Invasion 2nd April 2013

An early April Tuesday was my latest trip to Warhammer World with GW Newbury for Invasion - a 3-game 2x600pt doubles tournament.  I took my Howling Griffons with jump chaplain, 5 sniper scouts, a 10-man tactical squad with multi-melta and flamer and a 9-man assault squad with a plasma pistol and my new sergeant.  This squad leader was kitted out with a storm shield and lightning claw.  No pistol unfortunately, but the idea was to use him to soak up / dish out challenges and free up the chaplain to work through the unit and keep the fearless as long as possible.

My partner was one of the boys from school, who took a basic librarian, two tactical squads (one with plasma and the other with a missile) and 5 bikers.  'Look out, Sir!' seemed an appropriate team name for us!

Our store had made a deliberate effort to get more of the younger players along and actively encouraged mixed pairs of an older and a younger player.  Other stores seem to have also been wanting more young players, as two of the three teams we played were both kids, and the other was two brothers, including a young teenager.  That might have had as much to do with our results and with the fact that it was a weekday during the school holidays.  Because of my school club, I am quite used to playing kids anyway.

Our first game was against a nids / DA combo against a nice couple of lads.  The winged Hive Tyrant proved particularly troublesome with Iron Arm meaning we could barely scratch it.  However, we made a few rules mistakes, like letting him zoom across the board on Turn 1.  Very silly!  My biggest error was believing his gaunts on the 4-point objective were fearless, as long as the tyrant was on the board.  It was only in about turn 4 I realised they were actually out of synapse range, when I couldn't do much about them. We lost 8-4.

The second game was probably the most enjoyable, as the elder brother knew the rules, which helps!  They had a Plague Marine / Thousand Sons tag team we played length-ways with two objectives.  It ended up as a draw, as two Thousand Sons managed to keep out of combat on the last turn and got onto their objective. We would have won, if we had made the charge and tied them up.

After a loss and a draw, the last game was a bit of a reversal, but was not the most satisfying victory ever.  We were up against two more kids with GK and DA (a lot of which were unpainted).  The GK player had a Dreadknight, librarian and two small power-armour squads.  The DA player was nowhere to be seen for a few minutes once we started setting up, then he turned up with Sammael, 3 squads of bikers and a razorback.  He was surprised that he couldn't take the razorback without any infantry, as was I that nobody in the first two games had noticed!

We basically stood back and let them advance towards us, with only my jump squad moving to meet the bikes, which they managed to pretty much tie up for most of the game.  He only remembered late on that they had Hit and Run.  The Dreadknight almost managed to make it into combat before being shot up, largely by rapid fire, and then the rest of the GK folded.  It was then just a case of grinding down the DA bikes, including killing Sammael with a lucky snapshot from the MM.  In the end there were only two DA bikes left and most of our army was still intact for a 10-2 win.

With 15 points for a win in the last game and a decent painting score, we ended up 9th, which was a pleasing  standing, especially after our first game!

New Howling Griffons models

A report form last week's Invasion will follow shortly.

Whilst up at Warhammer World I treated myself to a Contemptor Dreadnought.  The Mortis pattern has BS5, Skyfire and Interceptor, so I also got 2 Kheres Assault Cannons - Heavy 6, S6, AP4 to sort out any flyers!

I am also working on a Landspeeder Storm, including the 6 scouts onboard and another unit of BP/CC scouts.  These are proving quite time-consuming, with the quartered colour-scheme, but I'm enjoying myself anyway.

At the weekend I picked up the new Tau codex, as as I might start some battle brother allies to my HG.  I could even be tempted to start a new army.  GW Newbury's new manager Matt (Quinn has been promoted to GW Swansea) has organised a painting competition using the new Cadre Fireblade model.  That is the only Tau model I got at the time, as there wasn't much left in store by the time I got there on Saturday.  

I have been reading the rules and fluff to decide first of all on which sept and colour scheme to go for.  My HG bases have been desert-style, if I want to go for allies, so a brown camo would make sense, but not the standard scheme.  On the other hand, I have a hankering for painting orange for a change - a mix of red and yellow of course!  The Borkan Sotek Green sept seems quite good fluff-wise.

Invasion time again!

Tomorrow will see me off to Warhammer World with GW Newbury again.  My Howling Griffons will finally be getting involved!  I shall be teaming up with one of the lads from school, who is taking Dark Angels with two tac squads and a biggish biker squad.

My troops will be a full tactical squad and 5 sniper scouts, but I can't decide what else to take.  I'm torn between my original jump chaplain with a 9-man assault squad or an assault terminator squad with thunder hammers plus the new termie chaplain I'm just painting.

Then the question would be whether or not to deep-strike with either unit.

I may just roll off to decide when I get there.

I'm back and thinking about 40K characters

It's the time of year now when I can get back to some more serious hobbying.  My dark, cold shed is not the best place for building or painting over the winter months, so my projects tend to get put on hold.  But now that Quinn is recruiting for Invasion at Warhammer World in April again, it's time to get cracking again.

Not that I have been away really, as I have still been playing.  Not only is the School Club live and well, with the kids agitating to get involved in the School League, but Quinn has also set up the Newbury Gaming Club on a Monday Evening at the Royal British Legion.  I have managed to get in a couple of games there, although it clashes with my son's football training.  50p for the food (a buffet of pizza / sandwiches plus chips) is also great value.

I finally got Dark Vengeance for Christmas, and the mini rulebook is very handy.  I haven't made any of the figures yet, but I was flicking through the new Chaos codex and spotted the rules for Plague Zombies.  A Fearless tar-pit unit has many uses, so I have assembled and basecoated 20 so far with a mix of Catachan and Zombie bits.  I am not sure whether to extend my current Chaos army, which was all done in the old Brazen Brass, or start a new one with an new colour scheme or theme.  For the Plague Zombies I of course had to pick up Typhus, so I may do a Nurgle force.  I suppose I could re-use my T6 Nurgle bikers plus Sorceror, which are always fun.

On the other hand, I am currently reading the Word Bearers trilogy, with Marduk and the brilliant Possessed Burias, so that is another interesting idea.  And whilst I have a lot of the new red paints, do I want more to do more red power-armour?

I have never been a great fan of using special characters.  I think this goes back to my Warhammer Fantasy days about 10 years ago, when a ranked up unit always seemed to me to be more useful than a particular character.  However, now with the challenges in 40K, special characters seem to represent much better value than generic HQs.  Indeed, my best gaming success was with one such character at Carnage last year, when I used Chenkov for the Send in the Next Wave rule in my 800pts guard list.

Perhaps this is a natural progression?  I am still not going for the Über one-man-army type character, but rather looking at characters who can bring the best out of other units in the army.

As well as Typhus, I have been looking at the Vulkan rules my Howling Griffons.  Even though my first SM army were Salamanders, I was never a fan of the Vulkan model, which just seemed to me a bit too over-dressed.

So I have now converted my own Howling Griffon version, using the SM Commander model, a GK halberd and bits from a BA flamer pistol for the Gauntlet of the Forge.

Finally on the characters front, I finally found the Games Day Runepriest model I had been looking for at the Call to Arms show in Theale last week.  As always, too many armies, too little time!

Fear the Plague-bear-er

GW Newbury celebrated its third birthday today.  I am at least pleased to report an overdue victory in the store.  I won the cake competition with this:

My prize was a golden wooden spoon!

Warhammer World Invasion

This half-term has seen Warhammer World inviting various GW stores for some inter-store competition, which they have called Invasion.  It is basically a 40K 600pt doubles tournament.  (See my first post for a similar event in April.)

GW Newbury went with a good crowd on Monday, along with Reading, Oxford and Swindon.

The day started terribly for me at 5.30 am with a flat tyre on the car, but I just made it to the store for the bus.

I had had a chat with my partner Chris about his Eldar force the day before, and we discussed our options a little more on the coach.  I had considered taking my Howling Griffons, but decided against them, as I hadn't had much success with them yet, and my Assault Terminators were less than half done.  Chaos was another option, using my old Lost and the Damned army from Eye of Terror for Bezerkers and Cultists.  However, I don't have a decent Khorne Lord and I figured there would be a plethora of Chaos armies there with lots of the shiny new models.  Also, with points being awarded for cohesion between the two armies, it would be an unlikely / unholy alliance.  Eventually I decided on taking my small Space Wolves force.  I played a trial game on Sunday, using two units of Grey Hunters with plasma guns and pistols, a Razorback with lascannons and a small unit of Swiftclaw bikers and a biker Wolf Lord.  They won on objectives in the trial game, but on the coach I decided to downgrade the HQ to a Wolf Guard Battle Leader and to swap the Razorback for a Drop Pod.

Chris had been up late getting some paint on his figures the night before, so arrived at the store even later than me!  He took a Farseer, a unit of Dire Avengers, some Guardians with a Warlock and a unit of Dark Reapers.

Our first opponents were a Space Wolves / Ork combo with lots of biker orks, two units of Grey Hunters in Rhinos and a Runepriest.  In every game, I used the Drop Pod aggressively and put it in the opposition deployment zone and in this game my Grey Hunters shot up the Lootas and made them run off the board, giving us First Blood.  However, my bikes failed their charge on the Ork bikers, which proved costly.  If the game had finished a couple of minutes earlier we would have won, but in the last few minutes the remains of my drop pod hunters were shot off one objective and their rhinos deposited their passengers onto two high-value objectives, giving them a 7-2 win.

The second game was against Grey Knights and Guard.  On the first turn a Demolisher shot took out most of my bikers and my warlord, giving them three VPs straight away from one model!  Again I put my Drop Pod down in harm's way, right in front of a Vindicare Assassin, which then seemed to have a a charmed life.  It made numerous 4+ invulnerable saves on its last wound and eventually beat off my Grey Hunters after a couple of rounds of drawn combat.  A combination of the Deathwind launcher and Eldar shooting killed off the Rough Riders (very nicely-painted Death Korps models) and the power-armoured GKs, but we never recovered from the early setback, and were only one wound away from being tabled by the end of the game.

Having had two losses, we hoped for better fortune in the final game, against more Space Wolves and more Guard from the Reading store!  There were plenty of Chaos armies there, but we hadn't met any of them!  This force included a fun Commissar on a Segway!

We finally managed to get the first turn in a game, but only by seizing the initiative.  Again the Drop Pod went down behind their Medusa, but we just couldn't kill it off.  This wasn't helped my my repeated rolling a 1s with my plasma weapons.  During the day I got snake-eyes twice when rapid-firing my plasma guns!  Of course, I also then failed the 3+ armour save each time.  I even got Chris to roll for me instead, and of course he also rolled a 1!!  We did have a bit of luck managing to hit their Vendetta with a snapshot from my multimelta Attack Bike, but then only managed to remove one of the twin-linked lascannons.  Chris' Dark Reapers had given us First Blood by sending their Thunderwolves running and his Runes of Warding also nullified and finally killed off their Runepriest.

I was just a little too sporting for us to win this game.  With two minutes to go they suggested and I agreed to a draw, as we were tied on VPs and had had three turns each.  Had we continued my remaining Grey Hunter could have got close enough to contest their three-point objective and we would have also had Linebreaker.  I just hadn't thought of suggesting this in game one and was a little taken aback by the suggestion.  This was only my second ever tournament, so I guess I'll know better next time.

Overall, GW Reading emerged victorious, so well done to them.  After the success in April, I won't tell you where Newbury came out of the four stores competing, but we were disappointed.  This was despite Quinn's team winning every game by taking two identical armies of Tervigons and Doom of Malan'tai, which basically swamped their enemies with Termagants.

The coach back was slightly delayed by another vehicular mishap, when someone reversed into our parked coach just before we were due to get on.

We had a fun day out and I have certainly learnt quite a bit for future competitions like this.  In particular, being a bit more decisive about my list and getting some practice games with my partner would be very useful.

Chaos codex is here!

I picked up the new book at GW Newbury.  I have yet to study it in detail, but a few things were particularly interesting.

Obviously all the new 40K codices will be hardback now and around the £30 mark, à la Fantasy.  It is a decent quality and full-colour, but at the price maybe it should be a few more than just over 100 pages?

What is a boost for chaos player is that the marks of chaos now grant more than a single stat increase, but also give some of the new special rules in the Sixth Edition rulebook.

As far as the Troops choices go, of course there are now the cannon fodder, sorry Cultists.  However, the basic Chaos Marines now have to choose between bolter + pistol or pistol + weapon, so have to focus more on their rôle in advance.  Also, Plague / Noise Marines etc are now Elites choices, unless you take a Lord (or Sorceror for Tzeentch) with the same mark.

The Heldrake model has attracted a lot of attention at Games Day and in WD, but it is also worth noting that Havocs can now take flakk missiles too.

Still no chaos drop pods...?

Quinn has asked me to be part of the Newbury team again for a return to Warhammer World in October half-term, for a 600pts doubles tournament.  I need to decide between my Howling Griffons, Guard or the shiny new Chaos.  I have a feeling there will be a lot of Chaos armies again!