Back to the workbench!

After a while of not doing much modelling or painting I'm getting back into the swing.  I picked up this fella on ebay and added the mask and axe and plan to use him as Lord Taurus, ascended leader of the Sons of Taurus renegade marines.  The listing said it was from Creature Caster, but I haven't been able to verify that.  Anyone recognize him and able to point me to some confirmation of origins?

I'm also bulking up the Scythiak Usurpation .  Above are my unimaginative Crusaders.  Very on the nose perhaps, but pretty much fit perfectly how they're supposed to be equipped (heavy armor, storm shield, power sword) and fit with the aesthetic already established with the marauder rough riders and use of fantasy chaos heads elsewhere.  I plan to put them and a priest in a twin heavy flamer Chimera and go try to fry and dice some loyalists.

 
Sonofsonsoftaurus has also been busy, assembling mostly on his own (I did some trimming of flash and sprue remainders) a Primaris Apothecary and an Ultramarines herald/ancient.  The head on the herald is from a different heresy kit (MKIII command I believe).  Cape/backpack left off of the herald for painting.  That Apothecary has a bunch of tiny pieces.  If I get one myself I may have him and his small hands build it for me.

More to come!

8th edition 40K pre-game checklist

 

The new edition of 40K presents a lot of options on how to set up a game.  Of course we always had the option to play whatever kind of game we wanted, but having a number of options codified can make things easier (hey, let's pick one of these) but can also lead to confusion (what do you mean I can't use the same stratagem twice?) if players come with different expectations.  You should always have "the conversation" before a game to get on the same page. Perhaps something like this will make the conversation easier.

++Warhammer 40K 8^th edition pre-game checklist++

Who’s playing?

Where/When?

What time do we need to end by?

Do we need an extended break sometime in the middle (meal, etc.)? 

Will any player need to step away on a regular basis (smoke breaks, store owner to help customers, etc.)?

Who’s playing what?

Comfort level/experience of players?  Does any player need help? Does anything in any army need to be explained?

Is there a particular mission we are playing? (tournament test, custom narrative, special campaign mission, etc.?)

If not, what type of mission do we want? (Open War cards, War Without End? Crucible of War, Eternal War, Maelstrom of War, other?)

Battlezones?

             Night Fight? (p.252)

             Fire and Fury? (p.253)

             Psychic Maelstrom? (p.253)

             Planetstrike? (pp.254-7)

             Cities of Death? (pp.258-261)

             Stronghold Assault? (pp.262-265)

             Death from the Skies? (pp.266-269)

             Other?

Points or Power Level?  How many for each player?

Must armies be Battle-Forged?  Any restrictions on Detachments?

(Matched Play style restrictions)

Do armies need to allocate reinforcement points to summon daemons, etc.? (p214)

      

Psychic Focus? (other than Smite, each psychic power only once per turn) (p.215)

Strategic Discipline? (Same stratagem can only be used by same player once per phase.  Does not apply to those not used during a phase such as before the battle begins or at the end of a battle round) (p215)

Tactical Reserves?  (At least half of an army’s units must be set up on the table.  Any unit that has not arrived by the end of the third battle round counts as destroyed) (p215)

Sudden Death? (p.215)

Other Special Rules?

Any special terrain?

Is there anything we need to remember to track? (ex: for bonus tournament points or campaign effects)

Do we have everything we need? (models, books, dice, tape measures, terrain, etc.)

Any other questions/clarifications?

GAME ON!

Hot Chaos on Chaos action!

The Hell Hounds Word Bearers took the field against John's Nurgle Alpha Legion (Plague Hydras?  Infection Alpha?  There's a good name in there somewhere).  We played a Maelstrom mission, with us each having three cards a turn and corner deployment.  In the top right, two rhinos and the daemon prince Garm head to a critical objective while other forces hang back to secure our deployment zone.

Konor Weeks 4 and 6

Two more weeks of the Konor campaign, weeks 4 and 6.  The Word Bearers continue their erratic efforts in aid of the Death Guard's efforts in the system...or are they just pursuing their own goals?

Konor battles, new players, wacko chaos bike

After a few weeks on vacation, we made it back to the game store for some 40K and week 3 of the Konor campaign.  Here, 50PL of my Word Bearers try to make it past sonofsonsoftaurus' Ultramarines.

Terminators teleport in, fail to damage centurions with shooting, fail to charge, and soon fail to survive the Ultramarine return fire.

Garm and a squad of marines take out the Ultra terminators.

While Rhinos try to make it off the board.

One Rhino almost makes it before being torn apart by lascannons from the dreadnoughts.  I finish off the last centurion, giving me two points (terminators and centurions) but the loyalists ended with three (two rhinos and one CSM squad) and the win.

The Ultramarines got into another game, vs. marauding orks. (Leonard)

They used the Open War cards, with deployment zones right in each other's faces and a plummeting objective that would show up on the third turn in a random location.

With these guys leading the way, the orks had a bad day.

Elsewhere, Necrons clashed with more orks. (Connor vs. Terry)

While these later games were going on, I hung out with new player Matt and returning (from a slight 17 year absence) player Will while they got a small practice game in.  Matt brought his Dark Imperium Death Guard and Will dusted off some Praetorian Imperial Guard.

They used the basic book scenario, and ended up with four end-of-game scoring objectives and extra points for slaying the warlord.

Along with his old school guardsmen, Will had some nice old school Ogryn.

"Sgt. Major sah!  'eretics at 100 yards!"

The Plague Drone took a lot of fire and killed off two squads before being finished off and exploding in a fountain of filth that covered the nearby troopers.  On the other side, Poxwalkers make a ton of Disgustingly Resilient rolls and move up towards Imperial lines.

A few manage to make it to combat, but with the Praetorians falling back the remaining Poxwalkers are gunned down.  The Death Guard pull back and claim two objectives and nearly shoot the IG off of one more.  Nearly.  The IG manage to squeak out a win with killing the Chaos warlord and narrowly making their final leadership roll.

John W.'s CSM also got a match in with Leonard's orks.  John's biker lord (or sorcerer?) caught my eye, a very over the top, very cool, very chaos conversion:

"Sorry sir, there were other bikers closer; we just couldn't pick the leader out."

"..."

I wonder if he was inspired by that recent Monster Trucks movie? 

Rise of the Primarch

I finished up the Guilliman model for sonofsonsoftaurus according to his specifications.  I will paint up the bare head later, but thankfully he has come around to liking the helmet.  I took a few cues from how he has been doing the ultras that he has been painting himself, so the blue is washed a little darker than I may have done on my own, and he's dulled down a little more than I would have done on my own.  Still, pretty happy wiht him and glad to have him wrapped up.

Fourth War for Armageddon: Planetfall

We had our next mission for our Armageddon campaign, a modified Planetfall mission (power level 75).  Chaos and Ork forces rain down from orbit upon the beleaguered Imperial defenders.  Above, some of sonsofsonsoftaurus' Ultramarines take up positions.

My early pictures of my own game seem to have disappeared.  I played against John W's Deathskulls. Bastion in the middle with a squad inside, squad and officer outside, squads and tanks spread out behind.  He brought an all infantry force aside from a dakkajet, and descended with a vengeance.

Fourth War for Armageddon - Escape!

After the initial surprises and setbacks from attacks against better prepared than expected orks and surprise assaults from traitor forces, the Imperial forces fall back towards Hive Acheron to regroup.  Unfortunately their foes have cut off most avenues of retreat, and small forces try to punch through where they can.

This week we were playing the Ambush mission from the new rulebook, with a few modifications to fit the intention better (restrictions on value you get from deep strikers or flyers escaping).  I played against Cory's orks.  Given the mission I took an armored spearhead (command russ, other russ, hellhound, armored sentinel, two chimeras with infantry squads and a platoon commander).  Cory was also all mounted, with warboss in batlewagon with boyz and a big mek, and two trukks with more boyz.  Power Level 50.

Fourth War for Armageddon, Day One

We started up our Fourth War for Armageddon campaign, with small (Power Level 25) games.  We played a modified Patrol mission, with the Imperial forces rolling out in clearing operations against resurgent Ork concentrations.  Along the way, many are ambushed by Chaos forces that have infiltrated on-world, as above.

8th ed test games picture dump

Over the past few weeks, like many around the world, our shop has been shaken by a plethora of 40k 8th edition games as people try things out.

Above vs. Bjorn as part of an epic rampage by the primarch in a three way game, smashing through a number of Space Wolves and Alpha Legionnaires, making a knight run away and being a general terror before finally succumbing to mass fire. 

This week we start up a campaign on Armageddon, stay tuned! 

Initial 40K 8th edition impressions

I've played one game of the new 40K so far, ran an intro event and have seen parts of several games.  If you have seen a lot of videos or cruise forums regularly (I don't) I'm sure a lot of this may be old hat for you, but here's my initial take.

Is it fun?  Yes.  Like any edition of 40K or any game in general, it depends on who you play with.

Does it feel like 40K? Yes.  Things generally do the kind of things you expect them to.

Are there some odd things?  Yes.  With any abstraction there will be some things that some feel go too far that way, and some odd rules interactions.  Given that so far they have limited the rules interactions, there are less of those, but that usually seemed to be GW's rules-writing weakness anyways - rule A is fine, rule B is fine, but confusing when A and B both apply.

Impressions - again, some are likely old-hat if you've read a lot elsewhere, I doubt I'm the first, and consider my limited experience at this point.

• Multi-wound models (like 2 or 3 wounds each) feel fragile for their cost.  Great against small arms fire, and potentially a chance against things like demolisher cannons that used to kill them outright, but the mid-power weapons that used to bounce off or plink away one wound now has them often taking worse saves and a good chance for multiple damage from one hit to kill htem outright.  Add in a variety of ways to take mortal wounds (which bypass all saves, including "invulnerable" ones) and expensive, well-armored units seem like a bigger risk.  
• On the flip side, those well-armored guys are very hard to shift out of cover.  Small arms fire against marines in cover faces getting through effectively a 2+ save.  Before depending on what you were fighting, well-armored units could consider cover an afterthought, but now it can benefit them greatly.  You want to use heavier weapons to dig well protected units out of cover, which does feel appropriate.
• Things have a lot of shots, but that can be deceptive.  With twin-linking giving double the old shots, being able to fire multiple weapons even if you moved, etc. there are probably more shots heading downrange than ever before.  However for some units that comes with a price - if you're using Heavy weapons, in many cases you don't ignore that -1 penalty for moving and shooting it, so those marines are hitting on 4s, guard on 5s.  I think it can be easy to overestimate the effectiveness of mobile firepower (of course some units and weapons ignore that penalty).
• Hordes seem to be a thing.  At least with the games I've seen, it seems hard to thin them out quickly, and there are currently a number of mechanical bonuses that encourage larger units, like for ork boyz and some tyranid units, where they get bonuses with 20+ models.  With some missions having control of objectives based on number of models within range of the target, that's another benefit for the living carpet.
• Deep strike, etc. is very reliable, but also gives less benefit without additional boosts like Warptime letting them get closer.  There is less risk, but less opportunity to take a risk in hopes of a reward.  With the general 9" away rule, a few spread out units can deny a huge area.
• Flamers are great on overwatch, but not if you charge from over 8" away (or outside of whatever the auto-hit weapon's range is).  Of course less likely to make the charge, but one possible way of getting stuck in with those multiple flamer units.
• Vehicles seem pretty survivable compared to before, with a lot less worry (at least for those that start over 6 wounds) about a one-shot kill.  Facing them, you definitely need to focus if you want to bring them down.
• Terrain - while the very basic rules has terrain all working effectively the same, the more advanced rules and types of games can have different things working differently (Cityfight, etc.).  Be sure to review that and discuss with your opponent.
• No cover from other units, both friendly and enemy.  Can still block LOS, but no getting cover for your tanks from an infantry screen, etc.
• Everything overwatches, including tanks.  Watch out for that Russ with three heavy flamers.
• Can move out of combat, but can't move through other models, so possible to get surrounded/surround the enemy and trap them.
• Characters charging into combat seems difficult.  Since you're not attached to a unit, you don't charge with them.  Seems like either the unit is in front and charges first, then character tries, but a) starts further away and b) may not have a clear path anymore with friendly unit in the way so may be left alone in the open to get shot next turn, or character is in front and risks getting shot up, and risks making the charge while friendly unit fails it, leaving him fighting alone.
• LOS from vehicles, firing arcs etc. are gone.  So your sponsons can see through to the other side, etc.  This opens up some conversion/counts as opportunities while staying WYSIWYG without messing with rules, like making a Leman Russ with battlecannon in the hull and a turret with three heavy bolters.  Chaos and Ork players especially take note.
• Focus attention.  Aside from the horde bonuses mentioned earlier, it can be worthwhile making sure a larger model gets taken down a step in effectiveness, or enough wounds are done to a unit to give it a more serious morale check.  
• Hit modifiers seem to work poorly with things like overcharged plasma weapons.  Modifiers are done to the actual die roll, not the target, so it looks like an overcharged plasma cannon shooting after moving that has a -1 to hit will kill itself on a roll of 1 or 2.  Add in that it's per shot, and that plasma cannon that does d3 shots is likely to die if overcharging.  So think very hard about overcharging plasma while shooting flyers or other things that give you a to hit penalty.

Overall I've enjoyed it so far, and look forward to more games and trying out more missions.