Update - On Blue Necrons

Sorry once again to be late, the reason for this being two-fold. The first is that I have once again been travelling, and the second being that I did not actually get anything done in the last week. However, I have managed to finish 1 thing and get a little further with another in the last day or so.

I have managed to spray and basecoat my Monolith, and now I am running perilously low on Regal blue. However, I have finished painting my Catacomb Command Barge. I decided not to base the Overlord and merely paint his base the colour of the barge to make him fit in with it more and is warscythe includes a lot of red to allow it to contrast with the blue of the vehicle. But anyway, here is a picture of it below.

Hopefully in the next couple of days I will get back to more useful / interesting (hopefully) posts, but that's all for today, thanks for reading.

Update - Short and not at all Time Consuming

Well this week has been mainly centred around gaming. The main reason for this being that a large number of our gaming group (me included) organised a triple table apocalypse bash. Each of us would bring 4,000pts from any codecies we liked, and with there being 8 of us, this meant a total of 32,000pts. Unsurprisingly, we didn't finish all of the games, but a good day was still had by all involved, even though it did go to pot a little. There were a couple of homemade special rules in place during the game including for determining the scoring. I won't go into these now bit will do on demand. Anyway, our team lost 7-3 and 4-2 on the first 2 boards, the former being the large board (which also had more points available), but we also won 12-0 on the third board (which I was playing on) to win the overall event 17-1.

Otherwise, I have been painting my Catacomb Command Barge. I have now got the base colour scheme down, leaving me to finish the details and paint the overlord, his command panel or whatever that thing in front of him is and the underslung Gauss Cannon. Pictures will be posted when it's finished.

And that's it. Feature post coming soon.

Ranged Vs Assault: Part 2

At first glance, both ranged and close-combat have their benefits. The main benefit that I really see with ranged is exactly that, the range, as you are now able to have a greater threat range, meaning that you can take units out from afar. However, I do not wish to dispute the statement that close-combat is where most of the damage is caused, and in this conclusion, I shall be quickly skimming over why I believe this is the case.

Firstly, I believe that the number of attacks is a big issue here. In assault you can get a huge number of attacks off. If we look at a comparison with my Orks. 30 slugga boyz on the charge get a whopping 120 attacks altogether for 180pts, whereas 12 lootas – again, 180pts – can only churn out a maximum of 36. So lets look at the mathammer for this against a bog standard 10 man tactical squad. Tactical squad gets 11 attacks (inc sergeant) hits with 6 (being generous today), and wounds with 3. 3 Orks are killed, reducing the number of attacks against the marines to 108, of which, 54 hit, 27 wounds, and 9 marines are killed. Ouch. Now for the Lootas, 36 shots, 12 hits, 10 wounds, 3 marines die. About a third of the damage that the boyz caused. Now I know that you could argue that Lootas should generally be popping transports rather than taking shots at marines and that Orks are at heart a close-combat army anyway. But this principle that a dedicated close-combat unit from a codex causes more damage than a dedicated shooting unit from the same codex for the same points follows in most instances, the exceptions being Imperial Guard and Tau.

Secondly, the availability of the ability to cancel out army saves is much more prevailant in close-combat than it is in range. Looking at dedicated close-combat units, a large majority of them have access to some form of power weapon or rending, just off the top of my head I can name Bloodletters, Genestealers, Nobz, Assault Terminators even Lychguard, whereas how many ranged squads can have access to AP1 or 2 weapons/rending weapons at the same proportion as these do power weapons. Space Marine Scouts can get a lot of snipers, Deathmarks, Chaos Chosen. I mean sure, many units can get access to things like plasma weaponary but in what quantity can they get it. Imperial Guard Veteran squads can only get plasma for 3 of their 10 men, Eldar Guardians can only get 1 Starcannon platform per squad. The sheer quantity of hits that cancel out armour saves in close-combat is horrendous when compared with that of ranged, and when coupled with the weight of attacks seen above, this makes one brutal combination.

Third and finally in this brief summation of ranged vs assualt. One reason that assault kills more in my view is the potential to hit multiple units at a time. Only a couple of units can hit more than 1 target at range in a single player turn, Long Fangs, Land Raiders and super heavy vehicles in apocalypse spring to mind here, but in combat, any unit can multi-assault, and when they do, they can cause utter devastation. Just last month when I was playing black templars my 1 of my squads of Nobz (with the standard warboss) ate a Land Raider, 2 tactical squads and an assault squad due to catching them in a multi-assault, killing 4 units in a single game turn, whereas the potential for a standard unit specialised at ranged combat is to only kill a single unit per turn.

And so close-combat, with it's additional attacks, inclusion of a large number of armour ignoring weaponary, and the ability to hit more than one unit at a time, makes it much more devastating when it hits than range. However, don't rule out range altogether, as it is necessary in a good list to be able to threaten units at distance, and if you don't have this, then you're in trouble, and if Imperial Guard and psyfleman dreads have taught us anything, range can still cause a heck of a lot of damage.

Update Number 2 - And a Little Battle Report

I'm hoping to get back to my proposed (I can't really say usual) update schedule next Sunday, but due to the fact that I have been all over the UK in the last week or so I've stuggled to rattle off a blog post, so here is one now. I'm also hoping to conclude the ranged vs close combat post duo this week, and the update next week should be a little more sizeable due to a triple board apocalypse game that me and 7 other guys are getting involved with.

I've only really done a couple of things this week, and they were both Necron related. The first was that during my travels I managed to pick up a Catacomb Command Barge, a kit that I was actually very impressed with, as I was expecting to have to magnetise it in order to allow me to be able to swap between command and annihilation barges at will, whereas with this, it was not the case. I'm also liking how the new instructions are now taking advantage of the numbering system next to each part.

Anyway, the second piece of 40k related activity that I participated in was the first test game for my Necron army. Just to let you know, the list can be seen below:

HQ:

Imotekh

Overlord with Warscythe in Barge with Gauss Cannon

Cryptek with Veil of Darkness

Cryptek with Chronometron

Lord with Res Orb

Elites:

C'Tan with Lord of Fire and Swarm of Spirit Dust

Troops:

14 Necron Warriors (Chrono-tec and Lord)

9 Necron Warriors (Veil-tec)

Fast Attack:

6 Scarabs

2 Destroyers with 2 Heavy Gauss Cannons

Heavy Support:

Monolith

I actually really like this list (of course, I made it). It's very different to what I have seen before with the new dex and it only has 2 duplicate units, both of which are used for very different rolls.

Now the game in question was set up to be a bit of a test for me, it was capture and control with spearhead deployment against sisters of battle. Many accept the sisters to be the weakest army in the game, and by saying that this is a test I am not countering this, this is simply due to the fact that I had never played sisters before. In case you don't want to read the next paragraph or so on the game, I will summarise now and leave you to scroll down the page to the result. I believe that I played quite a clean game, the necrons performed admirably and the only mistakes that I made were down to me not really knowing the army that I was playing against. So, onto the game.

I lost the roll off and my opponent gave me the first turn to allow him to get some last minute objective grabs in. He had Celestine, Jacobus with a battle conclave with 3 crusaders and 6 death cult assassins in a rhino. 2 squads of sisters repentia with priests in rhinos. 3 squads of sisters in rhinos, one squad had melta guns, the other had flamers and the third a multi-melta. He was also packing a squad of seraphim to go with celestine.

The game started well for me, I castled behind my Monolith leaving my veil squad in reserve. I moved then moved the barge up in the movement phase down my right flank ready to harass his home objective. However this could have gone badly wrong, as I made a mistake here as I did not know the sisters repentia. Imotekhs lightning only hit the rhino of the leftmost sisters repentia, popping it. The sisters fell out but were not pinned due to fearless, and then, due to fleet, they were able to charge the barge, but only managed to get one into it, who immobilised, but I swiftly took this on the overlord.  

He moved up his rhinos bar leaving the flamer sisters on the objective, I then spread out for the impending seraphim but neither they nor the warriors showed up this turn. Not really much happened here bar two things. In my turn, the Monolith obliterated the first squad of repentia to 2 sisters, who were then beat up after they charged the heavy destroyers, although they did kill one. In the sisters turn, the multi-melta took a shot at the monolith, passed night-fighting, penetrated it and blew it up. Fantastic. I now knew that I had a game on my hands. The C'tan moved up with the scarabs to engage the rhino wall, the barge was ineffective and no reserves came in. The scarabs ate a bit of armour but were then cut down by the second squad of repentia after their rhino was badly mauled by the C'tan.

Turn 4 was were everything kicked off. The reserves came in and my warriors capitalised on the fact that my opponent decided to move his flamer sisters off the objective. Their rhino was wrecked by the barge and many of the sisters were cut down, but they then fell back closer towards the objective. After cutting down 3 Crusaders and 5 Death Cult Assassins, along with wounding Jacobus. The large warrior squad was charged by Jacobus, the remaining Death Cult Assassin and a squad of repentia, and yet somehow managed to win the combat, although many of the necrons including Imotekh were mowed down during it. Meanwhile, the C'tan charged down a sisters squad.


On turn 5, my opponent expanded a faith point to allow his sisters to rally (something that I was not aware that he could do) and charged them into the necron squad holding his home objective. They won the combat but the necrons just managed to pass their leadership check clinging on to the objective. On the other side of the board, the C'tan charged the sisters squad, and although he killed 2 of them, he somehow managed to take 2 wounds himself locking them in combat, and although with some help from celestine and her squad, the repentia were able to clear their home objective, the sisters had nothing in range to claim it. The game ended turn 5, and thus ended with a 1-0 victory to the necrons. Although I do believe that this was a close game, I also think that I am now much more prepared for those rare occasions where I do face sisters.


That's just about rounded it off for today but hopefully there will be more frequent posts over the course of the week.

First Scheduled Update

The purpose of doing schduled updates for what I've been up to is a simple one. It stops me from rambling on about my own hobby goings on in the posts that may actually be useful or interesting. There we go, now onto the update of my hobby goings on.

I'm going to kick off this first scheduled update with the spawning of a new list that I have created. The reason that I am so certain that this will become a reality is that I only need 3 blister packs and a box set to complete it. This is because it is a Necron list based around using as many models that I have from the old codex as possible, and I have built it around a rather strange idea, but I'll leave you to figure it out and see if you are right when I post a battle report when I first take the list for a test run. This should not take long, as this is a 1,500pt list that I am pitting head to head with my Orks to see which list I take to throne of skulls in the summer. The Ork list is essentially my Nobz list with the Loota squads trimmed down a little and the boyz swapped for a small gretchin unit. But without any further ado, here is the list.

HQ:

Imotekh the Stormlord

Royal Court 1:

-Harbinger of Eternity with Chronometron

-Harbinger of Despair with Veil of Darkness

Overlord with Warscythe on a Catacomb Command Barge

Royal Court 2:

-Lord with Ressurection Orb

Elites:

C'Tan Shard with Lord of Fire and Swarm of Spirit Dust

Troops:

14 Necron Warriors

9 Necron Warriors

Fast Attack:

6 Canoptek Scarabs

2 Destroyers – Both of which are heavy

Heavy Support:

Monolith

Total: 1,494

I've even actually got some of it painted. During the week I have painted and based the Scarab Swarms, the Heavy Destroyers and the C'Tan Shard. Classy.

They aren't the best painted models in the world but that wasn't really the intention, that is for my Daemons army. In which I have finished Skulltaker's classy yet simple base, but that's for another time.

The only other thing that I've managed to do is play a short game of the 40k based role-playing game Dark Heresy, which we just finished. This was so recent that I was actually writing the first part of this while playing. This was a lot of fun and would definitely recommend it. Also, using video call to play role playing games is actually pretty effective.

Shooting Vs Assault: Part 1

I've been thinking lately about the common statement that in 40k more things die in assaults, and sure, one close-combat specialist unit may kill more in close-combat than a specialised ranged unit in the shooting phase, but is close combat actually better?

I'm going to set the ball rolling by talking about what I consider to be the 3 top codecies in the game right now. Grey Knights, Space Wolves and Imperial Guard, and seeing how they use a combination of the 2.

I'll start off with what I consider to be the 3^rd most powerful codex, which in my opinion is Space Wolves. Now, I am by no means an expert on Space Wolves, in fact, I believe that in your wargaming community you will be hard pressed to find a player who knows less about Space Wolves than me. To put it another way, I have been into minature wargaming ince 2003 and I have never played with, or against, Space Wolves. But the little knowledge that I do have is that a top-tier Space Wolf list will not leave home without a pack of Long Fangs, probably with missile launchers, despite the fact that Space Wolves like to get up close and personal with their opposition with their short range, and this is likely to lead them into combat. Yet they still bring an excellent ranged element to the field.

The second most powerful codex in my opinion is Grey Knights. Now this I do have a little bit more experience with but not much, and every time that I have played GK, I have been facing between 3 and 5 psyfleman dreads. These induce a heck of a lot of terror into my Ork army, not only are they one of the few things that I struggle to hide my Trukks from, but when they do pop my Trukks, they are doubling my Nobz out, making my Nobz extremely vulnerable to them. Grey Knights are probably the worst match up that I can get, and the more psyflemen they have (and they will have some) the worse it is. Yet, I consider Grey Knights to be a close range/close-combat army. Just look at their close-combat units, Paladins and Purifiers are just the start.

Now, to bring onto Imperial Guard, they are definitely a shooty army, there is absolutely no doubt about it. But whereas Grey Knights and Space Wolves need to bring some long range firepower to back them up, do Guard have to bring some close-combat or short ranged units in order to back up their long range firepower? No. Yeah, you often see Guard using blob squads to bubble wrap vehicles, but really I don't consider this a close-combat element, more to prevent the precious vehicles from being hit in assault than to actually cause some damage with the blob themselves (although running 50 guardsmen, a commisar and 5 other power weapons can be pretty effective).

When I took my triple Nobz squad list to a local tournament, granted I only lost 1 game, but I struggled. But now that I have dropped a squad and taken 2 squads of 10 Lootas, the list has dramatically improved. I am now able to deal with Dark Eldar, and it stops my opponents from just moving around and shooting. So the conclusion here really is, you can build a competitive shooty list without specialised close-combat units (although bubblewrap units are useful), but you can't build a competitive close ranged army without some long ranged support, and if you're not including at least a bit of ranged, I feel that you are missing out on a whole aspect of the game. Apologies for my noobishness.

On a side note, instead of just inserting posts here there and everywhere about 'things I did', I am confining this to a regular schedule. So every Sunday (hopefully), I shall post about what I have painted, whether I've played any games, created a new list I have made that I will actually get round to using/making, etc. Therefore, you will now be able to tell more easily which posts may be useful, and which may not. I.e, ones that weren't posted on Sundays may be the more useful.

That's all for today, the topic of ranged versus close-combat is to be continued in part 2.