General Updates: Tournament Results, Podcasts, and more!

It has been a bit longer than I expected to get an update in. I wanted to do this on Monday, but work has been extremely busy, and I've been pounding through some modeling stuff at home. Here's what I've been up to recently:

Being Gamist: How and Why of Counts As

I've been sitting on this article a little bit, as it's taken me some time to get it all written out. Let's see how this goes and if I've managed to present everything as clearly as I originally intended.

When someone normally mentions the words “Counts As”, what image pops into your head? Do you see a wonderfully converted army of kit-bashed miniatures wonderfully painted and modeled to represent the forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus? Do you envision Space Marines in robes and Dark Green armor being used with a 5th Edition codex, being led by Pedro Kantor, Logan Grimnar, or Mephiston? Do you envision a swarm of tyranid creatures and monsters deep striking onto the planet below coming in waves using the rules from Codex: Chaos Daemons (or vice versa: using Chaos Daemons with Codex: Tyranids)?

This post is going to discuss the various opinions I have seen on the topic as well as give you my opinion on the subject. I’ll tell you straight up that most of you will absolutely disagree with me, and I can’t fault you for doing so. As with all articles in this series just realize that these ideas are coming from someone whose greatest enjoyment of Warhammer 40k comes from playing the game and mastering the system. I don’t want to deny you what makes the game fun for you, I just ask you give me the same courtesy.

I am gamist. Some would even say I play to win at all costs. In a competitive setting they are entirely correct. I will use the rules in every legal way possible to defeat my opponent. I will be gentlemanly and courteous. I abhor bullying (and conflict), but I thrive on competition. You see, being WAAC doesn’t make you rude or a cheater. Being rude and cheating do, and I personally don’t like much of either of them.

Keep that in mind as you read this post. What I am going to say will rub some people the wrong way, but it needs to be heard. For too long has this voice been silent, and with the sweeping changes to tournament formats the world over, this idea may just be able to gain some public acceptance.

Being Gamist: I'm WAAC and proud of it!

I figure this title would get me some spotlight time, and to be honest, it's mostly true. If you have followed my discussion here on Struggling With Counts As or my email in to Mike Brandt, you're probably up to speed on my current mindset. For some more analysis, Bill and jay at the Gamers Lounge covered my email to Mike in their most recent podcast. I remember one of my points being misrepresented, but overall they were very fair and it was great to listen to it, even if they disagree with me. Mike also spawned a few discussion posts based on some of the same concepts I'll be going over, though he had a slightly different focus.

Struggling with "Counts As"

Most of you have probably seen the basic Dark Eldar list I posted a little over a week ago. As stated previously, I intend to run my Craftworld Eldar army to "Count As" their darker brethren. I've tweaked the list since then, but the units are pretty much the same.

In my playtesting so far (just a few quick games to get used to the units) some of my opponents have been irked by the presence of Wave Serpents representing Raiders. The two arguments I've heard are fairly reasonable, and I expect many others like myself will face similar arguments. Let's take a look at what my opponents had to say:

Works In Progress: Wave Serpent

As promised, I have an image of the first Wave Serpent with the base coat completed. I have some very minor edge highlights on some of the black areas that will be refined and then extreme highlighted on top of that.

There is a lot of work left to do on this, and I am going to get it completely finished before moving on to painting the Fire Prisms/Ravagers. This is one of two wave serpents to get this light color that I will be working on, though with the amount of time it took to get that base coat ready, I think the other one will be the last serpent to get painted.

The rest of my wave serpents will follow the prisms and falcons and will be primarily black with the white supplementary, as is the standard for Ulthwé. The two white ones are going to be perfect for the seer council/wyches in the upcoming DE list.

Works in Progress: Ulthwé Ravagers and Raiders

As promised, I have taken some images of my Ravagers that I will be using for my Ulthwé army with Codex: Dark Eldar. I currently only have two of the new Fire Prism kit, but I will be grabbing another one in the not-too-distant future. We'll see what Christmas has in store before I put any more money into new models (I need a LOT more warlocks to run as Wyches as well). For now I'm cleaning up what I've got and getting it ready for some actual use.

Dusting off the Eldar: Going Dark

Having had a chance to go over most of the stuff in the upcoming Codex: Dark Eldar, I am thinking I'll be able to break out my Eldar and get them to work with the new codex. I'm gonna throw some ideas around for counts-as and start working on the conversions for the missing pieces soon.

My Eldar army is pure Ulthwé, with the heavy focus on seer councils. Support from Black Guardians and a small splash of aspect warriors makes the list super-fluffy while still being really good, at least when we look at the options we have available in Dark Eldar. Try doing that with the Eldar codex and your grand total of 7 units will get blasted off the table in no time.

Here is the list I am looking at starting with. It's really straightforward, and probably on the weaker side of what can be done with Dark Eldar. Testing with this list will give me a really good idea about the core units of the force though, and I can branch out from there. I will explain the conversions & counts as after the list.

Battle Report: RayJ vs raptor1313

Saturday I got in a game of 40k against Rob, better known to the internet community as raptor1313. As he explained over on Spite for the Dice Gods, the mission we rolled was Spearhead Annihilation (Table Quarters deployment for Killpoints).

The list I was running is the Logan-Wing list I built based off of Chumbalaya's NOVA Open list. The list is available in the Kicking Puppies thread.

Here is what Rob was running:

Hive Tyrant with pair of Twin-Linked Devourers
3 Venomthropes
2 Tervigons with Catalyst
2 Termagaunt Squads (10-strong with Devourers)
2 Harpies with twin-linked Heavy Venom Cannons
2 Tyrannofex with Rupture Cannons
1 Carnifex

Works in Progress: Ravenwing Cavalry

As you may have seen in this article I am working with a Space Wolves list based on what Chumbalaya ran at NOVA. So far this list has been pretty good. The only big problems I've seen from it have been on my end.

For the project I'm simply adding some new models to my existing army. I've built a successor chapter to the Dark Angels, and I went with an alternate color scheme specifically so I could jump from codex to codex. I'm in this game to play and I wanted to give my minis the most versatility possible with the least amount of fuss from opponents and fluff bunnies.

Below is the first model being built up for my Ravenwing Cavalry. The horses are all pure black (just like the ones the Order rode on Caliban back before the Emperor reunited with the Lion). I'm going with the same silver/platinum armor that my chapter uses with the green primary accent color. The original color scheme is based on the Disciples of Caliban but using green instead of the dark red. I've modified it a bit, but that should give you a general idea of the army until I can get some more pictures up.

I've gone with purple to highlight the black on the horse as purple is the secondary accent color in my scheme (used mostly for purity seals and weapons). Once the rider is added it should really tie in well.

This still has a good bit of work to go, but it's finally starting to take on the appearance I'm going with.

Testing Out Some DA Updates

I'm gonna play some test games with an 'updated' Dark Angels list this weekend. Here is what I'm working with. Note the list is going to be built to be fairly balanced, but isn't going to be strictly optimized for tournament winning. I am taking a look at what options are opened up with just the bare basic updates to the DA codex. For the most part units are updated to mirror Codex: Space Marines/Imperial Armor Volume II. The biggest changes appear in Ravenwing and Deathwing, but even those are extremely minor.

Project Unforgiven: Revitalizing Dark Angels for a new generation

For the past month, the Dark Angels community over at Bolter & Chainsword has been setting up the framework for a project that will bring an update to the Dark Angels codex. There are really two parts to this project.

The first, titled Project Redemption, is taking the current DA codex and updating wargear, special rules, and unit discrepancies that would at least put it on par with the fundamentals of 5th edition. The second one, titled Project Unforgiven, is taking a look at all the fluff available to 40k players currently and reworking the codex from the ground up.

The end goal is to produce a set of documents to aid Games Workshop in a timely release of a new Dark Angels codex. We are researching fluff, mechanics, design, and a myriad of other issues over the coarse of the project and plan to playtest the project extensively once we being working with the rules development. Discussion with Jervis at GamesDay UK suggests we will be uniquely positioned to influence GW's normal process as the studio members are just now starting to turn their wheels on possible DA updates.

This isn't the first time the DA community at Bolter & Chainsword have influenced the rules for the better. In 3rd edition, the FAQ update that led to the 3.5 DA codex was in fact a result of a similar set of documents sent in by this community.

I suggest you all take a look at the project, give some feedback, and participate in the discussions. Things got sidetracked recently, but are now getting back on track, and this is a great opportunity to learn just how difficult it is to make a balanced codex that feels right!

All of the appropriate threads can be found in the Unforgiven Rules Development subforum.

Kicking Puppies: Starting Over

So, I’m a horrible blogger for leaving everyone in limbo for so long. I had all these grand ideas and managed to not get very many of them off the ground. I have been doing a good bit of modeling, playing some games, and visiting other blogs, but I haven’t left time for posting here.

I’m gonna make a stronger effort to catch back up. For now I only want to guarantee one post a week. I want to do more, but I will keep myself up to that minimum.

After coming down from that tournament in June I kind of jumped away from Dark Angels and looked at Fantasy. I’m still going to be working on that army, but it’s going to be a long time in the making. Most of my close friends don’t play it, and I enjoy the mechanics of 40k a little more.

Over the past few weeks I have been working with Space Wolves, and I’ve got enough games under my belt to really like how the units are working. I’ve worked up something based on what Chumbalaya ran at the NOVA Open. Details after the jump.

Project Update: All your base are belong to us

Yeah, yeah. I know. I've been mostly MIA for the last week or so. To make it up to you, I'll have a whole slew of updates coming in over the next couple of weeks. They will probably start this weekend, as the rest of my week is pretty full, but there should be pictures for all.

Yesterday I received in the mail my first order from Ironhalo.net. I have ordered a series of resin bases for both my Space Marine army and the Imperial Guard army I will be using for fantasy. First things first, I will be re-basing the Space Marines. I didn't get bases for all the models, just the most-used (and painted) ones for now so there will definitely be some improvement in the future. Here is what is getting based for the Space Marines:

• 2 Dreadnoughts
• 1 ForgeWorld Venerable Dark Angels Dreadnought
• 1 Ironclad Dreadnought
• 1 Sammael on Jetbike
• 1 Grand Master of the Deathwing
• 1 Grey Knight Hero
• 1 Deathwing Librarian
• 1 Deathwing Interrogator Chaplain
• 6 Deathwing Terminator Squads
• 2 Tactical Squads
• 1 Chapter Master Azrael
• 1 Chief Librarian Ezekiel

I also ordered a small amount of square bases to start up the Imperial Guard army, so you should see those beginning to take shape soon. Here is what I'm working on for those guys at a slow pace:

• Primaris Psyker (Wizard Lord)
• Vox-Caster (Handgunner Musician)
• Sergeant (Handgunner Champion)
• 8 Lasgunners (Handgunners)

After I get these guys finished, I will move on to getting more models added tot he army. I'm going to take it slow, and I'll be getting a lot of stuff shipped to me from overseas for the project (ForgeWorld models for the artillery and resin bases for the whole army). My goal tonight is to get all the resin bases cleaned and primed. It looks like they were cast without the use of sprues, and the detail is great, so I shouldn't have to waste any time fixing the surface other than basic soap-and-water washing.

Taking 40k into Fantasy: Platinum Guard

The interwebs are all a-buzz with talk of the newest edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles since it hit shelves on Friday. I have never taken the time before to get acquainted with the ruleset, as the few games I had the opportunity to watch didn't hold my interest with the quick and completely lopsided combats, lack of terrain, and other such things happening on the tabletop in those games. I figured a new edition would be a great time to take a comprehensive look at the game and see if I like it, however.

Deathwatch: It's like shooting 'nids in a barrel

Friday night I got together with some friends and ran the introductory adventure for the Deathwatch RPG, titled Final Sanction. The players formed a deathwatch kill-team coming in to clear out some tyranid infestation and general genestealer mind control on the local populace. The party has an assault marine, devastator, tactical marine, and apothecary. Each of the available classes fills a unique role, and they mesh together to support each other very well on the battlefield. What I liked in particular was the tactical marine's ability to fire bolt weapons better than other soldiers, which allows him to weild a simple bolter and still not be completely overshadowed by the heavy-bolter weilding devastator at ranged combat.

Overall the group seemed to have some good fun. They defended their drop zone from waves upon waves of enemies and then worked their way through a local Planetary Defense Force (PDF) base to get some support and rally the local militia. They finished up the night by securing the imperial weapon storage facility and reloading on some gear.

There's a lot more stuff to do, and a second adventure has also been provided. Both adventures are available for download on Fantasy Flight Games' Deathwatch website. We plan on running through these adventures and pick up the game a little bit when it releases next month. One of my friends wishes to join the game with a throne agent instead of a space marine, and so I've been looking over the rules in Dark Heresy: Ascension, and it looks like things will mesh up pretty nicely. For now I'm allowing him to build up and play one without taking all the special attack talents as the pregenerated characters in the Deathwathc adventure have a lot of rules stripped out. Still, he is able to sit pretty much on par with the party aside from lacking the strength and toughness boosts that are typical for a space marine.

I will provide a more in-depth analysis of the system and its parts over the coming weeks and months as I get more familiar with it. It looks like a great diversion from traditional 40k while still allowing us all to get immersed in the setting on a more intimate scale.

Eldar Strike Force taking shape

Last night I did a good bit of work modeling up some jetbikes. As mentioned before, I got my hands on some Jetbike Seer Council conversion bits from Chapterhouse Studios. Each kit comes with a rider (the farseer kit has two torsos to choose from), new handlebars, witchblade and spear, and some bits for spicing up the jetbike itself. Last night I built up 8 warlocks (4 with witchblades 4 with spears) and my autarch. I had pieced together the farseer on Sunday to familiarize myself with the kit.

I went ahead and pinned everything so the superglue would have more surface area for holding the models together. I have the riders just sitting loose on the bikes right now. after I get them painted up I'll secure them, probably with a tiny amount of superglue, as some of these sit very loose on the bikes.

Here are some images of a few.

Playing Eldar: Ulthwe Night Spinner Support List

Now that I've done a whole month's worth of Dark Angels gaming, I'm taking a step back towards my Eldar army. I have several new units to try out, and it looks like it's going to be a fun ride. I ordered some conversion kits from Chapterhouse Studios a while back, and the models just came in this weekend. I now have the stuff to build up a farseer and 12 warlocks on jetbikes without having to carve up a bunch of metal, and for a little less than the normal price. Double-win in my book. I also have a couple of Fire Prism/Night Spinner kits I'm working on. I've got one magnetized, and will be working on the second one soon. The following is a list I've developed to get the most out of these models:

RayJ Goes Undefeated!

You heard it here first folks. I have attended my first ever tournament where I have not lost a single game, and I was playing Dark Angels to boot. The catch here, however, is that I walked away with two draws on the day, going 1-0-2. The missions were fairly straightforward, and actually not all that bad after the final edits got in. One of these days I'll learn not to play with a handicap and use a real codex.

I've got a lot on my plate today, so I'm not gonna go very in depth on the games themselves. My camera phone (which was working on friday and I got fine-tuned for 40k pics) decided it wouldn't even start up at the event, so no pictures from me yet again :(

My first game was table quarters against an ultramarines player running Lysander and Tigerius. Lots of elite spam in his list, and anyone with volume of long-ranged firepower could take him easily. That wasn't me, and his 3+ storm shield saves laughed at my powerfists and lascannons all game. I almost had the win before Lysander came over and sucker-punched my command squad off the board.

My second game was seize ground against Orks who were running 3 battlewagons and a kustom force field. Thing is, his battlewagons were about 3 and a half times the size of a land raider, and all the terrain on this board was huge impassable line-of-sight blocking stuff (pretty much the only board at the event like that). It made movement around his army super-hard and side-armor shots on the battlewagons almost impossible after turn 1. Getting a draw under such circumstances seemed good to me. I failed to take down even a single battlewagon, shooting every lascannon (and some multi-melta at it) pretty much every turn.

Game 3 was killpoints against an IG army. I got the first turn and took a small but early lead. The catch in this mission was that any non-hq unit that died came back on that player's turn. I ended up immobilizing most of his heavy-hitting tanks so that they couldn't bring all their guns to bear and I farmed on some chimeras and the vendetta. He managed to kill two dreadnoughts and immobilize all my land raiders, but by that point they had fire coverage on the whole board. This was a fairly hefty win by turn 5 when I sprang ahead by a large number of kill points. Other than the immobilization of another dread when it came on, he killed a single terminator.

Two draws with mediocre battle points puts me in the same bracket I always end up in, right in the middle of the pack in scoring. I'm gonna start looking heavily at Eldar and the other marine codices to see what the future might hold as far as tournaments go. I love playing the Deathwing, but I'd like to go in and completely smash face from time to time, and that's extremely hard to do when one isn't playing a 5th edition codex.

Rocket City Invasion: Yay for Mediocrity

Saturday I played in a local event being run at the university in town. Here's a rundown of the basic points:

2000 point armies
Standard Missions used for 3 games (deployment and mission type pre-selected for each round)
Bonus objectives to earn up more kill points.

Here is the list I ran. It's a pretty basic mechanized Deathwing list that I ahve been using for a couple of months now:

Belial with Claws
2 Dreadnoughts with Missile Launcher/Lascannon
Deathwing Command Squad with Assault Cannon, Apothecary, Standard
Deathwing Squad with Assault Cannon
Deathwing Squad with Cyclone
2 Land Raider Crusaders
1 Land Raider

All Deathwing squads had 1 chainfist and 1 thunder hammer model.
All Land Raiders has an extra storm bolter

In the event I played against Space Marines, IG, and Blood Angels. here's a general overview of the games:

'Ard Boyz: A Tale of Epic Fail

Despite the title of the post, I did not perform badly at the semi-finals of 'Ard Boyz this year. No, in fact I was not even able to play this weekend. My region has quite the active 40k community with 10-12 gaming groups within a 2-hour drive. Add in another hour or two and you can see that the Tennessee Valley has an amazing group of active players.

The problem I'm having here is that GW only gave two venues even remotely close to the area a semi-final location. The one I was planning to attend was only able to hold 24 people, and since I found out I was eligible with less than a week to go, the spots were already filled. That means 8 preliminary groups within 3 hours of the store could be supported there. I can almost guarantee you there were more, forcing people to drive ludicrously long distances or be left out.

When I discovered I was unable to attend the event (which I would already be driving about 2-hours one way to attend), I took some time to debate visiting the other venue. With a 4-hour drive one way, that would put me on the road for far too long to also be playing in any sort of event. I also felt that paying for hotel accommodations for this event would not have been worthwhile, so in the end I opted for the next-best thing: going out to the movies.

I am a bit upset with the situation, but not terribly. I mean, I didn't earn the spot to begin with, so why should I have a problem missing out? But my problem doesn't come from the inconvenience I received. It's the fact that even the people who earned these positions would not all be able to play, even if they all traveled 4 hours (one way) to get to them. It is very poor form to host a tournament environment with an invitational and then not have enough space for all those invitations. Someone at GW needs to take a look at this situation and have a solution for next year.

In fact, addressing this issue could be part of a greater tournament organization overhaul. The interwebs have been chattering away the last few months with a want for a more competitive environment. I would love to see an organized play system set up to make everyone happy. A league set aside for fluff bunnies with tons of painting and sportsmanship stuff about and a series of tournaments where the only thing that truly matters is how well you play (and winning all your games is more important than tabling two opponents and losing to a third). Sure, painted armies should be a must, but it shouldn't affect your score. Also, being a prick should get you knocked out of the event. And for crying out loud, USE THE STANDARD MISSIONS!

I feel better now. no more ranting for me, I just really needed to speak that out a bit. I need to go finish off painting my third land raider for next week's event. I finished up the highlighting and basic metalics last night. Tonight I need to get all the rivets and then wash the beastie to bring out some more depth. I do like the look of black and silver running (driving) across the table :)

Tournament Madness Ensues

I had planned on giving everyone an overview of the two tournaments I have coming up this month. On June 19, I will be attending a local event here in Huntsville, set up by one of the members of the local gaming group. It looks like we will have about 20 players including Raptor1313 of Spite for the Dice Gods. I haven't played against Rob in a while, so I'm hoping for the head-to-head there. He's always a blast to play against.

This event is done in the typical RT fashion, most likely using custom missions I have talked with the organizer about scoring and the system has been modified from his original vision to be a bit more competitive, but still relies a large part on soft scores. It will likely take a large amount of effort for my local community to move away from soft scores, but I'm being fairly vocal while also being civilized. Maybe it'll bear fruit soon.

[Edit]An update from the organizer made just moments after this post states that the missions for this event will be taken directly from the rulebook. Most awesome tournament mission set ever, as all players will be familiar with the rules. Apparently each of the objective types will be used once, so two different objective missions and a single kill point mission. Each mission will also have a separate deployment type. My 2000 point army is built around these missions in particular, so this should give me quite a strong showing here.[/Edit]

On June 26 I am playing in another event at Dicehead. The event page can be found here. You may remember that I placed 4th in the 'Ard Boyz event held at that store. They are a great group of people, and this event is set up to be quite large. They posted the missions last week, and I was a bit disappointed in how they were set up. Some discussion with the organizer has fixed some glaring flaws, and he has mentioned he will be updating the second mission to use killpoints instead of victory points as well as some other tweaks to make things more balanced. This particular mission has units respawning after death, and I was explaining to him the interaction of tervigons with both that rule and victory points.

In the course of our discussion, the organizer mentioned to me that one of the top 3 finishers from our 'Ard Boyz event was not going to be able to attend, and thus the spot opened up for me to go this weekend. It's a bit short notice, so I'm looking heavily at using the army that earned me 4th place, but also converting the venerable dread to another fire support dread. 3 land raiders, 3 dreads, and 4 terminator squads with the old smoke and apothecary fit into exactly what I've been mentioning about DA so far. I figure it's always good to put your money where your mouth is.

So there you have it. The next 3 weeks will have me competing in 3 separate tournaments. In the past I've always managed a single loss in tournaments. Perhaps one of these three will be the place I pull out an undefeated showing?

Playing Eldar: My Experiences so far.

I've been messing around with Eldar for a couple of months now, but have been splitting me efforts enough to not have too many games in with them just yet. I'd say maybe somewhere around 7 or 8, almost all in the 1850-2000 point range.

My lists have been mostly similar, though I have been tweaking here and there to really get some ideas about the various upgrades. Here are the basic elements I've been using in most of my games recently:

Playing Dark Angels: The Apothecary

As I have been mentioning in my previous articles, one of the best ways to utilize the Dark Angels codex is to capitalize on its units that provide durability.  So far we have looked at how the Smoke Launcher keeps our vehicles on the field longer, and then ventured into the realm of dreadnoughts, where the venerable variety can shake off glancing hits like its no tomorrow.  Now we turn our focus to the apothecaries, the last piece of our durability puzzle.

Playing Dark Angels: The Dreadnought

Space marines on the battlefield are a lot like one-man armies. They have a tool for almost every job, and are pretty good at applying that tool to the appropriate situation. They're durable and hard to take down. Occasionally a foe will get lucky or prove to have just enough skill to take a marine down for good. If that marine was one of the most honored members of the chapter, he can be brought back from the brink of death and serve his chapter as a true machine of death, impervious to almost all forms of attack.

Of course, here I am referring to the dreadnought, the armoed walker that wrecks havoc on the opponent's mainline troop units. These little gems are quite amazing the Codex: Dark Angels, and you're about to learn why.

Playing Dark Angels: The Smoke Launcher

If one is to point to a single item in the Dark Angels codex that makes it truly viable, it is actually not the ability to field Terminators as troops. The humble smoke launcher which comes as standard equipment on all but the Land Speeder uses different rules from the rest of the Imperium, as the rule is printed in the Dark Angels Codex. Instead of providing a cover save, the DA smoke downgrades all hits to glancing hits.

This has the effect of drastically increasing survivability for the target vehicle for the turn smoke is in use. Consider, if you will, how hard it is to kill a land raider using only krak missiles. With the basic load-out 3 weapons, the vehicle requires a minimum of five glancing hits to destroy. Chances are, the opponent will not be rolling 5s and 6s for every single glance, and on average, the opponent will need about 12-15 glances to take down a land raider.

Where has all the time gone?

This post is mostly an "I'm still here; don't go away" kind of post. I have started back taking classes at the university to grab a Master's degree in software engineering, so all of a sudden some of my free time has been eaten away. I do have some things in store, however, so here's a teaser of stuff to come in the next couple of days:

• Tournament Information & Army Lists
• Planetary Empires: Campaign Update
• Playing Eldar: My experiences so far
• Playing Dark Angels: Series Debut

The Playing Dark Angels segment is going to be quite long-winded as I go over the ins and outs of using the codex in the current edition (according to my experiences). This is going to be an ongoing series describing the different facets of list building as well as strategy and tactics behind the units. The list alone is worthless if you're not using it properly, and for the Dark Angels, that is something more deadly to the player than the opponent's army (much like the Eldar, I'm finding)

I will cover deployment options, timing, meta-game decisions in list building, and the benefits awarded to this army. They do exist, and I find after having played for over two and a half years with them that I do much better with these units than their counterparts in other Space marine codices. I will discuss differences to those codices, but will emphasize how to make Dark Angels work for you rather than bashing on wargear options and rules that haven't been brought into parity. I will also show how Dark Angels line up in the grand scheme of the typical tournament scenarios and scoring.

'Ard Boyz: Missed it by one point

I'm sitting down to eat dinner after a full day of awesome gaming. Short story is I missed third place by a single point. I'll have details up at some point tomorrow. Maybe someone will decide they can't make it and I'll get to make the semi-finals.

Edit:

Colds suck. I've put up a brief explanation of each of my games over at Bolter and Chainsword. The post link is here. Biggest lesson learned: 4+ tervigons is hard to deal with.  Short version: Problems with mission 1 as expected. Wrecked face in missions 2 and 3.

'Ard Boyz: Updating the list

Having had a chance to go over the new missions being used in the 'Ard Boyz event this coming weekend, I have made some changes to the list I was going to run. I am still going in with my Dark Angels; I don't have the wysiwyg models to run a viable BA or SW list, and I'm way underpracticed with Eldar.

Playing Eldar: Results of the First Outing

Lucas came to the game with Ghazkull, some bikers, lootas, a large Nobz squad, and several boyz squads mounted up in trukks. He informed me that he only brought 1500 points, so I did some manipulation to the list to trim it down. I removed the harlequins, falcon, and one of the guardian jetbike units. I used the points I had left over to increase the number of jetbikes in the remaining unit.


The main goal with the list is to stay maneuverable, reserve the jetbikes to keep them safe and let them do some harassment and objective capturing late game.

We ended up with table quarters and annihilation for our mission. Lucas won the rolloff and gave his lootas the protection of the top floor of a building and deployed the rest of his forces forward. I managed to get a good bit of cover in my corner as well and kept the grav-tanks mostly out of line of sight.

Playing Eldar: The First Outing

In the Rocket City, we have a pretty good group of 40k gamers. A lot of us play in our little clusters most of the time (such as the handful that join me at my apartment). The local club, HAAWGS, has been setting up game nights for the last few months in an attempt to get everyone out and mingle a little more. Tonight is one such night, and my Eldar are going to take their first trip away from home.

Playing Eldar: Starting from the beginning

While I have only been playing 40k for about two and a half years, my interest in the hobby goes back to my days in high school, when I played many different CCGs to pass the time on the weekends.  Almost every weekend while I was playing, I would get to see a glimpse of the 40k universe as numerous RTTs were run at the store.  Many times I was tempted to pick up this game, and one army stood out among the others with their hovering ships and and sleek, elegant lines.

The War for Achilles Upsilon

As I mentioned previously, I am running a Planetary Empires campaign for some friends, and I will be using the Dark Angels codex throughout to represent my Platinum Angels. While this is not a competitive event, it is a great way to get more games in, and thus become more familiar with an army. Each of the other players in the campaign is mostly working on a new army, so all are unfamiliar with how things should work. It'll be a great learning experience. If I had started Eldar before we got things off the ground, I'd probably be playing Eldar in the campaign instead and be in much the same position. Instead I'll be using Eldar for all my other games outside of the upcoming 'Ard Boyz event.

My list for 'Ard Boyz

'Ard Boyz 2010 is just around the corner, and after some lengthy discussion with some folks over at Bolter and Chainsword I have come up with the following list. I feel it has a proper mix of what is needed to succeed, and that by choosing the appropriate deployment or use of reserves for each matchup it will fair well.

I have chosen to use my Dark Angels successor chapter which I have been using for over two years now. I have developed my skills in the game with this army, and it is the one I am most comfortable with. I will point out that I am using Codex: Dark Angels and bringing in Daemonhunters as allies for psychic protection and some added oomph rather than spinning off into the Space Marines or Space Wolves codices.

Fancy new banner

After about 50 minutes of fun in photoshop, I have constructed a banner for the blog. I'm still debating what sort of standalone pages or other things I will be adding, so I'm going to refrain from setting up any extra navigation for the time being. I'm going to modify the stylesheets a bit more to get the basic colors where I want them, and then I will get onto proper 40k material.

Emerging from the Warp

I've been following a fair few blogs on Warhammer 40k for a while now as a lurker. I have been playing a successor chapter to the Dark Angels since November 2007, and I have just now branched out into the world of Eldar. I'm going to spend some time configuring the look of the place, and then I'm going to take you all on a journey into my little gaming world. The vast majority of my posts will be related to Warhammer 40k, but I will probably be discussing some RPGs (primarily 4th edition D&D), movies, and other things that pique my own interests.

I should have something up here soon. It's a slow day at work and I have the opportunity to waste it away here.