My next army

So back in June before 6th edition hit and vehicles were still all the rage i got the urge to start a Imperial Guard army. I figured all my Grey Knight army lists lean towards shooting anyway so why not get an army with lots of big guns?

I didn't want a plain ole boring green Imperial Guard army though, i wanted to do something i hadn't seen before... Russian Imperial Guard. Red tanks with the hammer and sickle, Russian looking troops, the whole big thing a i wanted a red thunderous tide of tanks roaring across the battlefield... and then 6th edition hit and added "hull points"

But not all was lost, Imperial Guard in my opinion are going to fair extremely well in 6th edition. Cheap troops will allow me to field a large number of options in an edition that will be all about the ground troops, cheap strong flyer's in the Vendetta, and while my idea of squadrons of Sentinels or Banewolve's cruising across the battlefield doesn't look to be the best idea any more, my Basilisks and Manticores hiding behind my lines should still be able to dish out punishment without getting too many hull points stripped away (especially with indirect fire). Leman Russ's may not have the survivability they used to (which is a shame because i really want to field some Demolisher's against the large number of Terminators i expect to see) but i will just have to do some play testing to see for sure.

Building the Russian front

So over the last month or so I've been assembling my army and this is what I've got to show for it thus far

not to bad of a start, I've still got about 5 sentinels to assemble which I'm not in a huge rush to do with their depleted survivability in 6th edition, another Leman Russ which I'm probably going to make a demolisher (giving me two) as the Plasma Executioner is very expensive points wise (and GW seems to have made the model in such a way as magnetizing the barrel would make it look stupid)

I also have what i have dubbed the Apocalypse backlog to deal with...

A Shadowsword and a Baneblade which again I'm not in a huge rush to do since I'm going to have to wait a year for the next big Apocalypse game around here and i currently have no idea what variant out of the half dozen options or so i want to do. I'll probably need to get one ready for "TANKSgiving" but I've got a few months for that.

The second picture is parts to make about 6 or 7 basic Leman Russ's i scored off Ebay for cheap. Unfortunately they are the MKI or MKII variety and the tracks are a bit of a pain to line up perfectly, the upside is they came with enough armored track guards to outfit my whole army if i wanted to (the new Leman Russ's don't have them)

You by now may have said to yourself  "Jason, tanks are awesome but where are your troops!?" well here they are.

However Cadians which may be the best bang for your buck look about as Russian as Britney Spears, which leaves me with either Valhallans or Vostroyans.

Valhallans

Vostroyans

My Initial plan was to make the Vostroyans my Veterans and get some Valhallans for basic troops, so i ordered 4 sets of Vostroyans and a Vostroyan command squad from my local game store Battlegroundgames.com (shameless plug), Unfortunately 2 days after i ordered them GW changed their availability from 24hrs to 3-4 weeks.

So for the past month I've been keeping my eye on Ebay for Vostroyans and Valhallans but they aren't exactly popular Imperial Guard choices so they tend to pop up rarely. Found a large lot of Valhallans in the UK but they went for almost the same cost as from GW and i didn't want to pay international shipping on a bunch of metal figures. This week i scored however, a guy unloading a HUGE lot of Vostryoans here in the good old U S of A, and i got about 70 of them for a steal. That coupled with the Vostroyans i ordered from Battlegrounds (whenever GW decides to ship them) i should be all set for all the troops i could need.

First battle report of 6th edition!

Grey Knights vs Space Wolves 1850

So i think this was my fourth or fifth 6th edition game, learned most of the basic 6e rules up until now, learned a few more during this game. As this is my first blogged battle report and since i rarely play against Space Wolves please forgive the all the names i am about to forget and/or mangle

My roster

HQ1: Draigo

HQ2: Coteaz

Troop1: Paladins x7, 2 psycannons, Brotherhood Banner

Troop2: Warband:  Warrior Acolytes x4 w/ 3 Plasma Guns, Chimera

Troop3: Warband:  Warrior Acolytes x4 w/ 3 Plasma Guns, Chimera

Elite1: Purifiers x10, 4 Psycannons, 5 Halberds, 1 hammer

Fast Attack1: Stormraven, TL Lascannon, TL MultiMelta

Heavy1: Dreadknight w/ Heavy Incinerator 

Heavy2: Dreadknight w/ Heavy Incinerator 

Total: 1847

The plan for the list

Have the purifiers off to a side for fire support or if it was objective based to have Draigo make them scoring and combat squad

Send the 2 chimeras with the plasma guns after any terminators or equivalent, (hoping cheap guys with ap2 guns would make a good suicide squad

Send the deathstar up the middle consisting of Dragio, the Paladins and Coteaz up the middle

Have the Dreadknights flanking the Draigo-bomb and dealing with any threats accordingly 

Coteaz rolls for Psychic powers: Divination tree (anything less would be uncivilized)

1st roll: "Perfecting Timing" (the Draigo-bomb's guns ignore cover) not to bad but I'd rather have "Prescience" (Draigo-Bomb re-rolls ALL failed to hit rolls)

2nd roll: "Forewarning" (4+ invulnerable save for the Draigo-Bomb

Draigo's Grand Strategy lets the Paladins re-roll 1s to wound

My Opponent

This is where it's going to get sloppy because i forget names and know jack about Space Wolves

HQ: named dreadnought that costs 280 points (i shall dub him Bob)

10man squad w/Rhino

10man squad w/Rhino

10man squad w/Rhino

10man squad w/Rhino

5man Terminator squad on foot

Dreadnought

Dreadnought

The Battle!

The Mission: Purge the Alien 

Deployment: Hammer and Anvil (short table edge deployment

Primary: 1 point for each enemy unit completely destroyed

Secondary: Slay the warlord, First blood, Linebreaker

I win the roll of and elect to go first, deploy my troops pretty much the way i planned to since there is minimal cover, Stormraven is sitting in reserve

My opponent sets up across from me spread out pretty well across the line of scrimmage, he fails to seize and the battle is on!

Turn 1:

Night fighting, i hate night fighting but since I'm running up the middle with Draigo and friends it's not terrible. Move everybody up into firing positions and start taking some pot-shots at the shadows

My Warrior Acolytes in the Chimera start taking some plasma shots at his dreads and pretty much all miss horribly, about the only thing i get done in turn one is my Purifiers take out a rhino and make 10 of his troops walk

His turn, he disembarks all his rhinos (seemed odd to me that he bought transports and they didn't move the entire game but oh well) moves his guys into position and starts his shooting.

I escape relativity well with 2 wounds to my paladins, a chimera stunned in the back and half my purifiers wiped out

Turn 2: 

Draigo casts Psychic Communion to hopefully get the Stormraven here a little faster but it proves unnecessary as it shows up with a 6!

I see Bob the dreadnought HQ almost on my Dreadknight and figure i should knock him down a few pegs so i fire up the TL Lascannon in the Stormraven and... roll double 1s /facepalm

The MultiMelta is out of range so i launch a mindstrike missile to take out a single marine (pesky no psychers in his army) 

The surviving Purifiers including all 4 psycannons (they were in the back row for a reason) didn't move and unload on a 10 man squad taking out 4-5, while the 2 dreadknights move into position and take out another 5-6 marines between their two heavy incinerators, the Paladins manage to knock a couple hull points off a dreadnought and are not quite close enough to assault 

Perhaps the dreadnought would of died if i had remembered Coteaz has been casting his two shiny new powers on them each turn allowing them to re roll ALL misses... oops lol

My Warrior Acolytes continue to be unimpressive with their Plasma guns even at double tap range with their mighty BS 3... i guess you get what you pay for, i believe they did take out one terminator

and i turn it over to him, my opponent moves closer and does some shooting all around knocking a wound off a dreadknight and another off a paladin. On to assaults! 

Bob the HQ and about 5 marines move into base to base with a dreadknight and the remainder of the terminators assault a Chimera, surprisingly the chimera lived to fight another turn without it's multi-laser and with only a single hull point. The big actions was over between Bob and his boys and my Dreadknight, his marines couldn't do much against my toughness 6 and i was directing my attacks at Bob scoring a glance and a pen resulting with Bob blowing sky high (even after re-rolling since Bob was venerable)

Turn 3:

The heat is on now with Bob dead, Coteaz continues to roll psychic checks like a champ and not getting any perils (all the more dangerous nowadays in 6th edition) My purifiers unload on an untouched ten man squad decimating it with SEVEN rends out of 16 Psycannon shots along with a few storm bolter shots.

The Warrior Acolytes finally earn their pay taking out 3 more Terminators with Plasma fire and a Dreadknight picks a fight with a Dreadnought, i decide to try a multi-assault (since I've yet to do one in 6th edition) the bulk of the Paladins go after the 2 space marine survivors of their own twin linked psycannon barrage, while Draigo and another gets in on the fun with a quad locked into assault with a dreadknight

now that we are in assault and rolling dice i remember i forgot to fire anything from my Stormraven this turn... oops again

The Dreadknight and the Paladins clean up the marines and consolidate to the middle of the board

Turning it over to my Opponent he launches a Plasma salvo from one of his squads and manages to take out two Paladins since i can't roll "Look out Sir!" rolls to save my live... or in this case Paladin Steve's life. His remaining terminator picks a fight with a Dreadknight with 2 wounds left on him

Turn 4:

This was the last turn, the Stormraven blew up his last Dread with some TL Lascannon goodness, the Purfiers killed off the last of one of his squads, Dreadknght number 2 another, the paladins blew up a Rhino, the Multilaser on the other Chimera another, and his last Terminator was taken down by the Dreadknight


It was a pretty decisive win for me but i still identified a lot of things that didn't work and several that worked quite well

The Warrior Acolytes and the Chimeras

97 points x2 wasted? their BS3 made the plasma shots almost useless, both Chimeras survived to the end but that was more luck and his ignoring the second one. With Coteaz in your army it's a bonus to being able to take a 12point troop choice but you get what you pay for

The Dreadknights
Awesome as usual, i saved myself 75 points each by not giving them the teleporter to make them Jump MCs since i was going to have them march next to the draigo bomb the whole way anyway. They are certainly better as Jump MCs but still work pretty good if you can't afford it

The Stormraven
I got lucky getting it in on the 2nd turn, but I'm not sold on it as a weapons platform for 205points... if he had some flyer's I'm sure it would of been a different story but I'm still putting a question mark next to it for future use

The Purifiers
They earned their points this game for sure, losing 4 in the first turn hurt but that's my own fault for marching them across the board without a Rhino, and honestly i wanted them for shooting support anyway

All in all not a bad list, going to tweak it a bit and look to play it against a different army.

Sixth Edition, or putting the Rhino's out to pasture

Now don't get me wrong, 6th edition has a lot of great things in it and my only two complaints thus far are...

Vehicles: They are now WAY too fragile, do i think the hull point system is a good thing? yes, it has balanced things out so gone are the days where you hit a landraider 10 times and only blow off a weapon or two, immobilize it and make it shaken not stirred but it's STILL THERE at the end of the game.

However i just don't think they did enough play testing, because everything is just TOO fragile. From Rhinos, to walkers to the armored legions of Imperial Guard tanks are being shelved across America.

How to fix this? no idea, and i fully expect GW to stick to their guns and it will remain this way for the next 5 years or so but even increasing hull points by ONE across the board would balance things out more fairly in my opinion.



Flyers: with vehicles being on the losing end of the coin toss flyer's are definitely on the winning side. The skyfire rules make sense however GW has not put nearly enough things in the books to combat flyer's, right now here are your options...

Use flyer's: to combat other flyer's: GWs obviously plan to sell more flyer's. The flyer's GW has been pushing out over the last couple years are pretty cool and do add a whole new aspect to the game

Use fortifications: again, an obvious plan to sell more plastic but the inclusion of fortifications has opened up a lot of possibilities and their cheap cost makes them strong choices

Use twin-linked weapons: the lay mans choice, not the best but certainly doubles your odds of rolling a 6 so to speak but not terribly effective

Pray you roll a 6: Pray to the Emperor, Jesus, Allah, Tom Cruise... whatever your go-to real religion/fake religion may be may be



Now, i fully expect (or maybe blindly hope) the first FAQ from GW to include the rules/point costs for "Flakk" missiles which will give pretty much every imperial army more options to shoot down the things zooming over their heads.

This still leaves the xenos out in the cold, rumors are flying around of Tau and Eldar flyer's on the horizon (which would make sense for both GW to sell more plastic and to put the xenos codex's on an even playing field)

However for the time being a Necron army list of multiple Doom Scythe's and such with their cheap point cost, AV 13 and big guns are going to be dominating the tournament scene.

A year of 40k in review

So i picked up this addicting hobby about a year ago now, this blog will follow my continuing adventures to boldly go where no man has gone before... with 40k, building my armies, modeling and painting, battle reports, and thoughts in general from my perspective.

My first army for this year of 40k has been my Grey Knights, when i was poking around online a year ago or so deciding which army i wanted before i had even gone to a game store to see 40k up close i was toying around with...

Tau: Really liked how well they sounded as a shooting army, loved the mech look of them... but HATED the fact all their vehicles look like reject props from The Phantom Menace

Space Wolves: Liked the look of them, but that may of had something to do with the fact i had just blown through all the Song of Ice and Fire books (game of thrones) and had Direwolves on my mind

Grey Knights: Loved the look of them, heard good things about something called "Psycannons" and there was something special about the whole incorruptible thing... the ultimate good guys, space aged Paladins

So after a drive to Battleground games in Plainville and talking with a helpful bearded fellow named Ben i walked out with a codex and a bunch of Grey Knights, after all your supposed to enjoy this hobby so i might as well have an army i will like the look of and i think i would of liked playing Tau since the shooting aspect of the game appeals to me more than the assault but i would of hated looking at those ugly vehicles every day.

The months that followed had me trying pretty much everything in the codex trying to figure out what worked best for me started with Landraiders and Paladins, Dreadknights and Psy-riflemen... they all had their strengths but the Landraider never survived long enough to deliver it's cargo of Draigo and strapping young Paladins to where it needed to go, that and the Draigo deathstar sucked up so many points in my army list there was little left over to spend on other stuff... a bit of a problem in games with multiple objectives to hold.

This evolved to my most recent army incarnation of Castellan Crowe and his merry band of Purifiers, thundering across the foam battlefield 5 rhinos abreast shooting psycannons out the top hatches willy nilly, Psy-rifleman 3 strong in the back making anyone with transports or flyers cringe.

Noob Mistake #1: never buy Rhinos... buy Razorbacks instead because you will end up wanting them sooner or later and you should of just spend the extra 5 bucks to get the Razorback gun pieces

This list worked pretty well for me as the year went on, always came in the top half in tournaments at Battlegrounds but then... the darkness approached, something that would forever change my army list and put the Rhino's in the garage possibly for years... an evil on the wind calling itself...

SIXTH EDITION

to be continued...