UK 40k GT Heat 2 - Report: Game 5

Game 5 and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm confident against anything other than my horror match up in FMC Daemons in Kill Points, Hammer and Anvil. This is also exactly why I was pretty certain that my qualification would go down to the final game. As an FMC Daemons army arrives at the table.

UK 40k GT Heat 2 - Report: Game 4

So I come into day 2 only needing to win a game. The first game of the day being Emperor's Will with Vanguard Strike, and I was playing against a Necron player with Tau allies, who had won a 2 day event a couple of weeks back. He was running 3 Annihilation Barges, 2 Night Scythes with minimal Warriors and Crypteks with Haywire Staffs in. He had a Riptide, a Skyray, a tooled up Overlord and a load of Kroot with Snipers.

This isn't a bad match up for me at all. But despite this, I would have been happy with a draw, as it left me with only needing to avoid losing both of my remaining games to qualify. He picked the deployment zone behind an enormous hill, and he made me go first, Night Fighting was in effect.

UK 40k GT Heat 2 - Report: Game 3

So, going into the final game of day 1, and I'm on the top tables, kicking it with 40k powerhouses such as Courtney Rhodes, James French and Rob Waller. Rob beat my friend (who's a much better player than me) that I came down with in the first round, and now I was in his crosshairs.

UK 40k GT Heat 2 - Report: Game 2

Courtesy of the large win in the first game, I was now sitting on table 2, which at this stage in the tournament really doesn't mean too much. That said, my next game was against a Tau player. He was running an Ethereal, he had 2 squads of 10 Kroot, he had 2 squads of Broadsides with all of the Missiles. 2 Riptides with Fusion Blasters on one and one with SMS. He had 2 squads of 6 Pathfinders. Then he had Eldar allies, with 2 squads of Bikes and a Farseer on a Bike. Plus he had an Aegis Defence Line.

The Mission was the Relic with Dawn of War deployment.

UK 40k GT Heat 2 - Report: Game 1

I've been looking forward to the GT Heats for a while, but also felt a little nervous. I really felt that that I should qualify for the finale. I had decided what to take a few weeks ago, but I didn't really want to divulge anything such was my desperation.

My list was:

Champions of Chaos - What's the problem?

Certainly in the gaming groups that I play in, one of the most complained about thing by other Chaos Players is the Champions of Chaos special rule. This is a rule that is given to all characters, and it has 2 effects. Firstly, you must challenge and you must always accept challenges. Secondly, if you beat down an enemy character a combat, you roll on the Chaos Boons table, which can give you many 'rewards'. But why is it so hated?

Surprise Throne of Skulls

Ok the surprise is for me, if it were for readers it would be a pretty terrible surprise especially considering that I'm the one going. One of my club mates bought a Throne of Skulls ticket, and recently discovered that they wouldn't be able to go, and so they have been attempting (with the permission of the organisers) to offload it.

Throne of Skulls is next weekend, and I'm meant to be moving back down to Oxford then, but I just dropped £700 on a new PC and ideally I'd like to take it back with me, so I thought, what the hell, I'll buy the ticket.

Strategy Ramblings - Chaos Marines Vs The Screamer Brick

Well, if this is indeed the restart of regular posting that was a very short hiatus indeed. It occured to me at work that rather than thinking up new ramblings, or shoe-horning myself into a corner making me write posts about certain topics, I should just write about whatever pops into my head whilst I'm working. One of the biggest problems in my game is my strategy. I'm pleased with my tactical play after Invasion where we demolished our way through the tournament with a pretty poor list combination, but when you're getting into the larger tournaments to succeed you need to make that step into strategy, and that's been something that I've been attempting to do.

I've been uming and ahing a lot recently regarding my list choice for tournaments for the rest of the year. Recently I've been thinking about a Wolves Jaws bomb / blob hybrid. Good for Daemons, good for Tau. However how would my Chaos list fare against the flavour of the month? Welcome my friends, to my mind. Here is a picture of some head bookends, giving an accurate description of what goes on inside my head.

Invasion II Game 2 - Tournament Report

In the last post I may have alluded to our list's inability to deal with vehicles, well, when you have 3 AV13 vehicles facing you across the battlefield, you definitely can't deal with vehicles. We were playing against a Chaos Marine and Necron List, comprising of a Black Mace Lord, a 5 man Nurgle squad, a 10 man standard squad, a Vindicator, 10 Immortals with Tesla, 10 Warriors, a Lord and 2 Annihilation Barges. The mission was Crusade with Dawn of War.

Invasion II Game 1 - Tournament Report

Wow I have a lot of posts on the go. None of them are finished but there are a lot half complete. Although the amount of content coming out of here is currently a bit minimal, it should pick up hopefully towards the end of the month.

Anyway, yesterday was the day of the Invasion Doubles tournament for the Oxfordshire and Wiltshire stores, with 6 stores coming up to Warhammer World to compete. All in all 68 teams. As I've been living in Sheffield for the past couple of months I've been unable to acquire a ticket, but I went down to Warhammer World anyway to see everyone. As it happened, Oxford were one player short, and one of their guys was left without a player. Using my special ringer powers, I thus partnered him. Let the tournament commence!

Toy Soldier 40k Tournament Report - Game 5

Game 5 started nicely, as I was drawn against the opponent that my Sheffield friend played in Game 3. He was a Tau player but it wasn't really an optimised Tau list and apparently it was a really enjoyable game. The mission was The Scouring, we placed objectives, rolled for Warlord Traits and Daemonic Gifts, and then something terrible happened. We were both rematched as the players on the table next to us had already played each other. So the nice Tau army with 1 Riptide and 1 Squad of 2 Broadsides was whiscked away and replaced with this.

Lots and lots of Guns

Oh dear.

Toy Soldier 40k Tournament Report - Game 4

As I mentioned in the previous post, losing games bumping me down the tables would not make my games any easier. This was proved by my fourth round opponent, who is the Grey Knight player for the Welsh ETC team this year, and is currently ranked 35 in the country according to RankingsHQ. The mission was Big Guns Never Tire with Hammer and Anvil deployment. 5 objectives.

Toy Soldier 40k Tournament Report - Game 3

Going into this game I had 20pts, so a draw and a close loss. This meant that I was down the tables a little bit, just below the halfway mark of 30pts really. In fact my mate that I lost my first game to then lost 30-0 to a Screamer Council Tzeentch list and was playing on the table next to me.

Toy Soldier 40k Tournament Report - Game 2

Being honest I'd been looking forward to game 2, as I really wanted to try something. The mission here was the Relic with Vanguard Strike deployment. The modification here was, again, no First Blood, but there was also an objective worth a single point in the centre of each table quarter. My opponent was, surprise surprise, a Tau player.

Toy Soldier 40k Tournament Report - Game 1

Now that's the longest hiatus I've had in a while, I can assure you though that I've been storing up my posts to release them in one big burst. I have a good excuse for this however. Much hobbying has been done. There hasn't really been much build up to Toy Soldier here, and there has been a good reason for this, I didn't actually decide what to take until last weekend, when I made the foolish decision to take my Chaos Space Marines.

Word Bearer Progress the First

The word has spread a little since last post, however this will still only be a quick post, as it's not like I have as much to write about. I would have done more, but I spent the day looking at USB missile launchers, and it made me want to motorize my Manticore, I didn't do it of course, I'm a terrible electrician, but it's a cool idea.

So, what have I actually done.

Bearers of the Word

I realise that I've been on a hiatus for the first time in a while, and the hiatus has been a while. However, I accept that, I have really needed it, there's been a lot going on with my course-work and exams and such, plus moving back up to Sheffield before going to work tomorrow. Plus a constant stream of back to back codecies that I've felt obligated to analyse since October.

However, I am really looking forward to the Eldar Codex, they were my first army and have been waiting for this for a long time, but don't want to miss out because I'm still doing Daemons, an army which I also play but not to the extent of the Eldar. So, what I'm planning on doing is taking a bit of a break from the Codex analysing until the Eldar come out, I may do the occasional one but for the most part it will be pictures of projects that I'm embarked on from day to day, battle reports, unit roles, etc. So, in a similar spirit, here is how my Word Bearers are developing.

On an additional note. Trickles of information are coming through from May 2013 Throne of Skulls. Surprisingly it appears that the best Dark Angels general took it, with a Ravenwing list no less. Heldrakes appear to be creeping back to their caves to slumber and feed as few armies take more than 1. Additionally, congratulations to Franco (check out www.40kglobal.com) for winning Best Tau player with a record of 5 wins 0 losses. Well done mate. But anyway, the meat of the post.

Preperation

With not much happening in terms of new rules this month, and with all of the happenings in my own life, I recognise that maybe this month hasn't been the most productive of all time in terms of how much content I've been able to churn out. That said, I'm going to try and squeeze some blood from the stone here and get something out at least.

I have a couple of small things to talk about today, as I say nothing too in depth but if you start to get board just skip the paragraph that you're on and go to the next one.

First things first, a few months back I did a semi-spontaneous series which was generally called Throne of Skulls Prep, although it did tend to lose the 'prep' title after a while, and today's post's title is a kind of kickback to that. The reason being, in January I am going back to Throne of Skulls. Last time I went, I did so to learn my new army, get some experience with it and see what ToS was like. Now that I've done that, the plan is to go back and hopefully do a little bit better, so anything more than 1 win and 1 draw will suit me down to the ground, just to see how much 6 months extra practice with an army helps you, obviously it matters to have experience with an army but how much will it matter here.

Speaking of practice, I am getting a lot more games in now, I've played 4 games in the last 10 days or so and all of them have been against top people. One of which was against a top tournament player too, although I'm not going to namedrop. So, I'm going to try and compete this time around.

The list that I currently plan on taking, which involves me picking up a couple more models, can be seen below. It might change a little depending on whether I manage to aquire certain models but this is a good template which I probably won't deviate too far from.

HQ:

Rune Priest:

-Chooser of the Slain

-Tempest's Wrath

-Living Lightning

Rune Priest:

-Jaws of the World Wolf

-Living Lightning

Elites:

3 Wolf Guard:

-Terminator Armour

-Power Weapon

-Storm Bolter

Troops:

8 Grey Hunters:

-Meltagun

-Wolf Standard

7 Grey Hunters:

-Meltagun

-Wolf Standard

7 Grey Hunters:

-Meltagun

-Wolf Standard

Heavy Support:

5 Long Fangs:

-4 Missile Launchers

5 Long Fangs:

-4 Missile Launcher

5 Long Fangs:

-2 Missile Launchers

-2 Lascannons

Allied Contingent:

HQ:

Primaris Psyker:

Troops:

Veteran Squad:

-Grenade Launcher

-Mortar

Fast Attack:

Vendetta:

Heavy Support:

Manticore:

-Heavy Flamer

And there we have it. Yes, it's beardy, and yes, I'm a bit of a douche for using it, but I like to be able to take a list everywhere, and keep it relatively similar once I've found something that I like, so if I decide to start going to other more competitive tournaments, this list is still something that will be able to compete.

On a side note, if anyone else is considering going to Throne of Skulls this January just drop a comment below and I'll see you there. 

Right, now onto the next order of business, fun with fluff. With the Chaos Codex fast approaching I've decided to get some painting done, so as not to look like a bandwagon jumper when it hits. Bearing in mind that this is a fluffy army, and I don't care if I'm using a unit that is quite frankly, terrible (not unlike my Eldar army), I got back into painting my Hellbrute, and considering that this isn't an army which is first and formost for gaming, I wanted to do a good job of it, that is why a) I haven't finished, and b) I haven't put a post up in a while, as I was waiting to finish the thing so that I could show it done, but I really needed to post some content so here is what I've done so far. 

And there we have it, after finishing the Hellbrute I plan on moving onto one of the 2 squads of Cultists. I'm going to try and do this with a different method though, with the other 2 fully painted armies that I have (Orks and Space Wolves) I was motivated to paint them as quickly as I could to get them ready for an event, and thus used the production line method, as well as rushing them resulting in them not looking as good as they could have. This time, I'm going to be painting each model individually, so we'll see how that turns out. That's me done for today though. Back again soon. Hopefully.

Spread the Word

I know that I usually post a bit more frequently, but for the next week or so I'm probably going to be able to get 1 post a week down at best. This is because in about a weeks time I will be moving from Sheffield down to Oxford to study, and so am trying to get everything ready for that. This means that I either don't have the time to get any hobby in, or if I do, I don't have much time to write about them.

But onto the subject at hand. Tournament season is pretty much over for me now, if it wasn't for the 2-3 week long freshers 'week' that I have to attend at my University I might have been able to attend the Maelstrom team tournament (depending on whether we would have managed to pick up enough players to form a 5th Overlords team) but unfortunately it is that long, so I'm not going to be there. Best of luck to all of the Overlords / Overlords forumites that are attending though. Back on topic now, so, I'm probably not going to get many tournaments in between now and June, there might be the occasional club tournament that I attend but it looks like I'm going to struggle.

I think that this is actually a blessing in disguise though. As much as I enjoy competitive gameplay I feel that I've been neglecting a whole other side of the hobby. The last 4 months has been about, writing a tournament list, quickly painting everything up and then slapping it all down on the table. I haven't really engaged the rest of the hobby. So, during my time at University, I am going to be consentrating on delving into the back story of 40k, as well as enjoying more of the creative side of the hobby too. So, this means starting a new army (again).

So, what to pick. I thought that this one was quite easy for me. I wanted something that could contrast with my Space Wolves, as I plan on bringing them along with this new army to University. I wanted something with character, I wanted something with fantastic models and I wanted something with options.

This lead me down to an army that I have been looking at for a while in Chaos Space Marines. I have always enjoyed playing against Chaos, but I have found their Codex rather mundane in that there are really only a couple of ways in which you can use them, and their model range isn't the best, but I think that the last couple of months have changed my opinion of them in order to motivate me to get a small army. The first of which is the Dark Vengeance starter set. When I first saw it I thought that the models looked fantastic, and although I like the Dark Angels side, the Chaos side is superb. It's a relatively cost effective way to start a new Chaos army, and I am planning on selling the Dark Angels.

The second was 6th edition. I already have a Daemon army, and the ability to ally them with the Chaos Marines instead of having to take Lesser Daemons is a nice touch. Meaning that I can get playing with my Chaos right away, using the models that I have got from Dark Vengeance as an allied detachment (well, I could if the units had points costs in their entries).

The final straw was the ongoing rumour of the new Chaos Codex. I have been looking forward to this for a long time, even before I had plans to start Chaos, but I am hoping that with the new Codex will come with it a variety of new ways to build an army and a host of new models.

So, let's go deeper. Exactly what kind of a Chaos army am I going to play. First of all, I wanted something red. The reason for this is so I could contrast it with my Space Wolves, not only because I can show that 'this one is the evil army and this is the good army', but it also contrasts them in the ways in which you can enjoy 40k. Additionally, I didn't want to make a homemade force, I wanted to use one of the original legions so that people could see the army and instantly recognise it for what it was. That said, I wanted to use a legion that isn't very common, as I like inauthenticity. I also decided to go for a legion that was unidivided, allowing me to use forces from each of the different Chaos Gods without any issues, and was also known for using Cultists and summoning Daemons.

Word Bearers it is then.

Whilst this project is going on, I'll be posting news of its progress along with pictures of finished miniatures just to show how it's getting along. It should also work quite nicely in breaking up all of the unit analysises that I like to do. That said, I think that this post has gone on quite long enough.