Random 1,850 Chaos List w/Daemon Allies

So this is just something that sparked my interest while I sat here at work. It’s slightly based around my need to convert but it does look like fun.

Primary Detachment: Chaos Space Marines

Fun List For This Weekend’s RTT – 1,850

So I’m currently building up my pretty heavily converted Iron Warrior army and since they are nowhere near done I figured I’d bring a fun army to a local RTT. And one that’s mostly painted. This is what I’m thinking:

Chaos – Where I’m Starting

Well I’ve spent the weekend playing with my airbrush but since I still suck with that thing so far I figured I’d put up where I plan on starting my lists for now with Iron Warriors.

Chaos Codex – First Impression (Yes, Me too!)

But it’s not out yet!!!! Well, it kinda is. But that’s beside the point since it does come out on Saturday there isn’t any reason not to get started with my thoughts overall. I probably won’t do a unit by unit breakdown or review as I’ll leave that to other blogs to do. I haven’t delved deeply or long enough yet to not make simple mistakes and I’m not going to pretend I have J. I’ll be focusing mostly on my general thoughts on the book, different ideas for builds, and the possible evolution of the book. But today is about my first impression so let’s get down to it.

Kickstarter: Titan Counts-As and Tons More

I just wanted to throw this out there. This is something that is going to be a great product. The larger models are 8.5" tall. If based properly they make excellent stand-ins for Warhound Titans. He has the Mortis (overall chaos bent) and a more knightish Leviathan. The best part, they are going to be PLASTIC!!!!! The other best part.....they are starting at $89 on this kickstarter which is going to be decently below retail as well!!!

The More You Know - Nova 2012 Edition

So last year’s article on how much and how I screwed up is officially my most popular post. It’s views doubled any other post since I started this blog so I figured why not go ahead and do a 2012 version. It’s going to be a little long. But we’ll start with what everyone wants to read about, me losing J (I’m only humble 95% of the time!)

Really Understanding 6th – List Building

 A certain blue blog is exploding lately because the owner just got back from Nova and finished pretty low. Said author is blaming dice and terrain so far for his losses though that may change as he puts up more batreps but all of it did get me thinking and I decided I was going to put up some of my list building thoughts after playing 13 games in a weekend J Oh, and you’ll be able to read about the mistakes I made that caused my losses on Monday when that article goes live so keep an eye out.

GT Review: Nova '12

Welcome to my final GT review of 2012. Over Labor Day weekend I attended the Nova Open! This included the GT and the Invitational which resulted in a total of 13 games over the tournament time span. I’ll be talking about my list and experience with it probably later in the week but I'm gonna give you a breakdown of the event as I saw it. Like normal I'll start with the breakdown and then my overall score for the event. I'll follow that up with the a recap of the minor adjustments that I feel could make the event a little bit better.

Daemons Thoughts – After Playing Some Games

Last weekend we had a tournament at 2,200 points that I participated in. It was one force org only but otherwise followed all the rules for 6th. I’d been playing my walking GK’s pretty darn hard lately and since there wasn’t a painting requirement I said to hell with it and brought out my Daemons. If you haven’t been following my blog for long I have a bit of a love/hate thing with Daemons. I love them because they are just plain fun to play 90% of the time. And I hate them because that 10% is normally so bad the army goes back in the box for a few months J

Logan – Friend to the Little People

As most of you might have guessed I have a wee-bit of a crush on Logan. He’s just an all-star! That being said I recently went all in on a plastic daemon army that I’m going to be slowly painting up. But while I’m painting that up I have my Iron Warriors that I started and those need paint and I truly love all the conversion opportunities I’ve got in that army. And since Iron Warriors still hold the record for longest hold on my attention span in a row (1.5 years with no interruptions!!!!!) and there is a new codex coming I’ve gotten even more excited.

Necron Flyers – My Way

So I mentioned in my previous post how I would build a flyer army. This is what I’d honestly be looking at:

Two Recent RTT's - Super Brief Batreps

Well hello there everybody. I realize I’ve been gone for quite a bit but I should be mostly back now. A big part of it was that I hadn’t had time to play almost any 6^th edition and to talk about it without some hands on experiences seemed silly to me. Since I’ve recently played in two tournaments in the last two weeks and have another scheduled for this weekend as well as Nova the week after that I think I’m finally starting to get a feeling for 40k in 6^th edition. Not that I have it figured out by any means but I definitely feel better talking about now than I did 3 weeks ago J

New Daemons – New/Changed Unit Discussion & 2k Army Lists

Well most of us have seen that there are new daemons headed our way in the next few weeks. What makes this awesome is that it’s for some new units and also for some of the most fiddly of the current range. What makes it even more awesome is that in addition to some new units getting entries similar to the Storm Talon/Dakka Jet some of the old entries are being updated. Namely Flamers and Screamers. The only contention is going to be their invul saves but for a second let’s assume they’d have the saves the units would normally have in the Daemon book.

So why is this so awesome? How often do you see flamers or screamers currently? The change to 6^th might have boosted how often you saw screamers until vehicles started to drop off the scene but Fiends and Crushers have always been the babies of the elite slot. This means you rarely saw flamers due to cost effectiveness outside of a 3-man suicide squad. Well that’s changed!

Welcome to 6th: Daemons

This is the first in a series on armies and the changes 6^th has brought to them. We’re starting with Daemons because I think they got an enormous boost in this edition and will be a ton of fun to play.

My First Game of 6th

Well I finally got a game in and......it was quite fun even for a learning game. I played our local store owner when I got off early from work and we muddled out way through the rules pretty easily. My only sadness is that there were not vehicles or flyers since we're both infantry nuts.

I brought:

Flyrant w/2xDual Devs & Wings
Flyrant w/2xDual Devs, Wings, & Hive Commander
2x3 Hive Guard
20 Termagants
20 Dev. Gants
2xTervigon w/Catalyst, Poison, Adrenal Glands
2xCarnifex w/2xDual Devs in Spores

My opponent brought:

Warboss on Bike w/PK, Squig, and some other stuff
Big Mek w/KFF
3x15 Lootas
5x30 Shoota Boyz
3x3 Kannons

So you can see that we had around 250+ models between us before I even start pooping. It made for an interesting game and we managed to knock the game out in 3 hours with a new edition and interruptions (since he runs the store).

It was a pretty smooth game. Things I learned:

-Cover is interesting now since you get cover for your saves if the model taking the wound is obscured by 25% from any firing model in the enemy unit.
-Lootas are friggin crazy good if they roll 3 shots, even snap shoooting.
-Fearless change is definitely a good thing with overwatch. It allows you to pin units in place to hit with multiple other units. Without it boyz and nids would take a pretty massive hit charging into CC.
-Biomancy is pretty dang amazing
-Flying MC's are incredibly durable but 45 St7 shots can still hurt you.
-Night fight is huge and I really like how it works now.
-You have to clump up more with assault based troops now to ensure you make the charges after casualties. Blasts are going to hurt more.....
-5+ Cover means a lot more dying on models without an armor save.

Things I learned and my opponent did too:

-Always taking the closest model killed the screening conga line of boyz since he had one unit out of the fight for two turns as they tried to get back into coherency.
-Nobz are still essential. He wanted to try squads without them due to all the sniping possiblities nowadays.
-KFF isn't a requirement for foot armies like it used to be.

Overall it was a fun game with me deploying second after he had to spread his army across the table. I refused flank and the 2+ for reserves with Hive Commander is pretty ridiculous. We wound up playing relic and just pummeled each other. I got lucky that one of my Tervigons pooped out around 50 termagants before going out which kept me in the game. I'll try to start doing some batreps of baby steps in 6th. But I wanted to share a bit about my first impressions.

Traitor Guard w/Unearthly Allies 2k

I've been playing around with some ideas and this one struck me as fun. Should work pretty good against anything short of 6+ flyers but here is what I'm thinking:

Speeding Up Lookout Sir & Wound Allocation on Character units?

So I think a lot of people are misunderstanding how these mechanics work and are making this into a bigger issue than it actually is.

Here is what I’m thinking as I’m pretty sure I understand the mechanics behind how Lookout Sir and wound allocation work. And from what I can tell it’s no slower and might be faster than wound allocation in 5^th. Now this is just an idea and if I’ve got a mechanic wrong or it doesn’t make sense let me know. I was a little wrong in how I initially interpreted it but with some help from the guys at the YMDC over on Dakka we think we've worked out a way to speed this process up (and so massively speed up the game)

Nova and 6th Edition, I’m Totally Torn!

Oh I'm not torn on using 6th edition but on my army. As a fair few of you who read here have probably heard by now Nova is going to be the first national level GT event (i.e. over 100 players) to run 6^th edition. Which is awesome! But since I’m playing in the Invitational as well as the Open and have less than 2 months to build, paint, and practice with an army I have to get started pretty much now. Which leads to the point of this post; I’m torn between 3 different armies right now with a sound idea list as I get familiar with the rules for all of them. Oddly, all Xenos J

So….How bout them Tyranids?

I’ve seen a ton of screaming around the internet about more “nerfing” by GW when it comes to Tyranids. Well I want to take a look at Tyranids myself to get a feel how one of my favorite armies (right beside orks) is actually going to perform in this new edition. Bear in mind this is all without extensive playtesting of the ruleset at this point and no tournaments to speak of yet. Though I will be playing a couple of games this week to get the hang of the system and have 2 RTT’s lined up in the next few weeks.

6th Edition, My Initial Thoughts & And Stand Out Rules

Like dozens of other bloggers I’m going to give my first impressions of 6^th edition. Like almost everyone else in the 40k verse I bought my rulebook this weekend (Saturday since my LFGS was afraid to sell it Friday J) and I spent a fair amount of time reading up on it on Saturday and on my breaks on Sunday (yay for overtime). Outside of the fact that the book could kill my dog if it fell off my coffee table onto her let’s get started J:

I like it. Granted I haven’t played any games yet and it could totally fall apart on me but I really, really like it after reading the book. Just like in the change from 4^th to 5^th there is going to be a lot more mobility in the game now.

I’m on the fence about combat. In some ways it got a hell of a lot better but in others it got a hell of a lot weaker.  It’s going to be seriously tricky till you get the hang of it and model placement/movement is going to be even more unforgiving.

Kickstarter Shoutout: Sedition Wars!

Well with about four days left I'm going to pimp this a little bit too. This is a kickstarter project for a board game with over 50 Miniatures that Studio McVey and Rob Baxter (from PP) are putting out. It looks amazing and I figured I'd spread the word in case you missed this.

If you're not familiar with Mike McVey he used to be a big time painter at GW for years and his studio has been creating (with the help of some amazing sculptors) some truly great mini's for the last few years. You can find his blog here: http://www.studiomcvey.com/

This is also a kickstarter which, if you aren't familiar with it, is basically an crazy pre-order that nets you tons of extras. It's the only Kickstarter I've supported as Mike and his wife Ali have an excellent reputation in the community and to be honest the models are so pretty I couldn't help myself.

Kickstarter Link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster

Book this weekend!!!!

Means I'll actually be writing again on Monday :) Till then friends!

6th Edition, Army Building, and Travel 40k

I know I've been quite lately. It's equal parts busy life and the pre-new edition apathy that sometimes overcomes us.

Let's start by saying I'm super stoked for 6th edition. Now that we have a pretty solid release date (6/30 or 7/6) it's just a matter of waiting to see what 6th is going to be like. It does make it a bit pointless to talk about tactics and strategies though.

This does leave me a little light in the drive department for building and painting though. I don't want to commit to to many new models or conversions if whatever I decide to play with might become much less viable but at the same time I'm a bit of a hobby nut. So where does this leave me?

40k is a Shooting Game? Pt. 2

First off thank you all for the particiaption in the last post. There were some good thoughts but this is one I wanted to address directly as it King does a good job at stating why he perceives the games as slanted toward shooting. This is naturally open discussion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm not cutting or slamming TKE. I felt I should point that out as, while I'm sure TKE knows it, I wanted to make sure other readers did too.

TheKingElessar wrote:

Vis-a-vis a shooting game, however, I have to disgaree that the two are perfectly balanced in the core rules. The fact that you hit vehicles on the Rear is poor compensation for hitting them on 4+ or 6s virtually any time you catch up to one you haven't already damaged, only getting a single strike from Grenades, Melta Bombs not being AP1, and then the myriad issues with time constraints, distances, blocking, bubblewrap, and the fact that (barring Kharn) it will always be easier for skilled shooting units to hit and thereby have a chance to inflict damage than for combat units* - there are a great many more limiting factors to inflicting melee damage than shooting damage.

Is the gap as wide as perhaps it is sometimes asserted? No. However, if hyperbole is the only way to get people to pay attention to the debate long enough to see for themselves the inequality, then I have no qualms with that.

* - For anyone who doesn't already realise, this is two-fold: the fact that you can hit on a 2+, and often with a re-roll built in, shooting, but can't in CC; but also because shooting rolls to hit are based only on your own ability without the comparative process for Weapon Skill. A Shooting unit will always be exactly as good at hitting in any circumstance, but a combat unit is inherently less reliable, despite the variation being small and unusual, but they also variably take damage BACK, a much more important factor as they can hit things that kill them much more easily than they'd like.

The Nova, Terrain in 40k, and 40k is a Shooting Game

So…..lots of stuff in that title J

This post is going to be long. It might be a bit ranty here or there and might be a bit holier than thou in some places but I feel some of it needs to be said. Also I’m going to try and intersperse it with photos to break the text wall and entertain you with boobies (images stolen from my buddy Spags at TheBack40k cause I'm at work and looking might not be a good idea).

We’ll start first with NOVA. This part is a little gushy. This is the event that started a firestorm. There was a cry for a while for a more competitive format (in terms of clearly defined winners based on record) and Mike Brandt stepped up and took on the challenge of creating a tournament to provide it. His ideas influenced quite a few events in one way or another and normally in a good way.

Clarification: Now to be clear I’m not saying that Nova is the only or best format but I do feel Mike’s openness in his approach and his general urge to reach out to the community has helped create the environment we have on the circuit. Right up there with the guys from Adepticon, WargamesCon, and newly on the scene Reece’s group over there at Frontline Gaming.

And this format is Mike’s baby. He’s constantly tweaking and playing with it. He takes in ideas on how to make it better from the community and builds on it. In other words he’s a great TO. Some of you might be wondering why I’m blowing smoke up Mike’s ass. It mostly has to do with the fact that, as an event that is often considered the flagship for competitive 40k (even if all 40k is competitive in its own way), Mike takes a lot of hits from parts of the community and that can be draining on a person. Especially when the heat he catches is primarily from a small subset of people who consider themselves a big part of the competitive community. Most recently it’s been about terrain which segues nicely into the second part of the title.

The Source GT May 19-20 - I'm Going

Well I can't help but support another local GT that's coming up a week from Saturday. It does include re-rolls which since I've signed up so late I'm not going to get but that's ok. I'm just down for playing some more games. That being said I'm breaking out my Daemons for the event. I'm currently painting the 12 new fiends I've built and the 2 heralds of khorne. Here is the list I'm taking.

HQ

HoT in Chariot w/Bolt & Master of Sorcery
HoT in Chariot w/Bolt & Master of Sorcery
HoK w/Juggernaut, Icon, Rending, Blessing of Khorne
HoK w/Juggernaut, Icon, Rending, Blessing of Khorne

Elite

6 Fiends
6 Fiends
6 Bloodcrushers w/Rending & Musician

Troop

5 Horrors w/Bolt
5 Horrors w/Bolt
5 Horrors w/Bolt
5 Horrors w/Bolt & Changling
5 Plaugebearers

Fast Attack

12 Fleshhounds
6 Screamers

I'm Thinkin Orks.....1850 Summer GT Starter List

Adepticon is past and I've still got 3+ GT's lined up for the summer and as I was going thru my models and reorganizing my cases I've found a metric ton of my mostly built Orks. This got me thinking that I'd like to get another army painted up and that I kinda want to bring back my orks. I've got everything I need 90% built but the whole army needs a painting and this is what I'm thinking of running right now:

We Are the Champions!

Well even though one of my teammates beat me to the punch I’m putting up more of the details and breaking it to anyone who doesn’t read his blog or that hasn’t heard yet.

 In Order: Aaron, Nick, Brad(Me), Andrew

That’s right my friends. My team of ringers carried me to the top spot at the 40k National Team Tournament. The team consisted of Nick Nanavati, Aaron Aelong, Andrew Gonyo and myself. All of us have either won Best Overall or General at a GT in the last year. I met Nick two years ago at the first Nova and met Andrew and Aaron this year at the Nova. I got along great with all three and thought it’d be a great group to get together. Well, at least one that wouldn’t kill each other or inspire other teams to kill us (outside of pure jealously for our amazing good looks that is J).

Adepticon - Army Option 3

Here is my third and likely final option since I didn’t have the time to finish up my Admech Daemons like I’d planned (stupid real life getting in the way). It’s another all foot list but one I think is very strong. You’ll notice that it’s a bit different from the list I won the Darkstar with.

Adepticon – Army Option 2

Here is the second bag that is sitting by my front door in anticipation of leaving on Thursday. I think you can guess from the picture which book this army crawls out of.

Adepticon – Army Option 1

With Adepticon fast approaching I figured I’d put up some of my army lists over the next three days. So this is my first list I’m considering taking to Adepticon. Everything is painted to a decent standard and I’ve done well with this sort of list in the past.

So........Adepticon

I know it’s been nearly a month since my last post but life just got a little to nuts personally for me to spend much time on the hobby. However it looks like things might finally be moving toward normal and with Adepticon on the horizon I figured I’d put some stuff up here.

First off I’m super excited for the 10^th year of Adepticon and can’t wait. My schedule for the weekend looks like this:

Thursday: Arrive in the early afternoon. Meet up with some friends and team mates. Basically register and socialize J

Friday: 40k Championships! It’s a 4 game day for those who aren’t aware. I currently don’t know what I’m bringing yet but I’m sure I’ll figure it out before I head out in six days.

Saturday: 40k Team Tournament. My team, “They Shall Know Fear”, will be rocking it out with GK’s. I’m looking forward to an awesome day of gaming with Nick, Andrew, and Aaron. And thanks to Andrew we’re going to have a fully painted 4k worth of GK’s stomp the yard with.

Sunday: Either hanging out or playing in the final 16 from the Championships. In all likelyhood I’ll be hanging out J so I’ll probably be bouncing around noon or so. Might get a game in against some people from across the country that I don’t get to see often.

Hope to see you guys there. If you’re around and see me don’t hesitate to say hey!

I’ll be trying to post more often leading up to and after Adepticon J

Adepticon Daemons - Thoughts.....

I've been wracking my brain since I got back from the Indy Open about what my next project is going to be. So far this year I built and painted a GK army that has gone 10-1 over 2 GT's and now it's time to change up a bit. As most of you know I'm easily distracted and lately Daemons have been on my mind.

Now I have a soft spot in my heart for Daemons. I've never loved nor loathed an army so much at a tournament. You can see pictures of my Admech counts-as army in the army picture tab and I really am proud of how those turned out. I ran it at 2 GT events and at both events had that dreaded drift game where everything went wrong and my urge to kill rose. My Daemons actually accounted well for themselves but I admit I got a little frustrated with the lack of consistancy. But I've had my fill of consistancy it seems since I'm seriously considering Daemons for at least Adepticon if not the local GT in May as well and maybe more.

So that brought me to my main issue. Do I add models to my existing converted army or do I rebuild it from scratch? Well I've wracked my brain and come up with several fun themes for a rebuild like:

-40k Beastmen
-Iron Warrior/Dark Adeptus Alliance
-World Eater Legion Warband

GT Review: The Indy Open

Well weekend before last I braved the weather and snow to travel down to Indianapolis for the first GT in Indiana at the Indy Open. It was quite a haul thanks to the weather but worth the trip. This is one of my GT reviews and will rate the various important aspects of the event and also have a small list of ways to improve it going into its second year. I review on a Great, Good, Average, Needs Improvement, and Bad scale. Onto the review!

The event was run by the local group of pretty competitive gamers down in the Indianapolis area. It was the first event they’d ever run and I can honestly say I had no idea what I might be getting into. That being said I knew the guys running it and had high hopes J

Off the Shelves and Outta the Warp - 1,850 Daemons

Well damn Brent anyway but he’s got me thinking about running Demons again. Now I’d probably paint up an entire new army as I’m slowly shifting my converted admech over to a pure guard army since I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea regarding WYSIWYG.

Anyway I was reading Brent’s blog and the bastard had a great idea, especially in an environment that is almost 50% GK at this point. Collars of Khorne! No hear me out. It’d be a list that looks like this:

We Be Krumpin - 2k Orks

I was talking to the owner of my FLGS about an upcoming tournament he is attending and we started brainstorming on Orks. Now on Orks my thoughts are all out offense all the time. I don't think holding back does anything for them in the current state of the game. That being said here is a list I think could be a lot of fun.

Hobby - Tyranid Re-Paint (Test Model Done)

So at an RTT this last weekend I was again inspired to run my Nids. I've come to realize the main reason I don't wanna pull them out is that they are nowhere near the paint level of my other completed armies. It bothers me enough that I'm not bringing them out even when paint isn't important.

Dark Star - GT Review

Well as you most of you may have noticed I attended the Darkstar two weeks ago and it's time for my standard GT review which I've been doing for the major events I hit since last year. For those of you not familiar the Darkstar was a 5-game first year 40k only GT. It was not a Nova format but instead more soft score oriented with 45pts for painting, 75 for battle, and 50 for sports. Overall was determined by the total of these points and Best General was BP's and Sports combined. This made soft scores important which was the reason for me painting up my GK's and running them.

Dark Star - Game 2

Dark Star: Game 2

General Info:

This is a 5-game GT that took place in Minneapolis, MN. It sold out at its target of 60 people. The codex breakdown can be found in this thread: http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2012/02/dark-stars-comin.html . Every missions is 3 Objectives with whoever wins the most objectives winning the game. It’s straight win/loss with tiebreakers. The tournament as a whole is closer to a gaming event than a tournament in that only 75/185 (or 40%) points are battlepoints.

Indy Open Incoming!!!!

For those of you that don't know the Indy Open is a first year event taking place in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 3rd & 4th.. A quick rundown is:


We will have a 2,000 point 64-man, 6 round win/loss Grand Tournament, with Separate prizes for the best Painted army, Best General, and Renaissance Man (best combined Paint and Generalship). There is a three color minimum for this tournament.


The format will be a Win-loss style (like NOVA Open) with prizes for the top person in each of the W/L brackets (5-1, 4-2, 3-3, 2-4, 1-5) as well as other door prizes. March 3rd we will have 4 games, followed by two games on March 4th.


It's shaping up to be an excellent event. I'm looking forward to meeting some new people and rolling some dice. I'm probably rolling with my foot GK's but I'll make the decision probably the day before I start my drive. Only time will tell. I'd encourage anyone who has the weekend free and can make to head out on. Even though it's a first year event I expect this event to be of a high calibre. This is mostly due to the guys running it and that they took a lot from the Nova format to get them going. Either way it's gonna be a good weekend so come on out! I'll be wearing They Shall Know Fear shirts over the weekend so I should be easy to find.

Dark Star - Game 1

General Info:

This is a 5-game GT that took place in Minneapolis, MN. It sold out at its target of 60 people. The codex breakdown can be found in this thread: http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2012/02/dark-stars-comin.html . Every missions is 3 Objectives with whoever wins the most objectives winning the game. It’s straight win/loss with tiebreakers. The tournament as a whole is closer to a gaming event than a tournament in that only 75/185 (or 40%) points are battlepoints.

Dark Star - Batrep Update

Sorry I haven't had the Batreps up yet guys but where I'm staying for work I lose the connection everytime I try to upload photos. I've written 3/5 with spots for my photos so when I get home this weekend I'll be uploading all the photos and getting the batreps rolling. The first one is scheduled to post on Monday so keep an eye out.

As a sidenote I'm really hoping the rumors of a new WD Nid unit are true. I might be getting sucked in again since I'm reading the new Ciaphas Cain novel and it's got bugs. Only 2 more weeks till we find out :)

The Dark Star - Results

Well here we go:

Best Overall: Me at 5-0 :)
2nd Best Overall: Nice fella playing Deathwing from Toronto (4-1)
3rd Best Overall: Tyler (I can never remember his last name) (5-0)

Best Appearance: Ryan Carlson (my 5th round opponent)

Best Sport: I don't know his name

Best General: Tyler (by tie breakers, 14/15 Objectives to my 13/15)

Overall was a pretty good time. I'll have a full review up and some batreps in the next few days.

Dark Star - The List

Well now that I’m pretty darn sure I’m going to manage to get everything painted in time for Saturday it’s time I post the list I sent in for the Dark Star.

The Dark Star’s a Comin!

Well we’re about a week away from the Dark Star (http://darkstargt.com/index.html) and lists were due yesterday. I was saddened when I re-read the rules for the scoring as I noticed that if you don’t paint your own army you can’t win best overall or best painted. While I can understand not winning best painted I thought it was a little harsh about best overall. So that being said the Necrons that Reece from http://www.frontlinegaming.org/ won’t be making their first appearance. That’ll probably be reserved for a local RTT and maybe the Indy Open before Adepticon J

Since lists were due yesterday the field is pretty solid now with what people are bringing and it looks like this:

Modified Boom-Boom List - Necrons 2k

With the coming out of the FAQ I decided I'd do a bit of a redesign on my Tomb Blade list. Here is what I'm thinking would be pretty effective:

Dashofpepper: Still Alive, Updates, and Necron Rantings

Hey folks!

I’ve been incommunicado for a couple months now. I had back surgery near the end of the year – an old injury suffered while playing Army Rugby at West Point has been continually spiraling downward over the last decade, to the point where I could hardly walk, and every game of 40k played hunched over a table left me a debilitated mess (which had no small influence on my decision to booze it up as a measure of pain control).

I can walk again! I can’t lift anything heavier than 15 pounds for the next couple months, so my retinue of Imperial Titans converted into heavy duty cyber-stompas is going to have to collect dust a bit more. I joke; I don’t particularly like Apocalypse games.

All Terminator Lists Part 3: Grey Knights!

Well I’m finally finishing this out from back in July. There have been one or two people who bring it up regularly and I felt like I should complete this especially since I’ve been on such a Terminator kick this last year. You can see the other two articles here:

http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2011/07/all-terminator-lists-part-2-wolfwing.html

http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2011/07/all-terminator-lists-part-1-deathwing.html

Grey Knights are the third book that can take terminators as troops. Grey Knights are unique though in that they can take two different kinds of terminators as troops. Paladins and standard GKT’s. I’m going to split the two because I don’t think they mesh well in a single list. So we’ll start with the Paladins J

No MC List Update & Deathwing RTT Results

I know I’ve been quiet this week but it’s been a bit busy. I did get a practice game in with my Nid list seen here: http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2012/01/tyranids-1850-no-mc-starting-point-list.html

I learned quite a bit about how the army functions and supports itself. However the game was against foot orks where I made almost innumerable mistakes due to DoW and me not being familiar enough with how this type of Nid army functions. Basically I got soundly thrashed. The issue was not focusing my forces and hitting together. I should have accepted an extra turn of shooting for all of my units to hit together. Also Orks are ugly for this type of list with all the Klaws that are around and the sheer number of attacks it makes the multi-wound creatures far less survivable than normal.

Tyranids 1,850 - No MC Starting Point List

Well I said I’d be posting the a list showing where I’m starting from based on my last article. Here is the seed I hope to grow a usable army out of:

Tyranids & Me & List Design in the Age of SW, DE, & GK

First I’d say buckle in. This is going to be a long one.

Second, I have to send a damn you out to L'Etat C'Est Moi for re-sparking my interest in Nids. I fell away from them a bit after running them for most of the early part of the year last year in favor of other armies. Not because I didn’t find them competitive but because I was getting burnt out.

Nids are a funny army for me. It’s one that I tried to build back in 3^rd edition with a friend but we never finished it and the models disappeared. Neither one of us to this day knows where they went. Fast forward almost about 6ish years and I build a list for early 5^th edition using the last book. Loved it. Played it pretty heavy for quite a bit and then put it down. The new book comes out and I make a few conversions and poof, new army. I play that off and on for a bit but my Admech Daemons pull me away. Later I decide I really wanna run me some Nids so last year I played them almost exclusively for 6 months before putting them down again in favor of Space Wolves and Deathwing.

Sparked My Interest - 1850 Tyranids

Yesterdays article really got me thinking about my Tyranids. Now I'm in the process of replacing my converted Hive Guard with the actual models now that they are Fine Cast. I've slightly tweaked my list from last year to something a little more shooty to help deal with GK's since I don't want to be fighting them in CC to often. Here is one of the options I'm considering:

List Building Help: Tyranid's 1,850

So I was reading Dakka on Friday and I headed into a section I rarely head into anymore for fear of my sanity. The Army List section. I know most of you are thinking WHY? Well it kinda worked out. L'Etat C'Est Moi, who comments on here, had put up a Tyranid list for review for the upcoming Darkstar GT which I’ll also be attending. I read it and asked permission to post my response and thoughts on the blog and was given permission. Here is the list complete with the builders comments:

First RTT of the New Year is Re-Scheduled

Not the actual event itself. Just my participation. Next week will now be the first event for me. It's a prep tournament at Fantasy Flight Event Center for the upcoming Darkstar GT. Sorry guys, no batreps this week unless I get a game or two in at the local store.

Dark Angel Dual Wing - 1850

So there is an 1,850pt tournament this Saturday and I'm thinking might be fun to run:

Space Marine 1,850 - Count-As Iron Warriors

This was something I was thinking could be fun. It's something that I think is fairly competitive even against extreme builds. It also moderately fits the theme for the models I'm building.

How I’d Run Sisters of Battle – 1,850

I was just thinking up things I’d run if I had a Sisters of Battle army and this is what I came up with.

Forgeworld in 40k – My Thoughts

This was a question asked in my “What would you like to see” thread so I thought I’d throw out my views on this.

I love Forgeworld. The books are amazing and so are many of the models. I love the way it looks on the table top and I love the idea adding of new units into my various armies. Why do I say the idea? Well simply because I currently don’t invest in too many FW models that can’t be used in some capacity as a unit existing in a codex. For instance I’ve been considering picking up two Contemptor Dreads to use as Dreadknights due to how awesome they look.

Iron Within, Iron Without

So most of us have heard that the new Chaos codex might be coming out in the next 5-6 months. For most of those that don't know in 3rd edition I was an Iron Warrior nut case. It started with the Index Astartes article in WD. The look and feel of the army made me smile. Thanks to the rumors of the codex, that damned short story in the Horus Heresy anthology book, and the fact that I sold off my previously painted Iron Warrior army a year ago or so I've decided to build a new Iron Warrior army. This one painted and modeled to my current standard.