226: Necrons vs. Space Marines

Game played!

Brief batrep from the game I played a week or so ago against the new marines.  I've included a very brief battle report below, but due to the shop closing, we could only get in 2 turns so its pretty short.

Marines:

            Chapter Master with Honour Guard

            Librarian

            3 x Tac squads with Meltaguns and Lascannon

            5 Scouts (Bolters and Heavy Bolter with Hellfire)

            10 Sternguard

            Dreadnought with Lascannon and Missiles

            10 Assault marines

            10 Devestators – 2 Missile Launchers, 2 Lascannon

            Predator Destructor

            Autocannon Hunter/Stalker variant

My Necrons

            Trazyn the infinite

            2 Destruction Crypteks

            1 veil Cryptek

            1 Lord

            2 x 9 Warriors in Arks

            8 Warriors

            10 Immortals with Gauss

            2 x 3 Heavy Destroyers

            3 x Annihilation Barges

Game was Dawn of War (long table edges) and Purge the Alien (kill points) so about as straight forward as possible.

The Marines went first, their setup, from left to right (my point of view):

Stalker/hunter, Devestators, Tac squad, Dreadnought, Assault Marines, Chapter Master, Tac squad, gap for a building, Tac squad, Predator.  The scouts infiltrated forward in front of the predator, and the Sternguard and Librarian were waiting in the Drop Pod.

221: One Force at 1500pts

I can't quite believe it myself, but I've got One Force almost all the way to 1500pts.  In their most basic setup, without any unnecessary extras, the force is up to 1420pts, so I'm sure if I tart a few of them up with some extras I could get it to 1500pts if I wanted for a game.  It seemed only appropriate to take some shots of the whole force as it stands now.

211: Off to Blog Wars 5

This weekend, I'll be attending Blog Wars 5, so I'm posting up my list for anyone who might be going to get a look at and be ready for.  Blog Wars is 1850pts, and a Special Character is required for your primary force.  Your special character counts as a scoring unit in the games, and gives up an extra Kill Point when he dies, so is pretty important.  I hadn't read those bits of the rules pack last time I went, so thought I was being really clever that time taking Trazyn the Infinite, as he counts as scoring.  Of course when I did read the pack, it made my choice a little less useful.

202: Throne of Skulls - Result!

Well last weekend I attended GW's Throne of Skulls up at Warhammer World with my Necrons, and I still can't quite believe it but I came away not only with a Sportsmanship Award (joint with 8 others all of whom had 3 of their 5 opponents vote them favourite opponent), but also managed to bring home Best Necron General (thanks to those same sportsmanship awards).

201: Throne of Skulls

This weekend I'm off to Throne of Skulls at Warhammer World.  This'll be my first Games Workshop run tournament, so it'll be a new experience if nothing else.  I've read all the hype and hate that goes along with this but I'm going to try and keep as open a mind as possible and just enjoy it for what it seems to be, an excuse to play 5 games over 2 days.

Wulfen in 6th?

A development in the saga of the Space Wolves that I sadly missed whileout of the hobby was the Eye of Terror campaign that GW ran during 3rd edition, and the addition of Wulfen and the 13th Company army list.

How cool are Wulfen, seriously.  Space Wolves that have lost their rag, been subsumed by the wolf within and now exist in a semi-feral state, chasing the forces of Chaos over 10,000 years and throughout the Eye of Terror.  You just know that Chaos is fleeing terrified that these guys might one day catch up and give them a serious kicking.

It helps of course that the models are some of the nicest GW ever made.

Blog Wars 4, Lifts to Mansfield, and Sunday at Warhammer World

I'm going to Blog Wars 4, are you?  Seriously, I made it to the first and have missed the last two due to other commitments so I'm really excited to be heading back to Blog Wars for my second time.  Alex, From the Fang, runs a fantastic tournament, it'll be full 6th Edition, and you have to take a Special Character in your force.  Its a relaxed tournament (although there are those that take it seriously, looking at you Ven ;) and a whole heap of fun.

I'll be driving up on the Friday, and returning on the Sunday, I'll be hiring a car so if anyone around the Oxford/London/West Midlands area needs a lift they should let me know as I'd be happy to car share for the weekend.

I'd also like to see if anyone is interested in a day at Warhammer World on the Sunday, if there's interest then I'll book us some tables to use the good ones with designed scenery, I'll even try and come up with some scenarios based on the armies if people want.  You can check the tables available at WHW here.

Battlescribe

First post while I'm away, I may not be able to respond to comments till I return on the 23rd September.

For anyone out there looking for an army list builder, I'd highly recommend you take a look at Battlescribe.  Its a great little bit of kit, built on Java so it is completely platform independent (unlike pretty much every other army list builder which are limited either to Windows, or Windows and Mac), very easy to use, and Jon Taylor does a fantastic job of both maintaining and updating the software.  There is even a mobile version of the editor so that you can keep and edit army lists on your tablet/phone for ease of use down at the gaming table.  It'll also output army lists in various formats for taking to tournaments.

Wolf Guard in 6th

In 5th, it was a no-brainer to take a Wolf Guard to lead a squad, and of course the only way to arm them was to give them a power fist and combi-melta.  However, with the advent of 6th and challenges in close combat, that Wolf Guard choice involves a lot more thought.  Now, I'm not exactly a tactical genius, but I'm going to try and consider a few of the possibilities you may face, and what kind of weapon options you may want to take.

With the new rules, you can't pick out a character that has joined a squad when in combat, so the provision for a power fist isn't quite as important.  Couple this with the greater ease in attaching a grenade to a vehicle/walker now and there is even less reason to take a power fist at all in your squad.  As far as a challenge is concerned, what is most important about the opponent you are facing is Initiative, and I'm going to split things up into whether a Wolf Guards Initiative of 4 is greater than the character you will be in a challenge with, or if it is equal or less, and labelling the likely loadout you may want to use too.

They're behind you...

After a game a few weeks back when my wolf-scouts were stars of the show again, a guy down at the local club challenged me to come up with a 1750 list with as much outflank in it as possible (limited to the SW codex and the models I own).   

I've only managed to get in 2 games with it so far, but I'm quite enjoying playing it as it is somewhat different and it confuses players as they aren't sure how to deal with it.  I thought I'd post it up here and a few thoughts on it, to see what others thought of it.

Roughnecks Army List

I've been thinking a little about how I'd put together my guard army to represent elements of the Starship Troopers mobile infantry. Some things are pretty obvious, like including lots of bodies, auto-cannons, grenade launchers etc.  They there are the characters from the films and which special characters in the guard codex could be used to represent them fluff-wise or by effect on the game.

Final Blogwars List

Right, the list is finalised, its been submitted, and I'm just about to book a hotel for the Saturday and a car to get me to BlogWars.  If anyone needs a lift from anywhere between the Oxford area and Mansfield let me know, I'll be happy to pick you up on the way.

I'll be heading up on the Saturday in the morning, planning on spending that day in Warhammer World as I've never been and am very interested to see the place.  Looks like Atreides and some mates are going to be there that day too so should be able to get in some warm-up games.  Anyway, onto the list:

Revised BlogWars List

So I've played a few games with my Njal Stormcaller Blogwars list, and to put it frankly, I just don't like it.  I had a victory against an all foot guard list, and lost to a Dark Eldar list and a couple of others.  I just couldn't get used to running Njal in a way that would protect him long enough to make the most of his powers, I missed having two priests so being able to cast the same power twice and the area of board that I could cover.  I guess I'm just a little too keen to get my Wolves into the thick of things.  In the past, I've really enjoyed running Ragnar with a group of Terminators, sometimes out of a Land Raider, when I've needed to bump my usual lists up to higher points for opponents, so I think I'm going to fall back on that kind of Special Character use - I just find it more fun.  However, if you've seen my Twitters, you'll notice that I haven't been working on Ragnar...

Blog Wars - I'm going, are you?

I'm going to Blog Wars!

For those that haven't yet heard of this, and if you haven't, where have you been?  Blog Wars is being run by Alex over at From The Fang and is aimed at getting together members of the UK blogging community (non-bloggers are welcome too of course) for a relaxed tournament, a chance to meet up with all those names we know from blogs but may never have met, and throw down on the tables and "see who's best" ;)  It's going to be at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield on Sunday 5th June.  To try and help out, I've set up a Google Group for people to use to for organising lifts, nights out etc, you can find it here.

EDIT:  Second list added for consideration.

Space Wolves Terminators

From GW, used without permission

Until recently, my local club almost always played 1500pt games, and as such I had a 1500pt list.  In fact, I've got a list here which goes all the way from 500pts to 1500pts incrementally which is pretty much all I ever use.  However the last couple of weeks, both of my opponents have wanted to play 2000pt games, and so I've had to try and find another 500 pts.  Rummaging around in my army case the best/most effective way I could think to add those points in was with some terminators and a special character, ideally Ragnar.  Another option is to put the terminators in a Land Raider but as I didn't have one with me that wasn't possible.

Outflanking wolf list of DOOM!!!

Used without permission, will remove if requested

So last night after games night, a few of us had a jar or two and chewed the fat over random GW related stuff.  One of the things that came up was a possible loop-hole kind of thing in the Space Wolves codex (I know, shock, horror).  In the description of Saga of the Hunter it says "Infantry only" and where it can be selected in the Army List section there is a little * and at the bottom of the page it says it can only be taken by those in power armour that aren't either on a bike or using a jump pack.  In the Wargear section it does say that those who take a Thunderwolf mount count as cavalry, so in reality the following list won't work.  However there are those that would say that since in the Army List section it specifically singles out bikes and jump pack but not thunderwolves that its allowed - really lame reasoning, not one I'd use, but this is all a bit of fun and got us thinking about what kind of army you could build based on this.  So, considering the models I already have at my disposal we're going to see if we can try this out sometime in the future.  The list I'll take is:

Wolftastic List

Image from the Space Wolves Codex - © GW

Adam over at Space Wolves Grey has posted up his Razorwolves list in part in comment to the fact that pretty much all Space Wolf lists in the UK are converging on a single principle list of Grey Hunters in Rhinos accompanied by some Rune Priests and Long Fangs.  I'm as guilty as the next man for building similar lists in part because they are just so versatile and work extremely well.  However, its not the only list out there, and so for your consideration, I present the "Wolftastic" list:

Canis Wolfborne  + 2 Fenrisian Wolves

205 pts

Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf, thunder-hammer, storm-shield, 2 Fenrisian Wolves and all the trimmings

275 pts

Iron Priest on Thunderwolf  + 4 Cyberwolves

170 pts

3 x 

Wolf Guard, power-fist, combi-melta

5 Grey Hunters, meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen, Wolf Standard

Razorback (of your choice between twin Las, Assault Cannon or Las-Plas)

223 pts each

4 Thunderwolf Cavalry, thunder-hammer, 2 x storm-shields

290 pts

2 x

8 Fenrisian Wolves

64 pts each

Which totals 1737 leaving a few extra points to allocate to something or other.  The idea is the two units of Fenrisian Wolves join Canis and the Lord, and them, the Thunderwolves and Iron Priest all charge forward and get in amongst the enemy and cause huge amounts of carnage.  With Canis all the Fenrisian Wolves and Cyberwolves are going at I5 and the enemy has to divide its attention between 4 extremely hard hitting units.  Meanwhile, the Grey Hunters in the Razorbacks (and I'd suggest going with the lascannon option on the Razorbacks for some ranged anti-armour) tool around in the back field securing objectives and mopping up.  Thats 7 Thunderwolves, 20 Fenrisian wolves and 4 Cyberwolves all going at I5 and a whole lot more.

You could also lose the Fenrisian wolves from Canis and the Lord, the 4th Thunderwolf, the Wolf Standards from the Grey Hunters and reduce the Fenrisian Wolf packs to 5 minimum each and have room for another Iron Priest with Cyberwolves.

I haven't played this list, but would love to put one together and see how destructive it could be.  What do you think?

Help finding tournaments

Image used without permission from WestGamer

I'm wondering if anyone out there can help me.  I think I'm starting to get my army up to a half-decent level of units that I'd be happy to put on the table, I've got most of my 1000 - 1500 pt force painted to a tabletop level and thought I may try my hand at playing in a tournament or two, just to see what it is like.  Problem is I don't know where to find out about what tournaments are on.

Does anyone know of a centralised location (or small number of locations) that you can look to to find out what and where tournaments are on throughout the year (preferably for the UK of course) so I can see if there are any that fit the bill for what I'm looking for.  There must be some way that people find out about tournaments but I know it certainly isn't through any part of the GW website that I can find.

Thanks for any help, bG

Some general progress

Hey there everyone - I'd love to do a big shiny update of my progress, I've been working away, but haven't got anything major to show for it as its been a lot of detail work.

I hope to be able to show you some shiny new figures soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd post up my new army tracker that I'll be using to figure out what I need to be able to field the armies I listed in my previous post.  I got this idea from Admiral Drax who has been using it for ages to help him visualise how close he is to completing his epicly large Guard company.  Here's my painting chart:

I'll be trying to keep this updated as I go so I can see how close I am getting to my ideal Wolf army.

A scaling Wolf list

At the local GW there doesn't seem to be a set points value that people play - 1500 pts is a bit of a standard, but you are almost as equally likely to end up playing a 500 pts game as a 2250 pts game.  I've lost count of the number of times I've gone down with a list built to a specific points value to end up having to alter it on the fly to be able to get a game.

To that end, I've tried to put together a series of lists at 250 pts intervals using the models I have available at the moment to cover all the bases.  I'm putting them here to garner comments on them to see if there are ways that they could be improved (bearing in mind that I'm using models I have available, not all of them, but for some options I'd have to build new stuff).

500 pts

Rune Priest  (100)

8 Grey Hunters:  meltagun, MotW, powerfist, rhino  (200)

8 Grey Hunters:  meltagun, MotW, powerfist, rhino  (200)

750 pts

Rune Priest  (100)

Rune Priest  (100)

3 Wolf Guard:  3 powerfists, 2 combi-meltas  (124)

8 Grey Hunters:  meltagun, MotW, rhino  (175)

8 Grey Hunters:  meltagun, MotW, rhino  (175)

5 Blood Claws  (75)

1000 pts

Rune Priest  (100)

Rune Priest  (100)

3 Wolf Guard:  3 powerfists, 2 combi-meltas  (124)

Lone Wolf:  storm-shield, MotW  (65)

8 Grey Hunters:  meltagun, MotW, wolf standard, rhino  (185)

8 Grey Hunters:  meltagun, MotW, wolf standard, rhino  (185)

6 Blood Claws:  meltagun  (95)

6 Long Fangs:  2 heavy-bolters, 2 missile launchers, lascannon  (145)

1250 pts

As above +

4 Thunderwolves:  thunder-hammer, storm-shield  (260)

(4 pts over)

1500 pts

As above +

Wolf Lord:  frost-weapon, thunderwolf, Belt of Russ, wolf tooth necklace, wolf tail talisman saga of the bear  (245)

extra combi-melta for the Wolf Guard

So are these lists that would work?  Where would you perhaps change them to improve their effectiveness?  Are they even legal (I'm pretty sure they are, but I've made mistakes in the past so I'm never sure).