GW Newbury Tale of Gamers - time to start Orks

A week is a long time in this hobby.  For once I am not talking about the latest releases, although there must be plenty of mileage in the stormtrooper ice-cream van.

Back on topic, Matt wanted suggestions last weekend for instore events and I mentioned the classic White Dwarf series of a Tale of Four Gamers, which were always favourites of mine. I am not sure how many times they ran this with the different GW systems, but a 40K version sticks in my mind.

Having requested six players on Tuesday, we now have ten confirmed and raring to go.  For my choice of army I considered Tyranids, which no one else had chosen.   However, the underwhelming reception to the codex and the lack of potential to ally with any other army finally put me off.  With most people opting for power-armour of some sort, Orks were another untaken race, which I have decided to go with.  We already have quite a few Orks in the shed from when my son dabbled with 40k a few years back.  This includes all of the Black Reach figures painted very basically, as well as some Stormboyz, Lootas and a Battlewagon.  They are always a fun army, but what clinched it was the rumoured new codex out in June, along with whispers of Orks in an imminent new starter box for 40k.

Each month for six months there will be a challenge for the players to complete.  Officially, we aren't starting until 3rd May, but many of us are getting underway already.  In the first month we need 1 HQ and 1 Troop choice completed worth 250 points.  We will be marked on assembly, painting and basing.  My first Orks will be a Warboss and a unit of Nobz.  Having made my first box of Nobz, I decided to convert a Warboss also from a Nob, rather than ordering in a Finecast one, as there were none in the shop.  Hopefully there will be some new plastic characters out soon.

My next task will be to write a proper 250pt list before I build the next box and the Painboy I got today.

40k School League Regional Finals at Warhammer World

Having qualified from the local heats for the second year running, I took our team of four with a couple of reserves up to Nottingham on Thursday. A day off school to play toy soldiers- what could be better?  I was pleased our Head not only agreed to us going, but also stumped up the cost of a minibus and driver.

A couple of the older lads went last year, so knew their way around Warhammer World, but the younger ones were impressed with the rhino outside, the gaming hall and the display models upstairs.

Our team's 600 pt armies were inspected after we arrived.  As we were all prepared with equipment and I had made enough objective markers for 6 each and also made sure all the figures had at least 3 colours, we got most of the army points.  We lost a couple for the bases, as some were textured but not painted or were just painted.  Apparently unpainted sand does not count. I think it is a ploy to sell more textured paint, so I duly obliged and told the kids to get started, just to scrape together another point or two.

We had a Tau player, who had 2 Riptides, a Cadre Fireblade and some Fire Warriors. Another was using Dark Angels from the starter box with a Land Raider. The third had added a Vindicator to his starter Chaos models and the last army was Grey Knights including Coteaz and Henchmen as troops.  They played 4x40-minute games each.

Teachers were supposed to stand back and let the players play.  This sounds straightforward, but I found it hard not to say anything if they were completely ignoring objectives and merrily blasting away! Some members of school staff got told off by the GW bods for interfering, including me when I was answering a rules question one of the other team had asked me.  I was trying to be impartial and helpful...  Honestly!  One or two teachers were being a bit too competitive though.

As for the team, they did well in the first two games before lunch, with an even 3 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses.  Most of them were playing with objectives in mind, or at least starting to.

The afternoon was not as pretty.  Of the 30 teams there, they drew the eventual winners and the team that finished third, who were using some very good lists.  The winning team for example had Eldar with 2 Wave Serpents, Necrons with a flyer, Tau with a single Riptide and a nasty Daemon list, including the Portalglyph.  Although we lost every game in the afternoon, our Tau player was unlucky on the last game of Purge the Alien.  He was one assault marine away from tabling his opponent in combat with his Riptide on 3 wounds when the game ended.

The obligatory quiz, before results were announced, was just for fun and was an enjoyable way to end the day especially the 'say what you see' round.  The pictures of a neck and Rupert Grint were hilarious.

With our collapse in the second half we came 26th, so the boys were all disappointed with the overall results. It was a shame that only 3 teams progressed to the National Finals.  It seems mainly the power-gamers will be there, but I hope my boys, some of whom are only really just starting the hobby, aren't put off and are inspired by this visit.

Beating an Imperial Knight

My Howling Griffons played in a quick 1000 point game against George's new Imperial Knight tonight. He was using it allied to his FW Sons of Horus army, using the Chaos codex. We knew this combo was not official, but it was just a trial game.

The rest of his army was 3x10-man squads with 2 plasma guns each and a terminator sorceror, all of which he had also just finished assembling.

I reasoned that if he was using a super-heavy, I would use my Stormwing formation, along with a 10-man tac squad, a 5-man tac, 5 sniper scouts, a rifleman dread and a basic librarian.

We played Big Guns with 5 objectives on a 4'x4' board. I got to place 3 objectives and also deployed and went first. Even so I did very little first turn, as I just hid in my deployment zone out of range or sight of his units.

George advanced his units first turn, but the Knight couldn't see the tactical marines and failed to kill any scouts either, as they went to ground for a 2+ save with their cloaks.

Luckily my formation turned up turn 2, so I put the Raven in front of the Knight and the two talons either side.  Of course the Ion Shield went up facing towards the Raven. I knew the Stormtalons weren't facing it with their Skyhammers, but fortunately their assault cannons can fire 360°. The Ion Shield saved him from the multi-melta but the assault cannons took off 3 HPs.

George's outflanking squad from his warlord trait then arrived on the scouts' side of the board and also started trying to shoot the young marines off their objective.  Again the 2+ cover made the snipers hard to shift.  He also backed off the Knight, so I couldn't get all 3 flyers shooting armour 12.

Turn 3 I unloaded my dread and meltagun combat squad from the Raven and then hovered all the flyers circling the Knight to make sure I could use all their weapons.  In the end this proved to be overkill.  The Ion Shield went up towards the Raven and one Talon, but the meltas, autocannons and the other Talon accounted for its last 3 HPs.  First blood to me, although I did get worried the apocalyptic blast would catch the hovering flyers, but they were quite safe.

At that point we both had two objectives and linebreaker, but my first blood meant I was 8-7 ahead.  We called it there, as our time had run out and George couldn't really do much against my flyers, beyond some lucky plasma shots.

Knights can't touch flyers with armour 11 or more unless they hover, so really need protection with some anti-air allies and a more balanced army to guard their flanks and rear from multiple threats.

It was very satisfying to kill off the Knight, but it did feel a bit like playing rock-paper-scissors.

White Dwarf and Imperial Knights (and my 50th post)

Was it really only issue 4 of White Dwarf out today?  Have all the monthlies been forgotten?

Anyway this issue has been my favourite of the weeklies so far.  I may have been playing about with my Fantasy army this week, but I still consider myself primarily a 40K player.  This issue is 90% Imperial Knights, including background, tips on both assembly and painting, rules and even some advice on strategy.

The weekly mags are now closely tied in with the release schedule, which has shifted.  The familiar pattern had been everything kept under wraps until WD came out just before pay-day at the end of the month (well mine at least..), with pre-orders then up for the following week, and possibly another wave of the same release a couple of weeks later.  Now releases are being drip-fed over the whole month, presumably to get us all into our GWs regularly.  They are now live on the GW site by 7pm (UK time) on the Friday evening and I know of at least one GW store (Reading) staying open until 8pm to help people pre-order and cash in.  Imperial Knights have heen timed for 1st March, so will be in shops just when lots of people have the most disposable income.

Even so, I shall not be rushing out to get one of the mini titans. Yet.  Imperial Knights now appear as an army in their own right on the GW website and WD tells us they can form a primary or an allied detachment.  However they seem to ignore the FOC in their formations. Fair enough - you could field 4 at 1.5k - but I am not sure if they can claim objectives, but give away 2VPs each if destroyed.  I assume one would have to be your warlord too, if they were your main force.  I expect this will all be clarified when the codex is released.  Until then the welcome rules in WD will get everyone started.

Before I splash out, I will look at the models and see how they perform.  A titan has always been on the wish-list and this is a lot more reasonable than the Forge World alternatives.  My head tells me I should at least finish my Stormwing formation (which cost the same money), but my wife will tell you I tend to let my heart rule my purchases, especially with Warhammer.

I am sure GW's current business strategy is relying on our hearts too.  How else would they expect anyone to buy 5 Imperial Knights in one click?

Kill Team, a 2K pt game and Warhammer Empire.

A fairly mixed bag of gaming to report, just to keep things interesting.

First off, the B team from our school club just missed out on the Regionals at Warhammer World in March by one point.  They were well ahead on painting and gaming after 2 of 3 games, but complacency and silly mistakes meant they lost all four of the last round of games.  With most 40K games currently based on objectives, they need to learn where to put them so opponents have a hard time even contesting them.  Also, charging off of an objective in your last turn to assault a unit of terminators is BAD.

In my own gaming I played 3 games of Kill Team last Monday using 8 Assault Marines.  My first game was a very cagey match against DE Reavers, which ended up out-manoeuvring me.  After losing my second game too the last match against SW required me getting my marines off of the opposite table edge.  After killing his Thunderwolf Lord I escaped with 3 marines, which meant we drew.

After that we had a 3 vs 3 Marines vs Xenos game, where I managed to charge the biker warboss, which sent the rest of the boyz running and gave us a comfortable win.

The day after that I went to Pete's new house to try out his gaming garage.  He played 2000 pts of Guard, including a lot of anti-air, as he knew I wanted to try out my Stormwing formation.  We rolled the Relic on diagonal deployment.  Pete is always a good sporting opponent, so it was more for fun than anything.  I made loads of mistakes, like forgetting to leave a tac squad in reserve to go in the raven!  To balance that up I also forgot about Strafing Run causing pinning.  Near the end of the game my raven was on its last HP so I flew it off the table.  Having survived when it first turned up, I completely forgot about Interceptor when it came back on again.  Oops!

One of my tac squads had the Relic and Pete was trying to kill off every last marine.  The sole survivor fled 5 inches, which I thought meant he kept hold of it, but of course he should have dropped it automatically.  I claimed victory for having the Relic, but shouldn't have.  I have promised Pete a rematch.

Finally, I have started dabbling in Warhammer Fantasy again.  There has been an ongoing campaign at GW Newbury, so there has been more Fantasy happening there.  I have dusted off the Empire army from Bögenhafen I started back in about 2007, but never finished or played.  Having not played this edition (8th?) I had a quick practice game on Saturday but didn't really get very far in the hour we had.  I have now also assembled ten more swordsmen and a hellblaster to get me closer to the 1600 pts the campaign is now at.

My thoughts on the new White Dwarf and Warhammer: Visions

White Dwarf has always been a big part of the hobby for me.  I even remember it including RPG games from other companies back in my teens.  Of course, it has long been a GW-only publication.  Even with it becoming increasingly a marketing tool, I have kept a subscription for a few years now.

Despite a re-launched format only 18 months ago, this month there is an even more radical change, with a now weekly White Dwarf and a monthly called Warhammer: Visions.  As a subscriber I got both today with a letter saying I will just be getting the monthly in future, with the weekly not currently on a subscription basis.  I have no idea without trawling through the GW website how much the subs will be, but the cover price is £2.40 for the weekly and £7.50 for the monthly.  It seems they want me to pay a lot more than my previous £9 per quarter.  Is it worth it?

Visions is 230 smaller pages, slightly wider than A5 size.  As the name implies it is mainly pictures.  The only text is short flavour descriptions on most pages in English, French and German.  The first 70 pages are given to new releases, with quite a range of colour schemes, angles and detail shots. A further 70 pages roughly are for Army of the Month and Golden Demon pictures, again with multiple shots of different units.  Apart from the Store Finder (do we really need that in print?) the last 40 pages are for a useful Paint Splatter, this one showing various hive fleets, including some variant splinter fleets.  In between those sections are Blanchitsu (never grabbed me), Kit Bash (pretty good conversions of various Trukks) and a very disappointing battle report. It's mainly pictures of  models crammed together on a dark table, presumably for atmosphere, with no reference to the mission, points values or any kind of tactics, strategy or dice rolls.  No fun at all.

I think the small format doesn't help with a visual magazine.  Double-page spreads are dominated by the centrefold, which ruins any wow-factor.  Single pages are confusing, with a random mix of multiple shots or full pages of different orientations, either landscape or portrait.  It's not easy to flick through, as the eye constantly needs to re-adjust.  I suppose we are supposed to study each page for inspiration, but Visions does not inspire me.

White Dwarf weekly at 32 pages has more of the feel of a disposable flyer- certainly not something I would have to get regularly.  There is obviously more writing in this mag, with the new release dwarfs featured mostly.  There are some actual rules for one of their special characters.  For 40K players the 4 pages on the different types of Nid army are probably most interesting.

I would say White Dwarf is now more of a pocket money purchase for kids or would be more useful for beginners.   For example there are two pages on glues.  Casual players might like Jervis' mini-game alternative to rolling for the first turn.

Visions seems to be aimed at more experienced painters and modellers, but seems to lack visual impact.

Where is the strategy or tactics for the older gamers?  The advice for tackling Hive Crones? "Shoot them down as quickly as possible." Thanks for that.

I don't just want to see other people's armies.  I want a bit of personal interest. How they have evolved, which units they love playing and how have they fared on the battlefield?

The new mags deserve a bit of a chance.  Things change and we all moan.  But decent battle reports and tactica are a lot cheaper online.

Howling Griffons Stormwing Formation

Flying machines have always been one of my passions and I have regularly used a Stormtalon in my Space Marine lists.  In addition to my Storm Eagle I have now assembled my Stormwing formation and also started basecoating it.  This will be fun!

Even with the new rules allowing Forge World models, I will rarely get the chance to field all 5 flyers at the same time, unless I play more Apocalypse.  So I'm trying to work out how best to include the Stormwing in 1.5K points.

All of my Stormtalons have Skyhammer missiles, as they always do well for me and aren't too expensive.  The Stormraven has the multi-melta, assault cannons and hurricane bolters.  My basic formation would therefore come to 480 points, so nearly a third of the total.

The next problem is that I now can't decide if it's worth putting any other units in the raven. Even a basic Tactical Squad and Dreadnought would be exactly half of my points stuck in reserve, possibly until Turn 4.

The rest of my list will need to soak up all the opposing fire until the flyers show up, so a fortification with a comms relay might be needed to give me a solid firebase.

Anti-air is another worry, especially Riptides, so a Command Squad on bikes with grav guns might be my best option, although my usual HQ is a biker MOTF with a conversion beamer. I would either need a different HQ or take two.  This would again limit my points for other units.

I have some decisions to take, but I plan on having fun testing out my options, whilst I get the models finished.