BA Today

[Rhavien]

Will have another game this evening 1,5k points against enemy unknown till now. Last time we only managed to do 2 turns, because we weren't proficient with the rules anymore :) let's hope we get to turn 3 today.

[Warhead01]

Today in BA.

I've managed to build, base and prime all 5 Heavy Intercessors and half of a Storm speeder today. I had not expected things to come together so quickly. 

[Arkangilos]

Have any of you considered using the soon to be new Vampire Blood Bowl team as a bases for a militia force of BA and Successor chapter serfs?

[Blindhamster]

no.. but i have ordered some blood knight swords, hoping to give my captain a rapier like power sword!

[The Unseen]

Just realized that GW hasn't expanded our unique pistols into any of the Primaris infantry line Sergeants unless the kit comes with it; which is both saddening and maddening, as I built my assault intercessor Sergeant with an Inferno pistol when they just had indomitus rules.

Ugh.

He can take a hand flamer, so I guess that's what that is now.

[Xenith]

Just realized that GW hasn't expanded our unique pistols into any of the Primaris infantry line Sergeants unless the kit comes with it

 

Annoying, but this has been GW's MO with primaris from the start - no model in the kit, no rules.

 

Stupidly this even extended to stuff like assault intercessors with indomitus who could not take special melee weapons...until the MPK was released 2 months later. 

[Warhead01]

I found a MKIII (I think it is.) Thunderhammer. I'm not sure which Primaris squad leader I should give it to. What would you say is a good choice? Intercessor, Assault Intercessor or Death Company. What Unit would get the best use from it? 

[Karhedron]

Death Company I think have the edge in terms of raw number of attacks and they have slightly better durability than Intercessors. However they are Elite rather than Troops so you will need to factor that into your list building.

[Jolemai]

New Unit of the Week entry:

• Apothecary

[Rhavien]

More BA tomorrow than today, but I have an upcoming battle. First 2k match since lockdown. Opponent plays a mixed Custodes and guard list. Many tough Custodes plus some tank commanders and cheap objective grabbers. I have no idea how this will plays out as I have never faced such an army before.

Wish me luck brothers.

[Warhead01]

I just won 3 more Inceptors with assault bolters over Ebay using the make an offer function. I partly wish I had offered less but I feel I got a good deal. 
I thought I had 12 with assault bolters and this would bring me to 15, 3 squads of 5. I heard the math on that is not too bad right now. Seems I only have the 6. Not too bothered by that it will all work it self out in the end. 
3 squads of 3 might be ok enough for a while. 

[Warhead01]

The Inceptors arrived yesterday. I'm deep into base coating them now and should have them finished over the weekend! 

Trying to scrounge up at least 3 more, we'll see how that goes. 

[dice4thedicegod]

Yeah, I think that bolter inceptors are in a decent spot right now. I’m running some in an escalation league and they seem solid.

 

Plasma ones are tricky… hit hard but so vulnerable for the points

[dice4thedicegod]

Escalation league went to 1000 points:

 

 

I do like 1000 points. Big enough to have a few units, small enough to be quick and manageable.

[Karhedron]

Plasma ones are tricky… hit hard but so vulnerable for the points

Yes, you really need a Captain and possibly an Apothecary/Sanguinary Priest to get the best mileage out of Plasamceptors. They are great if well supported but vulnerable to both the enemy and their own overheats if not. Bolterceptors on the other hand can nip about on the flanks quite happily by themselves.

[Blindhamster]

continuing to work on operation "get everything based and basecoated in the appropriate shade of red" (by hand, i spray mephiston as the undercoat but use a brush and thinned down 50:50 mephiston/evil sunz as the base red). continues. Hit a snag as Im waiting for some paints to arrive, but making progress!

Also working on a custom sword to replace the non gw one I used on my captains (so i can use it at events eventually)

[Warhead01]

Yeah, I think that bolter inceptors are in a decent spot right now. I’m running some in an escalation league and they seem solid.

 

Plasma ones are tricky… hit hard but so vulnerable for the points

I have to admit I learned a bit of the value of the assault bolters from the BA commander on youtube a week ago. I think that's the channel. I think the math holds up number of models vs what you're spending on them in points.  Funny bit though when I was first reading the Bolter discipline rule a long while ago not I mistook it a bit and thought it worked on ever weapon with the word bolter in the name, thinking well, new edition new rules I guess.  Not realizing what I had missed on my read through...  

 

These three I am working on are very nearly done, just lenses basing and touch ups left. 

 

[dice4thedicegod]

Yeah, at 13 points per wound, the bolter inceptors are decent resilience for their cost while having good mobility and decent dakka. Definitely a “this can fit in any list and be useful “ whereas plasma ones need thought in list construction and fielding on the tabletop.

 

Personally, i think the relative points costs are about right at the moment.

[Jolemai]

Too flat to paint

[5thCompanyDaemonbanes]

Last week I had a 1k game against a friend's Ravenwing.  I brought a bit of a jerk list in retrospect, I overestimated what 1k of his stuff was going to look like, turn 2 all he had left on the board was a wounded stormspeeder.  This week we are going to do a full 2k, he will bring his full mixed Death/Ravenwing army and I am super excited.  Have really only played my other friend's mechanicus army the last year.

 

Haven't decided on a list yet, but definetly going to be more fun/flavorful this time, lots of Death Company to have punch fights with his Deathwing terminators.  I sold some old MTG cards I found from 20+ years ago and then spoiled myself with some more fine European resin terrain from gamemat.eu, won't be here for this week but next week for sure.

 

I have 4/5 heavy intercessors done, need to finish up this last guy for Saturday, see how they feel on the board, the sculpts are pretty fantastic.

 

And last to report, I wrote a quick short story in the writing challenge thread. http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/370930-rapid-fire-challenge-carnage-july-2021/

Edited July 21, 2021 by 5thCompanyDaemonbanes

[Rhavien]

I'm curious to hear about your fight against the deathwing, because I'm still stressed by the matches I had against them.

[Karhedron]

I'm curious to hear about your fight against the deathwing, because I'm still stressed by the matches I had against them.

Van Vets with Lightning claws seem like the best tool we have in the box.

 

I have 4/5 heavy intercessors done, need to finish up this last guy for Saturday, see how they feel on the board, the sculpts are pretty fantastic.

Mine have really performed well. +1W and +1T over regular Intercessors is actually a lot more durable than it looks on paper. You need 2 failed saves against overcharged plasma to kill an HI rather than 1 and those hits are wounding on 3s rather than 2s. Against small arms, you have the stratagem to give them a +1 on their saves. Against any really heavy hitters, you have Transhuman Physiology available. It really forces your opponent to either dedicate serious firepower to removing them or ignore them completely.

 

I like to pair mine with a squad of Infiltrators for midfield Objective holding. The Infiltrators have Smoke and a Helix Gauntlet which also reduces casualties and makes taking pot-shots almost pointless. With these boys helping to secure your Primaries, your Elites can concentrate on finding and killing the big threats

[5thCompanyDaemonbanes]

The 5th company was victorious this morning, but it was ugly.  We played with the open war cards instead of matched play, and the tldr is one heavy intercessor that survived objective secured the middle objective for me at the end of round 5 to secure the mathematical victory, so my opponent had to try to table me on his turn 6, and a squad of transhuman'd supressors were the last things on the board for the BA win.  Whiffed a lot of attacks, my phobos librarian committed suicide by warp after his second perils, hellblasters are still super good.

 

My list was a fun one, phobos captain, phobos librarian, 3x5 intercessors/auto/fist, 5x heavy intercessors/assault, 2x death company intercessors, 1x5 blade vets, 2x5 hellblasters/assault, 2x3 suppressors, repulsor executioner with all the addons/plasma.  I believe that was it.

 

Dark Angels, 1x5 terminators with shoots, 1x5 with death wing melee, terminator champion, ezekiel, 2x3 outriders, dark shroud, storm speeder hail, bike champion, bike apothecary, 3x primaris mario karts 2dakka/1melta, and I believe that was it. 

 

So nothing crazy competitive, just a fun Saturday morning game.

 

I toned my list down a bit, and I am glad I did, game was back and forth and we had a lot of fun, both made some great rolls and decisions, and both whiffed like I have rarely seen multiple times for some good laughs.

 

The Deathwing Terminators... damn, they are hard to move with their permanent transhuman, basically just had to rely on weight of attacks to even hope to get anything through.  We get so spoiled wounding almost all the time in melee on 2+, having to make 4s feels awful.  I was able to kill a few with mortal wounds before my librarian decided to go play in the warp, and his usually mean attacks did basically nothing against them.  It is telling that at the end of the game, the only things left on the board were ezekiel, 3x melee terminators, and the terminator champion, and my 2 suppressors that survived by flying to his backfield objective and hoping nobody noticed them.  

 

Thinking on those terminators a bit more, I love running power fists in my intercessor squads because it really punishes getting into combat with them, even usually with heavier units, but -1 to hit with the fist then wounding on 4+ is not the way to punish terminators.  My death company intercessors moved up the board and did a good job tying up and clearing out some of his raven wing units, the repulsor executioner stayed alive for longer than it should have and was able to do a bit of work until that last melta gocart came to say hi to it.  Pro tip, whenever you want to tone your list down, just take one of those, or two if your opponent really needs a pick me up.

 

Everything else in the list did what it was supposed to, the bladeguard sucked up a stupid amount of shooting and were able to help in the middle against the raven wing vehicles, and the heavy intercessors trudged up the board with my captain and one squad of hellblasters, since my opponent was mostly t5 at least vehicles or terminators, their guns didn't feel great, but nothing really felt great shooting past hellblasters.  I am going to keep playing them but not in a rush to go out and get more yet, maybe when they munch up thirty or so skitarii next time I play against admech I will feel differently.  

 

Next for the 5th company, 2x invictor warsuits, finishing infiltrators x10-15, and maybe finally adding some inceptors into the mix.

Edited July 25, 2021 by 5thCompanyDaemonbanes

[Majkhel]

Today I'm building a base for Mephiston

[The Unseen]

Just finished the campaign of battlesector, and overall pretty happy. Its a fairly short game all considered, but fun enough while it lasts. The story for those curious follows the effort to cleanse one of Baal's moons, Fortunata, of the tyranids after Indomitus arrives. So there are some references to the sergeant who commands your army basically using this as a test of the new primaris marines, and as such that's mostly what you'll be controlling, bar the characters and the vehicles, the only firstborn units are assault squads, and later Death Company.

 

I like the way they reward playing aggressively, most units don't suffer penalties for moving and shooting, and build a meter over the course of the skirmish by killing things and staying moving, and lose it by not attacking or entering overwatch. Sometimes its still the right thing to do, but if you can hit that rhythm of meter building the payoff is pretty big, most units basically just get to act twice if you fill the meter. Units with triggered abilites can instead "surge" and get massively boosted versions of their abilities for a turn. I only used this a few times, but a SP getting off a massive heal or buff is good. Death Company big thing is they fill the meter up stupid fast, I think they start the mission with 65 out of 100, and gain a stacking Black Rage modifier every time they kill models, which increases their melee damage, but decreases their evasion. Not uncommon for DC for me to get some melee buffs thrown on them, then jump pack charge something, kill stuff, trigger black rage for yet more melee buffs, then max out momentum meter and fight again. Feels suitable.

 

Some annoying things, the army management is a bit fiddly, and you have to manually re-order your army at the start of every single mission, and its sorta like those old tile puzzles where you have to slide units around to free up space to set units down where you want, cause movement is on a grid. One mission was really bad, I had 2 free slots and 20 units, so I had to shuffle stuff repeatably just to get melee guys in front and hellblasters in the back. And there are a number of things the game doesn't warn you about, it doesn't have a way ala Xcom of what a unit will be able to see if it moves to a certain spot, so using cover is a complete crap shoot. Sometimes you'll move somewhere and you can easily shoot over the cover, and other times its treated like a solid wall. Ohh and Hellblasters with heavy plasma or MM land speeders are basically the only true anti-tank, and I never used the MM because I took the Tornado version instead, because Dakka. So I used melee to kill big things a lot.

 

For gameplay tips, you can pretty much just ignore assault squads, they feel incredibly wimpy AND are super fragile. DC squads are a little better in that they actually hit hard enough to be worth bringing, and if you buy the health boosts that apply to them they don't instantly die.

aggressors are pretty much just entirely too slow for most of the missions, but there are a few where they're pretty nice. Their fists are terribly inaccurate though, but on a map with a defensive choke point where they don't have to move much, their overwatch is nasty. I got into the habit of loading up the next mission to see what the map layout looked like and then going back and selecting my units. Cause you would think Astartes would at least know the rough terrain of their own bloody moon before they run into it.

On the other hand, inceptors are great. Even without the plasma upgrade they can shred most things, and with it they can do decent damage to even the big beasts.

And Intercessors, suitably upgraded, stay fairly squishy, but do absolutely horrendous things to pretty much anything in the game. Auto bolt rifles+ranged damage buffs turn them into monsters capable of killing anything but the strongest armored tyranids in a couple volleys, and leave gaunt swarms on 1-2 models just on their own, ripe pickings for character pistols to finish off.

 

Overall I'd say its worth it. Got a weekends worth of enjoyment out of it.

 

The final mission of the campaign is stupid hard, where you finally track down the rogue hive tyrant to kill it,had lost basically 80% of my force and was going to reload and try again with some different unit choices, as there were a bunch of gargoyles and big monsters, but figured I'd send the sergeant out in a blaze of glory, and activated ALL the melee buffs on him (His own Blade of Sanguinius self-buff and the SP melee buff, both surged so he had like 400% melee damage), and had him jump in and smash the tyrant in the face with his hammer. Killed it. Immedietely hit the mission success screen, despite the fact that said sergeant was surrounded by a massive amount of tyranids and was about to die horribly. Had me laughing.

Beating that mission the "real" way was going to be really rough, but I might try it again anyway because that was the first time I was going to lose a mission.

Edited July 25, 2021 by The Unseen