Necrons vs Tau/Space Wolves

Greetings all, another game for my Tau, this time I'm allied with Morgan and his Space Wolves to take on the Necron threat commanded by Alun! Alun had 2000pts to play with whereas myself and Morgan split that in half for 1000pts each. We won the dice roll to set up so went first, Hammer and Anvil Deployment and The Relic was the objective... could be tough!

Night fighting was enforced in the first and second turns, meaning not a lot of damage could be dealt by either force. I forgot to take Blacksun Filters!

Morgans Thunderwolves were charged and weakened by Aluns Wraiths. Just as the Thunderwolf cavalry thought they had won a Necron flyer came on and decimated the unit. Meanwhile Morgans Grey Hunters advanced to control the Relic and bring it back, my Firewarriors staying back to cover their return. As dawn began more ranged damage was done. 

Alun deepstriked a 10 strong unit of Necron Deathmarks with their single beady eyed heads locked on my Riptide who dealt out destruction with his Ion Accelerator. They aimed and rapid fired into the huge Tau tech and left it on one wound remained. The Riptide returned fire, decimating 7 of them even though two stood back up. The Firewarriors in the centre then rapidfired under the guidence of the Fireblade and fell them, 36 shots tearing through the mechanical creatures. 

A bloody battle erupted for the Relic as the Grey Hunters were assaulted on all sides. Scarabs kept them in place so Imotckh and a unit of warriors with another Necron Lord could get stuck in. Both sides piled models in, and there wasn't many left. As the Necron flyer zoomed in to use its deadly death ray my broadside calmly took aim and blew it up with a well aimed shot from its heavy Railgun.

The game ended on Turn 6 with both sides vying for control, but me and Morgan had won 

by claiming first blood and I thin Warlord also. So close! We did have more numbers left at the end of the game and if it went to a Turn 7 I would have been able to claim the objective, 2 firewarriors almost in range to claim!

Also being played was another game of 40k, newcomer Paul had a force of Eldar from yesteryear and wanted to be inducted back into the game, so he teamed up with Louis and his Imperial Guard and they versed Andrew and his DeathGuard and Jordan and his Tyranids.

I have nothing in the way of details I'm afraid, you'll have to make to with pictures!

Bam inspects the carnage being wrought by both sides, wishing his space marines could join in and blow them all up!

Huw was here too with No Quarter... heres what he had to say about it!

"The three players each had a group of three figures each and had no special orders other than to go into the port of New Blaina and do what they liked. New blaina is abit of a lawless frontier town with five taverns three brothels no church and thats the nice partof town.

theres no law and no government even though its nominally a British posession so order is traditionally kept by a party of sailors and marines from whatever ships are in port."

"Ash chose to go looking for trouble in a locals bar and ended up in a knifefight, Carl tried to break it up with his sailors but some heavily armed locals persuaded him to move along. after settling the argument by killing the locals ash headed towardsthe main square.

Pete headed for the biggest tavern and got into a conversation with the owner finding out thsat a navy message boat had left 20,000 in sacks in the jail and that Mad Gerald, a local weirdo who keeps crocodiles as pets knew how a way of getting in. Picking up a local drunk to act as aligator bait he headed for geralds cottage...."

"Meanwhile mike had been stopped by carl who wanted to search his bottom for drugs, an angry crowd gathered and instead he done a scarper letting mike go.

Alun went to the nasty bit of town and decided-in broad daylight, to do a bit of housebreaking, which brought carl running to make an easy collar.

Carl took him to the nasty little jail house and slung him inside where the only thing to sit on were some big sacks full of shiny silver coins, after stuffing their pockets Aluns mob found the back wall was falling down which they were abble to hack thru with their swords and guns which carls coppers had failed to take off them. meanwhile Petes crowd nicked a horse and carriage picked up some whores and headed for the jail shouting loudly that the jail was full of british silver and anyone helping stom it would get a share"

"Long story short: everyone run for the jail, carl split his force in half to stop mike who had nicked a rowing boat and was trying to rob his battleship and even tho he shot dead all ashleys gang didnt have the men to hold off the mob. Carl scarpered handing the navy payroll over to the pirates and setting himself up for a court-martial next time around. Alun who had sided with carl to defend the cash got nowt but pete said he could come with him, mikes gang got shot to shit (again) and he rowed off on his todd, Ash's one surviving character took his share of the silver and booked into the third floor of the whorehouse and is probly there to this day. The End."

So there we go! 

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!

New FW Necron Release

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a huge fan of Necrons. I can see the appeal, but its just not something that makes me look and want to collect them. Forge World have however released some new Necron bits that will most likely tie into the imminent release of the new Imperial Armour book. First up, is the realm of battle board featured in a past White Dwarf.

Now fair play, four of those slotted together looks pretty awesome, I'd love to battle em on there! I sort of reminds me of some of the Lizardmen temples that had been seen many moons ago in foreign Games Days and such. The other new release is the Night Shroud Bomber.

How much better does this look with the side blades? Such a better look than the normal variant, it almost looks like a weapon you'd expect to see on Stargate or some othe scifi adventure. I'd always disliked how the cockpit was open, so this is another aspect that holds much improvement in my eyes.

Well done FW, some likeable Necrons!

6th Edition: Out on the 30th.

And here is apparantly what it will look like. (Apparantly)

Theres so many things going around about rules changes and as far as I'm concerned it all looks for the better. People will always complain because they're into the system of knowing which rules they can bend and tailor a force around such things to gain advantages. Now, they have to start again.

440 pages of full colour goodness, how much rules and how much fluff? Who knows. I'd guess at around 60-40 in favour of the rules. I love some background so hope theres a nice chunk in there! Lets hope the new set of rules herald a much richer experience of gaming, 5th had a good foundation, hopefully 6th edition will add some much needed depth to the experience.

Pre-order on the 23rd, out on the 30th!