Defiler just limp out the winner.
My dreadnought managed to stay sane through the whole game, and spent a couple of turns killing first the tank bustas, and then the deffkoptas who charged it in close combat.

Late turns: The shootas, the remains of a slugga squad, a deff dread and the wierdboy got into assault with a Plague Marine squad which they took two turns to finish off. Once this was done, the remaining half dozen sluggas boyz got shot to pieces by the Plague Marines in the rhino. This gave me enough time to kill the squiggoth with a Plague Marine squad and the Dreadnought. The dreadnought rounded off a storming game for him by killing the remaining burna boyz. Up in the top corner, the Chosen were defeated in combat and broke towards my table edge.

The game ended on turn 5 with a win for me. I'd scored 9 kill points to me opponents 5.

Overall, it was a fun game. My HQ, elites and heavy support saw most of the action, scoring 7 of my 9 kill points. They really blunted my opponents attack, so that by the time he got to my troop choices (which are tough in themselves), I'd taked the sting out of his attack. My Chosen proved their value yet again, taking 3 kill points themselves. The dreadnought worked well in this game as well, as he stayed sane for the whole game making him a cheap and versatile unit.

Against a big horde like this, target selection was important as there were a number of units which were softer and easier to take out. Had he been running a large scary unit (like Nob bikerz, or he'd beefed up his Nob squad a bit more), this would have been much more of a distraction to me, as I know I'd have been tempted to pump shots into a unit like that which was tough to kill.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Orks

I had another fun game this week, this time taking on Orks in a 1500 point battle. Last time I played this army (albeit at a smaller points level) I got stomped flat, but I'd taken some lessons from that encounter.

The mission was seize ground with 4 objectives, with a spearhead deployment.

My list was my current one:
HQ: Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime (175)
Elites: Dreadnought with multi-melta (100)
Elites: 7 Chosen, Icon of Nurgle, 3 flamers, 2 melta guns, rhino (246)

Troops: 7 Plague Marines inc Aspiring Champion with power fist, meltagun, flamer, rhino (251)
Troops: 7 Plague Marines inc Aspiring Champion with power fist, meltagun, plasma gun (226)
Troops: 7 Plague Marines inc Aspiring Champion with power fist, meltagun, plasma gun (226)

Heavy Support: Defiler (150)
Heavy Support: Vindicator (125)
Total: 1499

The Ork list was roughly:
Ghazghkull Thraka accompanied by 4 Meganobs in a trukk
5 Nobz in a trukk
Big Mek with a Shokk Attack gun
20 Boyz including a big shoota
20 Boyz including a rokkit launcher
3 Deffkoptas
Zagstruck and 5 Storm Boyz
1 Battlewagon
1 Deff Dread

The Orks won the roll to go first and elected to do so. The objectives were close to each baseline. I'd placed mine as close together as possible so I could have units on both objectives supporting each other. I also deployed them a little more forward than I have previously (took a tip from Goatboy talking on 40K Radio a few weeks back) and placed them where I wanted my units to move to rather than where I wanted them to start. The other two were in the Ork deployment zone at opposite sides of that zone.

He deployed a unit of Boyz, the Battlewagon and the Deff Dred close to one objective. The second unit of Boyz and the Shokk Attack Gun were defending the other objective, with the Deffkoptas and two trukks in front of them ready to advance.

My deployment was as close to the edge of my deployment zone as I could and in cover, ready to advance on the two objectives I'd placed. I actually won the roll to steal the initative, and I elected to take it. I'd read the advice of Fritz at Way of Saim-Hann that you're better going second on objective based games and I absolutley agree, but there was so many Orks bunched up together I couldn't resit going first with the intention of dropping large blasts on them from my Vindicator and Defiler. I'd also hoped to pop Ghazghkull's truk, forcing him to walk across the table with his slow and purposeful Meganobz.

Early turns: My Vindicator and Defiler moved up to fire on the big cluster of Boyz, Deffkoptas and trukks. Due to scatter issues, and my Vindicator being out of range of the trukks and so having to fire at the Deffkoptas, I managed to kill two Deffkoptas and 6 or so Boyz, but still not too shabby. My Plague Marines moved up to take the two objectives I'd placed, and they spent the rest of the game getting there and then defending them.
As I'd failed to pop Ghazghkull's trukk, it sped forward. It's occupants jumped out and proceeded to attack my Vindicator, immoblizing it and destroying its Demolisher cannon. In my subsequent turn, the Defiler charged Ghazghkull and his Mega Nobz, and over the next 4 turns destroyed the Mega Nobz and locked Ghazghkull in combat. My opponent was rolling pretty badly, so my Defiler was fortunate enough to last that long. By the time this was over Ghazghkull was too far away to do anything more (and I'd destroyed his trukk by then).

Mid-Game: The Boyz and Battlewagon heading towards my left flank rolled forward a bit but weren't doing much, I guess they were sticking around to hold the objective at the end. My Chosen turned up on turn 3 and rocked yet again. They opened by wrecking the Battlewagon from the relative safety of the Rhino. Next turn, they blew up the Deff Dread, leaving that flank protected only by one mob of Boyz.
In the centre, the other trukk with the Nobz in it attempted to ram my dreadnought (a bad idea in my opinion). The dread performed a death or glory attack and destroy the trukk forcing the Nobz out. In my turn, my Daemon Prince and Dreadnought ripped them apart, killing two, reducing the others to one wound each and routing them.

End-game: My Chosen jumped out of their rhino and destroyed about 15 Boyz with their flamers, followed by the remainder of the squad in the following turn. His Storm Boyz eventually turned up, but got turned over in assault by some nearby Plague Marines. In the centre, my dreadnought went into a blood frenzy, and charged and destroyed the last deffkopta. In the final turn my Chosen ran over to the objective closest to them (one of the two in the Ork deployment quarter), but not being troops they couldn't hold it anyway but it felt staisfying. The final tally was I held two objectives to his one.

A good game. I had some pretty good luck, and my opponent seemed to be rolling really badly. Gazghkull was well contained by the Defiler and should have destroyed him quickly, with his huge number of attacks, high WS and S10 but it took way too many turns.

The Chosen were awesome again in this battle, I would seriously consider a second squad of these in a future list.

Battle Report: New Units

I haven't played any Warhammer 40K for about four weeks, as I've been busy at work and some other stuff. This week though, Wednesday to be exact, I did manage to get along to my local club. I've only missed three weeks, but I felt like a total stranger, the club has absolultey exploded in size in that time, which is really great. There was about 8 tables of 40K running, two Fantasy, a Necromunda campaign and quite a few people painting. They've even expanded into a second room. Anyway, all good stuff. I got a game in against a guy I played on my very first visit (on that first visit, there was one 40K table, one Fantasy a game of Dark Heresy on) who is a great opponent and it was a really fun game.

I'm not going to go into detail much on the battle, just a quick summary, as I want to talk about a couple of new units. It was Annhilation with Dawn of War setup. My list was my all new one with my Nurgle Chosen and Dreadnought. He plays Nurgle CSM's as well, with his list featuring, amongst other things two Land Raiders carrying a squad of terminators and a squad of Bezerkers. It was a really good game and in the end I lost with five kill points to his six.

So this was the first outing for two new units in this list: Chosen and a Dreadnought. I wanted to cover a little bit how I felt each unit did in this game.

Chosen: Awesome. Pure awesome. My opponent deployed two Land Raiders on his base line close to one table edge. I outflanked with my Chosen, who are in a rhino, have an Icon of Nurgle, 3 flamers and two meltaguns. They came in on exactly the side I wanted them, and then immobilized and exploded a Land Raider. The resulting explosion killed a Bezerker who was in the Land Raider. They followed this up by destroying the rest of the Khorne Bezerkers (8 in total) and two terminators. They almost popped the second Land Raider in turn 7 but I missed with the roll. Had they done this, the game would have been a draw. I would consider a second unit of these.

Dreadnought: This unit turned out to be more fun than effective. The first two turns he acted normally, but turn 3 he went into a blood frenzy and charged out of the cover he was in. Next turn he blood frenzied again, only this time my opponents Daemon Prince had moved much closer and proved to be in range (the Dreadnought is fleet when he is blood frenzied). He took a wound from the daemon prince and tied it up for a turn. All in all, he was fun, and I definitely run him again.

Naturally, I'm already planning further tweaks to the list, but I want at least five games with this list before any changes happen.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Orks

Just a quick summary of a battle I fought last night. I had been hoping to use my new list but my opponent only had 1000 points of Orks with him, so I had to drop down a little.

My hastily drawn up list:
Daemon Prince, Wings, Mark of Nurgle, Warptime
7 Plague Marines, Champion with power fist, flamer, meltagun, rhino
7 Plague Marines, Champion with power fist, plasma gun, meltagun
7 Plague Marines, Champion with power fist, plasma gun, meltagun
Vindicator

..and my opponent:
Ghazghkull Thraka
Warboss with power klaw
4 Meganobs with power klaws
6 Nobz with big choppas
2 Trukks
1 Deff Dred
2 Killa Kans

This was a seize ground mission with the dawn of war setup.

The Ork list was brutally hard to kill. He rushed me with the trukk with the warboss and nobz in it, and destroyed my Rhino on turn one. I responded by bringing in all my Plague Marines and shooting 3 squads of them at them. This failed to kill them all, partly as he claimed a 5+ Inv save on them which looking again at his list (and the Ork codex) he shouldn't have had as he didn't have a painboy to give them Cybork bodies. I rushed them in assault and over the next couple of turns reduced them to one Nob and the warboss before my PMs died. My daemon prince finished them off.

Meanwhile, Ghazghkull and his meganobz rushed my Vindicator (which had blown up a trukk earlier). I backed off my two PM squads from them, knowing I had more chance of shooting them to pieces than in assault, and I was also hoping to get on an objective and hold it by turn 5. My shooting took about one Nob and they charged a PM squad. My Daemon Prince charged them in return. The Orks then slew the Plague Marines and the Daemon Prince, though Gazghull was down to one wound. My final Plague Marine squad was eventually caught and killed by the nobz and killa kans.

So the result was a loss for me. I did use some decent tactics, like I kept my units close together to support each other. Had I taken out the first Nob unit quicker (for example, had they not grown a mysterious Invulnerable save), I would have been in a stronger position to receive the attack of Ghazghkull and his Nobz. Still, lessons were learnt.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines/Eldar Vs Dark Angels

After 10 days without hobby and without internet access whilst I was on holiday, it was good last night to get in a game.

This one was an unusual team up (forced on us by how many models people had bought): 500 points each of CSMs and Eldar Vs 1000 points of Dark Angels. This meant it was two players against one player.

My list was my normal 500 point list:
Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime
6 Plague Marines, 2 melta guns, rhino with a dozer blade
Vindicator

...and my team mate:
Farseer with Doom and Guide
10 Dire Avengers with Exarch and Blade Storm in a wave serpent
Falcon

Our opponent:
Terminator Librarian
5 Deathwing Terminators
10 Tactical marines with missle launcher and plasma gun
10 Tactical marines with missle launcher and plasma gun
10 (or so) Veteran Dark Angels.

The mission was seize ground with 4 objectives using the Dawn of War setup.

Early turns:
The Dark Angels looked to have the advantage early on. CSM and Eldar shooting was ineffective and my Daemon Prince failed to turn up from deep strike. The Deathwing terminators struck close to the vindiciator but only managed to shake the crew. In return, all 5 got blade stormed to death by the Dire Avengers. My Plague Marines parked up on an objective to hold it but the Dark Angels clearly had strength in numbers.

Later turns:
The Dark Angels veterans destroyed the Plague Marines and Vindicator in close combat, leaving us with only one remaining troop choice. My rhino tank shocked them and luckily they broke. The Dire Avengers flew across the board in the wave serpent and destroyed the remains of a combat squad who were holding the DA's only objective. My Daemon Prince decided to turn up on turn 4 and just made it into close combat with 9 Space Marines, killing 5 in the first round and the remaining ones in the following turn. The game ended on turn 5 with us holding 1 objective to the Dark Angels none.

This was a really good game which I enjoyed. We had a good laugh at various points, alot of which was due to my appalling dice rolling. It's always easy to lament bad luck in battle as the bad luck sticks out and the good luck doesn't, but my rolling was atrocious throughout. For example:
-My Daemon Prince failed to turn up until turn 4, scattered so far he nearly went off the board, and then rolled really poorly in assault (3+ to hit on 5 dice, result was one hit). Luckily warptime gave me a reroll, but still I only hit 4 times.
-My vindicator was unlucky as well. The first turn the scatter was so large it missed everything, second turn it was shaken, third turn it hit 6 marines in area terrain and killed 1 (statistically I should have killed 2.46 marines), and then got destroyed on turn 4.


Hobby projects over the next week or so are to finish my Chosen (just need basing and some detail) and then start on a Battle Sister squad.

Battle Report: Two 500 point games

Played two quick 500 points games last night, as part of the doubles tournament. My team mate couldn't make it, so I played solo in both games (against a single opponent though).

My list in both games was:
Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime
6 Plague Marines, 2 melta guns, rhino with a dozer blade
Vindicator

Both games were on the same 4x4 tables, just flipped edges in the two games.

Battle 1: Chaos Space Marines Vs Space Marines
So this one turned out to be brutal, and not in a good way for me... This was annhiliation with the pitched battle setup.

My opponents list:
Chaplain
5 Scouts with sniper rifles
5 Scouts with bolt pistols and CCW
Land Raider

At the kick off, the only thing I was worried about was the Land Raider, so I deployed away from it (the Chaplain and scouts with bolt pistols were embarked). His scouts with sniper rifles infiltrated and deployed high up on some terrain with LoS to pretty much the whole table. Here's how we looked at deployment:



He got first turn, and rumbled the Land Raider forward and blew the twin linked bolter off my Rhino. In my turn, my DP flew forward to try and move round the big ruin in front, followed by the Rhino. I was aiming (wrongly I think) to get within 18" of the Land Raider without getting too badly shot up so my DP could charge it. He took off from the ruins he was in, failed his dangerous terrain test and took a wound... In keeping with this, my vindicator turned to be just out of range of the Land Raider.

In his turn, the Land Raider advanced but its shooting was ineffective, whilst the scouts sniper rifles took another wound off the DP. In my turn the DP and Rhino advance around the back of the ruin. We looked something like this at this point:



My vindicator fired at the Land Raider, I was hopeful of getting some damage on it. In keeping with my luck in the previous turn, it got an 11" scatter and missed.

In the following turn, the Land Raider shook the Vindicator, and the scouts killed the Daemon Prince thanks to their rending sniper rifles. This was not going well for me...

I changed my plan here and thought I'd try and advance on the LR to melta gun it out of the fire points, so I turned my rhino around. He responded by blowing up my Vindicator, and then in the following turn blew up my rhino, killing a Plague Marine in the explosion. His Chaplain and Scouts jumped out of the LR, and my remaining PMs moved into the ruins. Over the next couple of turns the PMs picked off a scout with shooting and lost a model to the sniper rifle scouts. Eventually I got a charge into the Chaplain and scouts and killed one, but by the end of turn 7 I was down to one model.

A thorough thrashing for me. I played indecisively and not aggresively enough and it cost me. I should have rushed the LR with my Rhino, popped smoke, crossed my fingers and gone for the meltagun shot it.

Battle 2: Chaos Space Marines Vs Daemons
This second battle was capture and control (pretty much irrelevant at 500 points when everyone just tries to kill each other) with the dawn of war setup. I went second. The table was the same as battle one, we just played on the other two edges.

My opponents list was:
Skulltaker
10 Bloodletters
Soulgrinder with all the upgrades (its a new model for him so he's trying them all)

I deployed just my PMs in the Rhino and parked up near my objective and held my DP in reserve so I could react to any deep striking daemon surprises. On his first turn he dropped in his Soulgrinder, who then used phelgm on my Rhino (fortunately is was out of tongue range), which shook the crew. In my turn, I bought on my vindicator opposite his Soulgrinder, and then I destroyed it with the demolisher cannon. A good start for me. On his second turn Skulltaker and Bloodletters arrived and scattered closer to my Rhino. They then ran to spread out a bit. In return my vindicator and rhino killed 3 of them (I hit alot more but he made a load of saves), and my DP arrived behind his daemons.

Skulltaker and his crew then turned around and charged the Daemon Prince. The rest of the game was a combat between daemons and the daemon prince. It ended with the Daemon Prince killing a load of Bloodletters and then finally killing Skulltaker, but not before Skulltaker took the Daemon Prince's last wound off him. This ended with 3 Bloodletters facing off against two tanks they couldn't hurt, so a victory for me.