6th off the bat: Paladins

Phew, after having a quick look through the new rulebook I am relatively pleased that no-one has brought the nerf bat to my nice, shiny, new Space Wolves, especially on the same day that I complete the thing, that said, overall I really like the changes that 6th ed brings to the game. It looks like GW have made more of an effort to close off obscure rules loopholes from 5th and although I haven't got to the hobby, etc, seegments of the book yet I very much look forward to doing so, just after I have finished learning the rules in full.

But anyway, as I've just had a quick look through, I'm just going rattle off my immediate thoughts about 6th edition. Rather than talking about the rules themselves, and suggesting how they will effect different armies (it's difficult to tell until you have studied the entire rulebook and all of the new FAQs that were released this morning), I'm going to hunker down on a couple of units (or specific types of units) in this post before moving onto individual codecies and their most effective builds from 5th later. So, let's get started. First 5th ed powerhouse unit up.

Paladins

The undisputed kings of kill points. I see a lot of changes for these guys coming up with 6th edition. Lets start off with the good things. First off, Power Weapons are AP3, meaning that they will no longer pose any potential threat to Paladins, yes you could always just allocate to the warding stave, but now you don't have to, as all of your Paladins can take the hit, which is important given the new wound allocation rules, which brings me onto my second point.

Wound allocation, Paladins have now shed their ability to take different pieces of equipment on each model to make them more durable. I personally think that this is big, as it makes it much easier to bring down a single model from that squad than it was under 5th edition rules.

Speaking of durability, I think that the Apothecary isn't really worth taking in a Paladin squad anymore. Although it is harder to cancel out it (the only way of doing so now is through instant death), it is now only a 5+, so not exactly reliable, and with a unit that has decreased in durability anyway, I wouldn't say that it's worth 75pts, especially considering that what I'm going to be hitting you with are things like Lascannons, Meltaguns and potentially Power Fists (if they live that long) anyway.

Segwaying like a pro, onto instant death, and specifically, Force Weapons, these are now broken down into 3 types, Force swords, Force axes and Force staves. Force swords are essentially the same as they were, but only come with an AP3, making them less effective against other Paladins (as well as anything with a 2+ armour save for that matter, such as Terminators), Force axes are like Power Fists but instead of doubling strength they give +1, and Force staves add +2 to stength but come with A4, although they do reduce models which take an unsaved wound from it to I1 until the end of the next assault phase (a bit situational as this will only really be useful against models immune to instant death.

A bit of a crappy segway now onto what for me is the most important change in the entire book. The missions. The reasons I say this is because your army could be as enhanced as anything by the new rules but if you can't achieve the objectives you aren't going to win very often.

First of all, I wish to say that I think that Paladins will do ok at the secondary objectives for each game, in fact, I would say that they do well. However, most of the points from the primary objectives. Essentially, there is only 1 mission that is similar to kill points, although there is one where killing certain types of enemy unit is a factor to the primary objective, there is only a 1/6 chance in getting a mission that the mission that Paladins will absolutely thrive on, although a single squad of the things will be useful in any game, as they can achieve some of the secondary objectives pretty well and you can guarentee that they will take an objective for you (provided that you have Draigo).

Well. I planned to talk a little bit more on some other units, but I think that I'm done for today, although other similar posts shouldn't be too far behind. Sorry for the likely spelling mistakes, I'm trying it without my word processor for today. I'm not a Grey Knight player however, so if anyone disagrees with any of the above please leave a comment, I like to learn.

Paint and Announcements

Before I start this post I have an announcement to make. Over on the right you may see a header entitled 'The Underlings Blog List'. This is a list of the blogs of forumites over at the Overlords. As a part of this group of blogs, I can say that I have read all of them and would highly recommend any and all of them to you. They all produce great content and it is definitely worth your while checking them out.

Anyway, onto today's post from this blog. Over the last week or so I have come into a relative period of laziness, as I have nothing meaningful to do. Just a quick piece of advice before I continue with the post, if you are thinking of making a triple decker sandwich (by which I mean using 4 slices of bread), do not use the middle layer for nothing but mayonnaise. Yes, it might seem like a good idea at the time but that much mayo just subdues the rest of the sandwich, even if the other 2 layers comprise of turkey.

The only thing that I have been doing is painting. Unfortunately I don't appear to have done much, all I have painted so far is most of a Rune Priest, the armour of 4 Wolf Guard and 4 World Eaters Terminators (including 2 metal ones, retro). Anyway, I won't post pictures of the Rune Priests now, as I'll wait until he's finished. I plan to do some freehand work upon a banner I converted him to have, but it'll probably just look like I've been sick all over it. But hey, I won't improve unless I try.

So, instead, here are the pictures of the World Eaters.

It was a simple colour scheme, all I did was undercoat them with a dark red (can't remember its name), followed by a layer of red gore and a highlight of blood red. For the gold bits I just bsaecoated bestial brown and then coated entirely with dwarf bronze. I then washed the whole model with devlan mud (yes, my wargaming room did smell afterwards) and used PVA to attach grass to their bases, going around the rim with bestial brown.

I painted them for a friend so that he can use them in a small tournament that I'm organising for some of my friends up in South Yorkshire, I now have the task of finishing off 17 Chaos Marines with the same colour scheme followed by wrestling with 4 Imperial Guard vehicles and over 50 guardsmen for another friend, whilst on the side trying to finish my Space Wolves. I don't mind though, as I've said I have plenty of spare time.

On a side note, I've recently got into online play on Space Marine, something I am really enjoying, despite the limited number of people that are online at any one time. I wish that you levelled more infrequently though, as I have been playing for about 2 days and I'm already about 60% through the ranks. That is my only gripe however. I'm on the PS3, if anyone wants to play together as a part of a team or something I'm all for that, just get in contact with me in any way you can, including the comments system at the bottom of the pages.

Ok, that's just about me done. Thanks for reading, and don't forget to check out the underlings blogs.

A whole day of 40k

This segment may be broken down into 2 parts depending upon how large a block of text it appears on my word processing software, which I use to write my posts before pasting them into the blog. So, well see how it goes.

I'm just going to write about the day that I had today, and to be honest, it has been the most active 40k day that I have had in a long time. For a start, I left my home for my local store early in the morning, to go and pre-order a copy of the rulebook (I like to support my store by ordering through them), which I did before White Dwarf had even plopped through my letterbox. This is because, either I am a pretty active forum participant and so keep up with rumours a lot, or because due to a rather large amount of caffeine which kept me up long enough last night to allow me to see the GW statement officially announcing 6^th edition.

But anyway, onto what I ended up doing for the 8 hours that I was at the store. So, onto my first of 4 games.

Due to an error in communication as to who was playing someone at the store, we all ended up playing, and so we ended up with a doubles 1,500pt game. By that I mean that each player had a 1,500pt army, leading to a 3,000pt game in total. Annihilation, Pitched Battle. I was teamed up with a Grey Knight player, who liked Paladins, while we were facing down Imperial Guard and Vanilla Marines. We came to an aggrement to leave most of the Guard army to him whilst I would take the Marines. In either turn 2 or 3, we ended up winning by wipeout.

The high point for me was where the same Wolf Guard that had killed the Swarmlord against ZacharPaladin ran on the backside of the board with his Scouts and punched Marneus Calgar in the face with a Wolf Claw, killing him. In addition, in order to protect the validity of my post regarding the Stormtalon, it had to be the first thing to die. Needless to say, it was killed with the first piece of shooting of the game, with a Long Fangs squad blowing it clean out of the sky. My point stands.

Game 2. This is where we started a doubles tournament. I was paired up with an old school friend that happened to be in store for the release. Each player had 650pts to play with, using a shared force org with their teammate, although each player had to have 1 HQ and 1 troops each. My teammate had:

A Librarian with Gate of Infinity, Avenger, Terminator Armour and a Storm Shield.

5 Sternguard in a Drop Pod.

A squad of 10 Tac Marines with a Multi-Melta and Flamer

a Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 weird Assault Cannons.

And that's it I think. I was taking:

A Rune Priest with Chooser of the Slain, Wolf Tail Talisman, Jaws and Murderous.

A squad of 5 Grey Hunters with a Meltagun and Banner in a Rhino.

A squad of 6 Grey Hunters with a Meltagun in a Rhino.

A squad of 5 Long Fangs with 4 Missile Launchers.

A squad of 5 Long Fangs with 2 Missile Launchers and 2 Lascannons.

First game was again, Kill Points, Pitched Battle. We were playing against horde Orks and Tau, and despite cleaning 64 models off the board and a crazy tank shock from a Rhino which saw the Warboss and his Nobz running off the Tau contingent was able to finish off a squad of Grey Hunters in the last turn to see a close victory to the Orks and Tau 5-4 on kill points. Later it was discovered that the Ork player was 50pts over his limit but at the end of the day it was an honest mistake and I'm not going to hold it against him, as he's such a nice guy.

This defeat left us against a another Tau army, this time paired with Daemons. The Daemon player got his non-preferred wave, filled with 2 squads of horrors with bolt, which came down and were instantly squished. This pair player very aggressively. We wiped all of their troops early on and despite a Long Fangs pack killing a Daemon Prince in close combat our objective was beset by many flamers and a Lord of Change. However, the Sternguard, Librarian and a squad of Grey Hunters managed to punch through the Tau lines to take the opposing objective, leaving the game as a 1-0 victory to us.

The final game was meant to be against a combination of Terminator spam Grey Knights and Loganwing. However, the Grey Knight player had to go leaving the game conceded in our favour.

At the end of the tournament we ended up placing 4^th, it would have been 3^rd but we were drawn on points with our opponents from the first game but as we lost to them we came fourth. We also won the butcher award for killing the most models throughout the tournament, with a total of 127, beating our closest rivals to the title by more than 30.

Additionally, I managed to scramble together an entrant into the painting competition in the form of a Wolf Scout, which managed to get 3^rd place behind some very good entries.

All in all, a good day of gaming and I would recommend anyone to attend similar events.

ToS Prep 3 - Beasty

So, I'm still trying to grasp how to use Space Wolves, and I think that my most recent game has helped me with this. So far, my record with my Wolves is 1 win and 1 loss, not ideal for going into a national tournament with but when starting a new army regular losses are to be expected, especially when it's quite different to what you're used to.

Apologies for the lack of pictures in this one but seeing as most of the Tyranid army is proxied it is probably for the best to avoid confusion.

In further preparation for the event I have engaged in a third game over the weekend, with the next one being a store smackdown at veterans night on Thursday. I was playing ZacharPaladin again, as he is also looking to get a few practice games before his Youngbloods Throne of Skulls. Unlike me, he was sensible, and picked an army that he knows well, bringing out his Tyranids. His newly updated list can be found below.

HQ:

Swarmlord

-Tyrant Guard

Elites:

Deathleaper

3 Zoanthropes

2 Hive Guard

Troops:

10 Genestealers

-Plus a Broodlord

10 Termagants

-Devourers

10 Termagants

Tervigon

-Adrenal Glands

-Catalyst

-Toxin Sacs

Tervigon

-Adrenal Glands

-Catalyst

-Toxin Sacs

My list has been through a few modifications as well. After the close-combat schooling that I get on Thursday, I realised that I only had 2 special close combat weapons in the entire list. So, I dropped the Dreadnought and his Drop Pod, and replaced them with some Wolf Guard. My new list can again be seen below.

HQ:

Rune Priest

-Chooser of the Slain

-Wolf Tail Talisman

-Murderous Hurricane

-Living Lightning

Rune Priest

-Wolf Tail Talisman

-Jaws of the World Wolf

-Murderous Hurricane

Elites:

4 Wolf Guard

-2 Power Fists

-2 Wolf Claws

5 Wolf Scouts

-Meltagun

-Melta Bombs

5 Wolf Scouts

-Meltagun

-Melta Bombs

Troops:

10 Grey Hunters

-2 Meltaguns

-Rhino

7 Grey Hunters

-Meltagun

-Rhino

7 Grey Hunters

-Meltagun

-Rhino

Heavy Support:

5 Long Fangs

-2 Lascannons

-2 Missile Launchers

5 Long Fangs

-2 Lascannons

-2 Missile Launchers

5 Long Fangs

-2 Lascannons

-2 Missile Launchers

So, on with the game. We ended up getting Capture and Control and Spearhead, a complete mirror match of our first preparation game. I won the roll off and chose to go second, putting the Tyranids in the corner with the least terrain. Everything was deployed apart from Deathleaper and the Genestealers for the Tyranids, while I left the Wolf Scouts and the larger Grey Hunter squad in reserve. Deathleaper caused a -2 to my main Rune Priests leadership.

I definitely think that I made my biggest mistake in deployment. I tried to be really clever and place my objective central in my deployment zone to elude both the Genestealers and the main Tyranid army, I also left a Long Fang squad further back so that it would be eaten by the outflanking Genestealers who would then get blown away in my turn by the remaining Long Fangs.

I started my defence as I always do, with one of my Rhinos being blown up in the first shot of the game, the Hive Guard accounting for it thise time. The Tervigons spawned a combined total of 21 Termagants here, but when I brought one of them down with Jaws we forgot to make the resultant death hurt the surrounding Termagants, which is my fault as I know the Tyranid Codex well enough and I should have remembered that.

The Swarmlord and a crapload of Termagants and 3 Zoanthropes then piled into my defence in the next few turns, with the last man standing (a Wolf Guard and his Power Fist) punching the Swarmlord in the face and bringing him down, although his victory was short lived as he was swiftly blasted away by the Zoanthropes. The Scouts accidentally came on on this side of the board and managed to stomp their way through Deathleaper a Termagants squad and the Tyrant Guard to clear my objective, with a little help from the Long Fangs in wiping out some more of the critters. Although I had not claimed this objective, my opponent hadn't either.

What it came down to was whether or not I would be able to take/contest the opposing objective, all I had to do this was a single squad of scouts (due to the others turning up on the wrong side of the board) and 10 Grey Hunters in a Rhino being chased by the Genestealers. If the Rhino had lasted 1 more turn I reckon that I could have driven closer to the objective and possibly reached it with my Grey Hunters, but it didn't. On either turn 3 or 4 (can't remember which) the Genestealers took it down despite the fact that it had moved at cruising speed, and the Grey Hunters were left with the task of holding up the Genestealers and the Tervigon.

This left the game in the hands of my Wolf Scouts, as I could only get a draw now. They smashed their way through more than a few Termagants to reach the objective on turn 5, with only the Wolf Guard and a single scout remaining. So, if the game ended here, it would be a draw. Typical then, that after 9 years in the hobby this game was the first one that went all of the way to turn 7.

The Genestealers ran straight into my scouts after finishing off the Grey Hunters and swiftly ate them, meaning that my only hope to try and scramble a draw was an unlikely shenaniganising manouvre with the Long Fangs moving them into range and line of sight (thank you Sanctum) in turn 6, hoping that the game goes to turn 7, and then somehow blasting away the Termagants, Genestealers and the Tervigon. I would probably go so far to say an immposible thing to happen.

So, the game ended at the end of turn 7 with a 1-0 defeat. I want to congratulate ZacharPaladin on the victory as he played well. What I have learnt though, is that I need to change my mentality. I have been thinking that now I am no longer playing Orks I should learn to be a bit more defensive, so at the start of that game, instead of thinking, 'what should I leave back to defend?' I was thinking, 'what should I send forward to attack?'. So, next game, I'm going to try using the Space Wolves in a more Orky style. Pity it's against Grey Knights, a game which has now been moved to Saturday (hopefully) on account of me being busy yesterday, getting a 6^th ed rulebook on advance order at the same time.

Until then.

ToS Prep 2 - Just one of those games

Sorry for the short absence, the reason for this being that I have had literally nothing to talk about over that period of time. And now we enter the main thrust of the Throne of Skulls preparation season. My first game of this period of time came today, against a Raven Guard army. I can't really remember the army exactly but an approximate list of what my opponent had can be seen below.

Shrike, a Chaplain, a squad of Terminators with a Sergeant with Power Weapon. 10 Assault Marines, a 10 man Tactical squad with a Sergeant with a Power Weapon and Rhino, a 10 man Tactical Squad with a Meltagun, Plasma Pistol and Krak Grenades, a Venerable Dreadnought with a Twin-Linked Lascannon, a Predator with Heavy Bolter Sponsons and Autocannon and a Devastator Squad with 4 Missile Launchers. There.

We rolled for mission and got Dawn of War, Annihilation. This was possibly the worst combination that I could have hoped for, I know I can out shoot this army, so ideally I would have wanted to start my Long Fangs on the field ready to lay down some fire, now that that is not a possibility I will have to roll on first turn and set up getting ready for the second turn.

I won the roll off for first turn but gave it to my opponent. Looking back on it I'm pretty certain that I made a mistake here. What I was thinking was that when Shrikes squad came on from outflank I would be able to bring on my scout squads behind and jump on it with the scout squads and maybe a Grey Hunter pack. But this would have depended upon my reserve rolls and such a gamble is silly.

He deployed his Rhino full of Tac marines, and I was left to deploy my Rhino full of Grey Hunters, with my main Rune Priest being inside it (the first ToS prep thread for my list).

The first turn set the tone for the entire game really, in fact, you could probably sum it up in the first shot. My opponent rolls his whole army on with the exception of Shrike, the Chaplain and the Assault marines (which he has formed into a kind of hammer unit). He then proceeds to fire his Predator's Autocannon at my lone Rhino. Both shots hit, both shots penetrate, I fail both cover saves (as I parked it supposedly safely behind a building) and the Rhino is wrecked, thankfully, I'm not pinned, so at least there was a bonus.

I'll just break the game down in terms of kill points now with a few bits of craziness thrown in. My opponents Devastator squad managed to get 2 kill points and not die, although neither of these kill points were achieved through shooting, I ran my 2 squads of Wolf Scouts behind them with the intention of munching on the Devastators and then overrunning into a big section of my opponents army, one squad of scouts came on on turn 2 along the side board edge thanks to a 1 but still managed to charge the Devs, whilst the others came on the next turn and blew up the Predator before turning their attention to the Devs the turn after. The Devastators then proceeded to beat up both squads of scouts, losing only 3 of their number the entire game.

The Tac squad jumped out of their Rhino and munched on a squad of Long Fangs, only for the 2^nd Rune Priest and his buddies to jump out of their Rhino and mince them in return. My Dreadnought came down first turn and proceeded to blow apart said Rhino after my main Rune Priest failed to hurt it with Living Lightning, only to be bashed around by the Venerable Dreadnought, the Drop Pod being ignored and surviing until the end of the game. One of the Long Fangs blew both arms off the Vendread later on but counted as a kill point after running away from another somehow crazy squad of Tac marines who showed them who was boss in close combat.

The Rune Priest and his Grey Hunters squad did ok. They came close to felling a Terminator squad, the Rune Priest and his remaining Grey Hunters had 1 turn to kill a single Terminator, failed, got punched until only the Rune Priest and a lone Grey Hunter remained. The started running, but got far enough to rally and shoot the Terminator in the face with a Bolt Pistol, which somehow did kill him were power weapons and mounds of attacks failed.

The tipping point of the game was the assault squad arriving, and nothing I could do could seem to stop them. To just give you some perspective, they came on, blew up my Rhino full of Grey Hunters, of which Shrike killed 5 by himself, I roll for my 15 attacks, 2 hits, no wounds......great. This trend continued as they then proceeded to eat the Grey Hunters squad, a pack of Long Fangs, another Grey Hunters squad and a Rune Priest. My attacks were just bouncing off them, as was my shooting and psychic powers, Murderous Hurricane, a Grey Hunters squad and a pack of Long Fangs failed to do anything to that squad in an attempt to fend them off after eating the Grey Hunters squad, including the dangerous terrain move. I did manage to single out the Chaplain and kill him though, which was a pleasant bonus.

Now, I very rarely blame the dice in games of 40k, and yes, there were mistakes that I made in that game, but if my dice had been just average, I reckon that that would have been an entirely different game. I'm not bitter about the game at all, my opponent played well, and I made some mistakes as I still have teething issues with that army, so he probably deserved a win, but in the end I slumped to a 9-4 defeat. It was a fun game though, we had a good laugh about my dice and I learnt a lot more about playing Space Wolves. But hey, a defeat is a defeat, everyone loses a game once in a while, and all you can do is pick yourself up from it and move on. Speaking of which, I have a practice game lined up next Thursday, against Draigowing. Should be interesting.

Blue Necrons and Pod Rage

I've gone off on a bit of a tactical tangent over the last week or so, so now I'm going to go for a little bit of diversity with some hobby updates.

Firstly, don't drop your largest case on your models, just don't do it, it's a bad plan. I did it, it didn't end well. Luckily though, I only dropped it on one model. Unluckily, this was the most frustrating kit that I have ever assembled. You might remember a while ago I posted raging about how frustrating it was to assemble a drop pod, well now I was lucky enough to be able to assemble it all over again. In truth though it wasn't too bad, the annoying part was still together enough to make the job easier, the parts of the drop pod can be seen below. I've got it fixed now though so it's all good.

Additionally, I made sure to order 2 Rune Priests just before the price increases on Sunday night, but due to all of the bank holidays that are going on in the UK at the minute due to the jubilee they haven't arrived yet, although they should do so tomorrow. In other Space Wolf related news, I've pretty much got my entire army assembled, I've made a Chooser of the Slain marker out of a base and servo-skulls, and all of my Long Fangs are assembled bar 2 missile launcher Long Fangs, still need to get hold of the bits for those.

Anyway, I've also managed to get a little bit more progress done on my Necron army. The reason that it's been a while for this is because it's a pretty large model and I've been distracted by getting an army together for Throne of Skulls coming up. So anyway, to finish this post off, here it is.

Rules Breakdown - New Flyers Part 4

Ok, this will be the final post on breaking down the rules for the new flyers, and we finish with the Blitza-Bommer. I don't think that I have much to say here, so I'm going to jump straight into it and see how much content I can squeeze out of this thing.

Like the other Ork flyers, it comes with a standard Ork BS, as well as an all round armour value of 10 it's also not open-topped. Base, it costs the same as 9 Lootas, although you can take Red Paint Job on it for an additional 5pts.

In terms of wargear, in comparison to the Burna-Bommer you are losing Twin-Linked on the Big Shoota (although it still keeps the Grot Gunner) and you're swapping the 2 burna bombs for 2 boom bombs. Now, boom bombs come with a good statline, although they don't ignore cover, they effectively have the same statine as an Autocannon, but are blasty. Crucially, they also roll an extra D6 for armour penetration. Pretty nice.

The reason I think that this is an absolutely fantastic unit for standard, pickup game play, but not for tournaments, is that they also come with a rule called Skreamin' descent. This is a 2D6 roll which determines some side effects for the boom bomb. Lets just say that on a low roll bad stuff happens, on a medium roll normal stuff happens, and on a high roll extra good stuff happens

I think that this is great, I really enjoy random rolls, (hence why I have 2 Ork armies, a random one and a tournament one) but I think that in a tournament setting you need a degree of reliability from your army, and unfortunately this doesn't have that. However, I am probably going to be picking up a couple of these kits, and magnetising them to allow me to change them around and use all of the planes.

That's it for this segment. In my new-found, hopefully semi-reliable fashion, I should have the next post up in 2 days time. Bye until then.

Rules Breakdown - New Flyers Part 3

I'm going to move swiftly on with breaking down the rules of the new flyers as it is now a week since their release, and I don't really want to give this segment a short break like has happened with the Arena (still searching around my place for missing codecies). Next up, the Burna-Bommer.

This is one of those units that may become more effective with the release of 6^th edition, this is if the rumours that you will be able to set fire to terrain. If this is the case, I may be tempted to give it the upgrades for Skorcha Missiles at 10pts a pop. But as it stands. No. I'll come on to this a bit later.

It's an odd unit this. I kind of like it (probably because of my soft spot for Orks), but I would never take one. From a straight up perspective it's a skimmer on a flyer base, with the standard Ork ballistic skill and 10 armour all round. Comparing it to the Dakkajet which costs 5pts less (as I can't see you not taking the additional supa-shoota), it loses 2 Twin-Linked Supa-Shootas, but gains a Twin-Linked Big Shoota with +1 BS (grot gunner) and 2 Burna Bombs. It can then take up to 6 Skorcha Missiles for 10pts each and Red Paint Job for 5pts. Compared to the Dakkajet, it has also taken a bit of a change in special rules. It still keeps Supersonic, Waaagh!plane and Aerial Assault, but it loses Strafing run, getting Grot Gunner instead.

Losing Strafing run isn't really a big deal for the Burna-Bommer, as the only reason that you would take it over a Dakkajet is for the Burna-Bombs, which are essentially Heavy Flamer large blast templates.

Now, talking about how this would work on the tabletop, a Burna Bommer can't move flat out and drop a bomb in the same turn, restricting it to 12” movement. The issue here is that in dropping the bomb you're seriously reducing the survivability of the Burna Bommer. Yes, that is slow enough to allow the Battlewagon to keep up but surely if you're doing that you would just run the target unit over with a deffrolla, which should do the job of reducing them to paste. If that doesn't work, yes, you could drop a burna bomb onto the unit provided the Bommer has gone over it, but then you're paying a decent number of points for something that is just going to clean up after the Battlewagon.

I can see a secondary use for this though, and as I previously alluded to it may be more viable in 6^th edition. But, here we go. Take a Burna Bommer and strap a few Skorcha missiles to it. Then, use these missiles to clear opposing scoring units off objectives, as they don't allow for cover saves. What they essentially are are small blast heavy flamers with the range of a Rokkit Launcher, so you can move forward at cruising speed and unleash your missiles.

There is a pretty big risk of this thing being shot down but it depends how high up it comes on your opponents target priority. If you say that you have used all of the missiles from it (which you will have) your opponent may not see it as as much of a threat as it was at the beginning of the game, and thus dedicated his or her firepower to other units such as Battlewagons or in the general direction of a Big Mek with Kustom Forcefield.

I'd probably use it like this though if I'm honest, it's a little risky but can be very useful in all of the book missions. Releasing a load of skorcha missiles in one go will get its kill points back in most situations and the ability to easily clear most non-marine equivilant units from an objective is great, even marines might struggle against all of those S5 hits.

On a final note. Don't like Scarabs? I'd probably say that this is a better choice for getting rid of them than the Dakkajet. Yes you're not doubling them out, but they're vulnerable to blast weapons so you're coming close, and they don't get a cover save. Perfect.

To conclude, overall, do I think that I would take this over a Dakkajet in an all comers army? I think that it's difficult, they certainly both have their merits, but due to its lower points cost, I think that the Dakkajet is probably the better option. Just the Blitza-Bommer left to go.

On a side note that hasn't in any way got anything to do with the new flyer rules, I've finished painting my first squad of marines after 9 years in the hobby. I've also managed to finish their transport to go with them. So, as an excuse to get a picture into this blog – it's been far too long – here they are.