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So now that the holidays are officially here, a few of my mates and I got together this week to play a few 1000pt games in the lead up to our yearly apocalypse game that includes our extended group of mates. This week I played 3 games, a 2 round match against Custodes and a game against Astra Militarium. The first evening was against my best mate and arch rival in all things gaming. He left Admech on the shelf (thankfully) and it became a showdown, Gold Vs Silver. My list was as follows: An ever evolving list that I call my all comers list at 1000 pts. The Adeptus Custodes: The Grey Knights battle had truly begun when we were rolling for first turn, and I successfully increased my chances of winning up from 27% to a whopping 49% chance if I played well, after claiming first turn! Hazzah! with 4 objectives up for grabs and a deployment of short edge to short edge, the board was long and narrow, with a fantastic set up of cover for both armies, I knew how tough the boys in gold truly were with their stat lines and I braced myself with my movement, I secured my home objective and moved half my army towards the 2nd objective. A poorly positioned Voldus nice and close to his body guard unit left him exposed and the following turn 1 from the custodes seen his warlord successfully charge him turn one. I was setting up screens and making calculating distances from his bikes, around terrain, not remembering his bikes could fly... Anyway, I managed to kill a bike with my dreadnoughts plasma cannon, and did 2 wounds to another bike with my razorback. Not bad for it's second outing. So a turn 1 custodes charge from his warlord into Voldus made me clench my cheeks and hold my breath. He zipped onto a second objective with his bikes, the one I was going for and held is back one with the 3 sagittarum guard. He really did well at pinning into my sort of half of the board, and I had to devote a lot of resources into his warlord. He had taken cut off the head secondary, that awarded more points the quicker he killed my warlord. 5 wounds later and Voldus was barely hanging on. I breathed a sigh of relief that he had weathered the ferocious fury of the shield captain and managed to survive another day. My second turn seen me gate Voldus out of combat and hid him away, limping on 1 wound, 5 termies the librarian and the 5 strike marines charged his captain, and I needed to kill him. My other 5 termies charges his bikes holding my second objective and the battle of minds begun. His captain tanked 5 of 6 mortal wound put onto him in a brilliant show of mental strength, much to my dismay. However I channeled my remaining psychic fury into my force halberds and swiftly cut of the brutes head. A cheeky interrupt of combat saw his bikes kill 4 of 5 termies in the ensuing combat, I couldn't believe it. I was left stunned and lost for words. A turn 2 deep strike with his dreadnought and a nasty stratagem of 3D6 rerolling charge, pick the highest seen his dreadnought set his eyes on my own dreadnought, but alas fate decided to laugh and he failed both attempts, statistical rarity. As that should of been in like flynn. 9" charge 3D6 pick the highest rerollable. Nasty! After having survived another turn, it was to know avail. My turn 3 was dismal and lackluster, I couldn't catch back up on primaries and my secondary's were measly. His turn 3 was a wrap up and a good game. But was fun none the less, as we both just wanted melee combat. A big relief from his oppressive bots. I quickly threw my glove down and asked for a rematch, already late into the night, he agreed and we began a second game. A big roll of a 6 gave me first turn and my chances again increased already. However, I didn't move at all, Just with the razorback I think, in my opening salvo of shooting, I killed two bikes with the dreadnoughts guns.. And its at this point, I'll give a shoutout to overcharging heavy plasma cannons, I absolutely LOVE them. They are half the price of the lascannon and gosh do they take the stress out of shooting. I've come away from every phase of shooting not wanting to smash my damn minis after failing with a 40pt lascannon. Anyway, back to business, I killed 2 bikes and called it a turn. He moved his bikes aggressively to me and footslogged his way down the other flank with his dreadnought and melee guard. Not much shooting happened and that was that. My turn 2, knowing I needed to do something drastic otherwise it would be a repeat of game 1 where I just get pinned to my deployment, and out scored, I decided to gate a unit of terminators into his backfield, 9" away from his sagittarum guard with the bolters, camping his home objective. A successful charge later and a handy fury of the first stratagem seeing me hitting on 2's I made quick work of the custodes and claimed that objective. This in turn, caused a rather unexpected move on the custodes second turn, he turned his bikes around and went back and charged the termies holding his home objective. Essentially splitting his forces across the whole table. He denied my warp shaping and I couldn't change from Tide of shadows to escalation, so here I was stuck. Much to both our surprises later in the fight phase. I mentally assaulted his dreadnought with the librarian, Voldus, 5 termies and not needing to cast atral aim, the dreadnought chipped in too. Now wounded, the dreadnought and his mighty heavy plasma and missile launcher rained down death upon him and destroyed the contemptor dreadnought. That was a surprise, but gosh, flat 3 damage is just great to see. No more stress. Even if I hit once, no more do I have to spend CP to reroll a 1 for my damage roll on a 40pt lascannon. My heroes charged his foot custodes with their body guard and a great clash of halberds followed. I think I killed 2 or 3 of the 4 models. His following turn 2, he charged my 5 termies holding his backfield with his captain and other biker. Knowing they were going to die, my brave terminators fought bravely, and with heavy cover, a defensible position and still being in the tide of shadows, they gained hope and nice +1 to their saves in melee combat, so as deadly as the charge was and even after the misrecordia's were swung, I had 1 brave justicar still standing. Defying death till the last. This in turn, left him stuck in combat and he couldn't consolidate back towards the centre. My turn 3 seen me wrap up the fight with Voldus and with him only having a captain and a bike remaining, we played it out, but the boys in gold were all dead by the end of round 3. Gold vs Silver is tied 1 = 1. What a great battle, and I walked away thinking man, tide of shadows actually saved my bacon. Although 2 wound smites really did push through in most of the rounds, against the toughness 5, 4++ invul saves of the custodes. They are so resilient and so strong. They just lack board presence and bodies. I imagine that both games could of looked drastically worse for me had he gone first both times and pinned me in. Both my mate and I have really put hard work into creating a ton epic looking terrain, for our games. With 2 fully painted armies, fully painted detailed terrain from GW looks epic. Alas I didn't take pics, but moving forward I should. My mate's army is superb. And the battlefields we create are fantastic! It's a joy to play and really is the icing on top of the cake. As much as the game itself. The second night I played another mate who brought Astra Militarium. Which in 9th edition, I haven't yet played. So a mechanised list with some heavy artillery was going to be a challenge for me. My list for this game was a bit different, as I needed something stronger to open up his tank hulls. I took another hammer on my Librarian and an NDK, with 2 guns and a sword to chop through tanks. (I already thought of a tweak here while discussing the lists after the game) And after play testing a lot of things, I can really see where points vs efficiency is for GK. I'll write up the next report tomorrow. Watch this space! Cheers for reading!

Seems high time to revive "Nico's Treatise on Bayonet Stabbing" as I venture into 8th edition and rekindle by love affair with Imperial Guard. Today I fought my first battle of 8th. It was definitely a learning experience. I made many tactical errors and also got schooled hard on the new capabilities of various Eldar new abilities as I fought my friend who primarily plays Eldar. I also lost my half-written battle report to the warp! So I'm going to do more of a summary second time around and no fluffy narrative stuff -- it was pretty one-sided anyway and not really worthy of a full report. Here's a quick rundown of the forces (NB my force was basically me throwing together every painted IG model I own, and going all-out on wargear to get up to 1500 points, so my non-optimized list versus a very optimized list honed over about a dozen 8th edition games tells part of the story of the beat-down I received): EMPEROR'S OWN VALKAN RIFLES 1) Battalion Detachment Company Commander, power sword, plasma pistol Company Commander, power sword, laspistol Commissar, power sword, bolt pistol Ministorum Priest, power sword Infantry Squad, flamer Infantry Squad, meltagun Scions (10), meltagun x2, flamer Chimera - HFx2 Chimera - ML, HF Ratlings (5) 2) Spearhead Detachment Tank Commander - Vanquisher, lascannon, multimelta x2 Leman Russ Battle tank - heavy flamer Leman Russ Battle tank - heavy flamer Hydra - heavy flamer [7 Command Points] AELDARI XENOS SCUM Farseer with Ghost Helm (and probably other gear) 10 Rangers 8 Dire Avengers 9 Shining Spears 6 Howling Banshees 5 Fire Dragons Wave Serpent w/ 2x lance Wave Serpent w/ 2x lance Night Spinner [4 Command Points] We forgot to give our army leaders warlord traits (just realized this as writing)! We did Eternal War Retreival Mission and I chose old school long table edge deployment: The lasgun ammo tin is a proxy for my second Chimera which I accidentally left at home. Otherwise you've got tanks to the left, chimerae in the middle, platoon holding an objective/ruins, Hydra alone to the right (big mistake -- I should have deployed it last with a good range of fire and away from those Shining Spears who are gods in 8th edition, whereas they weren't so much of a much in 7th and I therefore woefully underestimated them). He has Wave serpents in the middle, and to my right the Night Spinner and the Shining Spears. We then deployed the "infltrators": Basically, Ratlings with a commanding view from atop the ruins left of centre and his Rangers in the ruins in front of his Serpents. I'm going to hit post now so I don't lose what I've written and do the game in the next post ...