Batrep SM vs IMPGUARD.... Chairman vs Chairman!

I apologize for a lack of blogging lately, but Big Kev's been a busy lad! Heres a battle report from last weeks club night, and its a special one! My opponent this week is the incredibly awesome Byron who is the chairman for the Crow Valley Crusaders who are based in Cwmbran. We fancied a nice big battle so 3000pts were decided and army lists made! I had no idea what Byron was going to take, he'd mentioned a lot of armies so I decided to just take what I fanced and be versatile. He did however mention a Caestus Assault Ram.... He then went on to tell me the rules and I have to be honest, I was concerned!  The day of the battle came and I discovered an Imperial Guard force with Dark Angels allies. This was going to be brutal! Deployment below!

I set up first, eager to get a round of shooting in before the Guard could send a barrage my way. Sternguard dropped down toting combi meltas, and managed to blow up 2 Leman Russ tanks. First blood and some of the enemy firepower gone, relief! I managed to take out one Chimera but that was my first turn. Byron punised my sternguard and wiped them out with some veteran firepower who had disembarked from a nearby chimera. The Executioners spat death and 5 tactical marines (who were the only ones they could see) died, the ruins they sheltered in failing to save them Elsewhere however I was relatively unharmed.

My reserves failed to come on although I was able to do a little more damage the the IG tanks, although nothing blowing up I did cause some hullpoints here and there. I did manage to blow one chimera up however when the vindicator aimed its demolisher cannon at it, but out popped more veterans! Byrons reserves came on, a Valkyrie and... gulp... the Assault Ram! Bryon rammed my Land Raider for a ST10 hit and getting to roll 2 dice picking the highest... but luckily for me he rolled two fours... just a glance! The meltashot did fry a couple of my devastators though, ouch! 

Turn three sees my flyers come into play, the twin linked multi melta on my stormraven blowing up the Assault Ram... no wait, it missed! Even twinlinked I failed to hit the DA flyer, although the storm talon did roll three penetrations against the valkyie... and Bryon chose to evade and made all three Jink saves! At least it would be snap firing next turn!  Byron then got out his Deathwing, 10 strong with a Chaplain and assaulted my Land Raider wrecking it with their ThunderHammers. We had a problem arise here as we didn't know if the unit inside the LR was destroying or trapped, as it doesn't really specify in the rules. Byron had set up his termies to encircle the tank and covering all the doors, but because the vehicle hadn't exploded it didn't say if the unit inside were destroyed or not. We ruled that if the vehicle wasn't blown up they would be fine if they could escape the tank in a future turn. 

In my turn I managed to finish off the two executioners and whittle the termies down so I could escape the Leman Russ wreck in the following turn. 6 Termies killed by pretty much my entire army! Byron then charged headlong at my dreadnought with the Terminators and Chaplain and destroying it, following up into my tactical squad that was supporting it. After the Dread had killed one and overwatch another, only two were left and not many tanks. The Assault Ram hurtles into my dreadnought who had previously killed the veterans from the blown up chimera, blowing the dread up where it joins the wrecked vindicator, melta holes covering its chassis.

The tactical squad manage to hold on against the Chaplain and last Termie and cause two wounds, just about finishing off the Deathwing and leaving the chaplain on one wound. At this point with closing time approaching myself and Byron call it a game, I'd managed to pull off a win mainly due to Byron not having the best of luck when it came to dice rolls. Score wise I have no idea what it was, but Byron had little left whereas I still had a decent amount on the table. If Byrons dice had been a little kinder I can see the game being really close, probably me getting a loss! It was a great game though and Byron was a great opponent. Hopefully he'll want a rematch sometime and try to get his revenge!

In other wargaming news I do have a little side project as I step into the world of Fantasy... I shan't tell you what army yet but you may be able to hear some gutteral braying in the distance.... This weeks club game is against the Elf boy himseld Alun, 2.5k pts and I'm using ALL of my Tau... should be interesting as I think he's using the new Eldar codex. Report up in the week, but thats all for now!

Review: Death From The Skies

So my copy of Death From the Skies has arrived, and what follows are my thoughts. Theres been a fair bit of controversy around this by it being Direct Only, so lets see exactly how much it matters.

The first thing you notice that makes this different to the other releases in the 40k collection so far, is that its softback. Yes, the book bends! This matters little but it did catch me by surprise

Theres not an awful lot in here in relation to artwork, although it is nice to see this Helldrake illustration in a larger format than it is in the Chaos Codex. We already know this book is a compendium, so don't expect anything original.  The photography is pretty good too, some nice compositions and angles but again, I don't see much original.

So when the Stormtalon and Ork jets were released, there was an article in WD featuring a Necron, Ork and Space Marine campaign. Thats here again, although it feels a little larger and not having that WD to had is hard to compare. If you havent seen this already you'll enjoy the read however. What follows this are 4 new missions that take flyers into mind. Theres some nice ideas here including a couple of different deployment zones that I'll look forward to trying out. One mission, 'Scramble!', has the defender nominate 3 landing spaces or 3 skyshield landing pads where 3 flyers are given for no points cost, and these are grounded.You launch these flyers depending on the roll of a 6 or more, by adding the turn that you are on. The attacker gets D3 VP's bonus for each of these that are destroyed. Sounds like a great laugh, and reminds me of a battle report from a few years ago between a drop-podding Black Templars army and an Ork army that was set after the Armageddon campaign in WD.

So the missions are a great little addition. The rules for dogfighting are also included from Crusade of Fire, and should be a good laugh if you have a number of flyers to try them out. While there are no new flyers in here, it does mean that now my Space Marine chapter can take Stormravens.

This is a good feature, and having bought one several days ago I'm looking forward to putting it together and using it on the field. The only difference I can tell so far between the vanilla SM's and the BA's Stormravens is that the missiles vary a little. While both are ST8, the BA's are ap1. The Codex Marines are ap2, but are concussive. Minor difference, but it seems like a useful weapon. Stormtalons are now 10 points cheaper than they were originally, which is a good thing as they were'nt used that often, even though I love using them! The book also features the rules for the other flyers currently in the game, its just a pity they couldn't fit a new one or two into the book. 

Overall thoughts then.... Is the book worth £20? This all depends on how much of the material you already own. If you don't have the WD with the rules for the StormTalon and Ork jets in then you get the rules for these plus a story revolving around three armies and their flyers. If you already have these, you're paying £20 for slight changes that lets be honest, shouldn't cost that much. Why they couldn't put this update into a WD or on a PDF on the GW website I'm unsure, but it would have been a nice gesture to try and balance the feeling a lot of people have against Games Workshop. The GW online store has some bundles where you can buy multiples of flyers, but these offer no savings over buying them individually. Why not do these bundles and throw the book in for free? Come on GW, give the customer something back! 

Its a nice little book that will add to your games if you're an avid pilot in the skies of 40k, but you will feel its overpriced for what it gives you.

The Fallen Rise.

And so the Dark Angels have officially arrived. I've seen the leak pics, and I have to be honest I thought I'd best reserve my opinion until we get official pictures. They're finally here, so heres my thoughts.

Belial. A fair static model, but I think it shows off a commanding presence, and works pretty well. I'm not a huge fan of the bone armour with green robes... it looks a wee odd. Overall though a nice model, and I think a better colour scheme would improve.

Ah the return of Asmodai. A nice update, and I think DA fans will lap him up. 

The Codex itself, it'll be hard to have many thoughts on this until I've seen the rules and how the book looks and feels, but artwork wise the cover is pretty darn nice!

 Thsi first variant flyer. I really think this looks terrible. Why on Terra would you put stone like statues on a flyer? Absolutely horrible only made better by being able to make this...

 Now thats more like it. You can see the Storm Talon influence, but has an Imperial Guard feel to it too. Looks nice, and has no statues on it. Thank the Emperor! Missiles under the wings look good too. Also intrigued with the nose cannons...

Wowser. And I don't mean that in a positive way. One of the things that did appeal to me about the Dark Angels, was the Ravenwing. The idea of an army of bikes and speeders is always good, and like the white scars would be an impressive looking army on the table. Unless you have this speeder variant. This is horrible beyond even Nurgles doings. I like the idea about the rumoured rules for it, but this is just terrible. The gun point at the front is bad, the engines look pretty pap where they are... I just cannot stand this model.

This variant of the hideous flyer is only marginally better for the plasma cannons on top... but even those look unlike the usual plasma cannons of the Imperium.  Still a dire looking thing.

More bad colour scheme, but the models themselves look alright.  One thing that used to bug me about the 'watchers of the dark' is this... they're so mysterious, yet wear power armour. Look at the foot? A really odd choice that always confused me with Azrael's watcher.

Terminator command squad? I think these are kinda cool. The plasma cannon looks nice, and I'm jealous I can't use one in my Evandalists! The only negative I have for these is the banner. It looks daft on the top, how do you fit that in a Land Raider? I remember seeing one with a termie holding one, and that didn't look right either. I think they could have changed it to be holding a relic of some kind that had the same rules and purpose as a banner. 

So they are my quick thoughts on some of the new DA releases. Very hit and miss, I don't think many non DA fans will be turned but users of the Fallen will probably enjoy the new set of releases. What are your thoughts?

(All images property of Games Workshop)

Blood Angels vs Space Marines BatRep 2000pts

So being a little late this week at club we pretty much got right into the game. I took a fairly different list this week. This is a rough list...

Captain on Bike, + 5 bikers and attack bike

Chaplain leading a tactical squad

2 other tactical squads, one in rhino

3 dreadnoughts, one in drop pod

2 dev squads, one all missile launchers and one all plasma cannons

storm talon with typhoon missile launcher

Mikes Blood Angels list is roughly...

Dante and 5 sanguinary guard

8 assault marines

10 death company in rhino

tactical squad

devastator squad, 2 plasma 2 lascannon

baal and autocannon predators

dreadnought

stormraven with 5 assault terminators

Mike won the roll off to deploy and go first, then I set up. I went for a static left flank and centre, and the right would advance aiming to take out the dakka pred. Otherwise we'd see what happened!

First turn, no first blood but a couple of models killed either way. I glanced the baal and DC rhino twice each but couldn't get the first blood, but if I could weather the second turn of incoming fire I could pick one of those off to get a vital bonus point!

Mikes storm raven comes in and adds fire against the bikes and devs but fails to really do anything. Mikes assault squad manages to make an 11" assault into my central tactical squad, and a combat erupts! In my turn, I'm able to destroy the Baal and the DC rhino. First Blood!

Also in my second turn, my bikers advance even further and fire all their melta weapons at the dakka predator, and promptly blow it up. Another victory point! 

Ouch! As you can see in the following pic, the assault termies come out of the Storm Raven and slam into my tacitcal squad... this won't last much longer! The Tactical squad makes it to my turn with just a sarge and chaplain left, but then they can hold on no longer. I start losing more too, with my dread dying in the centre of the field.

My storm talon comes on and shoots at the devs. I manage to kill 2, but they hold firm. As I mentioned the assault squad and termies butcher my chaplain and tactical squad and consolidate towards my left flank. My bikers advanced again however and melta spoke death to the dreadnought, melting it to slag. For their efforts however Dante is finally able to enter play and charges them with his sanguinary guard. My captain challanges Dante who accepts, and a very close fight erupts between the two Space Marines heroes! The bikers however are unable to hurt the sanguinary guard and all bikes are killed after two turns of combat.

 Last turn heroics needed! At this point neither of us knew the points, so we kept fighting and decided to count up after the battle ended. Mikes 3 assault troops leapt into my left most tactical squad, but overwatch took one out and then I killed another without a loss. The sarge retreated, and Mike was able to save himself a point as his last terminator charged in. In my previous turn I'd shot at his termies with a lot of firepower and killed four... So close! The termie however misses with all but on attack... then rolls a one to wound! I failed to penetrate his armour however until my dreadnought stomps in and deals the fatal blow. Termies killed! 

I'd manage to whittle down the death company slowly but there was a couple left, so a vp denied. Dante and my captain was a close fought fight however, and the game ended with them still fighting. Captain Torgeaz had 2 wounds left, whereas Dante had one. Turn 5 was the last however, and we counted up victory points.

Counting up the points I'd won 7-6, first blood proving crucial! We knew it was a close game as we were playing, but that was incredible, I really like not knowing until after the battle and it proved an entertaining affair. Heck of a game fair dues, Mikes getting to know his army fairly well.

Elswhere at club a game of Gorkamorka went on, but I have no idea what happened apart from hearing much laughter from the table... must have been a good time!

Reavers Day of Reaving

So I've already post about The Tredegar Reavers having had an all day at club, but heres the second post I promised showing off the other two games that went on. Huw's Pirate game and an Apocalypse game consisting of Tyranids, Eldar, Chaos, Grey Knights and Dark Angels. As you can see, bio-titans and heirodules made an appearance as well as the entire Deathwing company of Dark Angels and it looked fantastic! Anyway, I'll let you look at the pics themselves, as well as a few thoughts of the day from some of our members.

Jamie Chadd; "my best moment was when my grey knights slew their first ever demon prince lol"

Huw Williams; "Owain getting his mast shot away by the Spanish Guarda Costa, Owain going up the tavern to celebrate their victory and catching syphillis (there's a special dice-roll), the pair of them getting cheated out of their prize ship by the Governor of Jamaica, the planting of a map and first clues to a vast Inca treasure: The Fabled Golden Cock of Atahualpa"

Mark Llewellyn; "My favourite part was my deathwing putting Josh's chaos army through the grinder."

Michael Browning; "my favorite part was Huw's reaction to Owain and Aaron's audatious attack on the 'best ship' in the spanish fleet and the eventual capture of said ship. Also it was my shot that took out owain's Mast!!"

Owain Richards; "Morgan's reaction to the Bio-titans, still cracking me up now. Mike taking down my mast in one shot, Celebrating a job well done with a job of a different kind and getting Syphillis and Aaron and me conducting piracy against the Spanish Navy. T'was a good day."

Morgan Payne; "Avatar fighting a heirodule for 3 turns was epic, karandras completely smashed a hive tyrant, jain zar took a harpy straight out of the sky, eldrad and his seer council survived against a carnifex, 10 gaunts, 5 warriors and 20 genestealers, the heirpohant was a challenge, kept getting its wounds down only for it to regen the next turn"

6th Starter Set

So what do we have here.... No rumours, no pinches of salt... just some good old solid truth. I think everyone knows about the new starter set which will be released in just a few days, but how do we all feel about it?

First of all the contents. Take a look at that picture... Phwoar!

Two nicely sized armies with plenty of variety of units for newcomers to learn about. The smaller rulebook I know will become an Ebay hit, as many people wish to sustain its larger brother and have something more transportable. Templates, a booklet outlining the units in the box and the missions along with a nice reference sheet help finish off the set. Of course, the real stars of the show will always be the miniatures and rightfully so.

Firstly, the Hellbrute. The first time you see it, you'll be amazed at its bulk. Its as if a Great Unclean One, a Dreadnought and an Obliterator had some Slaanesh sexy time and this beast was born. I do have one problem with it however. As amazing as a model it may be, its not going to be very poseable, which in turn equates to a lot of very similar looking hellbrutes out there at least until a boxed version with options comes available... which itself makes me excited. 

The other Chaos models are really well done. The Lord and the Chosen look great, plenty of character and detail embedded into the models, and if you havent already I highly recommend popping over to the GW website where you can get 360 degree pictures of them to marvel at. I however, am most enamoured with these chaps.

Chaos Cultists. Why? I've always been intrigued with perhaps doing a chaos army, but story wise its the uprisings that appeal to me. Dark Tidings afoot, and murmours of Traitorous Marines coming to the world to tear it asunder. As the defenders steady themselves, cultists appear and turn everything on its head even before the Chaos Space Marines are even on the planet. I love the idea that people everywhere suddenly show their true colours and turn upon those they were once friends with. I'd love a huge horde of them, some Imperial Guard Tanks perhaps, with some allied Chaos guys to be in charge. Sounds like a future army is brewing! Also though, is how well they'd fit as a Necromunda gang, they'd be amazing!

The Dark Angels contingent is really well done too, although as a Chapter they don't really appeal to me. I do feel that GW missed out by not having normal Marines in the box or at least having them be easily converted to be normal Codex marines. Expect a lot of these on Ebay too! The two models for me that stand out are the Librarian and the Limited Edition Chaplain, both are very nicely done and I may be tempted to do some extensive work on both to unclude them in my army.... Very extensive!

So in all, I think a great package especially for £65. I know a lot of people will be swapping contingents around so swell their ranks, and I look forward to facing off against these! 

What do you all think of it? Can you see some great idea's for conversions? Do you plan on swapping any contents? Your thoughts... Give them to me!

Day of 40K.

Thats right, a day. we opened the doors at 10am, and were able to get started by mid-day. We thought about this for a wee while, so I was able to organise to have the hall we play in for a full day for a pretty good price. Let the onslaught proceed! 

We had two teams, Imperial, and non Imperial. On the Imperial side was Morgan and his Space Wolves, Aaron and his Blood Angels, Jamie with his Grey Knights, and myself with my Evdandalists and new allies the Tau. Chaos gods had spoken into the minds of Louis, Mike and Owain, Bam fielded his Legion of the Damned army with the evil ones, and Alun and his Necrons also stood to invade the Emperors world.

First of all we played two games. Owain, Mike and Louis vs Morgan and Aaron, whereas myself and Jamie took on Bam and Alun.

The Imperium lost both opening games, not a good start! We'd decided also to make a note of player points, and after the first game Bam had taken the lead and I was not far behind. Not bad considering a loss! Jamie's Grey Knights failed to make much impact and lack of numbers proved decisive. I still had some troops left and had my Termies killed Bams Captain and Dread or I could have finished off his tactical squad holding a vital objective, I could have stolen the game. Moral victory, not just for that but my Predator gained revenge against Aluns Doomsday Ark by blowing it out of the sky, YES! 

Onto the next round, and to make it interesting we all had to nominate who was playing on what table. We had three, so that meant the Chaos team would have two duos and a single, whereas we had one tandem and two single players. After thinking about how they may plan their attack, I calculated that Owain and Mike would play together, Louis and bam would tema up, and Alun would be on his lonesome. And I was right. I took on Owain and Mike, Aaron and Jamie took on Louis and Bam, and Morgan and Alun continued their storied rivalry.

I won deployment and set up knowing that a good opening round of shooting would be a great start and put the Chaos side on the back foot. As Mike and Owain deployment Bam and Louis cheered as they stole the initiative. Unlucky! Owain rolled to steal it in our game... and promptly rolled a six. No! I'd set up quite aggressively too, with a couple of units fairly open.

 The first turn saw my Hammerhead nearly being destroyed by a Defiler, luckily I made the cover save. Mikes Dread was in range with its multimelta, hit, penetrated and then blew it up. That was painful! My Hammerhead failed to hit anything all game until the final turn, despite only needing to roll 3+. It was fianlly able to kill Owains Slaanesh dreadnought and deny him a point for having a unit in my deployment zone. My Land Raider was able to destroy the Defiler and deliver my Captain and Termies onto Mikes objective, where my Warlord roll to make my Captain a scoring unit would prove vital. The Stealth team were able to cause some pain to Owains troops, slowly whittling down his units. My Storm Talon killed Lucious the (not so) Eternal with a couple of Krak Missile shots and also managed to kill more of Owains squad to deny them another objective, although he was able to get his other unit on there. After the first turn I felt like I was going to lose, but managed to wrest control and get a vital win. Elsewhere, Aaron and Jamie were pounded, losing to the vile duo of Bam and Louis. Morgan and Alun fought out a stalemate, each side unable to capture the relic. Final game!

This was on a bigger board, 8x4. 3x3 and 2k points each. Me, Jamie and Morgan versus Louis, Alun and Bam. Vitaly we got the first turn, although Night Fighting was in effect.

 

Due to time constraints, we were only able to get in three turns each, and that was 3 hours of game time! We had played for 12 hours, and every hour was packed with fun. This was still plenty of time for plenty of blood to be shed. Jamie managed to get himself some better luck in this game and got us our first kill points. First Blood by taking out the Doomsday Ark, great start to the game! My vindicator survived 4 glances by getting a 6+ cover save due to nightfighting by rolling two sixes, cue me fist pumping. Morgans drop pod troops and blood claws were embroiled in long combats that swung either way, although Logan Grimnar killed himself after mind control scarabs infiltrated the old mans mind and made him smack his own head. Should have retired! My storm talon killed bams predator and a necron flyer, I also took out a big necron warrior squad and chaos squad with my captain and termies, and my firewarriors took out a last raptor and finished off a couple of terminators that were Fabius Biles bodyguard. We also lost a lot of units, 2 Land Raiders, my Hammerhead, and several squads all died in the name of the Emperor. However, it was not in vain! After the third turn we had more victory points, although overall from the other games we were down by several. After much totalling up we had discovered that I had the most points of any player, YES! Not sure how but it was nice to see that I've got back to winning ways, especially against such good opposition. 

I know there are many other tales of heroism and luck, sneakyness and straight out jamminess, but my memory barely remembers my own stories let alone other peoples. I'm very happy with how my Tau have integrated with my Space Marines and look forward to perhaps one day fielding and all Tau force. 

Onwards!