Dem's Blood Angel BFG Blog

[Demoulius]

yea i know m8. and the reason for that is this:

 

the IN player has the rulebook and i have the rulebook. i am the only player who even bothers to pick it up and read the damned thing however.

 

the necron player cant be arsed to paint his fleet, let alone take a peek (or buy) the book.

 

so it basicly comes to me to tell them about every other rules or whatever that i find....and its starting to get annoying. the second i dont know something (or forget) noone knows.

 

its the same with 40k really except that the IN player DOES know those rules. he reads the rulesbook and the codexi. the Necron player does the same thing with 40k though. hes also horribly unreliable (about getting on time and such) and quite a pain in conversations; as he believes his opinion is the one that is right and no amount of argueing can convince him otherwise. that last part doesent apply to gaming though as hes to lazy to pick up a book and just believes every thing we tell him (to an extent offcourse :()

 

we might get another game in this week for a rematch. lets see if we can then do a game without making a ton of errrors? eh? <_<

[Kythnos]

yea i know m8. and the reason for that is this:

 

the IN player has the rulebook and i have the rulebook. i am the only player who even bothers to pick it up and read the damned thing however.

 

the necron player cant be arsed to paint his fleet, let alone take a peek (or buy) the book.

 

so it basicly comes to me to tell them about every other rules or whatever that i find....and its starting to get annoying. the second i dont know something (or forget) noone knows.

 

its the same with 40k really except that the IN player DOES know those rules. he reads the rulesbook and the codexi. the Necron player does the same thing with 40k though. hes also horribly unreliable (about getting on time and such) and quite a pain in conversations; as he believes his opinion is the one that is right and no amount of argueing can convince him otherwise. that last part doesent apply to gaming though as hes to lazy to pick up a book and just believes every thing we tell him (to an extent offcourse :()

 

we might get another game in this week for a rematch. lets see if we can then do a game without making a ton of errrors? eh? <_<

 

That sounds like a complicated gaming group ^^"

 

But good luck on your next game! Play it slowly and close to the rules and it will turn out pretty enjoyable and up your gameplay <_<

 

(did I just say that to a loyalist? I'm getting weak Oo)

[Vaaish]

i figured youd get to use it to remain in play whenever it would get shot. the last entryon page 21 of armada says "using its 4+save does not prevent it from attacking a ship if in base contact with one when stopped."

 

the way i see it that means that if i get into contact with a ship, and use the 4+ save against turrets i can still make the attack. it doesent outright say that he can do it but the sentance to, at least. implies that it can.

 

Nope, you only get to use it when it's stated you can and the only time the rules say you are allowed to use the save is against other AC markers. The sentence you quote is referencing what happens if a thunderhawk attacks a ship that has fighters on CAP. The reason we know that's the case is that the Thunderhawks have to stop moving once they've used the save from reading a few lines previous on p21. In order to have used the save and still be in base contact with a ship, one of two things have to have happened. Either they moved to attack the ship and cap attempted to intercept or the ship moved into them with CAP in place. Either option means that the 4+ save was used and the Thunderhawks are in base contact with a ship. This is consistent with the standard AC rules that say AC attacks immediately on touching the base or another marker and prevents people from saying you used your save so the Thunderhawks can't attack an enemy ship they are in base contact with.

 

Nothing in the rules says the Thunderhawks get the 4+ against anything other than other AC. The only AC that are granted benefit against turrets are Eldar which can only be hit on a 6+.

 

On boarding modifiers, I don't know if it's specifically stated all are only applied once, but I do know that the FAQ says race modifiers are only applied once, and it would seem confusing if some were allowed multiple instances and others not. Based on the rules on page 34, when doing a single ship boarding action, you would only apply the modifiers once (this is because you can't say you are space marines more than once, the bm modifier lists BM as plural so extra BM doesn't affect it, you can only be on one SO, and you can't be twice crippled).

 

Now for multiple ships, the ONLY change to the process is that the BV of all ships in the combat is added together to get the BV according to the rules on p.34. That being the case, the rules are basically treating all of the ships in the boarding action as a single large ship that is applying any applicable modifiers rather than two or more individual ships.

 

It's part of the campaign rules, but this might help motivate your players to paint their fleets:

 

"If a vessel is used in battle before its fleet trials are

complete (ie, it’s not fully assembled and painted)

it will suffer a critical hit on a D6 roll of 1 every

time it uses special orders."

 

B)

[Demoulius]

thanks Kythnos :) yea even chaos players get soft sometimes eh? :D

 

i know theyre a hard group but theyre all i have :P its either play with them or dont play this game at all, and i love this game to deeply allready to not play it :lol:

 

Vaaish, ah i see what you mean. guess i was taking the 4+ save a little to far then, eh?

 

also see your point on the boarding mofifiers. in this case it dident matter (still lost by 2) but it ncie to know for future cases. when they doubt the ruling, il say i cant be space marines twice or be crippled twice B) nice all :-D

 

on the not painting of the vessels. im pretty sure he will either:

 

a] not play at all if we follow those rules

 

or

 

b] just keep moaning about it until we let him play without the downsides :pinch: the guy is really awfull like that.

 

he makes teasing and/or making fun of him so easy though. hes an old friend so he can take it from us and he does it back a plenty. tried so many times to reason with him and/or try to make him catch up on his painting/construction of his models. he just in it for the gaming i think though.

 

he even asked the IN player to paint his fleet for him when he left them at his house this one time :teehee:

[Vaaish]

Seriously though, crons are about the simplest you can get for painting. Spray black, drybrush metal, wash black, drybrush mithril. That's about the most basic cron scheme and it should look alright on the table B)

[Demoulius]

Seriously though, crons are about the simplest you can get for painting. Spray black, drybrush metal, wash black, drybrush mithril. That's about the most basic cron scheme and it should look alright on the table :(

i know man, we told him this allready. goes to show just how lazy he is eh? ;)

[Demoulius]

wooo new battle tommorow :woot: we will be doing planetary assault (i will be attacking, the IN player will be defending) and we decided to give 1750 points a try.

 

its a pretty big price hike after our last game but the IN player wants to use his empreror battleship and i want to use my BB :tu:

 

so the list will be:

 

BB with master of the fleet, 2 re-rolls

4 SC's (unsure if i should squadron them 2x2 or 1x4)

4 gladius frigates

4 hunter destroyers

3 nova frigates

3 nova frigates

 

his fleet will be:

emperor with f-admiral (i assume, the ship itself gives him +1 to LD anyway)+some re-rolls

mars battlecruiser

squadron of 2 lunars

4 swords

4 cobras

3 firestorms

4 firestorms

200 points that he has left to spend. i advised him to take a dominator (he also has a model of one) so he has some long range firepower to shoot at my BB. he wasent sure what to take though. he also contemplated putting some power rams on his ships with a 6+ prow. (oh dear)

since he was defending he was taking a good long look at the defence ships and space stations. i already told him i wouldnt mind him spending those points on defences. (IIRC i read somewhere that scenarios that use it, its allowed....and if it doesent i dont care :P)

 

any suggestions/criteria on my fleet?

[Vaaish]

I think you have good odds of crushing him both because marines get a bonus to the planetary assault points and because he's using a large number of escorts. Use your thunderhawks to paste his escorts or force them to brace. If you can get them out of the way and use phenomena to keep out of the way of NC, you should have much greater freedom to pick apart the rest of his fleet or draw them off from the planet.

 

For your list, I'd really suggest dropping all of the novas and split the points between more gladius and hunters. You should be able to fit in an extra escort compared to what you have now. I'd probably put all the SC in a single squadron.

[Demoulius]

why all the hate for the nova? i dont get that :(

 

sure they cost 50 pts but a front/left/right lance hit is nothing to sniff at, specialy when its on such a fast moving ship ;) they provide a hard hitting punch that i lack, specialy with blast markers reducing the number of shots that my bombardment cannons get.... have to learn to fire from several angles to negate that :P

 

tbh im not worrried about losing them early in the game, he has far more pressing matters to shoot at with the SC's and BB and all

 

but if you really think i should alter the list i got 4 hunters and 4 gladius frigates that could take their place. which ones would be better for this though?

[Vaaish]

well I think that in this case the lances really aren't as necessary and having more ships would be better. The hunters can swoop in to the side or rear VERY quickly and harass with torpedoes into the 5+ armor and even mess with the empy since they ignore shields. Getting another hunter means he can't really ignore a s10 torpedo salvo and their speed means you can likely outrun his AC if he doesn't try to deal with the Thunderhawks. Having more gladius means you can pick on full health targets more easily or target things the SC aren't shooting at to avoid the BM penalty and have enough dice to force him to brace. If you really look at it, you are only getting about 3 hits off those lances and you have the speed to get a far better payoff with your batteries since their rate of return is much better close in.

[Demoulius]

thats actually not bad reasoning at all :)

the way i looked at he picture was this:

 

the nova always had 1 shot per ship. the shot ignores blast markers and always hits on a 4+ (ignore ordenance here) aside from this they have some moderate fire that can help to remove shields (for themselves or others)

 

the hunter though gets 2 shots bypassing shields and can hit multiple targets, but their shots can get "taken down" measly firepower of 1 per ship is almost nihil. wont have much battlefield effect.

 

the gladius can get a total of 4 shots if i shoot at a closing capital ship and am within 15 cms, but mind you, most of those shots will be hitting on 6's. the mroe ships i bring the more shots i get at. when not firing at optimum targets though their rate of fire quikly deminishes.... also the least affected by bombers of all escorts due to the 2 turrets.

 

problem with the gladius frigates is that they rely on their mobility alot to get the best possible shots off. and the fact that they must be very close to their target. ive had multiple cases where ships went *boom* and everything nearby was vaporised (hit at the very least :) )

 

though the novas arent spectacular at what they do; they do damage once the shields have been stripped. and no blast markers or collumn shifts get in the way B)

 

that said i see the points you are making. i kinda allready let him know what im bringing but will also bring the other escorts. i dont want to tool my list but if he changes his list il change mine as well and see how it works out. how does that sound? :tu:

[Vaaish]

the hunter though gets 2 shots bypassing shields and can hit multiple targets, but their shots can get "taken down" measly firepower of 1 per ship is almost nihil. wont have much battlefield effect.

 

Don't think of it as shot taken down. If he is doing this he is either shooting at torpedoes rather than your ships, sending AC against the torpedoes rather than your thunderhawks, leaving AC on cap, or splitting up his fleet to avoid getting hit as badly. All of those things are beneficial to you and since each hunter is a s2 torp, you can just send a couple of small s2 salvos to strip cap or clear fighters (you will be in 30cm on his rear or within 60.). Any of those routes are freeing your ac up and disrupting his ships which helps you out. It's a quick way of gaining an ordnance advantage to help take out his escorts.

 

You are also forgetting, it's not just closing you have to get. Within 15cm and in his rear arc is just about as good too! Even abeam to him is a pretty hefty amount of dice to be throwing.

 

 

But, in the end, use what you are more comfortable with. If he's already expecting this fleet, the I think it would be sporting to keep things as they are unless he agrees to change things up a bit.

[Demoulius]

well played the game today. it went less then stellar. by the time i had to go home i had 1 nova frigate on his planet, had 2 crippled SC's left and my BB was crippled. none of his cruiser had any damage and he had 4 firestorms and 2 swords left.

 

his AC completly tore my list apart. in part because we forget to roll for the hit and run rolls (1-2 fails, we dident roll at all since we were accustomed to my marines hit and running) and we forget the 8 transports that i should have had. in the meantime he did have a space station and 3 orbital defence lasers.

 

i also made a huge error in judgement with moving my fleet around. my BB got bogged down by his 2 lunars whose constant barrages at it meant it could only move 5 cms a turn. the SC's in turn were facing the firepower of the rest of his fleet and the orbital defences (escorts were long gone at this stage) i think i had lost all but my single nova and 2 gladius frigates by turn 4-6 or so....

 

his cobras took out several of my escorts at a time, his bombers and assault craft did the same.

 

i could hardly get close to him, and when i did he completly tore me apart :lol: fact that the dice were very (euh...) not in my favor also dident help me any...

 

i can post some pictures later. to summarize though, bad luck with dice, bad decisions on moving my fleet (split it for fear of the nova cannons and thus isolated my force) and some things that we dident play to the rules (the 8 assault boats and not rolling for hit and running) made me lose BADLY....

 

just cant seem to get a break in this game :cuss

[Vaaish]

his AC completly tore my list apart. in part because we forget to roll for the hit and run rolls (1-2 fails, we dident roll at all since we were accustomed to my marines hit and running)

This is a HUGE boost to his fleet. Since you are marines he has to roll a 3+ to make a successful hit and run against your escorts or ships while your instantly destroy his escorts if they survive shields. It should have resulted in you easily pasting his escorts while he struggled to do the same.

 

my BB got bogged down by his 2 lunars whose constant barrages at it meant it could only move 5 cms a turn.

This is extremely bizarre. The BB has a move speed of 20cm which means under fire it can still move at least 15cm which is enough to even turn under fire without using burn retros. All I can think of is you got a thrusters damaged critical dropping you to 10cm speed and a BM for being under fire. I really hope you haven't been subtracting 5cm speed for EVERY BM placed which is the only other way I could account for a 5cm move speed. P.25 of the rules are pretty clear that it only loses a max of 5cm speed regardless of how many BM the ship has contacted or is in contact with.

 

I think I would have tried to draw out his fleet or at the least, just shoot torpedoes at the orbital batteries. Since they can't really move, they make easy targets for ordnance and suck fighters if he wants to defend them.

 

The best way to deal with NC is to either deny them shots by using celestial phenomena like asteroid fields to block LOF or to just AAF on top of them to minimize the number of shots they get.

[Demoulius]

I really hope you haven't been subtracting 5cm speed for EVERY BM placed which is the only other way I could account for a 5cm move speed. P.25 of the rules are pretty clear that it only loses a max of 5cm speed regardless of how many BM the ship has contacted or is in contact with.

 

hah! guess what? -_-

 

yea we already figured that the hit and run and the transports we had no way of showing would have made a huge impact. the biggest mistake though was sending in the SC without backup. the NC coupled with the huge amount of lance shots meant i would either have to brace or lose 1.5 SC each turn. turned out i lost a little less then 1 a turn :)

 

when i setup my fleet i was blocking LOS to the NC barring a few escorts. the first 2 turns he missed, after that though he started getting hit after hit OR scattered ontop of identical target (i.e. targetting a SC and landing on another SC)

 

he also made it very clear he wasent budging. and since i had lost my hunters pretty early and my BB was slowed down (or so i thought :cuss ) it meant i had hardly any torepdoes to throw his way :(

 

all in all we just keep forgetting to many rules i feel.

[Vaaish]

Were you also using the defenses column to target his stuff? Anything that hasn't moved at least 5cm counts as a defense when calculating dice on the gunnery chart. I also hope you didn't run into the teeth of his fleet on the way in either. The lance platforms only have 30cm range and the WB armed ones only have s6 batteries so either of them should be easy to avoid or take down.

 

Also remember the ONLY special orders satellite defenses like laser platforms and space stations can use are Reload Ordnance and BFI. That means you don't need to worry about them locking on at all.

 

Typically, for a planetary assault mission, you need to AAF to within 15cm of the planet's edge and brace if need be to survive. Start of the next turn, drop into the low orbit table. Once there you should be relatively safe since his lances and NC have to roll a 4+ before they can even attempt to shoot at you and no one is allowed to use torpedoes. On the other hand, you just suffer a right column shift for your troubles. That should make it a fair bit more difficult to drop your ships and since even three of your SC making it down there for a full turn within 30cm of the planet edge gives you 6 assault points which is enough for a marginal win, you should be set.

 

I think you guys might be better served by going back and doing a few small point games with just the basic movement and shooting rules checking what you are doing against the rule book. There aren't a whole lot of extra rules to learn but if you are trying to do everything in the book for the first time, you will undoubtedly forget more or miss rules than if you concentrated on one section for a game.

[Demoulius]

oh yea, the defence collumn has been greedily used :) his space sationt had one hit left and was floating towards the planet with certain doom ;) destroyed 2 out of 3 satalites because the cruiser were either out of range or i dident have enough firepower to phase them (2 crippled strike cruisers cant really harm a full health cruiser...)

 

he used a space station (the 150 pts one) so he had quite alot of firepower on the defence. thing is there was basicly a backdoor that wasent defended wherer i was sending the BB but due to the way that we played the blast markers it took ages to get there. like i said i made a fatal error with my SC's sending them off to their doom. if i had send them to support the BB (like a non-retarded person would have) i would have made a fine chance at this scenario ;)

 

we were pressed for time from the start and this was the first time doing such a huge battle. maybe plan something smaller next time when were stressed for time?

[captain Angel]

I truly enjoy a battle like this.

Great stuff, keep posting.

[Demoulius]

well glad someone liked the battles at least :P

 

dont get me wrong, i was enjoying myself at the time but kept kicking myself over every error (rules wise or normal) that i made.

 

for some reason the game intrigues me more then 40k...

[Demoulius]

played a battle yesterday 1000 points against my IN buddy.

 

i ran:

 

4 SC's with master of the fleet

4 hunters

4 gladius frigates

 

he ran:

mars battlecruiser

2 lunar cruisers

3 cobra's

3 swords

3 firestorms

cheapest admiral with LD8

 

we rolled for LD and i got LD9 on all my frigates, 1 SC was LD 10 and 3 were LD 8, placed my MoTf in one of the LD8 SC's.

 

we played the "the bait" scenario. we rolled for terrain and got a 2 for the zone (mecurial zone IIRC?) a radiation burst, 3 asteroid clouds, 3 clouds of gas, and a planet planet was in a corner, as was the radiation burst. the asteroid fields and gas clouds were spread out across the field.

 

sadly i couldnt take any pictures since the lightning was to bad. i played "the bait" and used my glad frigates as the fleeing units (fastest unit i got) and in the first turn one got blown up by his nova cannon. next turn his cobras killed a second one with their torpedoes. he had spread his forces out abit. sending the firestorms and cobras after my glads and kept the swords and his cruisers in reserve oon the opposite field of my glads

 

3rd turn my hunters came in, and my glads turned to fight back. the glads fired at the nearby cobras and killed all but 1. the hunters killed all but 1 of the firestorms.

 

his turn his cobra shot his torpedoes through my glads, doing no damage, his firestorm shot back at the hunters simulary doing nothing. his nova cannon scattered of target stripping the shield of 3 of my hunters.

 

next turn i boarded his cobra with my 2 glads. my SC's came in and moved ASAP to hide behind a gascloud. shooting saw the firestorm taken care off. i launched my thunderhawks, sending a party to the aid of the glad frigates in case things got hairy...

 

next turn my hunters got picked apart whilst i killed off his cobra with the boarding action (last turn was a tie due to bad rolling on my part, the thunderhawks failed to have an impace because he braced)

 

my glad squadron got reduced to a single frigate.

 

the next 2 turns i moved my SC's from behind the cover of the gas cloud right behind his 3 cruisers. i crippled his mars battlecruiser in 1 turn (hunters had done 1 damage a turn before with their torpedoes) and the next turn i used target lock to cripple a lunar (had moved in front of him with my fast movement) had sent a single cruiser to board the crippled mars the next turn.

 

he then pulled out his fleet leaving me with all my SC's intact and a single gladius frigate left alive (gotta love victory point denial :D)

 

VICTORY!!!! :D

 

have to say though its nigh impossible to have my escorts survive even 1 scenario -_- although mind you the glad frigates WERE the bait they took a heavy beating.... bad rolls on my brace meant i failed 5 of the 6 brace saves for the hunters meaning they dident get to impact the game all that much... :devil:

 

love the fact that i dont really miss the absence of lance at all ;)

 

-edit-

post was quikly rushed at my work as the end of my break was drawing near. filled in some gaps :)

[Vaaish]

Sounds like you had a fun game there! I don't think escorts are really meant to survive long in any scenario. Once you start trading hits they go away pretty fast. I'm a little surprised you mentioned your gladius squadron was the fastest though. The hunters are actually 5cm faster and boast the same armor. (they are speedy little suckers at 35cm movement). Have you thought about trying any of the upgrades from the 2010 Compendium marine crusade fleet? Adding a second shield to all your SC is nice as is swapping out the LB on a couple for a s5 bombardment cannon. Does make things a bit pricier though.

 

BTW, gas clouds don't block LoF; they are treated like BM. Column shift for WB, -5cm speed and -1 shield when you are in them. Nothing to prevent him from dropping a NC template on you through.

[Demoulius]

BTW, gas clouds don't block LoF; they are treated like BM. Column shift for WB, -5cm speed and -1 shield when you are in them. Nothing to prevent him from dropping a NC template on you through.

 

....

 

well that certainly took away the shine from my victory :D mind you i was to close for his nova cannon even after their first turn of movement so that couldnt have hit me anyway but his batteries and lances could have...

 

to be fair we dident look up whetever or not they blocked line of sight. we just...kinda assumed... (or rather i assumed, not sure what he was thinking...) also means btw that i lost 2 turns of shooting by looking at the end result i dont think i missed out on much :lol:

 

his cruiser wrecked my hunters in 1 turn because all 3 were focusing their fire on them. if the fire would have been mixed between SC and hunters they might have had a bigger impact in the game :lol:

 

to be fair we dident play for a few months so if this is the only mistake we made were getting better :)

[Vaaish]

Based on what you said, that appears to be the only rules mistake. You were almost right though, all other celestial phenomena blocks LoF. It's only the gas clouds that are the oddball.

[Demoulius]

Vaaish, do you think it would be viable to add some IN cruisers to my list? i love the models and the firepower they bring ;)

 

I was thinking about adding a mars class battlecruiser with added gunnery table upgrade and a pair of Lunar's. the MotF would be turned into a fleet admiral. would remove a single SC for a 1500 pts list. the admiral gets a re-roll for 25 points. list comes at 1495 pts.

 

Seem viable to you?

 

-edit- altered the list as i realised i cant take a MotF without having a BB :P

[Vaaish]

In the past it hasn't been very effective to mix IN and SM. That was mostly due to there only being a couple of builds that even worked when playing SM if you wanted to have a chance at winning and taking IN stuff gutted your options if you used the Armageddon list. I've not tried it with the new rules as of yet, but it seems to me it could have a little more viability although you'd need to use the dominion list. You won't be taking many IN ships since you have to bring them in under reserve rules so you'd need 6 SC to drag in two IN cruisers. Even then you would want something that would synergize well with your fleet like an armageddon BC or an AdMech gothic though either one is pretty pricey.