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Old vs New Been a while, but here we are again. I think I got burnt out a little rushing the Armaggeddon marines so haven’t been doing much on the ork side. I did get in a CP game yesterday. They only had the old Eyes of Ultramar set, which doesn’t have 11th edition rules. They had the datacards so I just assigned them the DA mission so we had different missions for the game. We fought on map B, I forward placed the Captain, vanguard and landspeeder. The librarian lead the intercessors and was on the home objective to start. They had Tigrius leading the Intercessors and the Reivers on their home objective. Bladeguard and Aggessors on the flank. (I removed half the Intressors after the picture cause the CP only has 5) Opponent was new and honestly thinking back I should have explained ‘Hidden’ as that might have save them a marine or two. So got first turn and moved the assault group up. Only shot I had was against his aggessors in cover. Dropped one to a missile shot. They repositioned everything, moving Tiguris’ unit forward, but didn’t have the distance to get past the terrain. Reivers ran to the other side of the home objective. Aggessors and bladeguard moved forward to capture an objective. They were basically shot blocked and they decided against assaulting into the vanguard vets, ok then. Landspeeder moved over and took the opponent’s home objective, vanguard vets and captain prepped to assault Tiguris unit. Tiguris overwatched at the vanguard and managed to wound one. They fired back, dropping one to a plasma round, though it overheated and finished off the wounded vanguard. The landspeeder put another missile into the aggessors, killing another one. The rest of the fire went into the intercessors and dropped all but one. Vanguard and the the captain pincher charged Tiguris and the vanguard did enough on their activation to wipe out the pair. They consolidated to the objective to add weight to capturing it. The Reivers moved back into the fray, getting between the vanguard and the captain. The bladeguard moved to support while the last aggressor pulled back into the cover of the objective. The aggessors then fired onto the Vanguard, killing one, they then fell back around the corner of the terrain to get out of LOS of the reivers. The Reivers and bladeguard focused on the captain, but failed to do any damage. The reivers still managed to catch the vanguard with a good charge roll, the bladeguard failed to close the distance to the captain however. The captain then used his Master of War ability (a better free Heroic Intervention) and joined in against the reivers. Reivers scored a wound on the vanguard and two on the captain, but lost all but one of their numbers to the response. Which wasn’t too bad considering the amount of 5+ saves they had to make. Do to casualties the captain was free from the combat. So I consolidated on to the objective. The vanguard could handle one reiver. Intercessors moved up and i focused on the bladeguard. Between the intercessors and landspeeder, I dropped two of the bladeguard, the landspeeder’s missile failed to wound the aggessor this time. Captain charged the bladeguard and finished him in melee. The vanguard actually failed to wound the reiver, who then finished the wound vanguard. At that point my opponent gave, they had a reiver and an aggressor and I only lost three vanguard. Quick, brutal. The Assault force is ok. I’m not sure I might have handled the Ork CP considering it out-numbers me almost 3:1. I also realized I didn’t post the completed Bane-Slayer’s Bulwark, so here they are. Next ones on the docket is the Ork, Guard, and Eldar. Mostly due to my FLGS is going to have a eldar event in September and I just need to finish five more Death Riders for the guard one to be complete. Thanks for reading

Ok, so GW might have devastated this project. I’ll have another entry on my thoughts about it later. Luckily I did have a few CPs that survived the purge and came out of the fire reforged. They did a semi-overhaul of the CPs. Secondaries are gone, Army Rule is the full rule now, and we now have unit enhancements as an option. Still had my weekly CP meetup on Thursday and my opponent was cool using the new 11th edition rules. I faced the same player from the last entry, they added some paint this time, but the dullehans return. This time facing the Vardenghast Swarm. This was a full game as well. They gave those CPs a Disposition. In the case of the Swarm this was Disruption, the Votann is Take and Hold. Using their new War Journal this gave me Death Trap and them Determine Acquisition. So how did I get this without a mission deck? Well I made a small force in Battleforge using Ambush Predators for the disruption disposition, then in Set up opponent’s army just selected Votann and a detachment that had a disposition of Take and hold. This gave us our missions and allowed us to track with the new app. I did send a request to have the option to select the CPs for this added if possible as well as wanting the other CPs added. I hope once enough make this request that they will in time. We used Map 3 seen here: They got first turn and just surged forward. Since I hid my force with positioning, he had 3 units I had 6 to deploy. Hearthkyn tried to run to one of the nearer and unclaimed objectives. Thunderers went center to get shots on my force next turn and the hearthguard moved down the edge. No shots available to them so passed turn. With a meal in the center I had the psychophage and winged prime move forward. Barbgaunts fired on the hearthguard to slow them, but they surged forward a bit anyway. Snack in the Center Preparing Traps Gaunts and leapers set their traps in the three terrain on my end while the duo charged into the thunderers. They did not survive. The hearthkyn moved into their targeted objective and the hearthguard closed on the duo in the center. The psychophage fired a snap shot and managed to take out a hearthguard, afterwards it popped smoke and between the smoke and the detachment’s natural stealth it was hard for the votann to gain a lock on the beast. However volume is it’s own bonus and it lost a wound to shooting. The hearthguard managed to make their charge and went into the psychophage only. Big bugs need big hammers. They managed to beat it down, crushing it under their hammers. They then consolidated into the Prime, who killed a hearthguard for their troubles. The prime fellback to my opponent’s home objective while I sent up the termagants and leapers to deal with the hearthguard. Barbgaunts drop a barrage on the hearthkyn killing nearly half the squad. The termagants do their best but fail to wound the hearthguard. One of the termagant swarms charge into the hearthguard as do the leapers. Leapers manage to drop the last of the standard hearthguard, leaving only the Hesyr and the champion left. The termagants don’t manage to wound them still. In a focused swing the Hesyr and Champion wipe out the leapers in single combat. One their turn I activated Shadows of the Warp and managed to battleshock the Hearthkyn, denying them the VP for holding. They did move forward and take some pot shots at the unengaged termagants, taking one out. The pair of heavily armed and armoured votann only managed to kill about half the termagants, which couldn’t get the votann’s armour in return. Going after VP i moved the other gaunt squad up and started lying my traps, same with the Prime in his terrain, moving back to help avoid detection. The barbgaunts continue to bombard the hearthkyn unit, this time dropping them below half. The other gaunts held the hearthguard at bay, or at least tried to. They were dropped to only one remaining gaunt by the end of the round. The Hearthkyn rallied and got a few more shots into the unengaged gaunts, dropping one to a well placed magna-rail shot. The last gaunt was taken out via a bolt round from the champion (strat that grants the unit [close-quarters]), they then charged the other gaunt unit and right thrashed it, but failed to kill all of them. Prime used his summon ability to bring back the destroyed gaunt unit, who then popped up behind the hearthkyn. Also healed back two gaunts into the still existing swarm. Since I only got two I fell them back to the other wall. The barbgaunts continued their barrage, dropping the hearthkyn to two models. The newly arrived gaunts held fire. I wanted to charge, which I failed. With one turn left and the score 30-13 we called it. Overall not bad. We actually encountered a 7 to hit scenario. Magna-rifle has a 5+ to hit. Moved, unit had cover (Psychophage smokescreen) and -1 to hit from detachment ability. I just told him a 6 always hit and roll. It missed, but that might be something to look into later. edit: Actually dug into the 7+ and per the standard rules, a unmodified 6 is a critical hit. So was right, you can't make it impossible to hit. Only armour save can be modified to that extent. Thanks for reading.

Well the rule books and cards are in my FLGS so I did what anyone would do and asked if anyone wanted a game :) Adam jumped in. Adam is a friend my son ( and the son of one of my friends) so while we have not played each other since covid we have known each other long time. He is just starting out with a new Tyranid army having been mostly a Guard player for a very long time. So we cut ourselves down to 1000 points. Which gave us more time to read the rules as we went. FLGS did a great job having 11th terrain already and a rulebook and card set out ready for us. He is playing Invasion Fleet Tyranids. Something like Hive Tyrant with Guard Tervigon Tyrannofex Zoanthropes 2 Big units of Termagants I cut my list down to 2 Lone Spears War shaper with 10 carnivores 2 x 10 carnivores Hounds Vespid Pirahna Farstalkers Pathfinders 2 x 3 Krootox riders We agreed to chill on the DP stuff so I took the additional AAC - but quietly decided not to use any of it strats or rules. It was just for the disposition as I wanted to practice the disposition that I have locked in on. T'au (Kroot) vs Tyranids. Recon Sweep vs Purge and Secure. Search and Destroy Turn 1 I rolled to go second so I scouted quite defensively. Farstalkers chilling in my natural expansion, hounds moving up ready to get into the far quarter The tyranids move up to touch the central objective while the Tyrannofex takes a long range shot at the only visible target - the hounds. It massively over-kills one hound On my turn 1 I move into all 4 table quarters and move up to touch the central objective to OC it with the unit of kroot with my war shaper in. The war shaper begins his run of really not doing much despite shooting into infanttry. I set up to grab some secondaries at the end of his turn and score 6 on my primary Turn 2 Adam is denied any primary, he pushes into my kroot to try to take the objective from me but finds himself falling short so I still hold it. He is spreading out and beginning to chip at my units I have a very big scoring turn, hold one plus maximum table quarters plus I max 15 on secondaries. I put wounds on things, kill models here and there but don't kill any units. Turn 3 Having set things up on the previous turn the tyranids begin to score, they swarm my kroot on one objective with termagants and OC me. My hounds finally die, he pushes me off the central objective. My krootox really underperformed in combat and at this point died to the hive tyrant and buddies. A better scoring turn for the tyranids as they get 10 on primary and 5 on secondary Facing the horror of Shadows in the Warp my shooting is hindered by my pathfinders not working. My war shaper snaps his own unit out of battleshock with his once per game ability. Even so things are a bit rough here. I do remove the Zoanthropes and cut through most of his guard but my last krootox dies in an ongoing combat with the Tervigon. I drop my Vespid into the backfield and don't do nearly as much to the termagants there as I hoped with the combined shooting of them and a lone spear. 10 primary score and 5 on secondary with the kill Turn 4 The tyranids are beginning to roll over me in the center and there is little I can do to their big high toughness bugs. I lose a lone spear and to my distress lose my entire unit of vespid from failing 5 4+ saves out of 7 even after trying a CP reroll. That was Beacon lost :( He finally finishes off the remaining kroot on his natural expansion - his ability to keep returning models to that unit eventually overwhelming the per-model superiority of the kroot. The piranha was grabbing a table quarter and took a real punching but survived on 1 wound. I pull a dead unit of kroot onto his back line and start work on the Termagants that the Vespid failed to kill. I badly need assassinate so my farstalkers are now not on the objective but are chasing the Hive Tyrant. They get in range and grenade it then take it down with lethal hits. The piranha flew away and hid, still holding table quarter. Only 7 on primary as I was running short of units but 7 on secondary helped. Turn 5 He has to cleanse with one unit of termagants and he shoots and charges my unit of kroot with his other termagants. 4 kroot die. They fight back and cut the termagants down to 6 models. 7 Primary, 7 secondary - I'm not repeating my mistake of letting him kill anything on an objective. I need to stop him getting Beacon so I push up the pathfinders, wounded piranha and my last Lone Spear - easily removing his Termagants. On the other flank my kroot remove his last termagants in melee. While the survivors of the far stalkers do a cleanse. 11 primary and 7 secondary scored. Kroot win 79 to 59 Playing at half the army size is interesting - we both felt that the mission stretches your forces a lot more at this points level and taking multiple units out for actions is harder to justify. I actually think this was pretty respectable scoring for having half as many units The pathfinders are a very solid piece to add and the Ion Rifles did kill 3 regular dudes but I think that was worth it, I need to be more careful with my targets - overcharging into the Tervigon was not worthwhile trade as it all bounced off the saves anyway Morale and Battleshock A lot happened with morale and battleshock The Shadows in the Warp did hinder my shooting and scoring for a turn, the only unit that took longer to recover was a lone spear and that hardly mattered. Being able to pull a unit out of battleshock with the War Shaper had a 7 point VP swing and in a closer game that would have been decisive. The piranha was in danger moving up on turn 5 but successfully hit the termagaunts with battleshock so they could not overwatch. I think with 3 of them this will be a more significant rule - but against Tyranids it struggles do do much until you kill most of their Synapse. Shadows in the Warp is pretty bad news for T'au in general and did really knock back my momentum. But its not entirely terrifying unless it has additional penalties, which tyranids can apply but I think they need a more mobile list if they want to apply that -1 penalty to a lot of my units. Thoughts on the mission I think this is a mission that very slightly gives the edge to Recon but not by much. The ability to get scoring early and deny scoring to your opponent early can apply pressure - but kroot are still paper-thin and don't last long. I had the chance to give up the central objective one round earlier and I should have taken it - that would have eventually awarded less VP to my opponent and forced him to either let my unit get away or find another unit to go camp that objective while he chased them down to kill them. Getting off objectives to cut down enemy scoring matters in this match and I was not paying attention that that enough. But also it was my first practice game in this mission, so lesson duly learned. A lot of this came down to me doing just enough scouting, getting just enough in place to stop him scoring any primary on turn 2 and still limiting it a bit on turn 3. My thinking here is that even if my opponent has an amazing go turn they might actually hit the 15 VP primary cap and not benefit enough to fully catch up.

Short update since work has been busy. Protectors of Aun'Shar So this time I got together the old Protectors of Aun’Shar CP, this week I was placed against another newbie. They were using Bane-Slayer’s Bulwark. For the game we did my usual modified Forward Position. They had the thunderers in the ruin on their home objective, champion was attached to the hearthguard and the warriors were split into two units, one with the melee weapons and the other with the heavy weapons. I infiltrated the stealth team, had the ghostkeel on one flank and the firewarriors with attached firecadre plus the ethereal (FNP enhancement) on my home objective. To keep this short, I tried to use the stealth suits as a forward observer and got them killed by the dakka-y hearthguard. Rest of the battle was the ghostkeel and firewarriors wiping out his units until I got him down to the champion with the ghostkeel getting lucky on it’s saves to hold the unit. Herthkyn Warriors move forward Surprise Ghostkeel Two tanks crash over an objective. Going full into the Ork CP this week with CtA now started. Hoping to have both the new SM and Ork CPs done by next month. Thanks for reading.

Got in two Combat Patrol games this week. Both against the Armigar Trailblazers. Now originally I thought the armigar one was one of the stronger ones, but after this bout, not so sure anymore. First game was Scorched Earth and I was using the Stormglaive Hunters. Subatan had the Master Rider Enhancement and selected the kill warlord secondary. Opponent got first turn but due to terrain didn’t have any shots. They did move the warglaive (warlord) forward to get ready to capture the Alpha objective. Subatan and the outriders blitz forward. The impulsor moved to take a mid objective and got a fire line to the warglaive in the process. Combined fire from both units managed to shave a few wounds off the warglaive and the outriders charged in. Using the Quarry of the Khan strat i managed to take out the warglaive in a single round. The combat was close enough to the helverin I just consolidated into the helverin. I didn’t manage to hurt any of the bikes. It then took two more rounds to take down the helverin with them backing out of melee on their turn and using the strat to fire after fall back. I lost two bikers to the shots by the end. While the bikers pushed the armigar off the objective, the impuslor and assault intercessors captured two other objectives and I just racked up VP. Game was called and it was so quick we re-racked and I had them roll a die to determine the CP I would use. Turned out to be Octavius. So I was ready for a challenge. New prey spotted Hunting party ready to pounce. Bikers corner their prey. Mission was Forward Positions and I took the Shock Tactics secondary. They got first turn, the warglaive moving forward to take a midfield objective with an advance. This gave me a turn of no fire as i marked the helverin for my oath and shifted the Infernus and Librarian to the opposite side, not managing to get in range of the objective. The armigars moved to focus on what models I had on the board. After their move I rapid ingressed the terminators with the captain into his back field. The emperor protected my guys from the knights’ shooting, passing all the 4+ saves from both of them. The terminators closed on the helverin. The assault cannon managed to score a wound on the helverin. The librarian took a shot at the helverin and managed a massive six wounds with his witchfire attack. The terminators assaulted the helverin and nearly brought it down. The warglaive moved to engage the rest of my force, It got up close and melted the psyker with it’s thermal spear. It then charged the Infernus squad. Opponent tried to battle shock the unit via Terrifying Charge, which i passed the leadcheck. Now this was another new player. Opted to remind them of Tank Shock being an option. I allowed him to roll, and lost two marines to the MWs. It only managed to score one more wound in combat, downing one more marine. The terminators took down the helverin and readied to move to take on the warglaive. Terminators surround and bring down their target. Warglaive tries to finish off it's target The warglaive managed to melt another terminator, this time the squad sgt, failed to hurt the infernus at it’s feet. After marking my opponent’s home objective the terminators moved in for the killl. Charging in with weapons blazing the terminators managed to score three wounds before charging into the warglaive. In a massive swing the powerfists managed to score several wounds (helped by Veteran Instinct re-rolls) and take down the warglaive. Terminators into the rescue. So after this I was surprised, but I was rolling hot saves and my opponent wasn’t doing too well. The surprise of the bikes in the first game caught him off guard, but with a 18” move there wasn’t much he could do to not get caught in turn one. During the second game at least he scored a good amount of points at the start. Just didn’t hold the lead as I got 10 VP from my secondary and locked his home objective quickly. There was a Combat Patrol Tournament over the weekend that I couldn’t attend due to family visiting. From what I heard the winner was Tau with the Sudden Dawn Cadre. Honestly with how well the Stormglaive did i would have ran that and might have done well. Maybe next time. I finished the Krieg HW squad (pict incoming later), been having issues getting the want to paint the Death Riders and orks. Got distracted by a few things for upcoming megabattles. Later i should try out a few xenos CPs. edit: Here's the pict. Thanks for reading.

My son - who talked me into this journey to Birmingham - is visiting and we have been talking a lot of warhammer. Meanwhile its a heatwave here in the UK So with getting the Aeldari preview yesterday and having seen the stream games we decided to test out a few ideas we have about how 11th will play. This was not going to be a real 11th game - we simply don't know all the rules - but the idea was to test out some thoughts we have had on the table with the information (and some educated guesses) we have. Its hot. So a few pieces of plywood and a G clamp turned the garden table into a warhammer table. My son cut out templates for the new terrain and off we go. We decided that using the mission they used in the reveal - Death Trap - would be a good enough test. Our best guess is that both our preferred detachments will be Disruption so its roughly the right sort of mission structure for us to practice even if this particular combo will never be an actual 11th mission pairing. Aeldari (Corsair Coterie & Twilight Flickers) vs T'au (Kroot Hunting Pack & Experimental Prototype Cadre) I will not do lists in detail as really that's not the point and we don't know the points so we used 10th ed for that! My list was similar to my usual but I decided to try out Farsight with some Sunforge as that is a fragile but powerful mech killer. Slightly less actual kroot as a result Pre-game We play an infiltrate play and counter-play game. Aeldari then redeploy the 2 units of rangers into safety against being eaten by onrushing kroot Aeldari win the roll to go first Minor Aeldari scouting on their right flank toward my natural expansion and they scout onto their natural expansion Kroot scout up close to the center objective and onto the natural expansion with multiple units of kroot, hounds and riders. The twin lance scout into the pocket behind the main push in the gap left by all the kroot scouting forwards but is well hidden. Turn 1 Aeldari push up and put a unit of flying corsairs in front of my natural expansion to try to jail me. They do movement trickery to grab and sticky objective the central objective. Shooting is largely ineffective - one Krootox rider dies. Harlequins charge some farstalkers and remove them Kroot keep pushing up but rather than doing a lot of shooting I do a lot of actions - using the booby trap action on 5 pieces of terrain 2 of which are objectives. Turns 2 - 3 We play a trading game. My first wave of kroot largely get lifted, my second wave comes forwards with my bigger units in support. Farsight and his crisis rapid ingress and pop Yriel and his unit out of their Falcon then charge one unit of Fire Dragons through a wall and leave only the Exarch. The Aeldari then mob Farsight with Howling Banshees, Harlequins and Yriel. The crisis go down but really compact a lot of Aeldari in one area to do it. Meanwhile elsewhere the Harlequins are beaten back by Krootox riders and the sudden arrival of the Twin Lance pushes back the Aeldari so they really have no way back onto the centre objective. The Twin Lance do their fall-back thing to shield a unit of vespid that deep-strike onto the Aeldari home objective and booby trap it. Turns 4 - 5 Its late and a nice cold cider calls so we talk these turns out - also its clear at this point that I will nearly max score The Aeldari clear out their home objective but Rejoin the Hunt kroot keep his backfield unsafe and with hounds and Lone Spears rushing up I can pick off secondaries. The Aeldari still are scoring but having lost their uppy-downy unit to the Twin Lance can't do a jump onto my home objective which frees up my Kroothawk Flock Lone Spear to join the fight and somewhat limits his scoring T'au win 95 - 83 There were definitely a couple of minor misplays but the overall flow of this was quite as we had discussed. These new missions are going to be very high scoring if you build your list with the tools to score them. Both of us had Sticky Objectives which is very strong in missions where being killed on objectives (not strictly true here but effectively true with the booby traps) earns your opponent VP. I lost 5 on scoring less than max on some secondaries - you need to average 4.5 per secondary and I averaged 4. My son fell 5 short on primary (purely because he could not copy my uppy-downy trick onto either my home or natural expansion objective) and a little more short on secondaries because I pinned him back a bit towards the end. As for the mission itself, we know you will never play this one symmetrically but there are still things to learn. Its very easy to max primary if you can afford to spam actions. If you booby trap early that makes the terrain a problem for your opponent as they give up VP should they be killed on that terrain. I am not sure this aspect will be important in a lot of games - you are likely to be capped on primary a lot of times if you have a list suited to the mission. We finished our ciders as we talked it over waiting for the heat to die down and the game really did reinforce to both of us that the game rules changes are largely QOL stuff each of which individually will not usually swing a game. A game might swing on one of the new rules interactions but also often it will not. But the mission changes are a really big deal and the use of terrain as objectives is a big deal. What is going to decide games will be the missions much more than - for example - the new rules on deep strike or precision. Also - that Corsair Coterie ability to sticky objectives then mortal wound anything that rushes onto the objective is really cool and quite effective against MSU. I can really see why my son thinks that might be good at messing with cheap action monkey builds.

While I was out of action as a player for family reasons a whole new game centre opened up nearby, so I decided to try them out and signed up for their regular Thursday evening session Turns out one of the players has been paired with a Kroot list for his first game of the Bristol Super-major. A match made in heaven. So I went for a practice game against Jason and his Tzeentch chaos daemons. His list is Scintillating Legion: Belakor, Kairos, a couple of lords of change with enhancements and then a scattering of minor units like flamers, screamers etc. Sweeping Engagement, Terraform, UKTC terrain Deployment was more or less as expected other than me putting one unit of vespid in reserve as I was going to run out of space in my deployment zone to hide things. We rolled to go first and I won. I would have rather gone second but such is the dice. I still take fixed cleanse and engage on all fronts Turn 1 I push up onto the right side objective in force, push up a few hounds with Rampager support on the left objective. I sit just short of the middle objective with the bulk of my infantry. I have most of my krootox on the right hand flank with Shadowsun to try to get a shooting lane. No shooting, he is hidden. Maximum secondaries His turn he pushes up onto my weak forces on my left flank and demonstrates the power of Sustained D3 into my rampagers. In the middle he only pushes out some Flamers. Turn 2 I hold my right hand objective and begin to push kroot into the middle, I have now terraformed all 3 objectives in the middle. Still very little killing going on as I plink off some flamers. With my hounds vanishing I drop some vespid into his backfield to collect table quarters and get maximum secondary again He still sits back using indirect to wear me down although its not that super-effective. Still he has it and is playing another cagey game. He holds the middle objective on my left and he shoots a load of stuff into my middle to stop me holding the middle objective Turn 3 I begin to push my 20-kroot unit and this is the first time I actually get to use that unit at all. I fail to get it onto the middle objective having left it too far back previously. I can no longer max out my secondaries, I only have 3 table quarters and can only cleanse once. Vespid shoot and whiff. Ghostkeel shoots and whiffs. Farstalkers appear in his backfield having Rejoined the Hunt but they do very little with their shooting into the unit he has camping his home objective. I do kill belakor and it was not as hard as I had expected. Now he begins to really push into me, although he is still careful to clean out my vespid and begins to pummel stuff. My ghostkeel goes the way of all things and while kroot are dying I still have plenty left. He pushes a lord of change into my deployment zone to score secondaries. His last unit of screamers come in and jointly with his other unit they kill my farstalkers. Turns 4 & 5 Leaving my big unit of kroot out of position really hurts me by this stage and with a failed charge of 7" on turn 5 they never make it. I do kill most of his stuff and by the end of my turn 5 he has 2 models really left (a slightly wounded lord of change and a single flamer camping an objective). But I am out of position to score and that is going to make the difference. He draws his secondaries, has to CP to redraw one and gets overwhelming force. For no good reason at all i had left a Lone Spear toe-in on my home objective. He kills that for enough VP to beat me by exactly one point Chaos win 67-66 A really enjoyable fun game. Also a real learning experience for me 1. UKTC terrain was new to me. I didn't get the shooting lanes right and I got things so my models got in the way of each other in the middle of the game due to congestion 2. I was far too cautious and too worried about all those big tough monsters. Turns out I can kill them better than I expected, if I push and throw the odd grenade I can (and did) kill 2 in a turn. Also he could not kill me as well as I feared. 3. Diverting onto the left hand objective was a mistake. It did help with my congestion problem in the middle but I should have danced around behind the terrain to avoid direct fire shooting and to hold onto that table quarter as long as possible. 4. I lapsed concentration on turn 5 and made a move (putting the lone spear touching the objective) for no reason at all. Not moving it would have won me the game 5. Fixed secondaries are too predictable for my opponent. Looks like I have to go back to tactical - but to be honest my play speed is coming along nicely and maybe this is not a compromise I need to take for play speed reasons. Behind some of this was the fact that I was not using the app to score myself (my opponent was) so I did not have the app to pressure me to keep up with my normal scoring pace. I fell a long way off my usual VP target. Feeling the pressure of the score by looking at the app might have brought me to my senses and got me to push more kroot onto the centre objective earlier and then I would have score more in the mid-to-high 80's that I really should be scoring in this game. List thoughts I will put the list below. The main tweak here was to take some more Vespid. I think Vespid are going to be good in 11th - or at least better than they are in 10th and they are pretty good. So this is an experiment I will continue The ghostkeel and shadowsun under-performed again. Inevitably into an army with 4++ and ample rerolls they would always struggle but they basically did nothing. Krootox Riders on the other hand buried those demons in dice and got the job done. Also I assaulted one demon prince and deleted it in melee with them. Much as I like the idea of the lone op effect with my list it does not really work with the ghostkeel - it simply does not have the range to attack and then stay out of danger against opposition with Fly keyword. By turn 3 or so I just can't afford to flood just one part of the table that much. Looking ahead to 11th the changed cover rules really hurt the ghostkeel - it becomes highly dependent on markerlights and squeezing those into my list for it feels like throwing more points after points which are already poorly spent. Time to put on my thinking cap That big unit of 20 kroot is off-putting for many opponents. I rather think I want another of those. Meanwhile yet again I barely got any value out of the Trail shaper. I think that guy is going to be swapped out for another war shaper - once again looking ahead to 11th rules and the greater importance of being able to remove battle shock. + DETACHMENT: Kroot Hunting Pack (Hunter's Instincts) + TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1990pts Commander Shadowsun (100 pts): Warlord Kroot Lone-spear (80 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin Kroot Lone-spear (80 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin Kroot Lone-spear (90 pts): Blast javelin, Hunting javelin, Enhancement: Kroothawk Flock (+10 pts) Kroot Trail Shaper (55 pts): Kroot rifle, Shaper's blade Kroot War Shaper (60 pts): Dart-bow and tri-blade, Enhancement: Root-carved Weapons (+10 pts) The Twin Lance (185 pts) 20x Kroot Carnivores (140 pts) 10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts) 10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts) 10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts) 10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts) 10x Kroot Carnivores (65 pts) 1x Ghostkeel Battlesuit (160 pts): Battlesuit support system, Ghostkeel fists, Fusion collider, Twin fusion blaster 12x Kroot Farstalkers (85 pts) 5x Kroot Hounds (40 pts): 5 with Ripping fangs 5x Kroot Hounds (40 pts): 5 with Ripping fangs 3x Krootox Rampagers (85 pts): 3 with Hunting blades, Kroot pistol and hunting javelins, Rampager fists 3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): 3 with Close combat weapon, Krootox fists, Repeater cannon 3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): 3 with Close combat weapon, Krootox fists, Repeater cannon 3x Krootox Riders (90 pts): 3 with Close combat weapon, Krootox fists, Repeater cannon 5x Vespid Stingwings (65 pts) 5x Vespid Stingwings (65 pts) 5x Vespid Stingwings (65 pts)

Having shared in my WIP log for the Sons of the Condor, I thought this might also be of interest to the wider KT subforum. Hope that's OK. This frames an upcoming narrative campaign me and some of my local group are going to play at some point - a prelude to the main action where the Tyranid Hive Fleets arrive near the Attilan Gate, Ultima Segmentum. Our main challenge at the minute is figuring out the rules; Kill Team has a lot of great nuance and flavour, but can get very bogged down in its own rules, to the extent that it's turning some of our group off. Anyway, on to the report - we'll see what happens :)

So due to a burst of ‘inspiration’ and some time off I managed to get the Stormglaive Hunters pretty much done. I say pretty much cause I realized a bit after I took the group shot that I had not actually painted the Outrider Sgt chainsword and in the few days lost it…. Well they are pretty much done and we got into a battle. Stormglaive Hunters (Storm Warriors) So there is a FLGS like a few blocks from my house that has their 40k day on Thursday. I have been teaching a few newbies how to play (if your new to this blog). Well one of my early students returned, this time with a built CP of Morgrim’s Butchas. They were still a little green on the game mechanics. So we did my simple Take and Hold mission but added some strats, namely the ones in the CPs and Command reroll. Keeping it light, but still adding. Anyway, mine was an easy setup of having the khan lead the outriders on the flank, which the hogboys were set up across the field and the impulsor on my home objective in case I was on the defensive. They had both boyz units near their home objective. I got first turn and it was off to the races. Now I was a little worried as I was out-numbered and the beast snagga CP has stuff for anti-vehicle. Not to realize that the dice had other plans. Subatan rushed forward and advanced to close the gap to the hogboys, only a minor wound from the guns before they made their near point blank charge. The Implusor shifted to another mid board objective and had line on one of the boyz units. They were set up on the line so I had pistol/rapid fire range and in a hail of fire dropped most of the boys in a single volley. The khan and his escort managed to drop half the hogs in melee and only took two wounds in return. Charging ahead. That was a full unit of orks... Orks called the WAAUGH like immediately as the marines had dug in already. While the wounded boys failed their battleshock. They still headed to help the hogs. The second unit lead by Morgrim advanced forward to engage the Impulsor. Nothing came of the orks light amount of shooting. Both units managed to made their respected charges. The Emperor was protecting that round as the small reinforcing orks didn’t manage to crack the bikers’ armour and just scratched the paint on the impulsor. The bikers focused on the hogs, but only managed to take down one more and leave the other heavily wounded. The impulsor failed to bonk any of it’s assailants. No Vp scored as the orks were overriding the objective the impulsor was on. Time to fix that as the assault squad disembarked and set up their own charge. Subatan Khan had his bikers fall back to the ork’s home objective. The assault unit split fire, the sgt taking a shot at finishing the hogs, but the WAAUGH protected him, while the bolt rounds failed to hurt the brutes. The khan finished the last hog with a single Devestating shot and his squad charged into the boys with the assault squad charging into Morgrim’s unit. The WAAUGH held firm as only the last two of the normal boys were dropped and the nob managed to crush a biker. The assault squad had issues wounding the tough orks, but still dropped the squad to almost half, the Impulsor managed to crush two boyz into the ruin walls while Morgrim continued to tear into it. Orks ready their charge. Storm Warriors preop their counter charge Surrounded, Morgrim’s unit broke but fought on. The last nob was speared by Subatan and the bikers fell back to the objective. The boys all failed to do any damage that round and his boys were taken out, leaving only Morgrim left to face the near full might of the marines. Game was called at that point. Ok, so Subatan Khan's movement ability is nuts on the small board. Being able to shoot and charge after advance and fallback means you can’t pin the unit down. Especially with the Master Rider enhancement which allows your bikers to just ignore terrain. It is an alpha strike force as it needs to get in the first kills to lower the return fire. Storm Riders helps as it drops wound rolls from 3s to 4s which helps whether that return. I can see Quarry of the Khan helping with larger targets of the older CPs. Also the Impuslor has a decent amount of firepower at close range. At 12” it’s throwing 14 shots at S4 1Dmg. So honestly this thing can hit hard, especially if Quarry is attached to it (more so if the squad is embarked so you get the five pistol shots as well). Overall not bad, but going to try and get in another game or two before I put these away for a while. Nice bonus is that the whole thing fits on a single mag-tray. Thanks for reading.

"Hate your enemy. There is no room for compassion in the prosecution of the enemy's destruction. Strive with every iota of your will and strength to see him destroyed. Slay him and cast down his works without mercy. Only when every corrupt work is destroyed and the ashes of his body float on the wind, only then can there be compassion. Hate the enemy who yet lives. Reserve your pity for the dead." - Chaplain Ur'Venn, attached to the Salamanders 4th Company, Purging of Clovis' World - + + + Sergeant Torek inserted a fresh prometheum canister into his pyreblaster with a practiced motion. The fuel indicator dial switched to full and he lowered the weapon to check his tactical display. An enemy convoy was approaching fast, intent on disrupting the Imperial supply drop. The Salamanders needed those supplies. Weapons, ammunition, fuel and tools, all would be needed to finish the campaign and cleanse the forge city of taint. His warriors voxed in, one after another, a litany of names sounding in his ears as the squad confirmed readiness. “Forgefather,” he said, the word an acknowledgement and a question all in one. Vulcan He'stan rested the butt of his spear on the cracked red earth. The relic weapon, crafted by Vulkan’s own hand, exuded a presence all its own. Though he wore his helm, the Forgefather’s eyes seemed to bore into each of Torek’s squad in turn before turning his gaze on the distant enemy. “Brothers. Too long have these blood mad Chaos scum ravaged this city. Too long have they profaned the shrines of the Mechanicus on this world. Ready yourselves, Sons of Vulkan! Destroy them, that we may destroy their brethren utterly!” The Seeker of the Nine raised his great spear and pointed it at the for. “For Vulkan and the Emperor!” “For Vulkan and the Emperor!” Torek bellowed with the rest, and the Salamanders began their advance. + + + The Salamanders saw action against World Eaters the other day. I like a nice casual game any day, and met up with a fella at the flgs to close out the month of March with a bang. It's been a while since I could play regularly, what with school and all, so it was so fun to get in a game at last. Here's a battle report, along with some 1-draft bits of fiction inspired by in-game moments (who doesn't like a bit of narrative?). The lists: I ran my usual. I describe this as a balanced-side-of-casual list. It doesn't do so well against the more competitive players in my area, but has been racking up a lot a victories against casual companions. For my Salamanders I prefer to field an army that'll win a decent number of games, but specific unit choices are generally limited by collection size, what grabs my eye, and which units I had the most fun building/painting or just want to show off My opponent ran a cool Berzerker-heavy list with tons of melee (Blood for the Blood God!) and some big 'ol melee monsters. I'd never faced a Maulerfiend before. It's a cool model and pretty scary fighter! List's from memory so hopefully right... The mission was Supply Drop. Objectives were gonna disappear, first the one on my left at the top of BR4, then the center objective in BR5. I got lucky as I deployed mostly on the right. I had first turn. We were both really cautious in BR1, mostly moving up only a little. My Vindi blew up the spawn, who'd moved out in their scout move, and my Repulsor took a pot shot at some Eightbound, managing to kill 2. The remaining 1 moved to control the bottom objective (my left flank) though he was, alas, never to score on that one. End of BR1 + + + A scream of bending metal reverberated through the hold as the transport halted abruptly. Sergeant Amfell was slammed against his restraints, snarling as he activated his commbead. “Eksor, what was that?” he hissed. Already the Land Raider’s hull was booming with the sound of impacts. The vehicle's pilot replied. “They've charged us! The cursed fools! Mountainfire is disabled and Brother Umaroth is not showing on my tactical display.” “What's on us now?” Around him, Amfell's squad was preparing to disembark, readying chainswords and heavy bolt pistols. Eksor sounded incredulous. “The cursed Daemon. Maulerfiend. There's a Helbrute out there too. Targeting now.” The smell of cordite and blazing prometheum filtered in through a gap somewhere in the hull as the Land Raider's flamestorm cannons discharged. “We're disembarking,” Amfell said, exchanging a look with Chaplain Ur’Venn. “Good luck, brother.” The pilot’s voice sounded strained now, Amfell wondered if he'd been wounded in the initial clash. Exit ports thumped open on the transport’s side and rear, revealing a cratered street, the Helbrute’s burning corpse, and a mob of screaming heretic Astartes charging toward them. The Chaplain led the way, chanting a litany of purgation, and Amfell followed, howling his challenge to the traitors ahead. + + + BR2-3 saw some more action. Adrax & his Bladeguard took the bottom objective and slew the lone Eightbound while across the field, my Vindicator took out another unit of the same. In the center, my Land Raider kept its load of marines & set up on the center objective. But in a massive flank attack, the Lord "Avocado" & his minions landed in my rear and took out the Repulsor, who's wreck claimed an Infernus Marine. RIP brother. And at the same time, the Maulerfiend made for the center, the Helbrute barely pushing through the Land Raider's overwatch attack to join in the melee. Berserkers in the Backfield! World Eaters strike! Vulkan & co. managed to drive off the Maulerfiend while my Assault Intercessors took care of the rest, but wave of Eightbound and a Rhino kept melee going for a while. Meanwhile Khârn led his band to the center to take on the rest of my army, finally falling to the flames in the final turn of the game, BR5. At that point it was just him, a couple Eightbound, and a Rhino. I removed most of what remained in shooting and then sent the Vindi in to tank shock. Because bulldozer tank. The Imperial Forces consolidate their gains (BR4) World Eaters perform a final charge A hasty shot of Khârn battling the Salamanders Commanders Kind of a bummer this one turned out so blurry. I kind of just slipped my phone down into a gap to capture a quick shot. Must've messed up the focus a bit. Still, a very cinematic moment in-game. 3 wounded heroes, their bodyguards slain, meet in battle in the eye of the storm. Khârn rose again to take down Adrax in epic slaughter, the Spear of Vulkan still embedded in his side... then I treacherously crisped him with a nearby blob of pyreblaster-wielders. Sorry Khorne... Final score 50-21. It was a super fun game and a great victory. I did feel a little bad though - he never scored on primary. It's just that what the Vindicator looks at, dies, and overall I think my go-to list is just really well attuned to World Eaters. Nevertheless, we both had a good time chatting Warhammer, throwing dice, and discussing some of the other games we're getting into of late. Very nice way to close out March & get some gaming in before school starts again. And so I leave you with a last piece, inspired by the moment Kareldek's Inceptors dropped into the rear and blew away a pack of Jakhals. Zharni crouched beneath the ruined shell of a building. Beyond its cracked and pockmarked walls, bolters boomed and engines rumbled. Around him, Zharni's compatriots lurked. There, Tek, clutching his rough-hewn blade. There, Olg, pacing and showing bloody teeth to anyone who looked his way. There, Anja, peering through the haze as though to see the blood being spilled scant dozens of meters away. The rest occupied themselves similarly, each engrossed in their own little rituals, staring at nothing and twitching at every sound. They could not join this fight. The red Giants said to hold this building, and this building they must hold. When a Red One told you to do something you did it, or your blood would paint his axe before you could cry “Blood for the Blood God.” “Shut up, Zharni,” one of the others grunted. He hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud. Zharni made an effort to calm himself. It was hard. The fighting was so close he could hear it, and he swore he could smell fresh blood in the air. But yes! The sounds of battle were getting closer. Perhaps Zharni would be able to fight today after all. He could hear the sound of blade on armor, the sound of fist on flesh. He could hear the screams of the enemy, and the warcry of the red Giants. “Blood for the Blood God.” “Shut up, Zharni.” He ignored the comment. He listened to the battle. He could hear the buzzing of chainblades, the roar of powerful beasts. He could hear- what was that? Zharni looked up as a keening noise cut through the battlefield clamor. Bulky shapes dropped from the sky spitting fire. Around him, Zharni's companions burst apart in sprays of gore, painting the rubble a beautiful, beautiful crimson. His eyes widened as the falling shapes landed with earth-shattering force, resolving into green-armored figures like the red warriors who commanded Zharni and brought him the blood. But something was off about them. These warriors bore none of the trappings of the Red Ones. Their armor was smooth, its plate unadorned save for numerals and markings like twisting flames. Zharni screamed his hate and charged toward the imposters, whipping the blades attached to his arms through the air in his eagerness to take their skulls. Their firing continued unabated. He felt his midsection come apart and he arced through the air as if in slow motion, slamming to the ground with a dizzying shock. At the edge of vision, the green-armored figures bounded away on plumes of flame, spitting death at a new target. Zharni was denied his prey. Yet he smiled. For Zharni could still hear the sounds of battle. He could hear the screams of the wounded, the moans of the dying. He could hear the boom of bolter and the whistle of spinning blade. He could hear the patter of his own blood falling to the earth beneath him, a sweet music, a worthy sacrifice. And above it all, Zharni began to perceive a new sound, the laughter of a thirsting god.

Was able to make it to the CP league at my local GW and got in some Combat Patroi over the weekend. Got in two games, one against a veteran and the second was a training game versus a new player. Both games I rolled a die to decide which CP I would use of the three I had with me. First up was a nid on nid bout. Insidious Infiltrators vs my Assault Brood. My opponent set up on three of the objective points due to their force all having Infiltrate. I put the parasite in reserve and the other three units on my home objective, ready to surge forward as needed. The Infiltrators got first turn and my line was assaulted by two units of leapers. They had pharmoned one objective to hold it and the third unit of leapers moved to hold the other. They kept the lictor on their home objective. The neurolictor was mid field at this point. Used the defensive strat to try and keep my stealers alive, but still lost a few. The rest of the game was a simple grind on my home objective. While I managed to kill all the leapers, it cost me the stealers and all but one of the Tyrant guard by turn four and the neurolictor was still in my homefield. I did manage to knock out the pheromone sticky with the parasite, it survived a turn against the lictor. My opponent was too ahead in primary for me to catch up, holding most of them for the game. The biovore managed like one wound a turn due to all the opponent units having Stealth and/or Lone Op. Honestly the Vedenghast swarm would have performed better. If anything it has more shooting, the leapers’ main bit is that they have Fights First, so melee is not the best place to fight them. The psychophage is also a little bit more tankier then the Tyrant guard due to it’s FNP. So the second game was against a new player that had picked up the Beast Snagga CP as their start into the hobby. Had them roll for my CP and they got… Armigar Trailblazers. So this was an interesting match up cause the beast snagga units do have anti-vehicle/monster abilities. The riders have anti-monster/vehicle weapons as does the boss. The beast boyz get hit rerolls against vehicles so more of their many attacks will hit. Basically death by a thousand cuts. Had the helverin on the home objective, the warglaive on the line and was my warlord for this. Orks were placed basically in the middle of his deployment zone, the boss attaching to one of the beast boy units. He moved all the units forward, his centrical boyz unit holding a few back on his home objective. They didn’t have charge range yet, nor weapons range. So went to my turn and I had a mission, take out the riders. Warglaive moved forward to a mid-field objective and the helverin shifted up to get line on the riders. The stubbers fired on the beast boys killing a few. Between the autocannon and thermal spear the riders were slagged. The warglaive then charged into the closest unit of boys, killing a few more and taking a wound in the return. During their turn the orks fired at the warglaive but failed to hit and/or wound. The other unit of boyz charged in, got in way of the boss so he wasn’t involved in that round of combat. Those charging boyz shaved a few more wounds off the warglaive but it managed to nearly wipe out the first boyz unit before they struck. Used the Gait strat to get the warglaie out of the melee and onto the other objective. The helverin gave some fire support and missed wildly. Did manage to get one of the larger squad. The orks ran after the the warglaive, once again the helverin opening up on the unit via overwatch and failed to hit anything. The orks barreled into the warglaive and only due to the steed’s high toughness and some (un)lucky rolls the warglaive took minimal damage but managed to kill a few boys for their troubles. The helverin moved up to grab the other mid-field objective and gun down the last of the first boyz unit. The warglaive pumped fire into the unit engaged with his and got a few more kills. The remaining boyz did a few more wounds, getting the warglaive down to half wounds. It then wiped out the remaining boyz and glanced the boss. At that point we called it, he had just the boss and I was well over on points. The two mid field objectives were my gather points. So I was netting 25 VP a round. Overall not bad, I do like that CP is a quick game. I want to use some others in time. Speaking of that I did get pictures of three of the Combat Patrols I had with me. The Vanderghast Swarm The Insidious Infiltrators The Armigar Trailblazers I had completely forgotten to get a picture of the Assault brood either before or after the game. I’ll have those next week along with picts of the Death Riders I finished for the DKoK CP. Then for that I just need to paint up the heavy weapon squad and I can either build/paint the command unit or just grab some models to use instead. checks the weapons of the 10 man squad oh lovely I have to make a flamer trooper.

Mission Onslaught, Dawn of War Deployment Forces Alpha legion Army List Emperor's Children - 3k points Maru Skara Praetor - paragon, volkite pistol* Legion Champion - paragon 5 tartaros - mixed loadout in Spartan* Contemptor Talon - 2x with autocannon and fist* 3x10 man tac squads 2x5 man scout squads with rifles 2x quad las preds Fire raptor Leviathan, storm cannon, grav bombard Mission Onslaught (5vp for holding the objective). Deployment was as below. My opponent won the roll for first turn and chose to deploy and go first. I counter deployed to get the gravs near those clumped up preds, my recons on the left flank where I thought my opponent would outflank, as he didn't deploy any units there, lascannons on the higher ground, seekers close to the tacticals with champion, dreads all in the middle to deal with any threats once I seen where the maru skara came on. Effrit are behind the ruin near my onslaught objective marker, out of sight and so 9" away from those sniper scouts. The fire raptor went in reserve and my opponent kept the spartan (praetor and terms inside) and the contemptor talon back for the Maru Skara outflank, and placed the outflank assault token on the back of my table edge - you can see a small token on my edge, just behind the plague furnace. I was caught off guard a bit as I thought it had to be a side edge of the table, however the outflanking assault (or maru skara) rule says any table edge including your opponent's DZ, so I was going to get it in the behind from a spartan. The upshot of this was that key damage dealing component's of my opponent's army were off table in T1, which totalled maybe 1500 of the 3000pts of the army, so turn 1 would essentially be a 3k vs 1.5k battle, which is what the Alpha legion prefer. I'm not a fan of starting off table generally due to having this point defecit - only if it's something you need to protect, so this was only benefitting me. Turn1: I fail to seize, so the EC's go first. To be honest, not much happened. Things moved towards objectives, The preds shot my lascannon dread and managed 1 wound from 8 lascannons - he might have moved 8" so he could only snapshot, the dread returned fire and damaged a pred. Leviathan shot my seekers, killing 2 after some heroic saves from the serge. Snipers went for my delegatus, but failed to do anything due to 2+ save, cover and shrouded from Leviathal. I'd have maybe went after the auguries to limit my interceptors. The lascannons react and kill 3/5 scouts. Their right hand tac marines moved up and bolt pistoled my headhunters, doing nothing. They then charged in. The HH's overwatch fire with 1 combi melta and the multi + bolters and killed two. The EC attack first causing 6 wounds, the 2+ saves needed which are rolled below. I attacked back with daggers but did nothing, but the vexilla means the tacs win by 1. I fail my Ld and they fail to sweep, I run 8 or 9" away. These armour save rolls on my headhunter sergeant were pretty emblematic of my rolling in this game, these AL dice are blessed. Due this this it was pretty one sided, but my opponent soldiered on. Headhunters get assaulted by the tactical squad, the combat is drawn with zero casualties, but the tacs win by 1 due to vexilla. My T1 begins and the Harrowing begins. Effrit pop out and annihilate the left hand scouts with shotguns. Grav cannons drop 3 pie plates onto the preds and finish off the damaged one, my multimelta strips another wound, but not kills the second. Leviathan and lascannon HSS target the leviathan and kill it. Fulmentarus shrapnel missiles, right tactical squad and jetbikes go into the right hand EC tacs and kill all but one who fails Ld and falls back. Seekers kill a tac marine and wound the champion. End of my T1 with those predators covered in grav pulse templates. EC- T2 The Maru Skara arrives behind my lines - 1100 pts or so of my opponent's army appeared behind me, but the grav rapiers intercepted with a reaction point dropping haywire and difficult terrain all over that, the lascannons HSS went into one of the dreads with the augury, and the fulmentarus went into one also using my second movement reaction from Moebius, I think reducing it to 1-2W. I wasn't worried about the spartan as it had to move full distance to get on the table so could only snap fire both ordnance weapons. Augury on seekers killed a termie, snipers couldnt see. No way could the tartaros fail the charge, moving to within 1" of the rapiers, even with the -4" from lies and obfuscation and terrain. The rapiers get wiped. The fire raptor arrives to blast my Lascannon HS squad in T2...which then Smoke and Mirrors's away to underneath the raptor and out of arc for the frontal guns, meaning it got to shoot one autocannon battery at them, and lost the rest of the shooting. The lascannons then killed it with a lucky snapshot in their next shooting phase. After wiping the rapiers, one of my dreads turns right back round and goes Praetor hunting.

In the run up to WHFest I managed to get another game in, this time against Adeptus Custodes. They're a really tough fight in 40k, and I had no idea what they would be like in HH. War of Lies, triangles deployment pointing at one another. This game I ditched the preds, despite how much I love them, to run a Leviathan in a HH Leviathal. I also swapped the Deredeo and something else for a Delgatus with nemesis and 3 sky hunters with MM's and a fist. Custodian Army Custodian warden that can be taken at 3k 3x terminators 1x5 dudes with meridian blades 1x 5 dudes with spears 1x 5 dudes with shields 1x3 dudes with spears in reserve 3 with combi instant death things 2x3 bikes with bolt cannons 1x Galatus dead with fist and 12" lance thing. Custodes t2 movement. This time I got seized on! I swear 50% of my games someone seizes. The Custides leader with the 2 next to him advances down the flank to try and fight the Alphas in honourable combat. No chance. The bikes to the right of my Effrit charged in, losing 1 to overwatch (breaching 6+ shred) before killing 3 in combat. The Effrit run away, but managed to escape the bikes. The Leviathan and Galatus get into range and start pummelling one another, The Levi winning out despite the 4+ save due to armourbane and only S8 on the galatus. The final wounds are knocked off in melee, which was a dangerous prospect with the custodian dread being WS6. In future it might be better to let them shoot and charge me to get 2 rounds of shooting off. The Fulmentatus just massacred any unit they shot at, with AP2 Brutal. The Guided fire applies to the unit, not just models with launchers, I think, so my nemesis and telepathy shooting attack could fire through walls... The Shield unit chases down the headhunters after rolling a double 1 charge in turn 1 and massacre the spies. The boss custodian failed their T2 charge, but made it into the dread t3 after I retreated with my fulmentarus. He beat this dread after it killed his bodyguard, however the other dread then charged in and smushed him to paste. We played 3 turns overall and after that it was a pretty clear cut win for the Alphas, I'd barely suffered any casualties (5 recons, dread, 2 seekers, 5 headhunters) while my opponent had like 8 custodians left and I was on 4/5 objectives, then also had warlord and headhunter. This was a good learning game, custodes are a lot more balanced than in 40k, the 6++ isn't great, it could have maybe even been a 5++ (we see how fast tartaros dies), however they are monsters in combat - they'll butcher any army they contact, unless you pick and choose those. I wasted a lot of precision fire in trying to take out the leader with his 4++ (he saves >50% of the saves), while I could have been easily killing the other custodians he was with, so that's a lesson for the future - those like 6 passed 4++ saves would have been 2.5 dead custodians. The headhunters did little this game, other than be the distraction I planned them to be (melta is worse than plasma v T5 2W?) howver the bikes did ok, and the fulmentarus did amazing. I'm not 100% on the rapiers, but the templates did slow stuff down. That might be very useful with alphas.

Ok, finally closing out the Adepticon 2023 catch-up Game 1. Win v. Wolves I thought they had us in the early turns. It was clear they cross a lot of table quickly. Should we leave the sentinels forward and give the enemy the extra move, or just pull them out? I think it'd be helpful to pause on decisions and go through outcomes in practice games. here my thinking was that I wanted early pressure on the objectives. I also wanted to divert them to get some shooting in where possible before they reach me. I also set the bullgryns up to stall their advance, knowing they'd break through the sentinels quickly. The thunderwolves were very tough, but our shooting was able to overcome them. Maybe with a smaller squad size they'd have been able to hide better. We did effectively screen out their terminator reserves. They then held the back lines instead of causing more immediate problems in our lines. Once the thunderwolves were effectively nullified, we were able to shift our focus to launching out on to the midground objectives. Again terrain placement and type plays a crucial role. If we couldn't get 5+ tanks in LOS of thunderwolves, I don't know how we kill them. This could have been a big loss going the other way. There's an intellectual fog around where and when to deploy out of sight for me. I need to learn more here. This is one of those points of misunderstanding where I win a fair amount of games, but not reliably. Understanding line of sight, enemy movement speed, really knowing the terrain rules and reserve rules... it all comes together. Kasrkins also did outrageous damage. Yes, play the meta units... I've of mixed opinion on the rule change. On one hand it was a 'feel bad' or 'gotcha' type of unit. On the other hand, I'm not the receiving end of such units all the time. It's nice to have one of my own for once. Good game to start the day. Game 2 Win v. BA Tensions high in this one. It's important to remember it's just a game. So, the big question was who launches out to the midground first? I think our list was a bad match up for them. They didn't have a whole lot of long range firepower. Early charges failed creating some lopsided results. Even with a number of command rerolls they failed like 7 charges in the game. Being left in the open the results were as you might expect. Felt bad on this one. I don't know that they win outright if they make their charges, but it sure would have been a much different game. If they could have bounced from unit to unit in consolidation and pile-ins, it's really rough on guard. Anyway, we were able to move up and get some firing lines on them while they weren't really able to move out. Reserves coming in failed their charges too. Great team, great paint job. Winning two to start is unusual for us, we're in trouble now. Game 3 Loss v. Tau Completely annihilated. Not an ugly agonizing loss though. These guys were great fun to play. They won best tacticians overall (best battlescore). I like the magenta paint scheme too, really eye-catching. The player measuring in the photo below had just won singles the day before (I don't know how you play 7-8 games and then come to the team tourney... I'm getting old but my mind would be mush). The other player is a coach on vanguard tactics, and he's really great too. So, any lessons here? Hard to learn when outclassed to such a degree. Issue: In the back right top of the photo is a giant terrain piece. It's obscuring. His army can move shoot move. Effectively I have nothing that can shoot them. In their turn they jump up, shoot me, and jump back behind cover. We're dead in the water. I don't think a token manticore or field artillery does much. They might have helped some though. I might have reserved some tanks to come in from the sides. Adepticon team tourney does have some special rules so CP was very limited. A regiment trait or tank ace to get a trait might have helped the reserves issue too. Still, assuming I come in like it's T3 and get a good shooting angle - I get one round of shooting and I'm toast. Not necessarily a good trade. If used reserves in conjunction with indirect fire, perhaps I'd have been able to limit some critical mass of enemy shooting. Though as orders are in the command phase, I should think that my shooting from reserves would not have really been that effective anyway. I'm not killing a riptide with 1-2 lemans. Vanquishers would normally be a solution, but they have shield drones - all high impact shots would be wasted. I also could have went full steam across the table with mechanized orders - possibly taking cover at other terrain pieces. But, this highlights a multi-part failure. I needed to understand what terrain would do. I needed to understand what their army could do with terrain. I needed to plan my own terrain defensively, and offensively as to how I might get across the table. Perhaps with precise terrain placement and selecting small forward deploy units, I might have put some objective pressure on them. Army list construction - the banesword can't maneuver or get line of sight. maybe the answer would have been to just stay off the table till T3. They didn't move out anyway. Let them fill the board and just come on in to a shooting gallery. Again the CP limits might have caused this to not really work, but that might be the best option. Game 4, Loss to Custodes What I didn't want to happen was to have bikes inside a densely packed backfield. I figured they'd be there turn 2. They instead played very conservatively. I pushed out on the right flank to try and get less bunched up while not opening up too much to a counter charge. Also, they were going to be up on points. Terrain as always is a crucial part here. If we'd agreed that the first floor was line of sight blocking I don't think we kill a custodes. Instead, it was a fairly close game. Once they got some squads on to objectives, it was just nearly impossible to get them off. Late game we did break out and started doing real damage, but it was too little too late. It was a good one. We all talked through multiple ways it could have gone. We also talked for sometime about the state of the game. They'd been in 40k since 4-5th edition. They noted how hard it can be to have a good tight game. I might slaughter a new player. I then get slaughtered by somebody going to weekly tournaments. That player then gets butchered at the top tables. There's levels to players and often there's a complete mismatch. When people talk about balance, this is not discussed. The hyper competitive side of the game isn't necessarily good for the hobby overall, or keeping new players. It's a weirdly time and money intensive hobby that doesn't translate well to sports or other activities. Game 5 Win v. Thousand sons and Guard I wasn't real sure what to do with deployment. I knew they had a lot of reserves, so I didn't want them getting in behind us. Thankfully they didn't have a bunch of indirect fire to wipe out our infantry. First turn they didn't want to over-expose themselves. We were able to move out and cause some real damage. Also, perfectus orders to bullgryns pushed out reserves... a lot. So their terminators and magnus came in, but maybe not in the best position they'd hoped. The terminators have good shooting, but the tanks weren't the optimal target. Their psychic powers are very good. But, Magnus whiffed his rolls to do any real critical harm when he came down. And, he came down immediately in front of our whole army. BBQ time. The banesword fulfilled it's purpose this game. Summary So, with 4x player teams, I think the other half went 3-2 as well. Looking at the overall results then, we're down a bit to 91 teams this year. We came in at 256 battle points, or 16th place in gameplay alone. That's much higher than usual for us. Big win. Some years we're near the bottom. Some we are in the middle. In appearance we got 116/125 points. That puts us tied for 6th with three other teams. Get those decals on there! Work on those blends and glazing! On theme we 100/100. Tied with 4 others for first on that. I really enjoyed making the army list, operations order, krieg costume, and wax seals. Put in a lot of work there, and we got recognition on it. In display we got rank 5 in which points are awarded, and a team can be invited to the showcase. Tons of work here, and very happy we got the invite. In player theme we got 29/30. This is just other teams ranking us. In total hobby score we got 250 points, putting us at 3rd place in hobby alone. And, actually there was a tie for first place. I thought we were well out of our league, but the judges were really kind. For overall/combined scores then we got 5th place. Super excited for that. Last year we were wild that we got 29th place. Didn't come home with any awards this year, but we were super close to best display, best appearance, and best imperial. The appearance score of 116/125 made all the difference. I think we were lucky in gameplay - realistically getting to grips with what we know, what we don't know, and what we don't know we don't know... we'd need to do tournaments at least every month. I think we're very far away from reliably winning more games (not to say we shouldn't try). Epilogue Afterwards motivation has remained high so far. I haven't sworn off the game, as happens after some lopsided tournaments, or skewed edition rules requiring building a completely new army. For now I like the idea of continuing to work on the display board. I think it'll be fun to take out to other tournaments, though it might be a bit much to show up in costume with a zeppelin to a local tourney. I want to cut the board up a bit, and add some real changes to the layout - do what I my actual vision of the thing was before time ran out. Doing more tournaments might also help me get to know some of the local players. I'm not part of any groups and see familiar players once every 9-12 months. I've got a lot of ideas for the next board, but without seeing the tyranids yet... I'm just not sure what the story is going to be. Well, one teammate has 10,000pts of orks so we could just to orks. But, organizing the team is always difficult. Would hate to start in on building a 15sqft board if it turns out we don't have 4 players. When I was young I had time but no money. Now I have money but no time. In any case, I can probably start sketching out the board now. If it doesn't go, it doesn't go.

After the absolute kicking I received from Ted's Chaos Knights, I was eager to temper myself against them once more and see if I can beat them - he's the only person in my club to beat my Blood Angels so far, and they won't stand for it! The last game was an absolute whitewash, something like 40 - 95, and so I wanted to approach this one a little better, and using basically the same army I used before. We tried to set up the terrain more like GW's tourney maps, with the 4 large obscuring pieces in the centre and then the smaller pieces round the edges. BA List 2000 Blood Angels Arks of Omen (Elites): Captain on Bike - Warlord (gift of foresight), relic (Indomitus), angel exemplar (artificer - mantle), thunder hammer, storm shield (-3cp) Sanguinary Priest - pack, selfless healer 5 infiltrators - medic 5 infiltrators - medic 5 sanguinary guard - 2 fists, 3 swords, 5 inferno 5 sanguinary guard - 2 fist, 3 swords, 5 inferno sanguinary ancient - fist, inferno, wrath of baal (-1cp) Death co - 5 inferno, 2 fists, 3 swords Death co - 5 inferno, 5 swords 10 Vanguard Veterans - 10 storm shields, 1 thunder hammer, 3 fists, 3 swords, 3 claws 3x MM Attack bikes. 5 Assault marines, 2x melta, eviscerator, serge with inferno, thunder hammer. 5 Assault marines, 2x melta, eviscerator, serge with inferno, thunder hammer. Whirlwind 3 eradicators, heavy, MMelta. Chaos Knights - iconoclast (+1A and AP in 1st round of combat) Knight Abominant - volkte thing, gift of the dark master, 6++ relic, winds of chaos Knight Desecrator relic laser gun, 5++ feel no pain when awakened trait 7x Wardog from left to right in below pic: Undivided melta gatling nurgle melta gatling undivided wardog claw+sword Slaanesh beguiling wardong claw and sword undivided claw and sword Tzeentch with dual autocannons Deepstrike one with gatling and sword in reserve. Mission Scouring (3vp for perfoming an action on an objective) Secondaries: BA: Behind enemy lines; bring it down; banners Knights Ruthless Tyranny; Storm of Darkness; Grind them down I started out by hiding everything in the large obscuring ruin, with one unit of infiltrators guarding my left flank, and the whirly on the right, eradicators and assault marines started in reserve. The knights won the roll off, I chose to forlorn a DC unit out front to try and bait him to charge them and move closer to me, maybe this was a mistake, but it was a 115pt lure. Tower defence CK Turn 1 movement. CKT1: The knights all moved forwards, very little could see, some stubbers shot at the DC, causing 4 wounds, all failed saves, then they were charged by a wardog and wiped. One starts the warpstorm, one starts the mission primary and they're all in dread range for 8. 8-0 to knights. BAT1: Death co go into assault doctrine. The attack bikes drove out to target the autocannon armiger, 4 hits, 4 wounds, dead armiger, great shot! The second unit of DC popped out to try and charge the slaanesh dog on the objective, but inferno pistolling the one that killed the other DC - the inferno pistols did about 4 damage, and the DC had to charge that one threatening my lines instead, killing it. In retrospect, I could have gotten a SG unit out to target this one also, and send the DC into the slaandog to try and net 2 melee kills from the start. One unit of SG jumped left to that objective and raised a banner, the infiltrators raised the banner on my home objective and a SG started the mission secondary on it. 4 for bring it down, 3 for the mission. 8-7 to the knights. CKT2 On 3 objectives for 12, big knights move forwards and everything shoots and wipes the attack bikes. Bikes are within banner range, so 1 manages to fire the MM into the central wardog, bracketing it. central bracketed wardog charges the DC who manage to only lose 3 models and punch it hard back. Deepstrike knight comes in near the SG on the left objective and peppers them killing 2, fails charge. Abominant stands on central objective and gets off the fnp. then starts to curse it. Storm completes (4) and They start the storm again and do another mission objective (3) and have the guaranteed 5 for 24pts total. 32-7 to knights. BAT2 On 2 objectives for 8, 2 for banners. I think this is the turn I have to do something or lose the game, so I go all out I also learned that the 4+ max to hit thing on the knight is only after it's activated, which it isn't yet, so I need to do some serious damage before it kills 5 models. Vanvets into assault doctrine and jump out to the aboninant, along with the captain and ancient. Priest jumps to the left hand SG unit and brings one back, they have strung out to be in melta range of the deepstrike dog and be revived by the priest. SG2 jump out to charge the melta/gatling wardog and kill it. I forget the mission action. Left hand infiltrators guerilla warfare out of there. Death co melta the dog they're in comat with and kill it, eradicators some onto the right flank and shoot the slaandog who pops the 4+ invuln and they do maybe 4 damage. Assault marines drop in behind cover in their dz and ASM2 drop in 92 from the slaandog, and their meltas don't do anything. Left SG1 charge the deepstrike dog and knock it down to 2w after it popped the -1D strat - acceptable as long as the -1d doesnt go on the abominant. Vanvets, captain and banner charge into the abominant, the hammer doesn't do great as my rerolls are useless, but between them they do 13 damage, almost bracketing it. Abominant attacks back splitting between captain and ancient. I get lucky and it does 3W to the ancient and 4w to the captain after the mantle. I stupidly used my CP earlier for a reroll, and should have kept it for Angels Sacrifice here. I get 4 for bring it down, 2 for grind, 4 for behind enemy lines for 18. 32-27 to knights. CKT3 2 Objectives. Now he's down to 3 wardogs and losing board control. desectrator moves to bail out deepstrike knight from the SG, kills one eradicator then charges and wipes the SG, consolidating onto my left objective and starting storm (so he can't move next turn). Slaandog goes after the assault marines within 12, charges, and kills 4, wounding the serge. Serge hammers back for 3D. Nurgle gun knight shoots the eradicator and fails, then charges the SG2. It's bracketed, but uses a dirty strat to turn each hit into 2(!)mw, wiping the SG. Abominant cannot cast the 5++ as it's warp storming, which then completes for 4. I then attack with the ancient doing 2 damage, the abominant attacks and I spring angels sacrifice, and make him put everything into the 1W ancient who unsprprisingly dies to save everyone else. The captain smacks a flat 9 wounds through then the VV's finish off the abominant...which then explodes, doing 3 MW to the captain, killing him, and 5 to the VV's killing 2.5. 4 for storm, 3 for tyranny. 3 for grind. I get 4 for bring it, 50-31 to knights. BAT3 1 Objective as the obsec nurgle dog consolidates onto the centre one, 1 banner as the desecrator knocked mine off. ASM1 serge falls back behind LOS blocking ruins, ASM2 jump onto the opponent's right objective near the slandog and mission primary for 3, the eradicators move towards it as it's already -1 to hit anyway, and melta. Infiltrators appear back on in opposing DZ guaranteeing BEL. Priest jumps over, heals and revives a vanvet, who then charge the nurgle dog. which survives on a few W. Infiltrators 2 advance towards slandog objective. Erads wipe the slandog. 2 for bring it, 4 for BEL. 50-44 knights CK T4 2 objectives, no mission secondary. Warp storm completes, deep strike dog pops into the sky again. Big knight can't do anything. vanvets finish the nurgle dog. 4 for storm, 0 for the tyranny. I max bring it for 1. 57-45 BAT4 3 Objectives for 12 and 1 banner. ASM2 jump towards opponent's right objective to take it t5. erads move onto opposing left objective and banners. Priest heals and restores a vanvet, then does mission primary. whirly moves out as a distraction and to block the deepdog from getting near my duds in the middle. infiltrators 2 advance onto central objective. Infils 1 move around and shield the asm1 serge from a potential deepstrike from the deepdog. 15 primary, 1 banner, 4 for BEL makes it 54-67 and I take the lead. CKT5 Deepknight cant land anywhere useful due to infiltrators, so settles for the whirlwind, but being majorly bracketed he does nothing, big knight fails to do anything, and stays on the objective so I can't banners it. 0 for tyranny. 54-67 to BA. BAT5 No point going for kills as I've maxed BID. 12 for primary, 2 banner. vanvets jump onto opposing right objective and banners it. ASM2 jump onto it and perform the mission primary, erads put up a banner on opposing right objective. ilfils banner the central objective. 3 for mission primary, 4 for BEL. put the score on 54-86, going to 64-96 to the BA. We'd actually recorded the score as soemthing like 78-91, so I've messed up somewhere in the retelling and it was a bit closer, but the BA still won through in the end! Knights t3 assault phase, after killing the ancient, but before the abominant exploded. End of my T3 End of the game

I had a trip to WHW with a few other B&C folk a couple of weeks ago and managed to get some games in, mostly with @Excessus, either playing with or against him! It's been a while since he'd played, so we just did primaries on a random mission, which turned out to have 5 objectives, we did 5pts per command phase for each objective held, and used nachmund rules. My list 1250pts Craftworlds Patrol - Swift strikes and mobile fighters Autarch, Warlord, 2+" move, falchou's wing, fusion gun 5 rangers, wireweave 10 avengers, dual cats 10 banshees, piercing strikes, mirrorswords 6 spiders 3 spears, hearstrike, paragon sabre Prism Serpent - lances Serpent - scatters Alpha Legion Chaos lord in TDS - Black mace master of possession - fleshy thing and 4+ invuln 10 renegade guard - plasma, grenade 10 renegade guard - plasma, grenade 2x 5 marines, plasma 5 terminators hellbrute - tllas, MoT hellbrute - bolters, MoT grav rapier venomcrawler venomcrawler Deployment - I won the roll off and Excessus had to deploy first and stuck everything pretty much as far forward as possible, the lord and terms started in DS Reserve. The 5 man csm unit forward operaratived onto the east objective. CWT1 I won the roll off to go first, and generally shuffled around and the prism advanced 21" onto the north objective. Nothing got out yet. The prism shot the lascannon hellbrute, but the MoT deflected one of the wounds, however I rolled well on the second and knocked it down to 1 wound, the rangers then managed a lucky mortal on it to kill it. The lance serpent then killed the grav rapier before I could find out what it does. Spears shuffled back. ALT1 Everything moved forwards, venomcrawlers shoot and kill the spears (!), a crawler and the other CSM make it onto the central objective, so it's currently 3-2 to the alphas. Other random shooting knocks 6W off the prism. CWT2 10 vp for primaries. The other dread has to die, so I maneuvered stuff around. This was a generally unsuccessful turn, I got 10 VP for 2 objectives, but it took basically all my shooting to kill that second dread and knock some wounds off a crawler. The avengers got out to shoot something also (mistake) ALT2 15vp. The terms came in 9" from my front line, blocking access to the central objective. Avengers got shot up with 5 dead, one crawler managed a charge on a serpent, but fluff the attacks, the terminators fail the charge. Score is 10-15 to the AL. The CSM approach... End of my T2 The Terminators arrive CWT3 10vp for primaries. The banshees hopped out to counter the terminators, they basically go where they want with a 6" advance, 8" move then 3" deploy, but the chaos lord was tucked away limiting access. I fall back with the serpent being attacked by the crawler and fire and fade to let it shoot. The spiders then hop onto the objective to either shoot the crawler or something else. Everything shoots the venomcrawler, it dies and explodes, kiling 3 banshees (!), wounding my autarch twice, and killing a spider. Scatters start thinning cultists on their home objectve. The exarch goes into the lord with 3 other banshees, the remainder, minus the dead 3, go into the terms. I forgot to battle focus the autarch, so he goes in as well. The exarch and 3 banshees knock the lord down to 3w (very good rolling on saves) while the rest of the banshees kill 3/5 of the terminators (less good rolling). The lord then swings back with the black mace wound spillover and wipes the banshees alone. ALT3 Terms go after the rangers on my home objective, the MoP heals the lord for 3W. the east CSM move to the centre with the MoP, the central CSM move toward the western objective. Bit of scattered shooting kills some spiders lord charges my autarch and kills him. 20-30 to the AL. CWT4 10 vp. all my tanks cycle clockwise to get onto the SE objective, scatters wipe their guard off the home objective, prism shoots the other cultists, but CP spent to auto pass morale. random shooting kills a term. ALT4 10VP. Terms move towards the rangers, the get fleshed to recover the flamer which kills the rangers. lord tries to chase a serpent. CSM moves to the serpent on the NW objective in the photo below and manages a long charge into it to ObSec me off it. 30-40 to the AL What was left at the end of T4. My tanks had managed to get into the AL DZ, however hadn't inflicted enough damage to knock them off objectives. The terms at the bottom fleshy cursed the flamer back to life and flamed the rangers, a lone csm marine managed a long charge onto my lance serpent to the left there, which denied me that objective sealing the win for the Alphas - I should have kept a CP for a to hit roll. CWT5 5 vp. I just shuffle, prism and scatters try to kill the last guard, but they survive to deny me the east objective. bracketed serpent fails to kill the csm in contact with it. ALT5 terms move onto my home objective. Nothing else of note. 15VP at the end, for a final score or 35-55 to the despicable Alpha legion!

22 July, 2022 While hunting for new prey, the Cruentes discovered a cache of useful technology they could secure for bartering with the Dark Mechanicum. As they were securing the site, a Necron force led by Illuminor Szeras attacked their position. Bardûl personally led this force, and was once more accompanied by Dreior and Gorm's two small Berzerker squads, as well as Xarian the Helbrute. The mission forced me to split my army in two parts, and forced me to deploy my whole army first, but gave me two objectives to defend. For my Agenda, I took the one that would give me Warfleet Glory, which gave me three extra objectives to grab and bring back to my deployment zone. On my left, Xarian achieved nothing: he downed three Warriors, one of which promptly stood up, and the other two got back up over the game. In return, Xarian was one-shotted by a lucky blast from Szeras: Bardûl and a squad of Berzerkers, meanwhile, made short work of a unit of Praetorians on my right: However, this left the Berzerkers in my centre open to attack from Skorpekh Destroyers...who, in turn, were counterattacked by the Berzerkers on my right: These Berzerkers then proceeded to claim one of my Agenda objectives and return it to my deployment zone. While this was happening, Bardûl started his action on one of my Agenda objectives, but was rudely interrupted by Szeras. Szeras bounded around the outside of this storage tank, catching the veteran warrior by surprise and carving deep into his armour. In return, Bardûl severed a leg of his opponent before gripping Szeras's mechanical neck with his chainfist. Szeras fought back, once more puncturing Bardûl's plate but not quite laying him low. Refusing to release his grip, Bardûl ripped his enemy's head clean from its shoulders. Armour broken and bleeding from several wounds, Bardûl faced down the Necron Warriors, who could not seem to hit his flesh with their Gauss rifles. In desperation, they charged the Chaos Lord, but just could not penetrate his defences. In return, Bardûl slew a total of five Warriors before the rest fell back. Result: 55-5 victory for Khorne! With the Necrons retreating, the Cruentes discovered what the xenos were after: under the battlefield was a vault of abhuman genetic experiments, which must've been of interest to the inquisitive Szeras. While the genetic material itself was useless to the World Eaters, the equipment within the vault was invaluable, and Bardûl dispatched it to the Eternal Warrior. Bardûl's Personal Glory: 4 -> 3 Khorne's Dark God Glory: 5 -> 4 Cruentes' Warfleet Glory: 4 -> 8 But now comes the real fun part. After this battle, Bardûl levelled up; in addition, the mission Victor Bonus allowed me to grant one unit a Battle Honour. Did I decide to throw in my lot with the Chaos Gods and make a grab for immortality with two Chaos Boons? You bet your heretical rear I did! It went a little like this: The first roll was a 12 for +1 Wound, which was very suitable given that he refused to die in both of the games so far. Perfect! Then the second roll...also a 12. Bardûl, in his arrogance, believed he was entitled to a greater reward than what was given to him and drank too greedily from the cup of immortality. Time for me to start making a new Chaos Lord...

15 July, 2022 The first battle the Cruentes took part in for this Crusade was 25PL against a mate's Death Guard. This was his first 40k game, so we kept the mission to a simple one from Beyond the Veil. I chose the Agenda that would get me Dark God Glory points for performing an action at the centre of the board. The story behind this mission is that our forces are jointly invading an Imperial world that has until recently been isolated by Warp storms. As Imperial reinforcements arrive in-system, the World Eaters give in to their bloodlust and start hunting their allies in the heart of an occupied Hive city. Bardûl led this battle, accompanied by the two small squads of Berzerkers, led by Dreior and Gorm, and Xarian the Helbrute. Opposing them was a Daemon Prince, two small squads of Plague Marines, and a small blob of Poxwalkers. Being an introductory game, I didn't take any photos and tried to let my opponent have a few hero moments to keep it fun. In the end, I accidentally wiped him anyway, however he won the game on points. Bardûl and Xarian the Helbrute were the only models left on the table; Bardûl had killed the Daemon Prince and several Poxwalkers, while Xarian demolished everything else in melee. Despite losing the battle, I still gained 3 Chaos Points to put towards my various trackers, plus one Dark God Glory point for achieving the Agenda once. Both Bardûl and Xarian gained 5XP, so were close to levelling up already. Bardûl's Personal Glory: 4 -> 4 Khorne's Dark God Glory: 4 -> 5 Cruentes' Warfleet Glory: 4 -> 4

Hey guys, I want to just do a very quick batrep... not really a full batrep because I've been experimenting a lot of different units lately and I also have some time restraints on me and as well I sold my Deathwatch (painted) army. So that being said I won't take many pics as I am re-painting the army from scratch and I hate unpainted batreps. That being said I wanted to do a quick reference for this game. We played an 1850 Maelstrom and for ONCE I got to play against Space Marines (very rare here). I mean at my local store there are a lot of marine players but they kind of hide out amongst themselves. But for tournie play not as much as you'd like to see. (Bloody xenos edition!) Back to the game... it will be a brief overview. In this experiment I took my normal CAD + BSSF, and I changed the list so many times I accidentally left out my Stalker Bolter squad, so I had to play 1850 without them. The true experiment was I wanted to play more games with the Culexus (I haven't used him in this army specifically and not played him in any army for quite a while, probably Ultra's last.) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ So from memory the Blood Angels were using Traitor's hate formation. It actually looked okay on paper, as he had a "CAD" getting him some ObSec with Scouts parked in a bush, and a good sized squad of Grav Bikes, Multi Melta Attack Bikes, a bout 3 Pods of Troops with a Libby and .... the BEEF of the army was Dante and his magical ballet of pretty men in angel outfits which can Deep Strike and then Assault! Scary stuff. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I did get first turn, he failed to grab it. The game was VERY much back and forth. I had two big key moments, and one scary moment: 1. I had a key alpha strike. I unleashed solo Missile Termies, Dread, and (believe it or not) a Rhino with an Infernus Heavy Bolter in it at his Multi Melta bikes. The main alpha though was the Pod with Captain, and Frag Cannon unleashing on the Grav Bikers: - This opening salvo may have saved me. - all but one biker dies, all but one Multi Melta Attack Bike dies. (it did take all the forces I had on the board to do it.) Ironically the last surviving members of each squad would live up until the last turn! (those boys know how to Jink!) 2. I FAIL to get KEY reserves in on T2. Reminding me for the Millionth time you cannot take this army without some form of reserve manipulation ( a bad design element of the BSSF). This is scary because in his T2, his Dante, pods, and 2 large squads of Sanguinary Guard come in and can assault. They get good reserve rolls, re rolls and only 1D6 Deviation! The Sanguinary Guard can and do assault the turn they come in. I got one squad shot up pretty good, and the Sanquinary Guard came in and just annihilated me. 3. My failure for reserves set up a bizzarre situation..... When I failed both rolls for my Pod + Aquila, I knew it was game over since I just watched two of his Sanquinary guard wipe some of my stuff... .so in an act of pure desperation I took my Infernus Hvy Bolter Kill Team, and "Angelis Beacon'd" them across into the heart of the kill zone without deviation. The funny thing is I was wishing so badly at this point that I had not taken that Infernus because I desperately needed a Frag Cannon. The Infernus template hit 7 of his Tacticals, and I rolled four 6's !! These would have been rends, and with the Frag cannon I would have had 14 hits. He failed enough saves, that the rest of the Infernus squad weapons mopped up the Tacticals giving me some breathing space, but what about the Sanguinary Guard? This is where the second big desperate act comes in..... ^This guy made Assassinorium Great Again! 4. The Culexus did 'okay' here but ripping buffs away was one thing, he just did okay enough to assist in turn 1 with killing his libby and assisting in the kill of the squad ,but the big moment is next turn... In the next turn the Culexus would wander up (north of this picture) and get 6 shoots from my psychic pool at his Sanquinary guard which were about to gank my Deathwatch Captain after smoking one of my squads. The Culexus was pro. He leveled his pistol and wacked 5 guard!!! This left only Dante in the squad. The other Sanguinary squad was in CC I believe at this point. 5. The Captain had a brave Deathwatch with a Stormshield who took two blows from Sanquinary Axes before falling. I made a key decision to try to hold on for one more turn..... I decide the Captain is the only one who can handle his turn's worth of attacks, and I take them all on the captain, he tanks all the 3+ power weapons and of all the axe attacks the Halo saved all but 1!!! Close call. 6. The rest of my squads come in (finally). But the Infernus squad is basically one shotted by Dante... no joke, that guy came in, wound up his axe and murdered the whole kill team.... BUT that left him standing in the open. (when your Deathwatch, you gotta know when to die.) In retaliation my Captain's remnant squad, and everything around him including the Culexus let it rip at Dante. He saved so much stuff... ridiculous. It was a simple special ammo poison round that saw Dante fail his 2+ save and die for Warlord kill. This gave me the lead for the first time in the game.... 7. The game was winding down. I had a few scattered units, and a few solo Termies rolling around, but had managed to kill off the rest of his army except for the Pods, and the scouts in the corner (which had no shot/effect all game). With that he conceded and what started as a very back and forth game got very hairy for a while and then concluded with the death of his Warlord. Conclusions: - Infernus: Still not sold. I thought it was doing okay in a Rhino, but because Deathwatch like to inherently get close and use every shot possible, this felt like a bad play. - Culexus. One of the stars of the game. Not that the Blood Angels really relied on anything Psychic wise, the Culexus was key in crippling one of his 2+ save Sanguinary guard.

I have decided to set myself a challenge to only play games with the models I have painted. The result of this is that I constructed a list that has getting on for 40 tactical marines in it, and using the Raptors chapter tactics I've played a couple of games. Here's my list at 1500pts HQ Lias Issodon *And They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics: Raptors, Cunning Strategist, Independant Character, Infiltrate, Isolate, Destroy, Shrouded, Warlord Bolt Pistol, Malice (^), Power Sword Elites Sternguard Veteran SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads 4x Veteran RazorbackTank Twin-Linked Assault Cannon Space Marine SergeantBoltgun, Melta Bombs, Power Weapon Troops Tactical SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads 9x Space Marine Space Marine SergeantBolt pistol, Bolter, Melta Bombs Tactical SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads 9x Space Marine Space Marine SergeantBolt pistol, Bolter, Melta Bombs Tactical SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads 8x Space Marine Space Marine SergeantBolt pistol, Bolter, Melta Bombs Tactical SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads Meltagun, 9x Space Marine Drop PodDeathwind Missile Launcher Space Marine SergeantBolt pistol, Bolter, Melta Bombs Fast Attack Bike SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads Plasma Gun, 5x Space Marine Biker Attack BikeMulti-Melta Biker SergeantBolt pistol, Melta Bombs Bike SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads Plasma Gun, 5x Space Marine Biker Biker SergeantBolt pistol Heavy Support Devastator SquadAnd They Shall Know no Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads 2x Lascannon, 2x Missile Launcher, 4x Space Marine Space Marine SergeantBolt pistol, Bolter Lots and lots of scout, infiltrate, rending bolters. People are intimidated when they see just how many men I get out of my case. It's glorious. Anyway, I've played two games with this list, one against space wolves where the only difference was the Sternguard were in the pod and tacticals in the razorback, and one against chaos space marine where it was as it is now. Game One: Space Wolves He had Krom Dragongaze in a unit of terminators, another unit of terminators, some grey hunters in a razorback, an axe and shield venerable dreadnought, a bastion with lascannon longfangs and a stormwolf with Grey Hunters in (I think this was all) I infiltrated three of the tactical squads all around the board, essentially camping on all the objectives, since we were playing the mission where you get cards for the number of objectives you hold each turn. He went first and killed just a few of my marines. The highlight of the first couple of turns was Issoden doing three hull points to the bastion with Isolate, Infiltrate, Destroy. :) I managed to rend off one of the squads of terminators and my bikes were harassing the dreadnought, keeping it away from my tacticals. When the Stormwolf came on I thought I was done for but by that point I had so many objectives thanks to the number of squads I had and the speed of my units, that he had to table me to win, which he almost managed to do as I was left with two devastators and two bikes at the end, having destroyed all of his army apart from the stormwolf and the longfangs in the bastion. This was a great game, and I feel that the rending on the bolters, whilst it doesn't kick in all that often, makes bolters just that bit more tactically flexible. Final score 17-4 to the raptors. My second game was against a Slaanesh and Tzeentch themed CSM list. He had a Ahriman, a level three sorcerer, a unit of terminators, a unit of slaanesh marines in a rhino, a unit of slaanesh bikers, a forgefiend and some thousand sons. Again I infiltrated and scouted really close, and took two hull points off the forgefiend with isolate (such a good ability). In my first turn I destroyed the forgefiend with my assault cannon, and took off nine out of ten of the thousand sons with the tacticals nearby and the drop pod squad. Highlight of the first part of the game was my tactical marines killing one bike which left him off the objective I needed allowing my bikes to turbo boost onto it. :) The game pretty much went my way from there, I was able to tie up his terminators with a squad of bikes, shoot off everything else, then mob the terminators with everyone at the end. Final Score 16-1 to the Raptors. Raptor chapter tactics are amazing. Taking Issoden, giving a bunch of units infiltrate and scout, which you use to get into a good position, then open up and rend things all the way to the bank. Simply stunning. I feel like if I'd gone up against more mech i'd have struggled, and I'm thinking of swapping out a bike squad for a stormtalon. Anyway, that's my short defense of the humble bolter, thoughts?

Battle Rep - RG vs Chaos 1850 pts ++ Space Marines: Raven Guard - Talon Strike Force (SM RG Talon Strike Force) ++ + Core + Battle Demi Company Assault Squad - 2x Flamer, Jump Packs, 4x Space Marines, Sgt w/Bolt Pistol & Chainsword Chaplain - Bolt Pistol, Crozius Arcanum, Raven's Fury Devastator Squad - 2x Lascannon, 2x Missile Launcher (Frag & Krak), 9x Space Marines, Sgt w/Bolt Pistol & Boltgun, Signum Dreadnought - Multi-melta, Power Fist w/Storm Bolter, Drop Pod Tactical Squad - Meltagun, 4x Space Marines, Sgt w/Bolt Pistol & Boltgun, Razorback w/TL Assault Cannon Tactical Squad - Meltagun, 4x Space Marines, Sgt w/Bolt Pistol & Boltgun, Razorback w/TL Assault Cannon Tactical Squad - Meltagun, 4x Space Marines, Sgt w/Bolt Pistol & Boltgun, Drop Pod + Auxiliary + Shadowstrike Kill Team Scout Squad - Camo Cloaks, 4x Scouts, 4x Sniper Rifle, Scout Sgt w/Sniper Rifle Scout Squad - Camo Cloaks, 4x Scouts, 4x Boltgun, Scout Sgt w/Boltgun Scout Squad - Camo Cloaks, 4x Scouts, 4x Boltgun, Scout Sgt w/Boltgun Vanguard Veteran Squad - Jumppacks, 3x LC/PF, LC/SS, Sgt TH/SS Vanguard Veteran Squad - Jumppacks, 3x LC/PF, LC/SS, Sgt TH/SS Vanguard Veteran Squad - Jumppacks, 3x LC/PF, LC/SS, Sgt TH/SS ++ Inquisition: Codex (2013) (Inq Inquisitorial Detachment) ++ + HQ + Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor - Carapace Armour, Bolt Pistol & Chainsword, 3x Servo Skulls 1849 pts ++ Chaos Space Marines: Codex (2012) (Combined Arms Detachment) ++ + HQ + Chaos Lord - Mark of Slaanesh, Power Armour, Frag Grenades & Krak Grenades + Elites + Emperors Children Sonic Dreadnought - Blastmaster, Chainfist w/Storm Bolter, Doom Siren, Searchlight, Smoke Launchers, Warp Amp + Troops + Noise Marines - 4x Noise Marines, 1x Blastmaster, Noise Champion, Chaos Rhino w/Combi-bolter, Havoc Launcher, Searchlight & Smoke launchers Noise Marines - 4x Noise Marines, 1x Blastmaster, Noise Champion, Chaos Rhino w/Combi-bolter, Havoc Launcher, Searchlight & Smoke launchers + Fast Attack + Chaos Bikers - Icon of Excess, Mark of Slaanesh, 7x Chaos Biker, Chaos Biker Champion, 2x Meltagun Heldrake - Hades Autocannon + Heavy Support + Chaos Relic Sicaran - Extra Armour, Heavy Bolter, Lascannons, Searchlight, Smoke Launcher, Twin-Linked Accelerator Autocannon Obliterators - 3x Obliterator, Mark of Nurgle, Veterans of the Long War + Lord of War + Chaos Knight Errant - Dirge Caster, Foe-reaper Chainsword, Heavy Stubber, Ion Shield, Slaanesh, Thermal Cannon 1850 pts Mission: Eternal War - The Scouring Deployment: Hammer & Anvil Night Fighting: Turn 1 Setup First: Chaos First Turn: Chaos Seize the Initiative: SUCCESSFUL for Raven Guard Now on the actual Battle Report! So as you may have guessed I’m aiming for a big Alpha Strike with this list. Taking the Talon Strike Force with the Command Benefit "Know When to Strike" paired with Shadowstrike Kill Team special rules "On Time..." & “On Target..” allows me to Deep Strike 3 VV squads near my Scouts Turn 1 AND Assault, oh boy oh boy! The Inquisitor and the Servo Skulls are a bit of a back up plan but with Hammer & Anvil (which I forced a re-roll for thanks to the TSF Command Benefit “Extensive Planning”) I had an ideal setup for what I wanted to do. Instead of doing the Battle Report turn by turn I like to give each unit or groups of units a grade so I’ll be breaking them down one at a time. Assault Squad - I started on the board but kept them out of sight of the enemy. I just wanted them on the board to avoid getting tabled turn 1. Normally I DS them onto a soft target and bathe them in flames but there was no soft targets on this Chaos list. They moved up the board turn by turn but did nearly nothing. I’m looking to replace them in this list as they don't seem to be worth the 95 pts. Grade - D-, would have been an F but they didn’t die so… Chaplain - I made the mistake of starting him solo but luckily he was able to move up the board quickly and join a VV squad after a couple turns. I was able to hide him each turn so he was able to survive but he added very little to this army. Because he can’t join any of the VV squads before they DS (they’d lose all their fun rules if he did) there isn’t much to do with him aside from sticking him with the ASM squad on having him join a VV squad later in the battle. Another unit I’m looking to make a change with. Grade - C, wasn’t a liability to my army, survived the battle but only helped out a very little to the overall battle. Devastator Squad - I combat squadded this unit, putting the Sgt/Signum with the Lascannons. I set them up in the backfield as always but with terrain and smart placement by my opponent I had limited options when it came to shooting each turn. As it always seems to be the Lascannons only hit/wound 50% of the time but that’s what the Dice Gods say so you have to roll with it….Both squads did their best, got in a few pot shots here and there. The ML squad went down to the Heldrake but the Lascannon squad survived thanks to being in ruins the whole time. Grade - C+, not their fault, the terrain, LOS, poor dice hurt them more that anything. They’ll be in the list in one form or another. Just not the battle for them I guess. Dreadnought - Dropped him down in the center on my opponent's deployment zone flanking the Chaos Knight Errant, he took a few HPs off him before he went down (more on that later). After that he when after one of the Noise Marines squad in a Rhino. Popped it open and with the help on a remaining VV or two wiped up that squad. Grade - B+, did what a DP Dreadnought w/MM should should do, pop tanks and PF squish infantry. Has been a stable unit battle to battle no reason to change anything here. Tactical Squads - Now we’re starting to get into the units that did some work. The DP Tactical squad landed in front on the Chaos Knight Errant because of a so-so scatter. The meltagun was able to hit but not able to get through the Chaos Knight Errant defenses. It held it’s own until the Heldrake finally swooped in a flamed then down. Both Razorback Tactical squads moved up the board fast and started picking off the Chaos Bikers until the fell then one moved onto the Noise Marines squad in a Rhino and the other moved onto the Emperors Children Sonic Dreadnought. The TL Assault Cannon is a really nice weapon, the re-roll, volume of shots and rending really let it do work on multiple threats. The Tactical squads stayed in the Razorbacks for most of the battle and only 1 squad got out when they needed to to take on the Emperors Children Sonic Dreadnought. Grade - B+, were able to get up the board without being popped open (smart use of cover and distance), took on multiple units and performed well. The TL Assault Cannon will be in my army for the foreseeable future. Really liking the Razorbacks over the cheaper Tactical squad w/Rhino options. Scout Squads - Now they really did the job of Raven Guard Scouts to a T. Because we deployed using Hammer & Anvil I was able to put all 3 units just outside my opponent's deployment zone. The Sniper Scouts were able to setup in ruins on one side of the board. In one turn they took at 3 Chaos Bikers which really thinned that unit out. Maybe got a few other shots in but nothing to major. With the other 2 Scouts squads the deployed in a straight line across the board with the Sniper Scouts. They were able to just tuck in and hide behind terrain to avoid being wiped out turn 1. They did next to nothing offensively but were the PERFECT Shadowstrike Kill Team scouts, glorified DS beacons for the VV squads. That’s up next. Grade - A, did EXACTLY what they were supposed to do. Infiltrate, Scout, hunker down and wait for the VV squads to arrive. Then Sniper Scouts were the only ones that did much work after turn 1 but if need the other 2 squads would have move/ran to any objective that was close to them. Vanguard Veteran Squads - Well well well, the MVPs right here! All 3 squads were able to DS and not scatter thanks to the Scouts. 2 were aimed directly at the Chaos Knight Errant and the remaining was aimed at the Chaos Bikers. The VV squads that went for the Chaos Knight Errant were able to get it down to 1 HP on turn 1, could have easily killed it if the dice were more in my favor. It went down turn 2 and after all the D weapons, Stomps, and Apoc Explosion there were still VV left standing. Next they moved to the Chaos Relic Sicaran and with the help on the Chaplain made short work of it. After all the work those 2 VV squads did 1 Space Marine was left standing to tell the story of the glorious battle that he had witnessed. The sole VV squad that went after the Chaos Bikers had trouble making charges, failed twice but still was able to put a hurting of them thanks to the LC/PF wargear they had. I can not state enough how great an option that is, the LC/PF combo is king! Grade - A++, they came in on time and on target and went to work. Granted they lost marines along the way but a Chaos Knight Errant, Chaos Relic Sicaran and Chaos Bikers felt their wrath. When the whole army is setup to make these guys shine and the do, damn is that a great feeling. Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor - Sat in the back, did nothing on note. His servo skulls did nothing as well. 34 wasted points. Maybe in another game against a different army he’ll be useful but not today. Grade - N/A, nothing to grade on. Will have to play more games with him to see if his points are worth what he brings to the battle. Did you really read all of that? WOW! Thanks. I really love writing these up as I love reading others as well. Maybe this was just an entertaining read to some or maybe helped other RG brothers out, either way chime in with your comments as I’d love to hear them. …….. Oh I completely forgot how to tell you the battle ended! We called it turn 3 as all that my opponent had left were a few Noise Marines, the Heldrake and the Obliterators which were still in reserve. We decided I would more than likely to claim more objectives and score more points at the very end because I had more on the table. Great game against a great player.

So I thought I'd share some reports from playing my Iron Hands. I will add on to this thread as I go along and get interesting games in. First up is a 1000p game vs Chaos Daemons. I went with a CAD My list: Belisarus Cawl 5m Tac Squad - flamer, rhino 5m Tac Squad - melta gun, imperial marine Stormtalon - skyhammer 2x Quad Mortars Knight Warden His list: Fateweaver 11 Pink Horrors 11 Blue Horrors 7 or 8 Screamers Herald Anarcich Formation Herald on disc w grimoire Herald on disc Herald w paradox I knew his list was scary, I built it for him. Even though I took some of the cheesiest thing Marines could bring I knew it would be very tough. Recap: The knight was the weakest link this game. Too many small cheap summoned units everywhere, at one point i even had to assault a 30p unit of Brimstone Horrors that he had gotten for free from the warp storm table. The stars of the game was everything else. The mortars did good on thinning out his objective holders. The Stormtalon blew fatey out of the sky over two turns. The tactical squad with the rhino actually managed to survive 3 assault phases from a full unit of daemonettes and eventually even wipe them out. And it was the first time I tried Cawl and boy is he tough. My opponent made a mistake and came to close to me with his screamer star. I assaulted them with Cawl and his 5man tac squad tying them up for several turns. Finally he failed his grimoire and I could finish off his star. http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn18/mperssonbmmseifer/20170413_201432_resized_zps5ymx2ebh.jpg He had a big lead on maelstrom points up until T6 where I managed to catch up. But it was to late. Daemons won 13-12. Next game will be same opponent but 1500pts instead

So I had my first game with my army. Been waiting this long to field a fully painted army. In all the excitement, I forgot my camera... Anyhow, my first draft army list includes: Watch Company Captain Artemis Aquila Kill Team 9 members (two assault marines 2 Frag cannon, various minor upgrades Artemis joins here Aquila Kill Team 1 Frag cannon, 2 terminators, 1 librarian, minor upgrades, beacon of angelis, drop pod Aquila Kill Team 2 Frag cannons, 2 plasmas, 1 librarian, tome, minor upgrades, drop pod Aquila Kill Team Stalker unit with a librarian Militarum Hellrain Brigade Commisar Command squad with hot shot volley guns Scions with 2 meltas Taurox with missile launcher ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAOS CAD Belacor 2 psykers on bikes 1 Nurgle character guy with nurglins, giving -1 ld army wide on enemy. Another psyker guy with a torrent AP3 flamer Rhino with basic guys, plasma Bike squad, joined by both biker psykers Chaos Drop pod thing from FW, with chosen marines 3 obliberators It was a really psyker heavy list. And he got "all" the powers he wanted he said. Invisibility two times, summoning power etc etc. There were so many powers I lost count. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Setup Terrain. We play on a table with a lot of ruins and some other 5+ cover save terrain pieces. Its pretty much a city fight environment. He went first with deployment. Deployed his obiberators, bikers and rhino on one flank, and Belacor among them. The Nurgle unit was in the centre of his deployment zone. On my side I had my Tempestus command in a ruin holding an objective and out of line of sight from his army. The Artemis unit stayed behind the ruin with the command, and so did the stalker unit and next to it was the Taurox. And bunkering up from the Chaos drop pod with the torrent Ap3 flamer/chosen, and out of sight and out of range of his Obliterators who would get a power casted on them. Allowing them to see through terrain and ignore cover... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turn 1 Chaos He deep striked his drop pod next to an objective on my left flank. Putting priority on that one instead of a "death and glory" attack on my units who were all cluster up (there were very few good pots to land and get a decent attack out on them). The bikers went for the centre of the battle field. Rhino move along towards the centre. Obliterators saw nothing, and could reach anything. So the just moved up Belacor flew across the table to my clusters units. Psychic phase... invisibility casted on the bikes. Belacor tried to scare off my stalker unit from the battle field (they were standing next to the edge), and also succeeded on casting dominate on them. But nothing of interest happened really. The Nurgle character guy summoned 10 deamonettes in his deployment zone. Shooting nothing of note, the deamonettes ran towards the Nurgle unit to protect them from drop pods. Chaos completed one objective ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turn 1 Deathwatch I came in hot. Putting my self as close as possible to the nurgle unit as possible. The deamon units were the only things pretty much I could take care of in the first turn. The bikers were protected by invisibility, and the rhino was protected by ruins and good placement (a risk for me to go there) I pulled in Artemis and he slingshotted behind the nurgle unit. And of course the second drop pod came in too. My psychic phase I casted prescience on the stalker unit. And that was it. My other power were pretty worthless for this fight... bad draws. Cant even remember now, because I didn't use anything except the primaris powers. The drop pod units and artemis took out all the deamon units. Actually... two units did. And only two frag cannons from each unit handled it by it self! All the rest were just standing there... 24 models looking at 4 frag cannons guys taking care of all the deamons. First blood secured and the -1 ld army wide spread was gone. A note here, he had a small theme going on here. Lots of terrify, and ld based stuff. So I felt happy about getting rid of the -1 ld character The stalker bolter unit opened fire on Belacor. Re-roll to hit really helped vs a the flying monster. Scored an unhealthy amount of hits, and with the watch company rules I had re-roll to wound too. I scored 5 wounds from 18 shots on the flying monster. Luckily for him, he made 4 saves on his 4++ (I used no cover save ammo, so he couldn't jink) Next up was the command squad with hot shot volley guns. Scored one hit, and one wound. Belacor jinked, and failed :D So he took another wound. My first misstake came next. With my Taurox I forgot I had twin-linked hotshot volley gun and a heavy 2 missile launcher. I should have tried to take those shots at Belacor. Because the only thing I could see was the rhino in cover... score one hull point on it though. So turn 1 saw two deamon units dead, and I completed 2 objectives, and really scared the pants off Belacor ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chaos Turn 2 Belacor flies towards my deployment edge next to my stalkers and command squad. Chaos drop pod floats towards the centre ruin where an objective is that he needs. Deploys his torrent flamer character. Rhino moves 6" and deploys its marines. Bikers move in closer towards the action Obliterators moves close towards centre too. Psychic phase... invisibility again on the bikes. Lots of failed powers and minor stuff happened. Belacor casted dominate again. And that was pretty much the only thing that effected me. Shooting, Belacor boosted off the edge. Didn't want to risk another round of shooting from the stalkers. Obliterators got the see through terrain power and made three plasma cannon shots at Artemis unit, who were cramped together for a perfect blast opportunity. Only one went through though :D And my storm shield couldn't even tank one hit... So I lost 5 guys to that one blast. Some random shots were made, and a few marines fell. This turn he claimed 2 objective points ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turn 2 Deathwatch The empty pod came in, and the scions. Scion landed next to the Obliterators, and the pod next to an objective. Moved my deep striked (from turn 1) units into a bracing position for the next turns onslaught. Moved the stalkers into the Taurox and repositioned them more centrally. Psychic phase, I used the Fulgurim primaris power with two librarians, and pretty much took out the marins from the rhino. The remaining 2 where shot down by the other marines. The rhino was destroyed by the taurox. Scions scored only one wound on the obliterators, due to lucky saves :) Scored two more points, one hold objective, and destroyed one unit (rhino and marines... needed one more unit to get more points). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turn 3 Chaos Sadly we decided this would be the last turn. The local game store was going to close up... Bikers moved in for the kill against my veterans in his deployment zone. Obliterators turn around and targeted the Scions. Drop pod moved towards my command squad and deployed the chosen. Belacor flew in, keeping his distance from the stalker unit. Invisibility was cast again. I cancelled it once on the bikes, but Belacor was there to back them up with a backup invisibility spell... *sigh* A lot of shooting for once. Killed 5 marines from one unit with 2 frag cannons. One frag cannon, 2 plasmas, sergeant with shield (not able to tank any plasma hits...) and the black shield died. Funny part was that the black shield died last of them all. Flamers and boltguns shot down 4 of the command squad. I had gone to ground to survive that attack. The Scions... well they were burnt to crisp by the obliterators Assault... even with re-roll he failed to assault with his bikes. He needed 8, but only scored 7... So I was lucky. In the end, he scored 3 points some how. Cant remember the things he did. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turn 3 Deathwatch I re-entered my scions, thanks to the formation rules. They deep striked next to the centrally located objective. It was of big importance as it was worth two points for me (2 mission cards pointing it out for various reasons). My stalkers, riding the Taurox went after the chosen who had killed most of the command squad. Now, given is that I am using the rules as written at the moment, meaning I have boltguns and stalker boltguns on my marines in this unit. So I deploy, and within rapid fire range. Take out all but one chosen. One unit of veterans went for another objective, limping towards it with its 4 members remaining. The other units made some shot versus the bikes, as there was nothing else to shoot at. Killed two or three of them. In the end I took 3 points. Final score 9 - 7 to the Deathwatch After math Now, if it would continue, I would be in deep derp against the remaining bikers. They were not many, but the invisibility that they had going was going to tip in their favour. My stalkers pretty much could walk around my deployment zone undisturbed. He didn't want to go close to them, but I was closing in. We figured if the game went on, he would slowly win the close combats versus my units, but it would take time. And, if he did, he would forgo hunting for objectives. Final thoughts I really underestimated the importance of my Tempestus detachment. The Scions, though small, had their purpose. First they put the pressure on armoured vehicles with their meltas. And they can't be ignored due to this. And if they are, they will charge in and perhaps stall a unit or get them self killed in the process. Either way win win for me. As they come in for free once they are dead, they can re enter over and over again. I saw this really good opportunity in this game, and it was when I got two mission cards indicating I should hold the centre objective. Since they died to the Obliterators, I could now reenter and claim the objective. With this in mind, the deathwatch, with limited units on the board, this is one way of getting to objectives. The command squad, though it didn't perform super well, is fairly cheap and can dish out a lot of damage. The invisibility and tons of ruins made it hard for them today to do anything. The Taurox... the ability to relocate the Stalker unit was really good. Its weapons were decent and I am overall happy with the use of it. Frag cannons... two were enough in this game in each unit. My friend was overwhelmed over its power. He was happy he had invisibility on his bikers, otherwise they would have been toast. Librarian with divination powers in a Stalker unit. While I didn't get a good power, the primaris proved really useful. Against the flying Belacor it really helped a lot. This is really situational of course, but I felt that a terminator with cyclone missile (similar price) doesn't add the same utility as a librarian. Overall, the stalker unit didn't really bring back its points in full in this game, but scared the living hell out of Belacor and kept the enemy at bay. Drop pods, I hate and love them. Of course, facing them is not something I like, but using them my self... well then I love them. First pod I dropped was to get the Beacon of Angelis up. The other tow pods I used more "tactically". The second one to block the direct path to my veterans. This prevented the bikers to reach me in turn 2, and gave him difficulty in turn 3 (as it turned out he failed his charge). The third pod I used to claim an objective. As it was empty I didn't really care much for it at that point. But... in future games it will be used as a blockade for my small force. Either to shield me off, or to close the enemy escape paths.

I was able to finally play a game against a friend of mine and decided I'd try to keep some sort of a log of the events. I took some photos to spice it up, but not many. We played Maelstrom - Tactical Escalation. I had: (I'll put the full list up at some point or other) Demi Company - Cap with Shield Eternal and Relic Blade - Razorback tacticals (2 melta, 1 flamer) - 4 lascannon Devs Ravenhawk Assault Group - Stormraven - 5 Sternguard - Dreadnought Shadowstrike KT - 5 Vanguard (3 swords, 2 axes) x2 - 5 scouts with LSS (x2) He had (from memory) Farseer with Guardian blob Farseer with Dire Avengers 2 x Falcons 2 x Wave Serpents - Dire Avengers and Wrathguard 2 x Jetbike Squads 2 x Warp Spider squads Stiking Scorpions So, not overly competitive but enough to be a pain. We deployed up, me spread out and he blocked up a corner - holding the 2 objectives I needed for my Tactical Objectives. http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae184/CordovaBiconis/IMAG1321.jpg?t=1492335272 I made my deployment quite aggressive - forcing him to break out of the corner in a spread - trying to limit all the shurikens arriving in one place... We started and I seized. I rolled for the RAG and they came on, dropping straight in behind his lines. I also dropped both Vanguard in to really keep him held back. The objectives in the centre of the table were what he needed so I wanted to slow him in the corner - giving me a chance to get to them as I didn't think I'd oust him from the 2 I needed in his deployment zone. Meanwhile, the Demi Company moved up to claim the objective he needed and brought their tanks to block another. http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae184/CordovaBiconis/IMAG1323.jpg In my shooting phase, the RAG targeted the DA and Farseer (in the building to the bottom left). The Sternguard took out about 4 of them. The Dreadnought shot at the Falcon next to it - it exploded into tiny pieces of space elf. The Raven shot at the farmost Wave Serpent, putting 2 hull points on it. I then shot at the Warp Spiders who jumped away. In my Assault phase I tried to charge the Spiders with the VV. They failed. Good good. The other VV charged the wounded WS and blew it up - I knew this would doom them, but it meant that one big threat was reduced to footslogging. His turn He moved the jetbikes in the bottom to shoot. He shuffled a few things but decided to hang about in the back to eliminate my troops - keeping him pinned back (so far so to plan). The Wraithguard and the Spiders melted the VV who had destroyed the WS. The jetbikes glanced the Dread to death and put 2 hull points on the Raven. The Scorpions moved up to threaten the objective he needed. The second WS zoomed away. The DA tried to remove the Sternguard but only killed one. My turn 2 http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae184/CordovaBiconis/IMAG1328.jpg (Sorry for blur) I moved up the Scouts to support my now-weakened flank. The Captain and his Assault Squad bounced up too. The Demi troops shuffled forwards to bring their Razorbacks to bear. The Raven flew off this turn. In my shooting, the Sternguard brought down another DA with pistols. The LSS tried to hit the Spiders but they jumped away. The Lascannon devs blew up the DA Wave serpent. In my Assault phase it all went wrong. I charged the Spiders with the VV. I lost 3 to overwatch fire. I tried to charge the Wraith guard (I needed a 6). I failed. And failed the reroll. I then whiffed every roll for the remaining VV and they then got punched to death by the Spiders. My right flank was now very vulnerable. The biggest positive was the Sternguard charging the DA and Farseer blob - they got in and punched 2 Space Elves down. His turn 2 http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae184/CordovaBiconis/IMAG1329.jpg He shuffled around to bring down the ASM and captain. His second Spiders didn't come in from reserve. The other Jetbikes moved to contest an objective. The Scorpions and DA moved to claim the objective he needed. In his shooting, the Scorpions and DA tried to shoot the guys in their objective. His Guardians killed a LSS. Everything else shot the ASM. They died fast to the Spiders and bikes. This left the joyous D weaponry to shoot the Captain. He took it like a champ and saved everything they threw at him. Legend. In Assault, the Scorpions charged the Tacs on their objective. The Sternguard and the DA kept fighting. One Elf died. My turn 3 One of the Scout squads joined their belaboured Captain. The other shuffled up. One Razorback zoomed up to claim the objective by the Captain (he had moved the Jetbikes too far to claim it). I knew I had to claim a lot this turn to get my objectives or risk losing quickly. I shot another Razorback up to claim the objective by the Sternguard/DA fistfight. In shooting, I killed some more DA on my back objective and the Jetbikes that were closing. My LSS tried to shoot the Spiders but they ran away. The forward most Razorback and their squad was then able to get a bead on them and they lost a man. In Assault, the Scorpions killed the Tacs on the objective in the back field. The Sternguard kept dueling with the DA. I killed 2, he killed one. The Scouts and the Cap charged the Wraithguard. The Captain killed one and the Scouts dragged one down too. His turn 3 He moved the DA to hold his objective and dropped the reserved squad of Spiders nearby to defend against the Tacticals that were coming back in. His jetbikes moved to shoot the razorback and tactical squad in the middle. They killed 4 men. Assault phase - DA and SG kept fighting. Captain killed 2 more Wraithguard. They did nothing in return. My turn 4 The one central man jumped back into his Razorback and shuffled closer to the objective. The objective by the SG/DA fight was claimed by a Razorback. A tac squad jumped out by the Scorpions, Spiders and DA in my back field. They then flamered everything and shot at the DA. They melted a few of each squad. (I love flamers). The razorbacks nearby then wiped the remaining DA. The Devs drew a bead on the Jetbikes and wiped out a few. The Raven flew over and wiped the second biker squad. My captain and scouts killed the last Wraithguard - the second scout squad also charged in to add weight of attacks. http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae184/CordovaBiconis/IMAG1330.jpg (The captain and his proteges) The Sternguard punched another DA to death. His turn 4 The Spiders in the back blew up a Razorback. The Spiders at the back moved to intercept the Captain - knowing I needed the objective that his Farseer was on. They shot and killed one of the Scout squads he was with. The remaining bikes zoomed to aim for Linebreaker. The backfield Spiders moved towards the Devs. In the Sternguard combat, I finally won. He fluffed all his rolls and they killed the last DA and the Farseer. Turn 5 My central razorback tried to bring down the jetbikes but couldn't. I moved up to Assault the Guardian/Farseer blob. The Devs and razorback in the back killed the Spiders. - The game ended here - he called it before the Assault as I was up on objectives 8-6 and he couldn't physically capture what he needed. (N.B. There are some things missing, e.g. psychic powers etc as they just added to the shooting etc - but the gist of the battle is here). It was good fun, even if some fluffed rolls were a right pain. Plus, I really hate Warp Spiders.

I just played another Tau game, but it was against a 'fun list'. Tons of vehicles, lots of tanks so very few saves for me. I took so much damage from AP 3 or better it was insane. I lost my two biggest squads the turn after their arrival, but before I did I used the Beacon Angelis to flip a Chaplain and 5 Custodes across the table. My HQ being wiped and two fair sized pod squads was typically Tau, but I think the worst part was I could only cause 2 Tau vehicles to jink on arrival (they still lived even after being targeted with an Auspex each.) In his ensuing turn he moved tanks slightly (I couldn't get all his hammer heads in the picture below), but the Breacher squads are just so gross.... they are incredibly anti-drop pod , basically cleaning up anything that Interceptor couldn't. About halfway through my opponent's turn I realized I was hardly rolling any dice. It came to me that most of what was targeting me doesn't allow me a save.... moments like these the game feels so anti-marine right now. At the end of the day he had a heck of a time trying to get rid of my Custodes.... again. + Tau 'fun' deployment: squads of Breachers, and a long tank line with a Drone Commander in the middle and lots of marker lights. + So here's me dropping in.... shockingly in this game there was no Interceptor!!! I was shocked.... however with 90% of his army in boxes, I couldn't kill anything. + - I'm picking up a lot of models and just putting them away with no saves.... but the Custodes did pop his throwaway squad of ObSec Kroot. - He is ramping up the score bigtime.... I have a squad in the background (see top picture) to continue the IHB (Infernus Heavy Bolter) experiment. They are in that Grey Rhino.... T1, even with dozer blades, I move the rhino 2 inches, I roll snake eyes and the thing is immoblized. o_0 - I give up Warlord, and two of my best Aquila squads, my Libby (dead) failed to kill anyhting with Psychic Shriek. - I now have 4 Custodes, an Aquila of 5 Stalker Bolters (never killed a thing, it's all in tanks) with a Cyclone Terminator (maybe he got a hullpoint off a vehicle all game? Caused some jinks mostly. - The IHB squad got out of their dead rhino. All game they maybe killed 3-4 Kroot caught in the open. He saw that they were only Infernus Heavy Bolters, so he flew his vehicles right into them, shocking them off of objectives, knowing I could not even glance the front armour of his transports. + Tau coasting to a win.... I am playing magic wound time with these Custodes..... and they're angry. + - Custodes play magic friends, get into CC smoke a squad. He's having trouble getting past my 2+ saves and 3++ shields. Custodes kill a tank, marker drones, Drone Commander, a full breacher squad, a Pathfinder squad (top of buliding), and a Hammerhead Tank.... THEN leave the runes near end game with 3 models left!!!! - My BSSF Ancient comes firing in automatically on T4 (he failed all reserve rolls) and I have to kill a vehicle with him... that's all he has to do. He lines up the back of a transport with his Assault cannon, misses 3 shots, fails to pen/glance on fourth shot. He is annihilated by Breachers in the next turn. - He was running away with this. He drew good cards, and while I had solvable cards, they were hard... kill this, grab that... nothing I was sitting on. - My IHB squad is so innefective he is just dancing around it knowing I can't damage anything in range. He gets out of his transport to grab a big point turn and quickly ramps up 13 points on me. - My Custodes take some serious tank shots but the Tau are used to me just putting models in the case... but not the Custodes. Everyone, including the Chaplain has a wound on them, but 3 models still live. I get out to mid field with the Custodes, they wipe up some remnant Kroot, and the Custodes smash into the Transport my Dreadnought could not hurt. - Custodes destroy the Transport, the IHB squad fails to do anything again. - The Stalker team which has literally done nothing (lack of soft targets, out ranged) decides they mush break from the building to get to mid table... they die a horrrendous death trying to get there. The Cyclone Termie fails his first save of the game (needed invuln from Hammer head), and the squad melts with him. - The game goes to T6 and I concede. Ironically I have 2 Custodes with the single Chaplain, 4 members of the IHB squad, and the Rhino JUST repaired itself... and then gets destroyed. Amazingly enough I manage 12 points to his 13. End Game Thoughts: - I tried hard to make it a game. I was thoroughly demoralized at the mass loss of troops and how much my army struggled against armour. Also having so few saves against Eldar and Tau gets pretty old, pretty fast. Add in Admech/Grav and it's enough to make someone go to Daemons or something where you're better off running around the battlefield with a loin cloth for protection. - This is the continuation of some heavy experimentation. Obviously this is not my idea of an optimized list but after some consideration I've made some final decisions on some units: - BSSF as a stand alone Detachment is terrible. - Watch Company is 'good', but too tax heavy - Dreadnoughts are still terrible in mildly competitive meta's, but even more so when it's nearly the only armour your opponent has to focus all his melta/plas/las/Stealth Cadre at. - Infernus Heavy Bolter. I'm not going to bother debating this any further. In my mind ,this is the worst weapon in the codex at a melta cheaper than a Frag. I won't say I'll never, ever field them again, because there's always a chance my wife will drive over all my Frag Cannon models and I'll have to proxy IHB's as Frag. Custodes save the day!