The Damned Codex?

Tonights proving to be fruitful for us 40k fans... The Imperial Knight and now a Legion of the Damned Codex? I'm very excited about this! Just knowing more about them is awesome, but if theres more options in the too? *dribbles*

Legion Damned again, and Batrep!

Welcome back for another batrep and update! This weeks battle report had me and Bam both using marines, my Evandalists and Bams Silver Skulls, versus Ryans Space Wolves and Aluns Eldar. 1k each player and capture the Relic!

We won deployment and first turn and took full advantage. Bams Chapter Master got outflank, and so went into reserve along with the razorback he and his honourguard were in. My Librarian's trait meant if he'd get a bonus point for every enemy warlord killed in a challange. We'll see how that went haha. 

First turn, the librarian comes down with five sternguard in a drop pod. Not where I wanted, but I did then see a possibly chance of first blood and even warlord. Aluns dire avengers and farseer were right at the back of his deployment zone, and I managed to kill four or five and force a morale check. Much to my surprise and Aluns dismay, they ran straight off the board! 2 kill points in one bold move, first blood and warlord! Elsewhere not much happened apart from killing a few of Ryans plasma cannon toting long fangs. They still hurt us though! 

They, in alliance with Aluns dark reapers took out one of Bams combat squads and two of my missile launcher devs. Bams army was hit badly and he lost more troops, but he still had 2 dreads and a combat squad left and his warlord off the table. Ryan than charged into me with his space wolf terminators. Who did I spy in there but Ragnar Blackmane. Do I challange and try to get the bonus point?

You damn right! Ragnar causes a wound, but I'm unable to wound him back. My sternguard are wiped out and no casualties for ryan, luckily the libby stays in the fight. Next turn, Bams Chapter Master comes into play, where the razorback gets damaged but they disembark and are charged by some howling banshees. Who are not eqiupped to take out armour save 2+! They're butchered, and Bam moves into the neaby building to do more killing. Meanwhile, ragnar strikes at my librarian, but I save all wounds. I hit back twice, wounding once. Ragnar takes his armour save, and fails! I then make a leadership test, pass, and the Space Wolf leader is dead! 2 bonus points for me! This puts is in a good position, it'd be hard to lose but draw could still be on the cards.

Bams chapter master and honour guard kill some grey hunters and rangers in the next couple of turns, demolishing their left flank. Then a fire prism shows up and kills Bams unit, ouch! My vindicator kills all but one grey hunter in the centre, limiting the troops units they have to capture the objective hopefully helping us win. 

Little else happens, I make 5 4+ saves with three scouts to keep them on the relic (even though they die next turn haha) and Alun failed another LD10 morale check thanks to some well placed frag missiles.

At the end noone has the objective but we win 4-2, as both of our warlords died. A cracking game though, Bam showed he was a little rusty as he hasn't played for a while but still did well considering how shot up he got. Ryan is still learning 6th edition but he too did well. All in all a good game!

Onwards! For the upcoming Apocalypse game, I'd fancied the Legion of the Damned Apocalypse formation. Didn't think I'd afford to get any though, so imagine my surprise when a guy called Alex turns up at our club with some stuff for sale, among them 5 damned legionaires! I get them for a great price, then the next day I look on ebay and am able to get another 5 saving a few bucks off the normal price, all in metal too matching my other squad! So today, I built them all. Then I decided to undercoat them too.

And then I painted them! All done in just one day, probably about 5 hours work give or take a little. So another unit of the Damned and I'm now able to take them as a formation, awesome! Can't wait to see all twenty drop in and cause havoc!

So thats all for now, I've got a course to go on for a few days so I doubt I'll get much done, but this weekend we'll have our first apocalypse game and a practice for the biggy in september!

The Evandalists. Video and Pictures

Welcome all to an update on my Evandalists, They're out and ready to be inspected! Below is a Vlog update on Youtube and further down are some pictures of units from my army. Over the next two or three months I'm looking to update my army background too, so keep an eye out for that!

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!

More 6th Gaming

So more gaming was had Thursday night, myself, Morgan, Owain and Alun from the club went to Firestorm Games in Cardiff. A great little shop and a nice big gaming room behind where you pay a few bucks to play for as long as you want, and they don't shut til 11pm. YES!

Myself and Alun had a 2500 points game, Evandalists vs Daemons and IG allies. The board we played on was really nice as you can see, although a future apology for the bad quality pictures as I was using my compact camera and its a bit dark in there. As befitting a gaming room!

I forget which mission we played, but it was very akin to capture and control from 5th edition. I set up, then Alun deployed his IG allies. 2 Leman Russ tanks and a squad of penal legion guard with a commissar. Then the Daemons came, and things went bad!

My three tactical squads, assault squad with chaplain, master of the forge, and ten man niper squad of scouts were all butchered. TTwo dreadnoughts and a vindicator all blown up with penetrating hits and rolls of sixes. My deployment zone was left pretty much empty! Kairos Fateweaver, a Bloodthirster, a Daemon Prince, and a large unit of Bloodletters and I'm not surprised either! Thinking my deployment zone was lost I outflanked my Captain with termies in a land raider and escorted by a stormtalon in to attack Aluns deployment zone. The Legion of the Damned teleported in and annihilated the troops holding Aluns objective. Game on! Alun's other Daemons came into play, a daemone prince now faced my Damned and a another large unit of bloodletters stood in front of my termies. In they went!

My captain was charged by a bloodthirster and of the four saves I needed to make I failed one, damn! Termies butchered the bloodletters, but the termies were then charged by the bloodthirster, Karios and the daemon prince and were killed. The Legion of the Damned killed the other daemon prince in combat, and the storm talon made frag missiles look impressive. 

The large bloodletter unit that had materialised in my deployment zone had about 14 models left, and the stormtalon swooped around and unleashed its typhoon missile launcher. Two frags detonated and there were only 4 left... wowser! The assault cannon fired, four hits.... 2's to wound.... 4 ONES!!!! ARGH!!! Hilarious moment though! Next turn the stormtalon again unleashed frags and the bloodletters were destroyed. I lost the game by a couple of points but had denied the enemy of either objective... Moral victory! Only the Land Raider and one legion of the damned trooper survived. 

What a fantastic game though, plenty of memorable moments like the assault cannon, being able to roll plenty of sixes to hit ALuns Flying monstrous creatures, and everything dying. Sixth edition is definately shaping up to be something special!

6th Underway!

And here we are. 6th edition is in full swing, FAQ's granted by the Emperor, and much tenderness for those d6's to give us the rolls we desire. And never get. At Tredegar Wargames Club we decided to celebrate by playing a series of games in a row, so everyone could see the rules being played and take it all in. I think it worked too. The general consensus is that they're a much better ruleset, the added depth a god-send and allies are allowing people to mix up their army lists.

Of course, I got to play too. I tried a small game with my nephew just to go through the basics so I could see some changes and my Nephew could see how it all worked. He beat me. Ha.Onto the main ame we played at the club, it was me and Josh, my nephew, against the old adversaries Bam and Jason. We used my Space Marine Evandalists, Bam used his Legion of the Damned, and Jase wheeled out the Eldar.

We played the Big Guns Never Tire mission which meant Heavy Support could capture objectives, of which there were three. A few things were forgot in this game, night fighting, gettinga 6+ save or Dispel against Psykers, which would have been useful going against a Farseer, and the way in which Fleet works. I forgot that you can no longer run and charge in the same turn, which Jase did and that helped them to win the game. But a fun game no doubt! Hull Points make so much more sense now, and I like how the missions work .

I also played another game against Bam, and again I lost. We did remember night fighting though! Another few things we forgot in this game too, I outflanked my chaplain and his 10 man assault squad, which allowed me to blow up Bams predator. In Bams turn, his 5 vanguard and captain assaulted my jump pack unit out of their razorback, which isn't allowed anymore. This was huge as my guys were wiped out, but it did prove to make the game more interesting! It was a really close game and I couldnt get enough wounds on bams squad that were contesting my objective to shift them. Ho hum!

Finally one of my Legion of the Damned... had a quick go at some atmospheric lighting and it doesn't look too bad... although it does show how bad my painting is!

Breaking in the Storm Talon!

So Mondays game was against the Blood Angels of Mike. I was up against Assault Termies in Stormraven, 5 assault troops with jump packs and accompanied by a captain and jump pack, 9 terminators, predator, devastators, a tactical squad, and two dreads. Myself, land raider with assault termies and chaplain, 2 tactical squads with rhino's, 2 scout sniper squads, dread, vindicator, predator, legion od the damned, and the brand new storm talon.

Capture and Control, and we placed our objectives in opposite corners of the battlefield. Land Raider, and tactical squad to try and capture the opponents, while the scouts, dread and vindicator held mine. Everything else, reserve! 

My vindicator advanced and managed to destroy the one dreadnoughts assault cannon, which meant I could target faster elements while he trundled towards me. The land raider and rhino advanced the full 12" to close the gap. I managed to knock a few devastators off but my Land Raider was then immobilised, meaning my termies would have to trek a wee bit. They managed to get into combat with the other dread, but when Mikes terminators got involved w had a long drawn out combat, eventually wiping my guys out. Mikes dread was left immobilised and only one of his terminators left. Not bad by my guys!

My predator arrives, and manages to immobilise Mikes Rhino, but my vindicator misses. Then Mikes assault guys deep strike down amongst my lines, yikes! During the next turn the vindicator wipes out the assault troops and the Legion of the Damned turn up and manage to wipe out the captain with a well placed meltagun shot. Phew!

Storm Raven arrives! Shoots over, immobilises my vindicator, and dumps down the assault terminators on my objective... nasty! They wipe out the first scout squad and look to threaten the second who still hold the objective, but the Damned marines are able to make it into combat and after 3 rounds of combat whittle down the termies until none are left. Phew!

On the other flank, my other tactical squad arrives and advances up to support the other tactical squad whose rhino had been blown up. They are able to assault Mikes tactical squad who hold the objective after the second TS whittle them down with rapid fire. The Storm Talon was able to kill one terminator, and used its supersonic move to contest the objective in case turn 5 was the last. In turn 6 it too poured fire into the tactical squad. The first tactical squad was then able to assault the remnants and take the second objective. Game won! Close mind, but the Storm Talon is fully bloodied. It may not have killed an awful lot, but its supersonic move could have potentially won me the game and its shooting then helped to wipe the Blood Angels out. Score!

Gaming Update!

So I've been a wee slack with actual games lately, but theres this and another couple of updates due to come in the next day or so. This game however was from Monday night, and played against Andrew's Death Guard.

I recently found out two things that helped me choose my force. Vindicators can move 6" and shoot, and Legion of the Damned are relentless. Score. Taking both! 1800 pts a side! My basic list was Chaplain, termies, land raider, vindicator, two tactical squads in rhino's, devastator squad with 2 plasma cannon, dread, and a land speeder.

It was an objective based game so only two troops for four objectives, was going to make it tough against the hard to shift DG, but my opponent also only had two troops choices too so this was about grabbing one or two and contesting the rest!

First couple of turns, and to be fair the whole game went well for me. If it was kill points it would have been a slaughter! Our vindicators were pretty useless, although mine did finish off a DG squad later in the game. I was able to pretty much kill all of Andrews Termies, and there were 19 plus Typhus, who I also killed. My Land Speeder deep striked close to his land raider and took that out in one turn, which was lovely to see! My Legion of the Damned also showed up and caused a nuisance to his havocs and the aforementioned DG squad.

This game however, was not all about killing. My one TS were able to capture an objective, but my other weakened squad were just unable to hold one of the other objectives which Andrew did claim... so we ended with a draw when the game ended on turn 5. Damn! 

Had the game lasted one more turn I'd have got a win as I had enough there within range to contest the DG's objective, including my Land Raider. But it was not to be. I am however claiming it as a huge moral win as I killed quite a lot of Andrews troops and one of the Imperiums most hated advesaries, Typhus!

It was a great game though and we both enjoyed it immensely. I've only played Andrew twice, and both games now have been objective based and both games a draw! We shall be battling again, and we're both sat next to each other on our club table, Andrew just above me. I will take his spot by beating him!

New Photographic Setup.

So I've finally attempted to sort out the photography, as I am a keen amatuer photographer, and made myself a little box to take pictures in. They're not perfect by anymeans, but the images are a lot brighter and the white backgrounds, after some photoshop work, help create much better images overall. Which isn't that good a thing as you can now see mroe of my painting imperfections!

 

Its definately been worth the effort, and if anyone wants I'll make a wee post about how I did it. It makes your blog look a lot better, and helps you see what you need to improve on miniature-wise.