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I've started a new season of Crusades in various groups and for the Custodes, my Crusade is inspired by the Warders of the Vaults of Rython from the Heresy era. Current Roster is: Shield Captain - From the Hall of Armouries Knight-Centura - Raptor Blade Enhancement Custodian Guard Squad (5-man) Allarus Custodian Squad (3-man) Telemon Heavy Dreadnought Vigilator Squad (10 man) Most of the list will be filled out with the rest of the Forge World models that I have, Caladius, Achillus, Galatus, Pallas, Sagittarum, and Venatari. This thread is going to serve two purposes, Army display (I'll get pictures of that I have so far later today), and battle reports through the crusade.

Over the past weekend I played in the last 9th edition major tournament in the area. Here is a pic of my army. I don’t have picks of the first round but I won with 87 points.

This is again from a while back, but my local club had an apoc game in May bank holiday which was great fun. This was a custom mission designed by myself to try and force a narrow frontage with waves of models coming at one another, but ended up a bit one sided. We went for a long, narrow table with a depth of deployment, to give long raged guns some chance to shine also (how often do fellblades get to use their 120"range?). Two players wanted to get away quickly, but hoped to have a smaller gmae that would still impact the larger game, so I came up with a custom mission: Explosive Payload. This was fought between Death Guard (traitor) and Dark Angels (loyal) and resulted in a DA win and several missiles fired at the main table. They were a bit weak though, so I might give them a boost if we every play it again. This was my first outing using Alpharius, and I took him with 10 firedrakes in a spartan, with primus medicae. Gigaros, the Spear of Hades - my Cerberus. Traitor Deployment featuring Dark Angels and My Alpha Legion. Much armour as you can see. After Alpharius sneakily infiltrated himself, the Primus Medicae, the Firedrakes (and spartan) and the Leviathan. The BA Fellblade takes potshots from the reat, but struggles for line of sight, or to hit anything as the sponsons are out of range. The triad of predators rumble fowards to unleash their heat weaponry. You can see how far back the Blood Angels deployed - thir fear of deep strikes really prevented them from getting into the game at all. That spartan started something like 36" away from any enemy units. The BA player loves conversion beamers and tries to keep everything as far away as possible... MISSILE LAUNCH! The Death Guard gain control of the launch controls and fire an ICBM into Valdor. Alpharius gets out of the spartan to hunt valdor, who runs away. I fail the charge, and next turn the cheeky vindicare tried to kill my Primus medicae, however failed to wound. Phew. With his ride near wrecked, Alpharius hops out to get his old nemesis Valdor. The Dread Drop Pod arrives filled with Leviathan, which proceeds to chop up the fellblade. Traitor vehicle pool T3. Big old messy combat. Alpharius and Valdor fought one another to a standstill, Alphy really is one of the weker primarchs, however my many thunderhammers reduced his custodian bodyguard to paste, then finished valdor off before the custodian lord could kill alpharius. Overall this was a traitor victory - the loyalists couldn't get any distance up the table and were thwarted by the wall of steel and infiltrating leviathan - this was largely their own fault as if you cannot kill a spartan and leviathan in one round with 8k points of models, then you only have yourself to blame - in this case, poor deployment meaning their stuff was mostly out of the fight.

Mission Dominion, Diagonal Deployment Forces Alpha legion Army List Custodes Valdor Blade Champion 3x terminators 4x 5 man custodian squads Achillus Dread - Spear 3x Caladius - 2x anti infantry, 1x anti tank 5 objectives were put in no mans land, and we hadprogressive scoring so 1VP at the start of your turn per objective, giving me the immediate advantage with my infiltrators. I lost the roll off for deployment so deployed first, moving my stuff as close to the objectives as possible, bit dangerous wit the custodes. The lascannons deployed on a ruin at the back, the grav behind a building closer in, the fulmentarus under the lascannons and out of sight to act as counterpunch, and my short ranged dreads in the middle to get stuck in asap. Recons went on a far left back corner objective to hold that for me. My opponent was afraid of the lascannons and castled everything in the ruins to the back, putting everything out of LOS of the lascannons, bunching together. 2x guard squads, the terminators and valdor went into reserve, again like 1k points that would be off the table. I think if my opponent had deployed everything on the table, and agressively, he might have won due to my aggressive deployment, but this wasn't to be. Deployment - distraction headhunters are between the ruins in the top left to go caladius hunting, as their meltas are useless v custodian guard. Photo is after scout moves. ALT1 Recons score me 1VP. Movement - the effrit get within 12" of the custodes, the headhunters advanceon the left hand caladius, however he had boxed himself in so couldn't fall back, and just rotated it to face my front armour, incidentally getting closer to my melta guns, which fired into it, wrecking it. The fear of the lascannons was their undoing, as the grav rapiers rounded the corner, to my opponent's surprise (he thought they couldn't move and fire, not something I thought I'd have to go over), and they dropped 3 pie plates onto the clustered 2 caladius and dread, doing 3 hp to one caladius, 2 to the other, and 3hp to the dread, as well as putting them all in dangerous terrain. The Effrit killed one or 2 custodes, the seekers took down another probably, and the leviathan shot into the achillus, doing some damage. 1-0 to the Alphas. After AL movement Custodes T1 After taking a severe mauling, the anti tank caladius went to the left, and the anti infantry one on 1HP skimmed forwards to land on the central objective. the achillus moved forwards to content the central objective. I don't react to get 2x shooting reactions. The left hand custodians went after, charged and killed the heahunters (but theyd done their job, twice by killing a tank then distracting a unit). Not much happens in the shooting phase, maybe some wounds off the MM dread. The achillus charges the mm dread, now next to the 1hp caladius. I overwatch with melta and grav, and knock it down to 1W, and put it in terrain. It still makes the charge, and handily splatters my contemptor...which then explodes for a 1" blast....it wounds the achillus....and my opponent fails the save, killing it! The Achillus explodes 3" catching the caladius in the side...I roll a 4 and it's glanced, stripping the last HP killing it also! Almost on Titanicus levels of destruction. ALT2 That was insane. I now have 3 units on objectives for 3VP. My dreads, seekers and everything movel up and wipe out the rest of his custodes and the last caladius, now in lascannon LOS. 4-0 to the Alphas. After ALT2 movement Custodes T2 Valdor and co finally arrive. They land just behind the central building out of LOS of most of my lascannons and contemptor, and next to my rapiers. With my 2 movement reactions from my WLT, I intercept with the rapiers to put the terminators and custodians into dangerous terrain X3, not killing anything. The lascannons augury the terminator that 5 of them can see and they kill one. The reaction point is used on the fulmentarus who punk some custodians. The seekers react and kill one, and the recons do stuff from across the board. The terminators and valdor fail their charge, the custodians make it into the rapiers on like a 10, and wipe them. The rapiers probably overwatched again to have 6 dangerous templates down, which I think killed another custodian on the way in. Start of CGT2 Assault ALT3 After that is was pretty much clean up. Between the effrit, fulmetarus, lascannons and 2 dreads, I killed off everything, the leviathan and contemtor then double teamed Valdor to finish him off in combat Playing out the rest of the game, my opponent scored 0 VP while I had 1 objective in T1, and 3 objectives from turns 2-6, for 16pts, then 1 for slay the warlord, 2 from leviathal, then 2 for attrition for 21VP total. A fair drubbing to the custodes, 21-0.

I managed to get my first game of 10th Edition in on Weds night and thought I'd report back - there was a lot of on the fly learning going on, so I forgot to take photos from the start, and only remembered to get them well into the game. This was a 1500pt battle missions/temptest of war style game, we both picked random objectives. Mission - Supply drop - 3 objectives in no mans land, one dissappears in t4, the other in t5. Diagonal deployment. I don't remember the exact secondary objectives, so wont list them. Tyranids Hive Tyrant, lash whip+bs, venom cannon Parasite 20x termagants - fleshborers 20x termagants - devourers 10x horms 10x horms 5x barbgaunts 3x VRL's 3x venomthropes 3x zoanthropes 3x zoanthropes 3x raveners with thoracic weapons Screamer Killer Exocrine 160w Dark Angels Belial (w/knights) Vindicare assassin Judiciar - heavenfall blade (w/bladeguard) 10x hellblasters 6x aggressors with flamers 6x bladeguard 5x deathwing knights, master with flail 1x landspeeder hailstrike 3x eradicators 113w DA won the roll off for T1 and went first. DA T1 Remarkably little died, maybe 10-12 gants, a few gaunts. They played devastator doctrine for advance and shoot, so the aggressors sprinted 10" towards the objective on the top right, one stepping onto it, and then flamed one unit of gaunts T1, killing 9/10. Hailstrike fired the grenades into the gaunts and the rest into the screamer, doing a couple of wounds to the screamer and thankfully rolling low on the shots to the gants, despite getting +8 shots for the 20 of them - maybe 8 died. The venomthropes had a lot to do with this, giving the gaunts stealth and cover for a 4+ save at -1 to hit. Las-fusils shot the screamer, doing loads of damage, they're somehow D6 damage this time instead of the 3 they were before! Screamer is on 6w. DA achieve both secondaries, one of which was hold most of the no mans land objectives, and hold the one nominated by me. Nid T1 In my command phase I endless swarm the mauled hormagaunt unit bringing 6 back to life, then use it a second time with my tyrant on the termagant units , restoring 4 to one and 5 to another. As units were above half strength, no battleshock tests. Screamer moved forwards towards the aggressors, who overwatch it, lots of hits, 3/4 wounds with twin linked, no damage. Screamer shoots them and kills one, then charges in and bounces off with shocking rolling, killing one, before getting punched for 4W in return - I'm crucially holding the objective though vs the one aggressor on it. Exocrine shoots the eradicators and rolls a one, killing one. devilgants shoot them putting a wound through. I give up and charge them with the horms who do some damage and drag one down, however a couple get punched to death in return. I still hold that objective. Zoans shoot the bladeguard, killing maybe 1. VRL's get onto the middle objective, taking it, but dont charge due to the players whose turn it isnt having the advantage on the charge. I get the secondary for taking an objective from the opponent and one other. DAT2 Belial appears behind my exocrine, who overwatches and doesnt do anything. Belial fails the charge into the exocrine, needing a 10 for terrain. Eradicator falls back and the hellblasters shoot the horms, wiping them. Bladeguard charge the VRL's, who strike first and do nothing, getting killed in return.Aggressors punch the screamer to death (twin linked). Speeder moves onto central objective and shoots the tyrant and gaunts. NidT2 I drew defend stronghold and somthing else, so had to hold my home objective v belial. I used shadown in the warp to force break tests, and absolutely everything passed with marines Ld6+. pointless exercise. Heal the terms back to full with endless horde strat and moved the borergaunts onto my home objective to tie up belial, hopefully for the game. Zoans move forwards and opponent uses overwatch to put the lasfusils into them,killing one. This allows me to move my horms onto the objective held by the aggressors, denying it to them. zoans and gaunts put shots into bladeguard reducing them to one guy + judicar. Tyrant multicharges bladeguard and speeder, murdering both bladeguard and judiciar, despite them striking first (T10, 2+, 4++, 4+++). Exocrine kills the last eradicator. DAT3 Belial move toward the exocrine, ignoring the gaunts, who scuttle towards him to try and block the charge, but also getting most on the objective, staying within 6" of zoans and venoms for the boosts. Belial gets the charge and poor rolling sees only 4 wounds knocked off the exo. Aggressors flame then punch the horms, taking back the top left marker. hellblasters pop the right hand zoans. no primaries for DA. Nid T3 Exo falls back to thwart belial. Gants shuffle more onto objective to stop them from toeing onto it and shoot belial, doing nothing. barbs shoot belial, doing nothing. devilgants shoot hellblasters, amazingly killing 4. With all my bad luck with zoan shooting, I forget about the blast warp blast and go straight for lance, with CP rerolls to protect me. Left hand zoans lance the aggressors, hitting, wounding, killing. The D3 shot blast is a trap, as you might just roll a 1 anyway, so 1/3 time you're better off with the better shot, even moreso against 3+ wound targets. Reveners pop up on the bottom right objective to hold it, out of LOS of the hellblasters. Start of DA T4 - the alpha objective in the top left has been removed from no mans land. After this photo, Belial moved towards the exocrine who opten to overwatch. To counter all my bad luck in this game so far, I rolled a 6 on the attacks, for 9 shots, then amazingly this: From 9 shots, I rolled 5 6's, garnering an additional 5 hits. So 10 exocrine hits on belials knight unit, which was enough to wipe the remaining 2 and the grandmaster. That was pretty much game over right there. My opponent didnt have that much to threaten me, and no objective positioning, while I was all over the board. Mop up time. Evrything shoots the hellblasters and the raveners charge in finishing them off. Overall this was a fun game, with a lot of swings, however we spent a lot of time checking and double checking rules. This will get better hopefully as we get more used to the game. I'm not 100% sure it's less complex than 9th - each unit now has a bespoke rule that triggers all the time, as opposed to a set of universal special rules that are easy to remember. Some of the time consuming decision making still exists, like bladeguard having to choose whether to attack or defend, and then additional reactions like overwatch, while cool, slow the game down when you have to measure who is in range of what etc. It works in heresy as heresy is a faster system with pass/fail for saves, and no modifiers. In terms of unit performance, this is what I think: Hive Tyrant, lash whip+bs, venom cannon - B+ - Venom cannon is pointless in this edition, ill go full melee next time. The free strat per turn is amazing. Parasite - D too weak, too slow, cant join gargoyles, sub par melee. Should be 50pts or so. 20x termagants - fleshborers - B- Solid unit, output ws poor, but kept in the game with strats and held them objectives 20x termagants - devourers - B+ decent output, did some good damage, took up a lot of space. Better with a tervigon to proc lethal hits. 10x horms - A - cheap, cheerful, fast, did the job of dropping OC20 onto objectives, surprisingly good in melee with 30 attacks per 10. 10x horms - as above 5x barbgaunts - C - poor positioning from me meant they couldn't hit the opposing moving units. Considering the points they cost, I'll give them a C for performance, but a B+ for being 5pts per wound, and 10W and putting out average 18 shots. 3x VRL's - C - in this matchup. Good for a speedbump but not much else, they can't break through power armour. 3x venomthropes B - flat -1 to hit on everything is great, however they have zero damage output of their own. 70pts is a tricky investment. definitely if you're running more monsters, as the -1 will hurt lot shot stronger weapons more, also a good pick for infantry for the +1 save. 3x zoanthropes -C+ Undecided. The blast version was underhwhelming, the lance was ok, but on BS3+. The battleshock thing never came up nd is too close range to ever have an impact on zoans, who want to be at 24" range. 3x zoanthropes 3x raveners with thoracic weapons - A- great unit for the points - same cost and identical statline to VRL's however with deepstrike and twin linked instead of stealth and infiltrate. Deepstrike allows stealing of late game objectives, and twin linked is worth it's weight in gold with the increased T across the board. Screamer Killer - D+ - T10 and 3D is about the only great thing about this. It seems overshadowed by carnifexes, who despite having 2D are...1/3 cheaper at 120pts. I think 3 carnis are better than 2 screamers, and they get the blistering assault rule, and you can add OOE. Exocrine B+ - Blast means it cant shoot in combat, gun is still swingy from 4 - 9 shots (100% variation) At 135pts though, this is a good option, and T10 to boot, so overall a solid pick. Tyranids overall Adapations: The 3 'options' to privide to nids at the start (sustained, lethal on vehicles or precision hits) is silly, and only sustained hits to me is a good choice, outside of playing knights, which is never fun anyway. Precision is dumb as you'll put the odd single shot into a character, that likely wont kill them. Maaaaybe it'll have some use against stuff with really weak characters in...tough units? I haven't read all the indexes yet, but I don't see any characters so far that buff their units to such an extent that you need to kill them asap - in this game, perhaps the judicar, which would have stripped FF from the bladeguard? In my opinion, 90% of the time you'll be taking sustained, it's just so good, as exemplified by the exocrine above. Shadow in the warp was poor, which you can realise just by reading the rule and looking at Ld stats in the game. My opponent did, however only just pass many of the rolls, so I think you'll need to bake a neurotyrant into every list if you want to have a hope of this having an effect - even then it just takes marines from a significantly above average chance to pass (Ld6), to a very above average (Ld7) chance to pass. I wouldn't even think about this, never mind building around it. A flat -Ld when within 12" would have been nice, thematic and useful.

It's Blog and Beginnings. Get it? ----- To avoid burying the lede, this blog will act as both a replacement for my two discussion threads (Order of the Penitent Saint: A Project Thread and toaae presents: WAAAAGH! Tortoof), as well as a general blog for my hobby thoughts. I was a big fan and user of the B&C's blogs the last time they were around, and with my hobby mojo reinvigorated by a new edition, it felt like the right time to get this rolling. But I had to have something to actually put some thought out for. And other than gross sentences like that (I very much blog in a "stream of consciousness" method), I didn't have anything that I thought was worth blogging about. Until now. bum-dum-DUM Nah, I'm just playin'. I played my first game of 10th this past weekend (a Fathers' Day miracle), and remembered to take some pictures! So, BOOM, we've got content. This game was at the excellent Gamers Guild in Tempe, Arizona. If you're ever in the Sonoran Desert, try to swing by and check out this excellent store. I have no stake, I just love the place and the people. Anyways, I arranged a game via the store discord, and got to play against World Eaters and Angron for the first time since the angry primarch stomped out of the Cicatrix Maledictum. 2,000 points, the Only War mission from the core rules. My list was: Ghazghkull Thraka (warlord) Warboss (power klaw, attack squig, ENHANCEMENT: Head Woppa's Killchoppa) Warboss (power klaw, ENHANCEMENT: Follow Me Ladz) Weirdboy Nob with WAAAGH! Banner Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun Mozrog Skragbad Deffkilla Wartrike (ENHANCEMENT: Supa-Cybork Body) Boyz (20 models, Power Klaw, 2x Big Shootas, 9x Slugga/Choppa, 8x Shoota) Boyz (20 models, Power Klaw, 2x Big Shootas, 9x Slugga/Choppa, 8x Shoota) Gretchin (11 models) Gretchin (11 models) Meganobz (6 models, 6x Kombi-weapon/Power Klaw) Killa Kans (3 models, 3x Skorcha) Megatrakk Scrapjet Mek Gunz (3 models, 3x Bubblechukka) Warbikers (3 models, Power Klaw, 2x Choppa) This list was basically "what stuff did I want to try?", 2k points. I wasn't trying to make a good list, per se, but just stick the units that most excited me from the index into a game. I know some people don't like that Ghazghkull is now an INFANTRY model, with only T6; in contrast, I'm so excited he's now able to join a unit. I've always been a big fan of Warbikers, and I really like my Deffkilla Wartrike, so I had to slam them in. I hope the SAG can have a solid role in fire-support, and I had to give the new Bubblechukka a swing. And on and on, with every unit I selected. Really, the only thing I didn't really want to include was the Gretchin, but I wanted more Command Points, and I get ansy whenever my Ork lists have less than 100 models (only got to 87, even with the grots). My opponents list was constructed much the same way, I think: Angron Lord Invocatus 2x6 Exalted Eightbound 10 Bloodletters some character (lord of executions?) Lord of Skulls Now I didn't take enough pictures to post a full battle-report, but here's what I did manage to collect. My deployment: My opponent's deployment: My opponent got the first turn, and between his World Eater rolls and scout moves, he was immediately into my lines: (a note, we realized the rules for FLY are different in this edition, and Angron was moved back) The Killa Kans were murdered, though they lasted longer than they probably should have in no small part to this roll: But otherwise, with the Lord of Skulls off-table and Angry Ron unable to make a charge, my boys were able to absorb some casualties before hitting back. In my turn, Ghaz stomped up to Angron and punched the Red Angel to death. The Prophet might be less tough, but he still punches like a true monster. In all, I got to kill Angron three times, with Ghaz personally taking his head twice. The daemon-primarch got him in the end, though Makari saved ol' Ghazghkull's life after Angron massacred all six meganobz in one round. Mozrog got the final kill. The Lord of Skulls was ineffective, though I did let it kill my Deffkilla, just cause I wanted to see how well that thing punched: In the end, it was a complete tabling, but who cares? Winning wasn't really the goal for either player. The things I took away were: Ghaz is still a heavy hitter, and the 435 points for the full Meganobz support may not be as high as I thought; giving the Prophet 18 ablative wounds seems worthwhile, without even talking about what they get from him (+1 to-hit and to-wound). Mozrog may be a solid staple in my lists, and there may also be space for the Beastboss on Squigosaur. Mozrog eats vehicles, is incredibly tanky, and despite not having Lone Operative, being a single model means he can hide fairly easily, but still has the movement speed to get out and pounce on the enemy. The Beastboss is less of a monster, but I don't hate his profile, cost, or abilities. I've long sat on a second box; I may have to get that guy up soon. I think the Big Mek and Mek Gunz may be something. Not necessarily the Bubblechukka, but also not-not the Bubblechukka. The random profile is hard to plan around, sure, but the fact that you get to determine the profile before selecting targets is a big boon. Warbosses are good, I think. At least satisfying. Next up, I plan to try my Gorkanaut and Morkanaut, meganobz with a big mek, and units in trukks. ----- "So you're excited about 10th?" I'm excited about a new edition. I'm super bummed by the switch to Power Level, which is what this is in all but name. They've changed the granularity of Power Level, but it's otherwise the same. This deserves its own post, but suffice to say, the rules themselves interest me less than the fact that a new edition is always a great start. I played a ton of 8th edition, and I miss those days of attending monthly tournaments, organizing narrative games, and just meeting tons of new people. 9th's launch during the pandemic, me moving back to Arizona (but a part I didn't know any of the stores in) and my complete dislike of the Ork codex meant I didn't play a fraction as much. I'm really hoping that despite my misgivings with 10th's ruleset so far, I'll be able to roll a bunch of dice and have a good time.