I do have a valid excuse for why I haven't been posting recently. I have had no internet. The only way that I would have been able to access such a phenomenon would have been to type up a post on my iPad, and then get on a bus, using the terrible internet connection which I would find there to upload a post, meaning that I'd be sitting there for the best part of an hour as it takes ages to upload. I didn't try, this is an estimated guess after going in search of internet 2 days ago.
However, after sitting through an extremely long induction to my course the University has finally allowed me to use their internet. Hoorah! It wasn't like it was needed in the first few days in which I'm studying here to, you know, learn about the city and the University. As such, I ended up having to undertake the 45 minute walk to my gaming club with my dual sized aluminium case full of all of my hobby related items that I have brought with my to University, and then walk back late at night in constant fear of being mugged (nice place, I just don't know it very well). In addition, I have been missing out on a weeks worth of the goodness that is the Dakka Dakka worldwide campaign, which, being a regular poster over there, I am naturally a part of, or at least I hope I am, I may have been locked out on account of my sudden disappearance, I'll have to check once I'm finished over here. You might be able to tell that I'm quite bitter about this.
I could write about the large number of games that I have played in this time, but I'm not going to. Instead, I am going to just summarise them according to result very quickly. I lost the first, second, third and fourth game in this hiatus, a highlight being when I was playing against a horde Ork army with Imperial Guard allies, my Manticore managed to fire all 4 of its missiles and only managed to kill 2 Ork boyz and 10 Guardsmen in a 7 turn game. The best bit being that the boyz were both killed by the missiles, and the Guardsmen were all killed by the Heavy Flamer on the front of the Manticore (my opponent marched them forwards). Quality.
I'm also going to quickly slot in some Word Bearers progress. I have purchased the Limited edition Dark Vengeance, if your store has sold out then you may be in luck of getting your hands on that Interrogator Chaplain if you are willing to come to Oxford, where the GW there still has a few on the shelves (by that I mean at least 7). I've also assembled the models, based them all and sprayed them all black. I've also started painting the Hellbrute, so that I can quickly glance across the room to remind me of what the colour scheme it (in exact terms) without having to walk over, pick up a cultist and study its paint coverage.
But anyway, here's something I haven't done for a while. I have spent a lot of this time on Battlescribe, mucking about and creating a few lists, just experimenting really. So, cutting to the chase, the lists are for Chaos Daemons, Eldar and Tyranids, and I'll go through them in that order explaining them. All of these lists are 1,500pts.
Chaos Daemons:
HQ:
Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch
Elites:
6 Flamers of Tzeentch
Troops:
20 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch
-The Changeling
20 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch
20 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch
And that's it. The idea behind the Daemon list was that I wanted it to be a mono-God build, so, everything in there is Tzeentch, I could have gone with an Epidemius kind of thing but since everyone is doing that I went for something different.
So, I went for a kill point denial idea when going for this build, but am also aware that there is a 1/6 chance of getting kill points in a game, that is why the Horror blocks are there. They are excellent at denying Kill Points, 20 model 4+ invuln models can be a bugger to shift, especially that Changeling unit where there is the possibility that you could shoot yourself. So you can dump them on objectives and just let them hold them, and with Fateweaver backing up the squads that need it the most, they aren't going to die very easily.
Sure you can charge them, but even then you'll have to be close enough to the Horrors to do that, meaning that it is likely that they'll have shot your unit up at some point, but then you're going to have to pile through 60 S4 overwatch shots, still be in range to charge, and then try and get through 20 fearless wounds which all have 4+ invulnerables, and those saves are also likely to be re-rollable.
Additionally, the likelihood is that you'll only need to hold as many objectives as your opponent's holding, due to the roll of the Flamers. They should really be coming in with your first wave, this is so that they can prey on one of your opponent's weaker squads and just destroy them in a single turn of shooting, getting you that First Blood point. Even in the unlikely event that they don't kill the punier unit which you marked for death, they should still eat a large amount of fire before succumbing, and if you try and charge these, then you'll have 6D3 armour save ignoring hits to get through.
So, make of that what you will. Next list.
Eldar:
HQ:
Farseer
-Runes of Warding
-Spirit Stones
-Guide
-Fortune
Jain Zar
Elites:
5 Fire Dragons
-Exarch
-Wave Serpent with Scatter Lasers and Shurikan Cannon
10 Howling Banshees
-Exarch with Executioner
-Wave Serpent with Scatter Lasers and Shurikan Cannon
Troops:
5 Rangers
5 Rangers
5 Rangers
Heavy Support:
3 War Walkers
-2 Shurikan Cannons each.
3 War Walkers
-2 Shurikan Cannons each.
3 War Walkers
-2 Shurikan Cannons each.
I would say that this is by far the weakest of the 3 lists.
I didn't want to take Eldrad, this was for 2 reasons, the first being that I was stretched for points, the main one however was that I really wanted to include a Phoenix Lord in here, being a lover of all things fail in the Eldar Codex (I regularly run various Phoenix Lords and Swooping Hawk squads in my Eldar armies, I have the models, why leave them on the shelf collecting dust when you could be playing with them, it's one of the reasons why I like Apocalypse, as it lets me field my Pheonix Court of Khaine), and I didn't want to take 2 named characters.
So, out of all 6 of the Pheonix Lords why pick Jain Zar? Well, I'll quickly run through the other Pheonix Lords to get to my point.
Baharroth is crap, he is argueably worse for points efficiency than the aspect that he is the leader of (i.e. the Swooping Hawks). To sum him up, he is a Swooping Hawk Exarch (already a bad start) with a Pheonix Lord statline and a 200pt price tag. Next.
Asurmen isn't great either, he is the most expensive of the Pheonix Lords at a whooping 240pts, but he does also come with an invulnerable save, but then he doesn't really put out enough damage to justify his points cost. Bad. On we go.
Karandras is quite fun, he's a monster in combat but with 40k much more of a shooting game now he's going to have to take at least 1 turn of shooting before he can charge anything, and he's expensive.
Fuegan is ok too, if there is a vehicle that you want dead, he will kill it. He will kill it so much that it's soul will cease to exist. He's decent in combat too and does come with Feel No Pain. That said, very expensive, and what you would take him for (smacking vehicles) Fire Dragons will be able to do too, for less points.
So that leaves us with Maugan Ra, and Jain Zar. Maugan Ra is often seen as the best Pheonix Lord to take, and leaves Jain Zar overlooked. He is very good all round, he shoots well, a 4 shot S6 assault, rending and pinning weapon with both fast and crack shot being fired at a BS of 7 is sweet, and also comes with Jain Zar's assault weapon strapped to the end of it. So why take Jain Zar over him?
Well, she is 40pts cheaper than Maugan Ra, and you can put her in a squad of Howling Banshees, Maugan can only go in Dark Reapers, meaning that he isn't going to get much combat action, or in a generic non-aspect squad, which isn't really going to be complementing him full either as they are likely to be either shooting based or combat based, only taking advantage of his combat or his shooting, he might still get to shoot in a combat unit or fight in close combat in a shooty unit if they're charged but you're not taking advantage of his full range of abilities.
Jain Zar is very much all combat, although she does come with a S5 AP2 assault 3 triskele which is nice for breaking down those Terminators, before charging in at S7 and I10.
So basically, she's cool, she hits hard, you don't see her too often, and if you want a Pheonix Lord for under 200pts then there you go.
Right, on with the rest of the list, quickly as this is getting damn lengthy. The War Walkers, I always liked to include a good fire base in 5th edition, simply so that I would have a presence across the board, so I wouldn't have to try and chase things down with my close combat units. This was why my 30 Nob list was so terrible against Dark Eldar, I couldn't catch them, so dropping 10 of them and picking up a load of Lootas seemed a good idea, this is essentially what these are here for. Plus, 54 S6 shots is pretty terrifying. I didn't go for Scatter Lasers for the simple reason of not having enough points left.
Rangers. Very nice for squatting on objectives. On a general principle I like to take a troops choice for every 500pt block. And the Fire Dragons are to take out heavy armour and another Wave Serpent to provide some target saturation to take some pressure away from the Banshees.
To sum this one up though, I wouldn't take it to a large tournament.
Right, I'm tired and I want to go to bed, so let's get this one done.
Tyranids:
HQ:
Tervigon
-Catalyst
-Scything Talons
Tervigon
-Catalyst
-Scything Talons
Elites:
3 Hive Guard
3 Hive Guard
3 Hive Guard
Troops:
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
Tervigon
-Catalyst
-Scything Talons
Tervigon
-Catalyst
-Scything Talons
Tervigon
-Catalyst
-Scything Talons
Probably the most competitive out of these lists really. Initially, it was an experiment to see how many Tervigons I could cram into a 1500pt list, then I started mucking around with a Hive Tyrant and Ymgarl Genestealers to get them bursting out of cover everywhere and eating things, then I remembered that there wasn't any shooting in the list whatsoever, so I drop the Ymgarls and replaced them with Hive Guard, which came out over the points limit, so I dropped the now void Hive Tyrant and had exactly enough points for a 5th Tervigon.
So, the answer to how many Tervigons can you get into a 1500pt list is, as many as the force organisation chart allows. 5.
With this list, on average you should be spawning 52-53 Termagants in the first turn assuming that your opponent hasn't killed any if they went first, although that should decrease as the game goes on as your Tervigons stop spawning.
I'm getting into some proper rambling right now so I'm going to try and mitigate the damage by stopping this post here. Hopefully I should be back to the usual gaps between posts now. As always, have any suggests or anything at all to say relating to this post, including possible improvements to the lists, please feel free to drop comments down in the comments box.
