Apoc, Batrep, and Overdue Update!

Well, its been a wee while! I've got a few battle reports backdated but thought I'd post the latest as it was a nice little game against advesary Adam, mongeror of filth, and now also is known to call upon the power of the WAAAGHH!!!. The reason for my ineptitude to get some posts out has been that I've been incredibly busy with so much photoediting that editing even more pictures for my beloved blog has been a horrid thought. Now I've got most of it all done I'm able to photoshop for joy and 40k again! Also, being busy means you get paid...

When you're my hefty size, finding good tshirts is a problem. When you see a Ninja Turtles one... you get on it! 

I also got myself this little chap Saturday, what a lovely model too! Finecast, which I've now had a couple of minis of seem to be alright, the only bubbles were one in a wire and a couple on the bottom of his feet, I've also got a second drop pod and another rhino chassis. Speaking of the drop pod, anyone else find you change language to that more akin of a vulgar ruffian? Bloody drop pods! I'd also grabbed myself Apocalypse and another thunderfire cannon for a future project... more soon! Anyways....

Batrep!

1500 Space Marines vs a combo of Chaos Cultists and Orks. And Ghazgkull. Mainly the infamouse Ork Warlord to be honest... 

Most of Adams cultists were central, with a forgefiend and orks to my left and Ghazgkull and a big mob of orks on my right. My list was a more pacey affair than I normally take, so I had a unit of bikes with a captain, chaplain and attack bike attached to it. I also had missile devs, predator with lascannons, vindicator, and a couple of tactical squads. The other thing, was an assault squad, which I rarely take these days!

See the derriere of this Nurgle Daemon Prince?  It flew over the middle building and rudely aimed itself at my assault squad, thus presenting its bum to two tactical squads and a predator. Much rapidfire and lascannon shots later the Nurgle ass shower was dead.

My bikes flew down the left flank, their jink save dodging shots from the forgefiend and they cut into the orks striking them down quickly, soon rushing into the Chaos daemon engine and....

finding the off switch to its rear. In actuality I'd taken its last hull point with a basic attack glancing, which Adam failed to save. But I like to make things up a little more! 

My assault squad did some sterling work taking out three units of cultists, before Ghazkull, whose mob had been shot to ribbons, diverted his attention to them and slapped them silly, I attempted to charge him with the bikers but failed, which let him charge and take out most of my bikes. I left him on a wound, which proved enough in the next assault phase apart from the old Ork killing off my chaplain and captain. He's a beast! 

It was a good game, Adam could have done with a couple of more durable units, as the cultists and orks were rolled over. Ghazkill(which is a very good typo) was utterly hard, taking out about 500+ points on his own, which is probably all Adam took out all game! 

In other news, with Apocalypse coming out I've decided to try and finish off my battle company. I need just three more tacitcal squads, two for TS's and one to break up to plump up my Devastators. Theres a few other things I want to add, I'd like three predators, a third storm talon, and I've also got another dreadnought. Plus, theres a chance I'll be doing my own sort of contemptor dreadnought, which will be the new body for a Master of the Forge. On tracks. Ambitious, but sod it, gonna give it a go! We're doing our first apoc game with the new rules in two weeks and in september we're doing a full on apocalypse event. If you're in South Wales and want to come along, more details soon!

Hopefully now I'll update some more, but for now, cheers for reading!

Campaign Day at Tredegar Reavers: Testing the New Tau!

And so the Tredegar Reavers put on their first campaign day: VYNDRA II. Jacob came up with the rules and scenarios, so much kudos to that man!

Armies were made from 2 x 500 forces, 1 HQ and 1 Troops unit compulsery. So my Evandalists were to be rolled out again for action! However, with a difference. Not by me! I myself was using the brand new Tau Codex, along with another person who came to play. My list looked roughly like this. 

Fireblade Cadre, 10 fire warriors, 6 firewarriors, 8 pathfinders, riptide, broadside, hammerhead, two crisis suits, and a 3 man stealth team. No drones or anything, everything was pretty basic but I just wanted to squeeze as much in to give everything a go. Leaning over winning was the main aim today!

As always, Huw was in attendance putting on a game of No Quarter with Mike, Aaron and Owain. Couple of pictures are included!

Myself and Jacob got to club nice and early to get things set up, and here are the four tables we used. There was another but it wasn't needed, so I've just included these!

My first game was against a Necron force. Part of Jacobs plan was that the first game most of your units would deepstrike even if not normally allowed, except if a vehicle in which it comes on from your table edge. A few of my units are ready to arrive, so I deep strike my Riptide fairly centrally. Scatters. Mishaps. Rolled a one. Cry. The model I'd put a lot of effort into getting some sort of painted shape was killed before it had rolled a dice! Ho hum, on with it! We had four objectives to control, so my opponent had oen unit of immortals on his, a tough test to budge! I had my 10 man unit of firewarrios and my Fireblade Cadre, on one of mine. Second turn, he brings down his Necron Lord and he scatters. Mishaps. ROLLS A ONE!!! DICE GODS WHYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!! Well, bonus for me but horrid for the Necron player! In the end I was able to get a Crisis suit to contest his objective while holding my own. Game finishes 4-2 to me, Tau victorious!

Some of the other fights, Space Marines vs Chaos

Eldar and Dark Eldar allies vs Chaos

This was the Necron Lord that mishapped, lovely looking beastie!

This was Tau versus my Evandalists, commanded by Jason. He had some terrible luck, the Chaplain dying and after Jase rolled a one on the injury chart Jacob had concocted was dead for the entire campaign! Ouch!

No Quarter! in action, scurvy and crocodiles!

My next game against Chaos allies, this was a very close game. Chris' bezerkers came zooming down, I managed to blow one rhino up but out stomped Kharn who killed my broadside, but a railgun shot to the face soon stopped him. His other unit of bezerkers then failed to assault me twice and were wiped out by a combination of the new Tau rule 'Supporting Fire'. This helped give me enough sixes when shooting overwatch to make them just out of range of charging me the first time then finishing the squad off the second time. Score! The other Chaos had his Lord fly down the other flank and wiped out my Cadre and Firewarriors. Once again, a Railgun shot from across the board killed him.

My Riptide then tried to zoom foward, using the super charge I moved 17" forwards to close the gap with the Chaos objective. 7 bolt pistol shots, look at those to wound rolls! I made sure my dice saw that so they could see how to perform! The riptide only killed a couple, but it was worth a shot. In the closing moments of the game my hammerhead was able to blast apart just enough of the squad to cause them to run from the objective and off the table... thus making it a draw. Crazy game!

Some action on the Tyranid moon board.

More No Quarter, showing off the Island feature Huw had created.

Had to take a quick snap of this, the one Chaos players objective. What a beatiful piece of genius!

  
One of the Arena of Death matches. Being a Tau player I wasn't too bothered with this, but it was fun watching some of the other guys go at it. Moment of the Arena goes to Jason rolling a one when a fire warrior shot him for his armour save. Bad luck Jase!

Everyone had to hand in one model for the best painted award, we voted for the top three, then others voted for the top one. My Chaplain came second I believe!

Ah, my game against Alun will be a memorable one for my Tau! We were all given a special card at the beginning of the day which we could use in any game. Mine was "Was that a Lictor?" which meant I could move any one unit of my enemy 12" away from where they had been set up in  deployment. Seeing as Alun had taken an Aegis Defence Line and quadcannon I moved Yriel and his guardians out and shot them to ribbons, leaving Yriel on two wounds. My markerlights then removed the cover saves for the Eldar Rangers and Farseer who were then promptly shot at by everything in the second turn! Yriel slid around and took out my stealthsuits, and then charged the pathfinders. Overwatch from those alone took his last two wounds, result!

The enemy!

Aluns raider flew down the right, which I blew up, and then decimated the squad with fire from the Riptide. I then charged the squad and kept then held up for several turns while my army moved to capture the Relic and further themselves away. The Riptide fell, as it was incredibly hard to hit those pointy ears but the last two Dark Eldar died and Alun was wiped out. Victoy!

This was a scene as another Tau player tabled the Khorne Bezerkers, heres Kharn before he was obliterated.

This was the final game, and was a little bit different. HQ and any other unit had to go around chasing Relics, when one was controlled you had to roll a dice, if it was a 6 you'd win, otherwise it was replaced elsewhere on the table. A lot of city terrain was used for this! The only time I managed to get to one, I was able to roll the six and hold the main objective! Victory for the Greater Good.

And so the end comes, and we hold aloft our certificates. I was the owner of the Silver Throne, and, most pleasingly the best sportsmanship award too! The other Tau player won the overall campaign for scoring a shedload of victory points, best army and best mini, where as the Chaos player won the Arena of Death with his juicy Chaos Daemon Prince. Jason also won a certificate, for being the best roller of the 'one' on a D6, but could not be pictured due to having to leave early. As you can see, I'm the large ogre on the right.

So all in all a great day, we've raised a nice wee bit of money to go towards more scenary and got some good games of 40k in! First thoughts with the Tau, they're an incredible defensive army, supporting fire means anything coming close to you will suffer a few wounds from the amount of overwatch fire you can pour out. The Broadside didn't do much, but I had that mainly to take out flyers. The riptide performed well despite its terrible start, and the Fireblade Cadre's ability to add an extra shot to the fire warriors proved well worth his meagre 60pts. Unit of the day, Pathfinders. They are amazing and make the rest of the Tau so much better. Can't wait to play more games with them!

Day of 40k. November style!

So another hugely satisfying day of 40k gaming for us at The Tredegar Reavers, 2 large games of 40k went on and Huws Pirate game made a splash too. This post however, is dedicated to the game I participated in, a nice chunky game of 40k.

We had two opposing sides, Imperium versus Chaos. The sides were;

Me/Big Kev - Evandalists Space Marines and Tau allies

Bam - His mysterious Space Marines

Iain - Space Wolves

Carl Grey Knights.

Louis - Alpha Legion and Traitor Guard

Chris - Khorne Bezerkers and Death Guard

Alun - Daemons of too many varieties! 

 It was amazing to finally see most of my army out on the board, although some of it was not used. I think we had between 18-20k in points total, and thankfully it wasn't as slow moving as the Apocalypse game we played at Warhammer World.... mainly because we didn't have 16 players in one game! For the mission we adapted two missions from the rulebook to meet the size of the game. We had 6 objectives, but also victory points could be gained as in Purge the Alien. This meant we had a lot of tactical choices to make when capturing objectives... especially when Alun suggested a special rule.... In addition to him deploying daemons in the normal way, if a Chaos unit held an objective for a turn he could bring his units in within 12" of it. This made holding the two objectives in our deployment zone a huge priority, and also the two in dead mans land would need to be kept clear. We felt we had a good gun line and so wanted to hold back and then surge forth in the closing couple of turns to claim the open two objectives.

We won the roll for deployment and went first. This is our Deployment below!

Grey Knights and Space Wolves held the right Flank, myself and Bam held the centre and then both me and Iain held the left too. The chaos forces deployed and prompty stole the initiative, even though Alun and his Daemons didn't want too! As a lot of the Chaos forces were off the board, we escaped only losing a couple of models and no victory points lost, we had a chance at the bonus of first blood... which was then captured as a Nurgle Land Raider was blown up. Good start! We managed to get a few more kills and that ended the first turn.

Turn two, and the Daemons turn up... Ouch! Them having to deepstrike basically meant kill them asap or be charged by a close combat elite force. In our deployment zone we found blood letters, lesser daemons, Slaaneshi riders, warp talons, and a Great Unclean One. Louis' Valkyrie made an appearence too... but I'd chatted to Bam when making our forces and had contingencies for this! We had taken two Bastions, Bams had a Quadgun and mine had the Icarus Lascannon. Manning mine however, was Telion(or at least my Squat Sniper, not decided on a name yet!). This meant I had a 96" range st9 sniper! The Valkyrie flew on and was promptly blown up by Bams Quadgun... I didn't even get to fire! Only two crew survived, one Veteran and a Comissar Lord. 

A combination of Bams Predator Executioner and Iains Plasma Long fangs wiped out the darmons threatening the right flank, while a Tactical squad belonging to Bam took out the Warp Talons. My own Plasma devastators and Tau fire warriors wiped out the bloodletters, and then firepower from 4 dreadnoughts managed leave the Great Unclean One with two wounds left, and my Snipers fire were able to finish it off. Not even Nurgle likes the toxins of the Imperium! 

Battle was soon met in the middle as the Grey Knights advanced and were soon caught up in a long protracted combat with the Chaos forces on the right flank. Chaos Champions were killed, and Abbadon and Draigo battled it out for a few turns of combat until Draigo eventually fell. 

 

Turn three saw the chaos forces advancing ever closer,  looking to capture the middle objectives so their daemon allies could safely join battle closer to our lines. They pushed up the flanks, while we kept the centre line of cultists and daemons at bay with concentrated fire.

Louis' forgefiend proved effective, not so much in how much damaged it did, but how much we aimed at it to try and silence its deadly weapons. We failed in this!

Louis' maulerfiend, aka 'Buster' did some damage too, earning its weight in points back by quite a bit! I believe Bam took it out later in the game with a well aimed hunter killer missile. Phew!

Chris and Carl duel with the dice as Khorne meets Grey Knights. 

As the Chaos forces advanced, myself and Bam began our distraction tactic. Several of my Tau units, Legion of the Damned and a Drop Pod carrying a heavy flamer toting dread, and a couple of Bams units deepstriked onto the rear of the Chaos lines. Several of the dangerous chaos units had to turn back and deal with this new threat, giving our main line much more time to deal with the impending threats!

More daemons are found among our lines, including a Blood Thirster, two units of blood letters, while a gaggle of Greater Daemons advance up our left flank and take on the Space Wolves and two of my Tactical squads, including one Kairos Fatewaever. His ability of re-rolling failed armour and invun saves proved huge for the daemons, as they stubbornly refused to die as they killed our forces! 

Being unble to wipe out the bloodletter units and Blood Thirster at our rear they charged into the Grey Hunters holding our rear most objective. We had a healthy lead at this point, but if the daemons could capture this objective and a couple of the others they would close the gap sinificantly. After the assault just 2 grey hunters remained, and we would struggle to kill these. 

In the centre of the battlefield, battle was met between my Chapter Master, Chaplain and terminators and Kharn and his retinue of Bezerkers. One Bezerker and an untouched Kharn were left standing, and I lost three terminators after the first round of combat. My chapter master, Vincent Eniko was unable to catch Kharn off his guard, but then Orneus Gyozo stepped in with an almighty punch of his power fist that could have been the Emperors fist himself and crushed the mighty Traitors helmut. With the blow, one of the Imperiums biggest threats fell to the ground and my newly made chaplains first kill couldn't have been any bigger! The unit got back into the Land Raider and surged forth to claim an objective, Vincent Eniko being a scoring unit due to his Warlord Trait.

Iains wolf lord on thunderwolf was stuck in combat with this beast for a few turns! The decimator eventually ran the warrior down, crushing the wolf beneath its armoured feet and knocking the life out of the wolf.

In the closing moments, combined fire from 2 devastator squads, fire warriors, and a tactical squad managed to kill a blood letter squad that were standing before Second Company Captain Erasmus Torgeaz and his Bike riding squad. The stormed into the combat, impact hits killing the last couple of blood letters in combat with the grey hunters and my Captain challanged the Avatar of War. The Blood Thirster greedily accepted and struck at Torgeaz with daemonic speed, two hits getting through the Iron Halo. Bloodied and battered, Erasmus delivered furious blows that must have matched the visceral brutality of the Blood Thirster itself and took its last couple of wounds off him. A huge kill for Torgeaz, and objetive rescued!

So a great game, and I'm sure the other guys had some great moments too, due to my age I only remember mine though! Ha. The gamed ended 49 points to the Imperium and 32 to Chaos. A glorius victory and many honours earned. Orneus Gyozo, Erasmus Torgeaz and my Snipers being my own personal men of the battle. 

I'll do another post soon fleeting over the other two games that were played, one of which contain 2 biotitans, a harridan and an Eldar titan. It looked cracking fair play and was an incredibly close game! I'll be asking the guys for their moments to bring to you, along with some pictures of the pirates game Huw put on that some of the guys played.

Some great news too, we made enough money from the day that we shall soon be sending off our GCN application and the insurance money, so huge boost for the club! Makes me a very proud Chairman. We're now going to look at another all dayer over the Xmas period, as our club night falls on Xmas and New Years eve... so no club for 2 weeks? NO WAY!!! All dayer needed it seems! Andrew mentioned about perhaps doing a fast paced tournement style day, which I think would be cracking! So we'll get some planning done soon and see what we can do. All in all, a great day and some cracking moments for my Evandalists... expect not only another post on the day but also a video with some footage in and also I may do a little story based from the viewpoint of my Evandalists. For now though....

Fair well!

Monday Night CHAOS.

So last night we gave the new Chaos Codex a go. Louis and Chris, to avid Chaos followers (feel free to spit in the heretics faces ha) played me and Bam. Louis took Abbadon, Sorceror, two cultist squads, and three two man obliterator squads. Chris took Kharn, bezerkers, Daemon Prince and Termies. Not sure if he had another troops unit, but its all good. Bam had three dreads, captain, and three tactical squads, and also two drop pods... one for a dreadnought and one for the captain and tactical squad. I took Tau. Yep, against a new codex and I took an army I'd used only once before, interesting! I too 3 battlesuits, inc Shas'O, 6 man stealth team, 2 fire warrior squads, and a hammer head. 

This week long time member Jacob mentioned he was bringing some terrain up, imagine our faces when it was all painted and looked awesome! New terrain means awesomeness. We rolled for terrain, mission and deployment. Crusade and the normal deployment was the way, and me and Bam won which side and first turn... needless to say we took the side with more cover!

I didn't get as many pics as I'd have liked, due to playing and forgetting too. Perks of getting old! First couple of turns was quiet, except for me and Bam getting first blood for Chris' Terminator squad trying to deepstrike in front of my battlesuits, scattering onto terrain, then getting lost in the warp on a roll of a one. Yeah! I concentrated blowing up the rhinos to make the Khorne contingent footslog while bam dealt with a daemon prince, who are now nasty pieces of work. It killed all but a sarge of a tactical squad, a dread tried to save him but got blown up, letting the seargent stick his power sword where the warp don't shine(it was on its last wound, phew!)

My stealth team deepstriked in, as I didn't see anywhere good for them to deploy via infiltrate, and then did exactly the same as the Chaos Termies. ARGH! All for the greater good I guess, swings and roundabouts! 

Bams Captain and tactical squad got beaten by abbadon, cultists and two obliterators in combat, we both managed to down most of the bezerkers, and I'd not lost a fire warrior. Thats a first! We had to stop early as time was getting late, but I think we were in a decent position. Kharn would have been amongst my lines if he could have survived a whole turn of everything I had shooting at him, including a hammerhead. We had one objective and first blood whereas the Chaos side only managed Warlord. A win for the Tau! It was a good laugh, and I think both sides made some mistakes here and there. Pity we couldn't finish but ah well!

Mike, has a new ambition to be a God. So he's started by sculpting a mountain. Ha crazy man, should be good though, will look awesome having such height on a table. 

Projects for me shall soon consist of revisiting my Space Marines to start work on the 2 chaplains I want to do, one on foot and one on a bike. I have some of the parts so will get cracking soon. I'm also thinking of building a Master of the Forge Dreadnought... but I'm daunted! Adios for now anyways!