2nd place at the Guardians of Tyr 1500 point 40k tournament!

Today was the 1500 point 40k tournament at wargames workshop (not GW) in Northampton (in the UK for anyone in the states reading this). I had ballsed up before I even started playing, I'd left my bag at home with all my dice, my rulebook, my codex, my army list etc. in it. It was a bit of a panic moment, had to borrow everything except my army, cost me a tournament point :(

The tournament involved 3 games over the day with 5 turns in each game, but we only managed 4 turns in each of the games I played in. I used my Imotekh/Scarab farm combo and found it to be good only if I deployed my scarabs as close as possible to the opponent while keeping them safe. Unfortunately I was trying to play too safely for the first 2 games and the horde of scarabs never did much.

1st game was 2 random objectives each, these were kept secret from your opponent. I managed to claim one objective and my opponent had 2. If we played for another 2 minutes it would have been a draw due to me smashing his guardsmen in combat with my scarabs and pulling them off the objective. :(

Ian vs Ian, Guard vs Marines

2nd game was 5 objective on the map. I held 1 objective at the end and my opponent contested one with me. So I won that one. I managed to keep night fighting going on the whole game with Imotekh, the lightning did loads of damage, more than the rest of my army.

Unleash the Swarm! This unit of scarabs started the game as only 3 bases.

I'm gunna eat you....

Multi Melta to the face!

3rd game was kill points with table quarters deployment. I was playing against a very nicely painted Red Scorpions army played by someone who found the tournament by reading this blog :) 

I managed to get a huge horde of scarabs into combat with my opponent and they chomped through his army with the help of my spyders. In just one combat the scarabs charged into 2 squads of marines and the rhinos they were riding in before. Both the rhinos exploded and I killed a bunch of marines. Then my scarabs piled into combat getting even more into the melee and slaughtered the rest. After that combat they wandered over to the stern guard squad led by a librarian and promptly started munching on them but we had to end the game at that point. 

Overall I beat Ian McDonald by only one tournament point to claim 2nd place. It was 46 points to 45. Congrats to Ian Wardle who claimed overall victory for the tournament.

Congrats to Ian

Last game of the Alaris Dream campaign

The end is upon us!

This week saw the last game of the 40k Alaris Dream campaign at my club. Throughout the campaign we had been fighting to get relics for our special characters. Now it was time to see who'd win them in the end. 

Imotekh makes it night time. My camera makes it sunset.

The last game was a 6v6 game with 1000 points each. We had to field our special characters if they were alive. The objective of the game was to collect relics from the other characters. All of the relics were on the same side though....... so we had to kill each other to get them..... 

For this mission the special rules were: 

   Your character had to move as quickly as possible to the nearest relic

   You were allowed to attack your allies

   After turn 1 your character must roll a reserves roll. If it is passed then they teleport away from the battle to a 2'x2' table to duke it out with the other characters

 Necron Warrior: I though you were our friends

Ork: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggghhhh

As I had a relic I knew that my allies would turn on me. I kitted out Imotekh with a derpstar squad of lords, crypteks and an overlord. One cryptek had veil of darkness so I could teleport to whichever objective I wanted, one had a chronometron for re-rolls (which came very much in handy), one with an eldritch lance. The rest of my army was 3x5 warriors and 2 wraiths to annoy Mark because he loves them so much.

Imotekh has his lightning ability. As I knew everyone and their pet dog might be attacking me I decided to use his lightning  on every unit on the table that wasn't mine. All this did was kill an immolator that was nowhere near me and annoy a lot of people hehe.

A wraith proxied as my overlord because I'd left my overlord attached to his command barge at home. Doh!

The derpstar squad and Imotekh did really well. They almost killed a chaos lord who had 2 relics, killed most of his squad of CSM, killed a squad of 8 chaos termys too!! After all that they hadn't lost a single man (er necron?). The chronometron came in handy to re-roll Imotekhs teleporting away roll when I didn't want him to go. 

By turn 5 Imotekh teleported onto the small table of doom. On there already was an Ork warboss, a Chaos Lord, Typhus, a Grey Knight character, The Swarmlord and a guard Psyker character. Imotekh sucks in combat so I knew I was doomed.

Crazy things happened though. The Swarmlords psychic powers killed a 2 or 3 of the enemy characters. Imotekh killed the warboss. Imotekh then got stuck into combat with the chaos lord he'd been trying to kill all game. The chaos lord had other ideas though. He had a relic that let him re-roll failed saves and I didn't have a power weapon, so he effectively had a 2+/2+FNP! We failed to kill each other and eventually the swarmlord killed us all.

So in the end the Swarmlord won the campaign by only winning the last game. Congrats to Matt Franklin who normally doesn't have much luck playing 40k. I'm happy with how Imotekh did, he was fielded in 6 out of the 7 games in the campaign and only died at the end. He did fail his one and only we'll be back roll though grrrr.

Thanks to Ian and Barrie Wardle of Guardians of Tyr, it was great fun. If I did the campaign again I'd probably choose Mephiston instead as there was a lot of character combat involved. Now I need to finish writing the campaign I was planning......

RAFWA weekend 40k tournament fun

Last weekend I went to my first RAFWA (Royal Air Force Wargaming Association) event. It was a 3 day event at a hotel from Friday night to Sunday. There was all sorts of games being played including aerial combat, boats, historical, sci-fi, rpg and other things too. 

 

Mmm tasty trophies

I was taking part in the 40k tournament. 5 games over the 3 days. The first game was a combat patrol mission to decide who would go against who in the first proper game. The proper games were 1750 points, 2 objective missions and 2 annihilation missions. I used my Necron scarab farm army.

Imotekh, cryptek with chronometron, 7 warriors all in a ghost ark.

7 warriors in a ghost ark.

Overlord with warscythe in a command barge.

6 wraiths with whip coils.

11 scarabs in 2 squads.

9 canoptek spyders in 3 squads. 

 Canoptek Goodness

The first game I played was against Dark Angels. It was a 400 point combat patrol mission with victory points (not kp). I won this game using some warriors and 6 wraiths with whip coils. Wraiths are still awesome!

The 2nd game (1750) I played was against Dark Eldar. We had a dawn of war annihilation mission. I decided to go 2nd and keep my entire army off table. The Dark Eldar came right up close to my board edge on turn 1, big mistake. 1st thing I did was bring on my command barge, 24 inches and sweep attack over his transport holding a bunch of incubi. The transport died, yay. Then I brought on the rest of my army. By the first turn assault phase I had my 6 wraiths in combat with one wych squad, 6 tomb spyders in combat with his incubi and his other wych squad had been decimated by gauss fire. In the 2nd turn he charged his archon into combat with my spyders, prompty failed to wound them and failed all but one of his 2+ inv saves, getting instant squished in the process. The rest of the game pretty much carried on like this except for his flyer which refused to die even with a whole necron army trying to kill it for 2 turns.

3rd game was against Dark Angels. I didn't know anyone still played DA and I got to play against 2 at this event! His army had 3 squads of termys as troops and some other shooty stuff. First couple of turns I took a pummelling from his shooting. Then the termys came down and I thought it was game over. But I still had a formidable amount of scarabs being built. I'd built of a squad of 30+ scarab bases and they'd pretty much taken the entire right half of the table by themselves, this was the area with no termys though. From the middle to the left half of the table 2 squads of termys held 2 objectives and there was a squad between them. Somehow my scarabs in the space of 3 turns managed to wipe through these 3 squads. Eventually I was contesting the far left objective with about 10 bases of scarabs and one terminator. There were no other Dark Angels left alive and I held one objective with about 4 warriors and Imotekh. Victory!

4th game was a particularly laboured and painful exercise. It was a game against a guard mech army. So far every opponent he'd played against got really pissed off with him and I was no exception. I nearly scraped a draw. It was a game of 2 objectives, one in each deployment zone. I had managed to destroy his troops controlling his one and nearly contested the one in my zone but he had a chimera with a vet squad in it. Sometimes I have fun loosing and sometimes I don't enjoy winning. This was definitely a game I did not enjoy at all. I'm not going to make any accusations about things being done wrong on here.

 

Instant killing power weapons...... oh crap....

I love command barges now!

5th game was a kill point game against Grey Knights being played by a GW manager. I lost this game entirely but I had fun doing it and that's what matters in a game. He didn't use any vehicles, it was mostly terminators. His army was the best painted army I played against too which made it better. I did manage to do some strange things in this game. Imotekh single handedly beat a squad of terminators in combat, bear in mind he doesn't have a power weapon. My scarabs managed to remove the armour save from his boss character before they died, he then got shot by gauss and died. 

 Whats that coming over the hill? Is it a Grey Knight, is it a Grey Kniiiiight?

It was a great event. We had dinner provided and other things to keep us occupied in the evenings. My gf had a bit too much to drink and we went to a very bizarre chinese restaurant where the waiter didn't know what soy sauce was or what green tea looked like. In the tournament I came 3rd somehow and got a nice trophy, the annoying guard army came first and the Grey Knights I lost to came 2nd. I did manage to claim 2nd in 2 painting categories as well but I didn't get a trophy for that :(   I found that canoptek scarabs and spyders aren't as good in a tournament as I thought they'd be, too many people know how to kill them quickly for my liking.

I look forward to the next RAFWA event in October.

Tournament army finally painted

I've spent the last 3 nights finishing off my necron tournament army. Had a ton of scarabs to do. Painted some scenery too for the tournament. Looking forward to the RAF wargaming association tournament on Saturday. I don't want to see a paint pot again for at least a week...... still got a tomb stalker to do and some puppetswar wraiths........

Anyway, the only thing people are really interested in is pics (sorry about slight fuzzy):

Game 5 of the Alaris Dream campaign - Imotekh Lives Again!

Last nights game was the penultimate game of the club campaign. Due to issues with numbers on the Imperial side 2 of our games had to be changed to 3000 points Imperial vs 2x 1500 point bad guys. I was allied with Orks against 3000 points of Blood Angels.

My list was:

Imotekh, Destuction Cryptek with Gaze of Flame and chronometron cryptek attached to 20 warriors

Overlord with warscythe in Command Barge

2x 8 warriors with 2x Destruction crypteks in 2x Ghost Arks

4x Wraiths, 3 with Whip coils

Ork list was:

Warboss with Power Klaw

3x 30 boyz squads with a nob with power klaw and boss pole

10x burna boyz

6x deffkoptas with rokkits

Blood Angels (2x force orgs):

2x captains with lightning claws

1x sanguinary priest

1x furioso dread with blood talons in drop pod

3x scout squads

2x land raiders

2x vindicators

2x stormravens

1x predator with autocannon and lascannons

1x baal predator with the burny flame template thing

1x big assault squad

The game itself was an objective game with 5 objectives on the table. We were meant to play with a weird rule that meant all infantry (including jump infanty and bikes) would come back on as reserves. We canned this rule because our game was taking forever anyway and this would have made it insane.

Deployment was table quarters on a normal 6' x 4' table. This made it very hard to deploy 3000 points on either side. My deployment being squished to the side of our quarter effectively meant I was kept out of the game. The Orks filled a lot of our deployment and the Blood Angels were struggling for space too, too many orks and too many large BA vehicles.

Before the game started we all had ambushes to do as per the previous games in the campaign. I rapid fired 20 warriors into a land raider hoping to immobilise it. I got 5 glancing hits! I then failed to get anything higher than a stunned, even with the chronometron reroll on one of them! GAH! The orks managed to kill a vindicator with their ambush and the blood angels killed one of my wraiths, Mark really hates my wraiths XD

Once the game got started it was a very long and slow game. I'll just go over the highlights.

The orks moved towards the enemy as orks are wont to do. The Blood Angels mostly held back. I tried to get round to the enemy but we only got 4 turns in so I never really got there.

Imotekhs lightning killed a stormraven and immobilised a land raider.

The drop podding dreadnought slaughtered a squad of 30 orks but didn't do much else.

Imotekhs squad got charged in the last turn by a squad of 5 marines, because I had a crytpek with Gaze of Flame he didn't get a charge bonus so I only took 10 attacks which killed one warrior, I then hit back and did nothing. For the first time ever my warriors actually passed the morale check and stayed in combat, I just wish I had a power weapon in the squad somewhere.

I don't really think anything else spectacular happened. It was mostly a game of kill the orks or be killed by them.

My Necrons were pretty much ignored all game, which meant I still had 3 troops by the end to claim objectives. I had one ghost ark on an objective, one which I believe had an objective but there was a difference of opionions on it and one squad of 20 warriors on an objective but in the last turn they were charged which pulled them away from it. The Blood angels held one objective too. The objectives were worth d666 points each, I got 400 ish and the Blood angels got 100 ish, so we effectively won anyway. I only got 2 kill points in the end and I haven't a clue what the other 2 got but it was certainly much more than me.

We finished at 2300 and I still had an hour drive to get home :'( sooo tired today!

Apologies for the funny coloured and sometimes fuzzy pics. We were in a dark corner of the room and my cheapo camera had difficulties with it.

 

Game 4 of the Alaris Dream campaign

Today's game was a random objective game. There were 5 games on 6'x4' boards with one on one 1500 point games. There were 5 markers on each table, one in each quarter and one in the middle. Everyone was handed secret objective cards that were for their eyes only. The card detailed which 2 objectives were yours. Due to the secret and random nature of it some players had objectives in their opponents deployment zone and I'm sure some would have both players going for at least one of the same objective.

Each of the 5 tables had different terrain and this in turn had different effects on the game. Our force commander had asked us previously in the week if there were any preferences as to which board we wanted to play on. I picked the swamp board. The swamp counts the entire board, minus hills, as difficult terrain that grants 4+ cover. There's also a chance of your models being eaten by a swamp monster. I picked this board specifically so I could pull some C'Tan Writhing Worldscape shenanigans with Imotekhs nightfight and some scarab farming.

I won the roll to pick sides and go first. We could pick any side of the table. So I picked one of the short sides to keep Imotekh as far away from the enemy as possible. If he died then he'd be gone from the campaign permanently. 

My opponent was Space Wolves. His army was mech mainly with a squad of long fangs and a dreadnought.

Before the game started I had an ambush tactic to use. I decided on ambushing his Long Fangs with Imotekh's warrior squad. Imotekh's flamer attack massacred the squad killing 3 of the missile launchers. The relic Imotekh gained in the last battle came in use for the return barrage of fire. 2 missile launchers and a bolt pistol fired at Imotekh and his squad. The bolt pistol missed and the shot was reflected back, killing the sergeant (Yay relic!), one of the missile's was save due to cover, the other knocked down a warrior who promptly got back up again. The 2 remaining Long Fangs then cacked their britches and decided to leg it in the opposite direction but they regrouped at the beginning of the game.

Once the game got started it pretty much revolved around me getting my close combat elements to the enemy while Imotekh blatted things with lightning. He killed 2 rhinos and a razorback. Probably the best he's ever done with it. But the important thing was that the nightfight was keeping away fire from my warriors which were sitting nicely on objectives.

My Wraiths got to the enemy first but had been decimated by Vindicator fire by the time they got there. They managed to destroy the main gun on the vindicator before finally falling to their injuries. 

A turn later my scarabs got to the enemy. The didn't really kill much except for the dreadnought, taking 20 off its armour value lol. They mainly acted as a tar pit for the 2 squads of wolves and the lord that had got out of exploding rhinos.

My C'Tan killed a lone dude and I then made a hideous tactical error and charged him into a combat already going on with a horde of scarabs and wolves. The scarabs died in droves, loosing combat by 12. The poor C'Tan, after taking not a single wound, then fell due to fearless saves. He only killed one marine with his explosion :( After this his effect of making terrain dangerous was lost.

After this all happened, the Spyders finally made it into combat. They didn't do much either. They did manage to chomp through a few marines but eventually they had all fallen bar one that was in combat with the Wolf Lord.

At the end of the game my warriors had been sitting on their objectives the whole time and I'd kept the Wolves at bay. They held one objective and I held 2. I got 6 kill points and he got 5. Each objective was worth d666 (3d6 sort of) points, due to some lucky rolling I ended up with over 1200 points :D

It was a fun game but I really ballsed up with the C'Tan. I could have put the scarabs onto better targets too. I didn't realise that Space Wolves are so damn annoying in combat against mediocre combat units like scarabs.

Game 2 of the club campaign

I forgot my camera so no pics today.

Last night was an awesome, fun and truly bizarre game. I'll try to describe it as best I can. First off, I was a bit hyper from a crazy drive to make sure I got to the club as quickly as possible as I finished work later than normal. I got held up by an accident on the A1 and my car ran out of fuel near the club due to a dodgy fuel guage. I made it there half an hour late buzzing from adrenaline and having not eaten much. I dread to think how annoying I was last night.

Anyway, on to the game. It was a 3v3 game for random objectives. We had to search buildings instead of shooting and on a d6 roll of a 6 there was an objective. Also to make things way more crazy there was a set of tunnels underground accessible via buildings in the main table. These tunnels were represented with space hulk terrain on another table. The rooms in the tunnels were also possible objectives. We also had restictions to our force org, we can only have 1 elite/fast/heavy/hq if we take 2 troops, 2 if we take 3 troops or 3 if we take 4 troops. In this game each player only had 750 points, so the restrictions were quite limiting. We also had restrictions on max wounds, MCs, saves and vehicle armour.

On my side (the bad guys), I had necrons led by imotekh, 20 warriors, cryptek with chronometron and 5 wraiths with whip coils. Dale had orks, 90 boyz and a warboss. Jon had nurgley chaos marines and some plague bearers.

On the enemy side the corpse gods followers had: Blood angels led by Dante, lots of jump pack stuff and space wolves with erm wolfy stuff and long fangs.

Imotekh messed up the game quite a bit. We stole the initiative because of him and he made it night fight for the first 3 turns meaning we barely got shot at all. His lightning was a bit pants, killing only 7 or 8 marines I think.

The whole game revolved around trying to get guys into the tunnels and our armies moving towards the middle of the table. Two objectives were found and held by our side in the tunnels and one was found and held by the space doggies. My necrons fared alright, I lost 2 wraiths and a handful of warriors. My wraiths killed a captain and a squad of honour guard barely taking a scratch from them. The orks died in droves, kind of what orks do though. The nurgle forces did well holding 2 objectives and killing Dante.

The blood angels died in droves too but the space wolves did well, killing loads of orks.

So in the end the bad guys won. Dante now can't come back for the rest of the campaign (yay). Imotekh survived to fight another day. It was an amazing game. Haven't had this much fun playing 40k for a while. Congrats to the Guardians of Tyr for organizing it. Thanks Ian and Barrie.

I hope this wasn't too rambling or incoherent. I'm knackered and relying on my iPhone to autocorrect and hopefully make this all make sense lol.

Cryptek painted, Imotekh too

I've painted the cryptek now. He looks alright for a cheap and nasty quick conversion. The question is can I be bothered to make more of them. I might just use my pariahs as crypteks as they don't have any use now.

I painted Imotekh last week or the week before I think. Not the most complicated or dramatic paint job but it'll do. I find it hard to make necrons look spectacular as I only really use 3 colours on them; boltgun metal, brazen brass or dwarf bronze and blood red for the faces. Painting the Imotekh model has led me to redoing all the bases for my necrons lol. They were just unpainted sand but I've decided to go with the grey, like my Blood Angels.