Battle Report: Bloody Wolves vs. Tyranids - 5,000pt Game at Warhammer World

The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain

Well it's been a while at least! There's a reason I haven't been blogging about 40K recently is because I simply haven't been playing it! Part of that is a result of having a second child but the major factor is the number of excellent board games I now play instead. I'll have to post a top 10 or something similar soon so you can see what I've been playing.

Meanwhile we kept our annual(ish) tradition of Matt, Jamie, Dan and I meeting up at Warhammer World for a big game. This time round it was Matt and I versus Dan and Jamie and we decided to have a 5,000pt game. Space Wolves and Blood Angels (Bloody Wolves for those of you who remember our Doubles efforts) would take on Tyranids in a modified version of Relic. There'd be a central objective as usual but there'd also be five teams three of guardsmen to represent the PDF running from the Tyranids. The Adeptus Astartes had come to liberate the planet from the Tyranids but the PDF had vital intelligence crucial to their efforts. The guardsmen would advance every turn back towards the Imperial lines and could only be killed in combat. Each surviving unit was worth points to us and any unit wiped out was worth bonus points to the Tyranids. We aren't a fan of all the complicated stratagems so decided to stick to the rulebook ones but without the restriction of one per phase.

Battle took place on the excellent J'migan Bridge board which we played lengthways to give us more close quarters fighting. The forces deployed on either side of the dry river bed and the Imperials would be taking the first turn. We somewhat foolishly decided just to pile headlong towards the Tyranids with the bulk of the Space Wolves force. The Knights and BA predators hung back to give artillery support. The early volleys managed to take down the tervigon, a venomthrope and a handful of gaunts. I was also able to rack up some wounds on the tyrannofex and the harpy. On the other side the Blood Angels weren't faring so well, the tactical squad that drop-podded in barely managing to kill any genestealers.

Speaking of 'stealers, Jamie used his large horde of them to tear open the grey hunters' rhino. Fortunate for me that he did since otherwise there'd have been no escape for them. As it was I managed to just squeeze them into a gap to allow them to disembark. Meanwhile the tyrannofex sprayed acid at the already damaged stormwolf and brought it crashing down. Fortunately the Wulfen survived (with help from some re-rolls) and we spent some command points to allow them to attack and kill the harpy before it could swing. Elsewhere the genestealers made short work of the drop pod tactical squad.

It didn't go well for them after that though as the combined fire on the left flank was able to wipe them out, followed by the screamer-killers, taking out the major threat on that side of the battle. The Wulfen charged headlong into the termagants to stop them firing off their weapons, killing them in great swathes. Njal and his terminator brethren piled out of the land raider to go to work on the other gaunts, broodlord and carnifexes. The fire from the knights made short work of the tyrannofex and remaining venomthropes. The most dramatic events were taking place on the bridge itself though. The death company dread managed to take out old one eye only to be killed by the broodlord and Swarmlord, the resulting explosion damaging both in return. This left the blood claws (who'd recenlty left their razorback) and the knight warden to deal with the wounded tyranid monsters. Dante and his assault squad arrived behind the tyranid lines but Dante failed his charge. Astorath and his tactical squad did even worse and both failed to make it into combat.

At this point we were feeling pretty good but there was an ominous pile of Tyranid models that had yet to be deployed. Two trygon primes, a hive tyrant,  some raveners, deathleaper and three lictors all now entered the fray. With the genestealers tackling one of the armiger helverins too it looked like we'd soon be surrounded. Unfortunately for Jamie and Dan, most of their reserves failed to make it into combat. This also resulted in them taking some unnecessary wounds to overwatch. This was probably the tipping point of the battle. The Imperial firepower was able to clear out the trygons and lictors keeping the predators and remaining helverin safe. The blood claws dispatched the genestealers on the bridge and the warden made short worth of the swarmlord and broodlord after some poor luck on the invulnerable saves.

Meanwhile the wulfen continued to cut swathes through the hordes of nids before them, downing a warrior brood before smashing into the zoanthropes. The terminators struggled against the carnifexes but not before Njal had managed to down the broodlord with Smite. The assault squads finally started to do their job cleaning up some other warriors and more gaunts. Dante wasn't so lucky though as the hive tyrant made him look silly. In fact, the way Jamie was rolling his invulnerable save probably extended the game for a good hour! He eventually succumbed to the warden though and by this point it was essentially game over. The remaining firepower mopped up the last of the genestealers and carnifexes. Deathleaper had one final stand against the terminators though, killing Njal but falling to the pack leader's hammer. With time running out, we decided to wrap it up there. It was a clear victory for the Imperium.

 

Conclusions
I have to say I enjoyed that more than I thought I would. There's nothing quite like 40K for creating those epic scenes of two mighty armies clashing. It helps a lot when you're playing on beautiful scenery with painted armies obviously. There are some awesome looking photos from the game. The scale is always fantastic and it still creates those moments when a unit achieves something you wouldn't expect it to. I'll happily play the odd game now and then.

However, it hasn't reignited my passion for the game. We weren't rushing but it still took us six hours or so to get through the game. Yeah, we could've played a couple of games with smaller armies but the big draw was the scale of it and being able to play doubles. I had really high hopes for 8th edition. When we went to Coventry for Warhammer Fest, just before the launch of 8th, I remember listening to the speakers and thinking, "they finally get it". Fast forward to now and I think the game has a lot of the same problems creeping back in. When the indexes first came out we had a very streamlined game, albeit with a lack of flavour. We're now back to a similar level of silliness with stratagems, faction abilities, etc. In 5th and even 6th edition, I could show up to a tournament, look at my opponent's army and know exactly what to expect. That just isn't the case now. Only someone who lived and breathed the game (and played several times a week), could hope to remember all the combos of armies, stratagems, etc. That takes away a lot of the strategy and puts too much emphasis on list building over generalship.

I was glad, therefore, that we didn't use any of the faction stratagems. Even so, all the re-rolls and modifiers still make things complicated. This is a problem GW created by sticking with a D6 system. I'd hoped we might see a return of D4, 8, 12, 20, etc. That would give more options for differentiation between units and weapons without having to add re-rolls. There's also some of the same nonsense that has always plagued 40K. Why would a unit of marines sit in their rhino, surrounded by genestealers and just let them tear the vehicle apart killing them in the process. They'd throw open hatches and fire off their bolters or slam the ramp open, squashing a couple of aliens and come out guns blazing. It's moments like that which ruin the flow of the game and detract from the willing suspension of disbelief. It's like the moment in a film where the hero makes a miraculous recovery or similar, jarring against the immersion of an otherwise entertaining movie.

There are a lot of positives to be taken from the current "new GW" though. They're engaging the community in fantastic style, something I never thought I'd see from them. Not only that but they're taking ownership of the competitive scene and tinkering with rules to try to keep certain builds from dominating.

All that being said, it just isn't a good enough game to take my attention away from the huge array of excellent board games that are frankly much more enjoyable. Like I say, I'll try to post up some reviews, top 10s, etc. In the meantime, I've put quite a chunk of 40K stuff up on eBay to cut down my collection significantly. I've amassed quite a pile of Tyranids too as I'd intended them to be my new army for 8th. I still enjoy the hobby side of things so they might get painted up. Facing them in this game has definitely made me want a fully painted horde. Just a shame they won't see battle much.

Tournament Report - Doubles at Warhammer World - Ynnari

It's been a long time since we've managed to attend a doubles event at Warhammer World. In fact, looking back through the blog posts it was July 2014!! That sounds far too long ago but thinking about it, it's probably true. With the refurb of WHW there were no events for a while and then all the subsequent doubles fell on weekends that weren't suitable for us. The doubles events were the ones that really got Matt and I hooked on tournament play so we've been to quite a few now. The game is just better with four people I think. Having someone to discuss tactics with and watching your opponents do the same is really interesting. **SHAMELESS PLUG WARNING** If you'd like to try out doubles gaming for yourself, why not buy a ticket for Double Trouble 2 on June 10th. Details can be found by clicking on the DT2 logo on the right!

Anyway, this time around we toyed with various different lists. We needed two 900pt armies to make a combined 1,800pt force. I think that's the highest points limit we've ever had. We toyed with various horrendous combinations of Imperial Knights, wraithknights, dreadknights, Ta'unar, etc but decided to give the recently released Ynnari a spin. We only managed to a get a couple of test games in but it's a good job we did as using the Soulburst effectively is key to success with them. The list we settled on was:

899pts of Ynnari
Maugan Ra
2x 5 Kabalites Warriors in a Venom
Venom (for Maugan Ra)
3 Reavers
6 Swooping Hawks (incl. Exarch)
Yncarne

899pts of Ynnari
Farseer Skyrunner (Spirit Stone of Anath'lan)
5 Kabalites Warriors in a Venom
3 Windriders
3 Reavers (incl. cluster caltrops)
2x 5 Scourges (4 Haywire in each)
Wraithknight (wraithcannons, scatter laser)

Nothing too filthy I don't think. Obviously Ynnari are powerful but there's no scatter windriders, no wraithguard in raiders, etc. A fairly mixed list that should be fun to play with and against we hoped. I'll try to keep the battle reports brief for a change. Here goes!

Game One - Ynnari vs. CSM/Daemons
Our first game was Cloak and Shadows against Fateweaver, some heralds with screamers (2++ re-rollable saves), some blue horrors, some CSM, a terminator sorcerer, firestorm redoubt with lascannons and a land raider.

Fateweaver headed straight down the middle of the board and was frankly pretty lucky to survive two turns of shooting from pretty much all of the Dark Eldar. He passed a ton of 3+ saves and all his grounding tests to cling on with a single wound remaining to fly off the board to return in turn 4. Elsewhere their Wraithknight used a Soulburst to kill the land raider in their first turn with a D shot when some nearby Reavers perished. The land raider turned into the Yncarne and between them they slowly worked his way through everything else in the army whilst the Dark Eldar were mostly out of range thanks to the deployment.

Ultimately, the Yncarne ended up in combat with the 2++ re-rollable screamers for the rest of the game whilst we tried to rack up the VPs. It wasn't until later that we realised we'd brought the Swooping Hawks in on T2 only to forget about them for the rest of the game. They could've been attacking Fateweaver and claiming objectives but they were lost in their dead pile which they kept to the edge of the table. The game ended in a narrow victory of 14-12 helped in no small part by me rolling 3 for all three of the D3 point objectives we scored!

Unfortunately, one of our two opponents was pretty miserable throughout the game because he took an instant dislike to us for running Ynnari. It's a shame as this was our closest game so could've been a lot more fun.

Game Two - Ynnari vs. DA/Tyranids
Not your most likely of combinations and something you'd be more likely to find at Double Trouble with its random pairings (hint hint). Anyway, basically it was 60 hormagaunts, 30 termagants, three zoanthropes and an exocrine. The DA portion wasw two rhinos with tactical squads, two predators, DW knights in a pod and Ezekiel. The mission was Spoils of War. They won the roll-off but we Seized!

The Venoms lay waste to the Tyranids early on with the Exocrine and two of the Zoanthropes gone in the first turn. The Wraighknight struggled to kill the predators and the Scourges didn't give much help leaving both on a single hull point. That spelled doom for the Wraightknight who ended up dying to overwatch having lost all but one wound in their shooting phase. Meanwhile, the Yncarne got tied up fighting some Hormagaunts until the other Zoanthrope died to remove their Fearless. The DE continued to chew through the Tyranids and the Yncarne eventually turned her attention to the DA with the Scourges helping by finishing off the predators. Other than killing the Wraithknight the only highlight for our opponents came from the Deathwing Knights who soaked up a lot of fire and killed Maugan Ra in combat before eventually being whittled down to end the game.

By the time the dust settled we'd managed to find 21 VPs from the objectives and our opponents hadn't scored at all. A pretty one-sided affair throughout and I felt for the Tyranid player who was a spectator from quite an early stage.

Game Three - Ynnari vs. Cult Mech./Wolves
The last game of Saturday would be Tactical Escalation. Our opponents had two units of four breachers, a unit of four destroyers and a dominus. The wolves had WG in a drop pod, WG terminators, a lord on thunderwolf and a squad of TWC. They won the roll off but, to our surprise, gave us the first turn.

The venoms and concentrated on the destroyers early on to try to protect the wraithknight. The dominus went down and in came the Yncarne who somehow find herself in a charge from the TWC as we'd not thought about them when we brought her in (despite carefully placing everything else in our list out of charge range during turn one). The rest of our army was able to focus on everything else though including the drop pod of WG and terminators who arrived on successive turns. The breachers were eventually whittled down by the rest of the firepower and the wraithknight waded into the combat hoping to save the Yncarne and end the game. We'd also thrown in some sacrificial Reavers to die to try to get some wounds back for her.

The squad leader for the TWC had other ideas though. The wolf lord had long since died to the Yncarne but he decided to avenge his brother by smashing down the Yncarne. He also put some wounds on the Wraithknight who'd stomped the rest of the squad away. That put the Wraithknight on initiative 1 thanks to Concussive (which I don't think I've ever actually managed to use!) meaning they'd strike simultaneously. In an epic end to an otherwise pretty one-sided game, the heroic Space Wolf took out the Wraithknight but died in the process. He'll certainly make it into the sagas!!

Whilst all that was going on we managed to take a 17-3 win on VPs to give us a healthy 52-15 scoreline for the day.

Game Four - Ynnari vs. Astra Militarum
We knew our list would struggle with heavily mechanised lists and that's exactly what we found ourselves against on Sunday morning for the Deadlock mission. Five Taurox, two Wyverns, a Vanquisher, some rough riders, two lots of armoured sentinels and two Vendettas. Our opponents won the roll off for first turn (I don't think we won one all day!).

Their first turn was unbelievable, pretty much everything they tried to do worked. Three of the venoms went down, two of which to single autocannons on the Taurox which hit, pen'd and rolled 6s to explode after I failed the cover saves! That did give the Wraithknight a free shooting phase but he missed with one gun and the other pinged off the trees hiding the Wyvern. That would be the story of the game. We'd really need the D shots to be hot but Matt fired 11 shots (i.e. 6 lots of shooting) before we managed to kill the Wyverns who'd been the targets every time! That's just insanely unlikely to happen! The Wyverns took full advantage and their barrages lay waste to big chunks of our army. We did at least manage to take out a Taurox to bring in the Yncarne....

Well, that didn't go great either. They drew the Kingslayer card so unloaded a pile of guardsmen to fire at her. Matt failed an ungodly number of 3+ saves and she perished without moving an inch! Granted we'd missed an opportunity to get her into combat with a Soulburst but still, gutted. Eventually the Wraithknight started to wade through their army in combat but by that point their VP total was well out of reach.

I don't think we've ever had a game where our luck was quite so abysmal. Our opponents must've felt invincible because pretty much everything they tried to do worked out. Part of the problem was that a big chunk of our army (i.e. the Venoms) was either dead early on or impotent because there were no non-vehicles on the table for most of the game. We were perhaps foolish to bring the Yncarne in on our turn but it felt like the right place and time. It basically came down to all those failed D shots. If even a couple of the early ones had worked it would've changed the face of the game. The final result was a 10-18 loss.

Game Five - Ynnari vs. Orks/Unbound
We were grateful not to have to play another Vanguard Strike game and instead we got Contact Lost. The opposing army consisted of grot tanks, killa kans, a Shadowsword, leman russ, Chaos Terminators, grots and a mek gun.

Another mismatch that proves that random pairings often don't make for fun games for everyone. The opposing army was certainly nice to look at though and eventually scooped three of the painting awards (I was a little suspicious about the number of people from their gaming group who might've voted for them though). They went first and killed off one of the Venoms with the Shadowsword. It proved costly though as the Wraithknight found his form again and stripped 8 hull points from him in response before finishing the job in our turn and charging the Leman Russ to kill that too. It was then The Scourges chewed through the killa kans and with help from Maugan Ra the Grot Megatank went down to give the Yncarne her entrance.

Nothing particularly dramatic happened in the game from this point on. We slowly chewed through their army and, despite losing some Scourges for a lone Killa Kan charge, they had a pretty miserable time of it. We managed to pick up a 13-4 win and probably could've dragged it out for more if the Scourges had stayed in combat with the kan rather than running off the board! It was a shame to end the day with such a one-sided affair that I don't think either of us really enjoyed.

Conclusion
You might be thinking that 4:1 win/loss ratio would place us pretty high in the standings but, since we didn't pick up a single favourite game vote, it was only good enough for 67th out of 89 teams! Had it been scored purely on VPs we'd have been 16th mind you. We knew going in that they were scoring it on fave games though so we weren't too worried. Incidentally, our vote went to our third game for the epic antics of that TWC squad leader. They were also really nice guys who we'd have loved to play again some time. Shame they're from Kent so that's perhaps unlikely!

Looking around there didn't seem to be that many insanely broken lists. It seemed from talking to people like there was a lot of Ynnari but probably the daftest thing we saw was this:

The main thing was that the event delivered on what we hoped. It was a great atmosphere (if a little warm) and we had a great time in most of our games. They stopped proceedings to play the 8th edition announcement video which didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know. It'll be interesting to see how tournament play changes though. I'm cautiously optimistic about it but I hope I'll be able to get a post up with some of my wishlisting for the new version of the game.

I think our list delivered on being fun to play, if perhaps not to play against. It's interesting to try to figure out the best way to get the most from Soulburst. Clearly a nonsense though really. The sort of thing I hope gets fixed with the new rules.

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari?) for the Doubles - Part 4 - Finished (sort of)

Just packed up my army for the doubles at Warhammer World this weekend. I should probably be getting some sleep in preparation for a long day's gaming tomorrow but I wanted to show you how I've got on with my Dark Eldar painting project for the event. I'd got the following in various states of painted that I hoped to have ready in time:

• Archon
• 15 Kabalite Warriors
• 4 Venoms
• 10 Scourges
• 7 Reavers

Well, after a bit of a test session on Wednesday (which I had hoped to blog about before now), we decided to ditch the Archon and one of the Reavers (along with his cluster caltrops) in order to squeeze Maugan Ra in as my HQ choice. I wasn't too bothered by this as my Archon was the only thing I'd managed to get "finished" for Double Trouble. I'd have been annoyed if I'd put hours into him in this project only to write him out of the list. I can cope with one Reaver not being involved! 

Anyway, apologies for the crappy pictures but it's late and I couldn't be bothered to set things up properly. Maybe I'll get round to some better pictures at some point. Here's a summary of what I've been doing since the last post. 

I've rolled out the orange and red wings to the rest of the Scourges. Painting the black bits back in on the orange took far more time than it should've last night but I'm happy with how the wings have turned out. It did mean that I didn't get time to do the vials/pipes properly or paint their armour properly but hopefully the bright wings will distract people from that! I never got round to getting the airbrush out for them so opted for a bit of a Jokaero Orange basecoat then 3 thin coats of Troll Slayer. Probably would've been quicker with the airbrush but that would've meant painting in the garage rather than on my knee in the lounge and "spending time" with my missus.

I updated the paint job on my fourth venom (it had previously been painted with Liche Purple which didn't match the rest). Once they were all done I added a couple of transfers to the flags and glued in the gunners. Out of interest, did anyone else find the gunners were leaning back quite a way or is this just because I've used the ones from the Raider sets instead of the wyches? I ended up filing their feet down so they stood up straighter.

I've tidied up all of the Kabalites with purple shoulders and knees to match the gunners and Reavers. I unfortunately haven't had time to do ANY of the line highlighting on them, the Scourges or most of the Reavers. It's a shame but hopefully I'll find the motivation to come back to it later.

Well I'll be taking plenty more shots of them at the tournament tomorrow so hopefully you'll get a better look at their paintjobs then. For now it's midnight and I should really turn in. I'll try to get battle reports for the tournament up early next week. I should have more time for blogging over the next few weeks as I won't be frantically painting. I do want to get the Blood Bowl teams ready for the next session mind you...

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari) for the Doubles - Part 2

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I've not actually made any progress on these guys. Well, it doesn't really feel like I'm much further along. It's frustrating me how long these are taking which is counter-productive because I'm then struggling to motivate myself to make progress. I'm only putting in an hour or so each evening at the moment and clearly that isn't going to be enough to get that to-do list down to size.

Don't get me wrong. I'm pleased with the work I've done so far on these things. Well, to a point anyway, I still find painting difficult because I'm just not very good at it. I just don't seem to get the same results as other people do and they're doing it in half of the time. I'm not saying I should just be able to pick up a brush and win a Golden Demon but I don't even feel like I get the paint the right consistency or something. It's funny that I'm back to painting an army for a tournament again when I specifically said I was just going to paint whatever I fancied!

Anyway, I think the Reavers look good enough so let's have a quick look at what I actually have done:

After a discussion with friends I decided to repaint the seats in grey (Mechanicum Standard to be precise). Jamie made a good point that they look like leather but stand out too much, detracting from the rest of the model. Anyway, I decided to paint the armour on the riders in purple to match the carapace sections. Their suits underneath are still black though so I think that works well. I've also picked out the skin on those with bare arms and I'm reasonably happy with the result. There were two of the seven that hadn't got the controls painted in on the bikes too so they're now done. I've also painted all the little dots on the cluster caltrops not that anyone will ever notice!

Last but not least, the eagle-eyed amongst you might've noticed I've changed the faceplates to black in the end. I'm waiting for some paints to come into my FLGS but once they do the helmets will be gold I think which will help to tie them into the Scourges who have gold faceplates. I'll try and mute it down a bit with washes so it isn't bright shiny gold but I think it'll just add a little something. I'd considered purple or silver/steel for the helmets but I want to see how gold works out. Once that's done the facemasks will get a couple of coats of 'ardcoat to give a high shine. I'd like to maybe drybrush a bit of the cyan up the middle of their facemasks to give the impression that the blue is reflecting in them. Probably won't work out like I see it in my head though.

Whilst I wait for my order of paints to come in, I'll probably move onto the Venoms. I'm sure progress will be quicker with them since well, vehicles always go quicker. There's a couple of decisions to make there too though. For example, do I keep the flag/trophy poles or remove them. I've seen both and can't make my mind up. Removing them means less painting at least!!

Battle Report - Astra Militarum & Blood Angels vs. Orks (1,750pts) - Warhammer World

Well, I fully intended this battle report to have been up last night but that also involved me writing it on Wednesday night which just didn't happen. Anyway, here it is, better late than never.

In order to celebrate GW's 40th anniversary we decided to have a relaxed game of 40K during our visit last Sunday. We went for a clash between the combined might of Matt's AM and Scott's BA against my Ork horde. We were sharing our army lists in advance so that we could try to make it a reasonably close game rather than a white wash. This is something I've talked about before but I really think it makes for much better games. We don't get many opportunities to play these days so having a totally one-sided affair just feels like a waste. Anyway, Matt and Scott would have 875 pts each to fend off my full 1,750 pt mob of Orks.

Matt's guard force consisted of an infantry platoon including mortars and the obligatory PCS and infantry squads. To that he added some stormtroopers, ratlings and an aegis line with quad gun (since he knew I'd be bringing a couple of flyers. The mission we devised would see a beleaguered Imperial world under assault from the greenskins. The PDF had requested aid from the Blood Angels and would need to hold a key bunker long enough for their power armour clad allies to rescue them (or else avenge their deaths). The Blood Angels in question consisted of two 5-man tactical squads in pods, a furioso dread in a pod, some jump pack death company with a chaplain and a squad of terminators.

Facing them was the Ork horde consisting a warboss in mega armour leading a mob of 20 boyz on foot, a weirdboy leading a second score of boyz, a big mek sporting an SAG joined by lootas and 3 mobs of boyz in trukks each with a klaw-wielding nob. They'd be joined by a squadron of three deffkoptas, a dakkajet, blitzabommer and finally a morkanaut with KFF containing 3 meks and 3 burnas (that was the closest they'd let me come to a Stompa!).

We didn't get much choice over the table so it probably had a bit more scenery than we'd like but it certainly made the game more immersive to playing on a full table of terrain (yeah, yeah I need to get mine done!). We'd planned on a central bastion or similar for the PDF to defend but in the end we chose a Firestorm Redoubt. The board featured multiple gun emplacements but we reasoned that a squig had chewed through a crucial power cable so they'd be inactive (had we put more thought into it we could've had some system where Matt and Scott could roll to see if any came back on line but nevermind).

The PDF deployed surrounding the redoubt with the PCS inside the structure. The greenskin horde could then deploy anywwhere that was 24" or more away from an AM unit. All reserves would be guaranteed to arrive on turn 2 (i.e. all the BA but also the Ork flyers). The Ork objective would be to control the structure at the end of the game (which we gave AV12 in case it came to that).  You can see the deployment in the picture on the right.

There was no grand strategy on my part. I like to keep Orks as Orks and just charge headlong into combat without much thought of the consequences. The mek was a little more kunning than brutal though and kept his lootas at range to pound the "stoopid oomies" from range.

Turn 1

As the early morning mist cleared the PDF finally saw what they'd heard coming in the night. The guardsmen took aim and launched an opening salvo at the xenos scum but still bleary-eyed from a troubled night's sleep they could only damage one of the trukks and bring down a couple of the onrushing boyz.

Knowing they wouldn't be able to sink their teeth into their human enemies yet the Orks simply charged at them as fast as possible. The morkanaut pilot didn't seem to get the message though and chose to fire his weapons rather than keep pace with the rest of the boyz. That proved to be pretty ineffective too as just a handful of the humans fell. The weirdboy was able to summon the power of the warp but his 'eadbanger missed it's mark and failed to bring down the guardsman carrying a flamer in the nearby squad and he wasn't able to wield enough warp energy for da krunch.

Turn 2

The Blood Angels came tearing down through the clouds in their drop pods to aid their besieged allies. Two pods slammed down bringing a tactical squad and the dreadnought in close to the weirdboy's mob. The marines and dread both opened up with a torrent of promethium which reduced the mob into little more than a gang. The guardsmen managed to destroy stop all of the trukks.

Meanwhile, the terminators teleported in but in the rush to save the crucial building they missed their target and would need to cover ground to get to grips with their foe. The death company and chaplain came in behind the lines in order to counter-charge once the first wave of guardsmen had been slain in the inevitable onslaught. Finally the last drop pod brought the tactical marines down in front of lootas and allowed them to cut half the mob down with bolter fire.

The onslaught came on quickly with the warboss declaring a Waaagh! This would not only help the boyz get into combat but also give the flyers a boost to their firepower. Speaking of which, the bommer came in low over the squad shooting the lootas but missed the mark with its bomb meaning only a single marine died. That would be all it did too as the quad gun made short work of it after the over-confident Ork pilot made no attempt to avoid the incoming fire.

The dakkajet also hit the squad with all of its supashootas but left a couple of marines after most of its shots failed to penetrate the marines' power armour. Meanwhile, the mobs clambered out of the wreckage of their trukks and charged into the guardsmen killing the squads on the front line. The Morkanaut advanced dispensing its cargo of burnas who incinerated a full unit of humans.

The weirdboy also frazzled three of the tactical squad with a bolt of psychic energy before he and the remains of his mob charged in to finish off the remaining two. Rather than target the closest threat the mek directed his lootas to hit the guardsmen again and was at least able to damage the quad gun before the morkanaut could finish it off along with some of the men manning it.

Turn 3 onward

The dreadnought slammed into the warboss' mob but in its zeal for combat it neglected to fire its flamer again which proved to be costly. It couldn't cut down the boyz quick enough to stop the warboss from tearing it apart with his power klaws over the next two combat phases.

The death company executed their counter charge plan to perfection, cutting a full mob of Orks down before they knew what hit them. The fire from the remaining guardsmen was enough to cut a second mob down to size and cause a third to flee. The death company then turned their attention to the deffkoptas and cut them down too. The warboss' mob returned the favour though and crushed the death company and its chaplain, thanks mostly to the warboss himself and his klaws.

A combination of the retreating mob regrouping at the right moment and fire from the lootas meant the remaining tactical squad was dealt with but not before the mek was killed. The morkanaut gunned down the remaining stormtroopers after the terminators had killed what remained of the weirdboy and his mob. The final mob from the trukks was able to kill off the ratlings and help deal with the mortars too. This left the morkanaut and warboss stood outside the structure containing the PCS (one of which had been killed by an earlier glancing hit from the deffkoptas.

With empty drop pods the only remnants of the BA force, the Orks simply needed to enter the base and kill off the occupants but in typical Orky fashion (and because I thought it was a better way to end the game), they chose to smash the structure apart with their S10 fists. I think we'll call than an Ork victory! WAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!

Conclusion
Once again, our system of planning our armies together meant that we ended up with a very close game which we all really enjoyed playing. I think my battle report has made it seem a lot more one-sided than it actually was. There was a point when the AM had taken out all of the trukks and the BA had incinerated a good chunk of my Orks and I thought I wouldn't actually get into combat. Having not played Orks in a while though I'd somewhat forgot how their relentless assault works. You lose a big pile of boyz early on but what's left smashes through the opposition. It's kind of the opposite of how Tau work, you feel like you're cutting your open down in great swathes but as soon as the combats start you wish you'd killed more sooner!

I'd planned the list with the intention of keeping plenty of the Orky flavour of randomness that I love about the army. Sadly, I never rolled a double on the SAG, got decent powers with the weirdboy but barely used him and the blitza-bommer died a premature death after getting "just like dis" on its first bomb. They basically proved to be more reliable than I hoped but it still felt like a very orky game.

I thoroughly enjoyed using Orks for a change having played with Tau quite a bit recently. They're great fun to use as you don't feel like being too tactical is the right thing to do. I really think Mob Rule is a great rule despite its many detractors. Remember that the old rule only worked for 10+ mobs so most of the time you weren't getting Fearless anyway when using trukk-sized mobs. This way you might lose a few boyz but they'll stay in the fight longer. I think having Fearless would've been OTT since they took away the penalty kills in combat.

Finally, it was the first time I really got to use the morkanaut to any great effect. It probably wasn't a fair choice since Matt and Scott didn't have much to deal with AV13 but it would've soon died to the dread or terminators. You feel like it's got a decent amount of firepower but then remember the BS2 and Get's Hot and soon it doesn't look so powerful. Still, it's a low-AP threat to terminators and the like. Dropping off some burnas into the guardsmen was satisfying too.

In typical fashion for me, this game makes me want to paint Orks again despite saying at the start of the year that they probably wouldn't get a look in. I'm very tempted to pick up some stormboyz too despite promising myself I won't be getting anything new. Mind you, I am planning on selling quite a bit of stuff so I'll probably have enough money for some....

I really must get on with sorting the Double Trouble details out. The next post will cover the deployment types and custom Tactical Objectives (the first draft before playtesting at least). I'll also cover a couple of things that have come up in comments and emails regarding army selection.

Games Workshop's 40th Anniversary Celebration

Matt, Scott and I headed down to Nottingham on Sunday for Games Workshop's 40th birthday celebrations. I didn't bother with the open days this year but since this was a free (but ticketed) event I figured why the hell not? The deal was sweetened by the fact that the ticket included free entry to the exhibition hall. We'd only been recently but I knew there were new HH dioramas and more excitingly for me a Tau vs Admech one which you can see below and right.

We didn't anticipate there actually being much to see and do so we also took some miniatures for a relaxed 1,750 pt game of my Orks vs. Matt & Scotts' combined AM and BA force. What better way to celebrate GW's birthday with a classic clash between Orks and the Imperium. I'll report the battle in full in the next post so it doesn't get lost in this one.

Well, upon seeing what GW had to offer us we were fully expecting to be home by lunch time! In the main hall, along with the usual permanent shops, they'd got the events team's Nick Bayton playing Warhammer Quest with people, some kitbashing tables, a FW stall selling some new stuff and their existing range plus a sale (!) table selling off some old kits for 50% off. The latter sounds a lot more exciting than it actually was. What it basically came down to was dead stock that they were trying to flog. The old finecast assassins, the small format codices (clearly a bad idea), the fluff and art books that came with the 7th edition rulebook, the Imperial Knight Companion book and a pile of fantasy stuff (which may or may not have been any good - I have no idea). There were some t-shirts on sale too but I wish GW would make some more subtle ones. I'm not ashamed of my hobby but I don't need an enormous SW symbol across my chest. Tacky.


Through Bugman's and into the dining hall and we found the Studio section. Here there were some of the classic old models which made me wish I still had my Predator Annihilator and Terminator Captain. There was also Jes Goodwin with some of his oldest sketchbooks. I got a chance to chat to him about some of the new stuff that's remakes of his and he said he has mixed feelings. Some of them are an improvement because of the technology coming on but not all of them! There was also some tables with the guys who have created the exhibition dioramas. One of the painters said he can knock out a finished Stormcast Eternal in about 25 mins. Granted he's airbrushing a basecoat of gold and then washing first but still, I'd barely have the blue on in 25 mins! I'm gonna have to time myself next time I paint! It was interesting to see pictures of the displays evolving from piles of cardboard into the finished project. I got a chance to chat to them and ask for more stuff dying or more bodies at least! They said the new Tau board has more (which it certainly did - as you can see in the pictures).

Finally, we were treated to the new Raven Guard FW HH kits including Corax. Have to say I love those models. Far more exciting for me though was the new human and orc Bloodbowl players that I'm sure you've seen on other sites by now. I wish they'd be more specific on when they're hitting though with "coming next season" being irritatingly vague. The models certainly seem like early mock ups but you just never know with GW. Anyway, that little lot only took us about 45 mins to get around so we were convinced we'd struggle to fill the day.

That was until we walked across the car park to the licensed video game displays. Firstly, it felt better because it was in a building I've never ventured into before (sad I know) but also because they've got a great range now. I was disappointed not to see Freeblade but I suppose it's already released (if not on Android). Anyway, Eisenhorn was the first game we came across. It's not a finished game yet but I think part of the problem for me is that I haven't read the books (they're on my list) so it wouldn't mean a lot to me. Matt had a go though but wasn't particularly blown away. There was also a version of Talisman set in the Horus Heresy. I had a go but it basically felt like I was just clicking and rolling virtual dice but not really interacting. I did get a free copy of the original Talisman though so I'll give that a go and perhaps that will help me understand it better. It's difficult to get a feel for the game from 5 mins of play.

Matt had a go at the Vermintide game and said it was easily the best of the bunch. It's a co-operative first person game which Matt described as Left 4 Dead with Skaven instead of zombies and bows and arrows instead of guns. Sounds good already. We also chatted to the guys from Derp Studios about their Tactical Objectives app. It's a nice little app for keeping track in Maelstrom games but if you've already bought the cards £4.99 for the basic app (with original deck and Cities of Death deck included) is steep, especially when each faction is £2.99 on top. Cheaper than the physical cards and a nice idea but I think I'll stick with the cards I already own.

The big deal for me though was the presence of Creative Assembly with their Total War: Warhammer game. It's been on the edge of my radar since I'm torn in my emotions towards it. On the one hand it's Total War and I lost weeks of my life to the first Rome game but it's Fantasy and I just don't know enough about it to be instantly excited. They did a 30 minute presentation on it though and within about 5 minutes I was blown away.

The first thing that strikes you is that clearly the people making it have a lot of love for the source material. They've either done their research or else, like the guy doing the presentation, are players themselves. They've taken time to make the factions feel unique and get their individual personalities across. The flythrough was from the Greenskinz perspective. I was particularly impressed with the effects of conquering a dwarven settlement and seeing it "orcified" with glyphs and gubbinz. I could go on about how good this game looks and how much of my life will probably be lost to it but I think the main point is that it looks like all the good things from Rome I without the crap from Rome II. They've clearly come a long way in terms of their understanding of what players want and the interface is much more intuitive. We didn't see battles in action (although people could play them) but what we saw of the world map is really impressive stuff. I'll probably wait for a Steam sale to pick it up but it's going on my wishlist right now (literally). Here's a Youtube video of what we saw in the run through so you can judge for yourselves.

Once we'd left the video game section it was lunch time so a quick burger later and we started on our game. Since we weren't exactly rushing we only just got enough time to look around the exhibition but still enough for me to take tons of pictures of the Tau.

Conclusion
Well, considering it was free entry the bar was set pretty low but I have to say I had a great day. This was in no small part down to the 40K game we played (more in the next post) but I was blown away with the video game demonstration. GW definitely got something right when they realised they need to do more licensing. It did make me wish I'd thought of a tactical objectives app though!

The main thing for me though was the startling divide being GW policy and the policy of the video game companies. These guys, particularly Creative Assembly, really know how to make you want to buy a product or even preorder it. The major difference is they're showing us work in progress stuff. We aren't talking a measly two Bloodbowl models, we're talking playable versions of new games. That's such a huge breath of fresh air at Warhammer World. We're so used to being teased with stuff or having information drip fed to us that you begin to forget how other companies do it. I left feeling far more excited about the third party products than anything GW themselves were doing.

That's a really sad state of affairs and one I can't forgive GW for at all. Why the hell didn't they have an early playtest version of Bloodbowl for us to play? It's free playtesting feedback for them from people who aren't being paid to have an opinion. I just can't for a second understand their secrecy policy. No-one is going to copy what they're doing who hasn't already. Dreadball already exists so who cares if people know what to expect from the new Bloodbowl! Why weren't they even teasing more stuff from the specialist games. Why do we have to wait for "rumours" all the time, most of which GW blatantly "leak" themselves.

It was an interesting juxtaposition of one of the best games of 40K I've played in a while set in a backdrop of minimal effort from GW. With the exception of the free cake, it really didn't feel like a celebration of their past. It's a total opportunity missed. Bloodbowl was one of their earliest creations and they weren't showing off it's remake at an anniversary event!! Seriously, who runs their marketing department?? The day just felt like a bit of an afterthought, someone realised it was the 40th anniversary so they figured they ought to do something to commemorate it.

We had a great day but we had to "forge our own narrative" to do it, I guess that's why GW wants us to do!

Anyway, come back later in the week for our battle report and then I promise I'll get onto some Double Trouble discussion.

40K Battle Brothers Tournament - Day Two Battle Reports

After a poor start to the first day we pulled things back to give us a decent score of 23 VPs (out of a possible 31). Not perfect by any means but with a couple of good wins on the second day we could've been in contention. As I said yesterday, we were mostly hoping we'd avoid the super heavies and Daemons spawn lists. We'd have really liked a game against the new Orks too.

Game Four - Ripped Tights vs. Astra Militarum & Tau
Our opponents for the first of the day's games would be Ed and Rob with their combination of Astra Militarum and Tau. Their army consisted of a commander cyclic ion and shield drones, crisis bodyguard with burst cannons, two six-man units of fire warriors, four pathfinders, Longstrike in his hammerhead, a unit of broadsides, a company command squad, two squads of guardsmen, a hellhound, Leman Russ punisher and 3 ratlings. We'd be playing Purge the Alien.with Hammer and Anvil deployment.

Our opponents won the roll off but we managed to Seize and turn one was totally brutal. The wave serpent managed to strip all 3 hull points from the hellhound for First Blood. This was closely followed by the crisis team stripping all 3 hull points from Longstrike. We'd have felt bad already but this was followed by the riptides double pie-plating the broadsides and hitting all the pathfinders too. With cover removed we managed to wipe out all of the suits and the pathfinders with them. Suffice to say we felt pretty shitty from the off in this game.

The feelings of remorse were pretty short lived though as the Leman Russ took two wounds from the wraithknight followed by the ratlings pulling something amazing out of the bag by hitting three times and rending all three times too taking the wraithknight down to a single wound. Fortunately there was nothing else to fire at him though. On the other side the commander and fire warriors killed off all of the marker drones but they'd more than done their job.


We got one unit of kroot on each side and they started to whittle down the guardsmen on the left and the fire warriors on the right. The crisis teams and riptide started to try and chip away at the commander with his 2+/4++ and shield drones. I made the mistake of not pushing the riptides up the field to get into reliable melta range but our opponents were also forgetting to do their assault phase moves early on. On the other side of the board the wraithknight was downed by a melta from the guardsmen (I think). The wraithguard got out of their transport to try and start flaming stuff but met a demo charge which killed the entire unit, spiritseer included!

Despite this temporary morale boost for our opponents their army was starting to dwindle pretty quickly. At the end of turn 5 they had 3 guardsmen left and since we got a turn 6 we completed the tabling for a 16-5 win. As ever that's the problem with 40K in that sometimes it feels worse to win than it does to lose!

Game Five - Ripped Tights vs. Imperial Fists & Dark Eldar
We were drawn against our game one opponents again so swapped with the table next to us which gave us Kalon and Nick who were running Space Marines and Dark Eldar. Their list consisted of an archon with wyches in a raider, two raiders full of kabalites, three centurions with a terminator librarian, two 5 man tactical squads and a stormtalon. We'd be playing Scouring on Dawn of War and with the grav and poisoned weaponry lined up against us we expected this game to be tough.

We won the roll off but deployed conservatively as our opponents got the +1 to seize warlord trait and sure enough they seized (but on a 6 funnily enough). Their raiders all advanced with the wyches' one going flat out. The other two took some shots at the drones and managed to kill one. The centurions were out of range so we started our turn. The crisis team fired at a raider but could only take a weapon off one although they did at least force Jinks. The riptide tried to melta it but could only immobilise it which wasn't helpful and disappointed on a 4+ to explode! The other riptide managed to both overheat and take a wound which was special of it and left the centurions unharmed. The wraithknight blew up a raider for First Blood.

To our surprise the archon and wyches elected to charge the crisis team to score Slay the Warlord and succeeded leaving them in the open. The wraithguard retaliated by wiping out the wyches allowing the wave serpent to instant kill the archon despite his shadow field. The centurions moved out to shoot the wraithknight and managed to take it down to one wound which would've been enough for the storm talon to kill it had it not decided to target the wave serpent instead which it could only glance.

The riptide on the left tried to hammer the centurions in response but with their Forewarning 4+ invulnerable save they passed a whopping 5 out of 6 to keep them in the fight. The wraithknight did manage to kill one though. The remaining centurions split fire to kill the wraithknight and a couple of the wraithguard. The tactical squad began to advance towards one of our objectives to take it from the riptide with Objective Secured. This proved futile as they were cut down before they got there. The other riptide got a chance at half-range melta shots on the stormtalon but could only destroy the lascannon. The wraithguard advanced on their objective and did enough damage to the tactical squad to make them flee the battle. Meanwhile one of the remaining raiders tank shocked some of our kroot and made them run.

Over the next couple of turns we managed to kill off most of their force (the librarian helped with perils) but they were left with a single centurion to give them an objective and the immobilised raider (which just wouldn't die) to give them Linebreaker. We'd got all of the other objectives though and with all three secondaries again we'd taken a 16-4 win (although it should've been 17-4 since we again forgot the bonus point for the stormtalon).

Conclusion
We'd certainly scored a huge number of VPs over the course of the day but with the inclusion of Favourite Game votes (that we rarely seem to get) it was anyone's guess where we'd place. To our surprise we managed to finish second overall. Of course, being a GW event we only got a certificate for our trouble but better than nothing I suppose. Once again the favourite game votes proved to be our undoing as the guys who won scored 12 bonus VPs for four votes meaning we'd have needed two votes to win (we got none). I've complained about the system before but these days I just accept that's how the event works so a place in the top three is more down to luck than anything else.

It's frustrating not to get a single vote. We genuinely go out of our way to be pleasant to our opponents but of course there are times when we have to query rules etc. Trouble is, no matter how nice you are to your opponent they won't enjoy it if they lose. Anyway, I'm not going to complain again as I've covered my objections before. We had a great weekend once again and to come away with something is great. We ended up with 55 VPs over the course of 5 games which is pretty good I reckon!

On a side note there were something like a dozen Imperial Knights present with some lists having several which I was pretty surprised about but I suppose the model is well loved. Unfortunately we don't know what won the tournament in the end but I'll try to find out for my own interest as much as anything else.