Epic Play - X-Wing Thoughts

Xwing at club has been a little underloved, so to bring the new year in our first club night of 2016 consisted of our first game of Epic. Josh and Bam both had big ships, the Raider and the Assault Carrier, and were eager to use them in a game so myself and Scott, of the Crow Valley Crusaders, took 200 points of small ships to counter this Empire threat. Scott went for quite a competitive list, 3 Bwings and lots of Headhunters,whereas I went for ships I wanted to use because I love using them. 3 prototype pilots, Han with engine upgrade, a couple of B's and an Xwing. Josh took his Raider with one of the Slave one pilots and a ti fighter, and Bam took the Assault Carrier, several tie fighters and a decimator.

First things first, I don't remember many details on the game but I want to talk more about 'Epic Play'. As we got more and more through the game it became more apparent that Bam and Josh were a little underwhlemed with the larger ships. Its possibly because myself and Scott didnt take any, although if I had one I'd have been tempted. Bam also didn't realise one of the rules which may have changed a few things but it was still an odd yet interesting game. Josh's Raider didn't seem to do much, and I think he needed to fly it more aggresively towards my ships and just try to take them out by ramming them. His weapons didn't seem to do that much either, so it would be interesting to try again and see if it was down to the dice or if Epic ships just aren't that great against a lot of smaller ships.

Playing with Scott was an eye opener too, seeing how his mind works when taking a list was intriguing as I'm not the most competitive when it comes to playing. I'm hoping a few of us will be looking towards playing a tourney or two this year so will be speaking to scott about what lists are in and doing something very different while trying to win a game or two!

The game itself went pretty much mine and Scotts way, with Scott hammer away at the ties, decimator and assault carrier where I took on the raider and its attention. Han flew up the middle, got shot at by the raider then swept back in towards the bounty hunter, giving Han the engine upgrade is just an absolute joy, especially with push the limit and the millenium falcon tile so he can get an evade every turn too. Tie fighters are jerks, the swarm still works incredibly well and I think if Bam had taken 200 points worth of them we'd have had a lot of trouble! I also still think the Slave One is a great alround ship. Throws out some good firepower, moves well too and is quite resilient.

We ended the game with the Imperials not having much left, both big ships out while we still had a decent amount of ships, but not without our own losses. Epic play is something I want to try again, and myself and my nephew Josh are going to switch sides so I can try a big ship in the near future while he gets to try rebels for the first time. 

Future releases are exciting too, I cannot wait to get the Ghost expansion, being a fan of the Rebels series. If you've not seen, THEN GO! The Inquisitors Advanced Prototype looks deadly too, Bam has mentioned his excitement for getting his grubby mitts on the ship. 

So a Question to the Xwing players out there, how competitive are you guys and how does this affect your ship choice? What are you guys looking forwarf too and anything on your wishlist of things for new expansions? I was surprised a couple more new ships weren't featured in The Force Awakens, so if we'll see many new ships is unlikely. Fingers are crossed!

Incoming updates will depend whats played over the next few weeks, but I'm pretty sure Spartacus will be featured (we had an amazing game last week of this as Morgan picked it up) and also the start of our look at Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. We have a group of between 6-8 players and we're having our first regular night on Saturday. Exciting times!

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!

Batrep Evandalists vs Imperial Guard

So Sunday I get a message from Alun, my Elven nemesis. "So, I'll be at club tomorrow. You want a game? If so, state the points!"

"1850! Or 2350! Choose!" I reply. 

"2350! A rather random amount!" Alun settles. 

I wasn't sure what force Alun was taking, so I went for something I thought was adaptable. My force looked like this...

Captain on bike, artificer armour and power weapon, bikers and attack bike

Chaplain, with termies in land raider

2 tactical squads

dreadnought with twin linked heavy flamer and heavy flamer in drop pod

whirlwind

Telion and scouts

dreadnought with plasma cannon

Missile launcher armed devastators

Storm talon

Aluns force was roughly....

4 Leman Russ tanks, one with Pask

4 chimeras with veterans, company command, and comissar lord

squad of veterans with aegis defence line and quad cannon 

valkyrie with veterans

Deployemtn shown above, and Aluns reserves and tank contents below

I go first, and immediately bring down the dread in drop pod ready to toast me some guard. My main force advances along the left flank while everything else gets into postion to fire. I take out two chimeras with heavy firepower, and kill some of the veterans inside them too. The dreadnoughts flamers are unleashed and every guardsmen becomes a hot tasty snack! That quad cannon  wont be shooting my storm talon next turn! Having no cover or armour saves is amazing, Alun upgraded his guardsmen to veterans with carapace armour, so heavy flamers are the way to go. 

Alun fires back, and doesn't cause a lot of death... the dread dies, as I expected when placed in front of two lema russ tanks, and I lose a couple of tacitcal marines and bikers.

Turn two was more quiet for me, I advanced into positions to charge with termies and bikers but both were just out of range of what I rolled. I wanted to blow up the chimera but shooting didn't work and wasn't able to assault either so had to leave it! 

Sly Marbo... deadly little bugger he is! Kills 7 tactical squad members, then assaults them the turn after and finishes them off. There was a hilarious moment when I tried to kill him with some scout fire and a plasma cannon plus those two tactical marines and was unable too, I mentioned that I'l probably roll a 6 in overwatch then a one to wound. What happened? EXACTLY that! Amazing sequence!

After a quiet turn three my chaplain assault one squad while my termies did a disorganised charge on two of the leman russ tanks. I lost my bonus for charging but managed to blow them both up, while my chaplain duelled with the veteran sarge and failed to kill him!

The Bikers were able to sweep around the left  and despite losing a couple more of their number got into

with the Commissar Lord and his squad. It took two turns but I was able to kill them just as the command squad charge in, and the game ended with this combat still happening. 

The final scoure was 11-7 I believe, although had it gone on for another turn I think I may have been on my way to tabling Alun. Had a great laugh, good to face the elf boy again! I think the dreadnought with flamers works amazingly well against anything not in power armour, especially against troops in cover. Bikers performed well, their jink saves helping them to keep enough numbers wise to get into combat and be able to still take out a unit or two, and the termies blowing up two Leman Russ tanks was awesome! The storm talon, which I failed to mention didn't do much, hence why I forgot about him! I was disappointed with the Chaplain but he's done well before so I forgive him. Biggest disappointment was the missile launchers, they didn't do an awful lot. I've had a couple of games with them and they've done ok before, but even after blowing up a couple of chimeras in the first turn they failed to do anything! 

We had some Battlefleet gothic happen at club, looks like a great game fair dues, would love to have a go sometime and I've always wanted to incorporate this and epic into a campaign.

We have another all dayer this sunday, and this time theres a few of us having a day playing blood bowl! I'll probably be taking my humans, and I have a nice idea for a team ready to roll out that may involve me painting a star player to use as another model.... we shall see though! Expect much blood bowl to be mentioned in my next post among the other games that take place on sunday!

Monday Night Gaming

And here we are once again, the day after a great battle has been fought. 

This week I had a 2500 point game versus Morgan and his Space Wolves, an army I hadn't yet fought. The Emporers Will was the missions, and deployment was Hammer and Anvil. We set terrain up previously and one wide edge was fairly empty... so when deployment was rolled I hoped to win. I didn't. All I had in my zone was two bastions (we used them as buildings but nothing more) and a hill. This could hurt! Morgan's zone was a lot more occupied, and would be hard to mount an attack. I deployed with most of my force held back. Taking Khorsarro Khan meant I could outflank, and by hell I'd need it with this deployment!

Morgan advanced and took a few shots, but killed nothing. I stayed where I was, and killed nothing. 

Turn one over! Turn two saw Morg bring on a unit of blood claws, a wolf guard in termie armour and a wolf priest in an outflank move, along with a unit of wolf scouts right next to the bastion I'd be using as my objective. This was nasty!

And nasty it proved to be. The tactical squad I had there killed a few wolf scouts but were torn apart by the big blood claw unit,  and the scouts were able to blow up the bastion, the 3 devastators left inside, and four of their own troops in the resulting blast. Myself and Morg found this to be hugely entertaining, as we'd only just discovered the seperate damage chart for buildings. Up it went taking loads with it, amazing!

Elsewhere my forces came on, but one tactical squad, Khan and the Storm Talon didn't show up. Land Raider with termies and Chaplain came on at Morgans rear, as did some regular Termies. The Legion of the Damned came on in front of Morgans Objective, which meant he had to choose between these and my termies which unit he attacked with his Wolf Lord. The Damned it was! There were too many attacks for the Damned to contain and were all brought to bay after 3 combat rounds. The Termies were able to kill the Eldar allies Morgan had taken, pathfinders and farseer and stayed on the objective. Morg then counterattacking brought his assault troops jumping over, who unleashed bolt pistols. I took 4 wounds, and failed THREE SAVES!!! Thats right, 3 ones showed up and I cried. This left one termie left and ten assault troops! Needless to say he died.

Khan, the tactical squad and the storm talon took until turn 4 to arrive, and it looked like it may be too late. My other termies were unable to have much affect on Morgs objective, but I threw the tactical squad up there to try and contest should the game end on turn 5. The Storm Talon and other devastator squad fired at the blood claws and were able to wipe them out after two rounds of shooting leaving Khan and his bikers to assault the wolf scouts and try to get the 6" or so they needed to claim my objective. If they did this, and the game ended, I'd have sneaked a win even though I'd lost much of my force. Morg had 2 points, first kill, and for having units in my deployment zone, where I only had one for having my units in Morg's zone. If I could claim the objective, I'd get a win. Khan attacked first, 4 dice and all I needed to roll were 3's. A one, and two two's sucked. But I did hit once. Anything but a one.... One. ARGH!!! C'mon bikers, do me proud. They killed one biker. The scout passed his leadership test and my bikers had failed miserably even though the odds were easily in their favour. Damn you dice gods!!!

Just to rub salt in my wounds, the game ended on turn 5. 2-1 to Morgan, a game that points wise, doesn't show just how much I lost! Morg still had half an army intact, whereas I had lost a lot of troops. I'm incredibly happy that I managed to get myself into a position to almost pull off a win however, as I really shouldn't have had a chance! Kudos to Morgan though, he played well. Very entertaining game and another loss in 6th edition, but I still think its much better than 5th. Just wanna get more games played!

Talking about Tactics.

(image from Games Workshop)

So I've been thinking about some tactics recently... More specifically, Sternguard. I hink the special ammunition is a great option for them... but something else appeals to me more. Stormbolters. Why? 

2 shots and assault. Every time. A lot of people prefer the special ammo, or even combo-ing their guns with meltas, flamers etc. Boltguns are great, but they're rapid fire which means you can assault afterwards. Combi weapons are good, but a bit pricey when added up and they're all one shot per game. Stormbolters?

10 sterguard with 9 stormbolters and a power weapon... 19 shots, 3's to hit 4's to wound againts other marines. Probably kill about 3-4 marines going by probability. Then? Assault. 3 attacks each, plus four for the sarge who has a power weapon and bolt pistol... he'll kill one at least, plus with the 27 attacks you'll be hitting about 18, and wounding 9. If the enemy has a 3+ save they'll lose another 3 to those attacks plus the one from the sarge. Thats about 8 models in a ten man tactical squad dead. What I wanna try? Land Raider Crusader. Add the Hurricane Bolters to the above AND the assault cannon and you've got an enormous amount of anti infantry firepower. I've had boltguns take out bloodthirsters through sheer weight of firepower and this is similar in those terms. The problem? Costly! But I do love the idea of Stormbolter fire shredding enemies to bits and then assaulting whatevers left straight after! Imagine sticking a chaplain with these guys too to get the re-rolls to hit? Omnomnom!

Recently in a game we realised that you can no longer arrive from reserve and assault in the same turn. Is this good or bad? I think, its perhaps a good thing. Instead of keeping your units off the board and then counter attacking with a brutal assault you need to be more tactical by having them on from the start. This can be easy or difficult depending on transports, terrain etc. Towards the tail end of 5th edition I used Khan a few times and turned up in an outflank move and assaulted, well this can no longer be done! I now have to be more careful as to how I use him and his bikers, advance under cover? Park them up and let the enemy come? Well, not nessecarily.

Bikers now get Hammer of Wrath, which gives each of them an extra attack on the charge at initiative 10. The other good thing with 6th edition rules is the 'jink' ability. This gives all bikers who have moved, a 5+ cover save. This is extremely useful and when moving up the flank makes them almost as hard as Terminators. That can move 12" a turn. I think bikers are a much better unit now despite the restriction on asaualting from reserve. I never did get to try using Khan outflanking, escorted by a Storm Talon and then assaulting the survivors. Ho hum! 

I'm considering converting up a Librarian soon too, or even going for the Librarian in Terminator armour model. I've never used a psyker before so with the new rules it should provide an interesting lesson or twelve. 

In other news, I did some video editing! While exporting however my pc shut itself off. Turns out I need a bigger power pack to handle the exporting... so pennies need to be saved to get this upraded! Hopefully it won't take too long but money is a wee tight so we shall see. 

What tactics do you guys and gals like to use or what are you looking forward to trying?

YES! Club Night Games!

And so the second Club night for Sixth edition, and I find myself playing against one of the clubs better gamers. And I still haven't won. I'll go through my army list first. 

Chaplain, 5 Assault Termies, ALL Thunder Hammers, in a Land Raider. 

10 Legion of the Damned

2 Tactical Squads in Rhinos. 

10 Devastators with two Missile Launchers and two Plasma Cannons

Storm Talon

LandSpeeder with Multimelta and Assault Cannon

Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon

Vindicator

The Chaplain and Termies against Chaos Marines were to hold back and protect or be an attacking piece. LOTD do what they do best, hold the enemy up and contest objectives. Tactical squads to get objectives or add firepower, boltguns are lethal! Devasators to pick on troops or armour, depending on what Louis takes. Vindicator, well, you know how good these are! The Storm Talon would enter from reservesa and zoom to deal with anything it wanted, and the Land Speeder will deep strike and attack the heaviest armour the enemy can muster head on with assault cannon and multi melta.

Deployment! We get the crusade mission and four objectives to fight over, 2 in or near our deployment zones. I go first, and set up centrally and close to the right side objective. Louis places a dreadnought close to threaten my lines and so becomes a priority. The rest of his troops are further back.

Game On!

So the first turn and I manage to destroy the dread that threatens my right flank, the tactical squad sent many thanks! Most of my troops just get into better lines of fire, getting close to an army thats better in assault is silly to be fair! Louis sends a rhino speeding up, which I blow up in the second turn to reveal.... 4 terminators and a Chaos Lord. OUCH!! More fire decimates the retinue until only the lord is left who ducks into cover and then assaults out and destroys my vindicator. Bugger him! 

My Legion of the Damned come on, and even after the re-roll scatter off the board. Louis gets to place them in a crater right in front of his battleline. They roll bad and do little damage. In Louis' turn they get fired at.... 5 wounds, and I fail ALL of them. I start to feel this will be another loss! In good news however the tactical squad near the Chaos Lord disembark and take two of the Traitor's wounds from him, and then the storm bolter from the rhino finishes him off. Score! The Land Speeder deepstrikes down in front of the Chaos Land Raider and turns it to molten slag, Multi-melta doing the damage. This is huge as Huron Blackheart's retinue now have to do some footslogging. The Raptors come into play and prove a nuisance as they take a hull point from my Land Raider, but the Storm Talon proves annoying and is only hit once. 

The Land Raider then pounces upon Blackhearts retinue and unleashes the Chaplain and Termies. Battle is met! Huron challanges the Chaplain and I accept, and cause one wound after dodging the attacks of the heretic. The Terminators are brutal and kill the opposing Terminators, and close the net around a now panicked Huron. Two remaining Raptors try to save him by assaulting the terminators as the Tyrant Clasps the Chaplains chest and takes him out of the battle, just as the Thunder Hammers rise and fall upon his head, shattering the Tyrant's skull. The Raptors soon fall and the terminators continue to rampage through the chaos lines. The Storm Talon is eventually taken down, but the Chaos forces are beaten, 17 - 10 Victory Points! First game won of sixth edition!

Evandalists vs Half Deathwing Company

Yep, HALF, of the Deathwing. I think it was about 2650 ish points, so Mark could fit in as many terminators as he could. And Belial. I didn't know what to expect in this game so I went with a little bit of plasma, 2 Termie squads in Land Raiders, one with Chaplain and one with Captain, 3 tactical squads, Khan and a bike squad, and vindicator and dreadnought. Capture and Control time! Deployment, I kept many units off so I could react to my opponents actions. The vindicator, dreadnought and devastators with plasma cannons started as these could do a lot of damage. Although they only killed about 5 terminators in total!

Then my units make an appearence. The Land Raiders come on and unleash my terminators who do well against their DW counterparts, and Khan and a tacitcal squad come on from the far side to assault the DW objective. 

I was able to take control and kept the pressure on Mark by being able to choose what to assault after weakening with plasma shots. In turn 5 I got control of my objective and by the end of turn 6 I had full control of the DW post too. 

It was an enjoyable game against an army I had no idea how to play, but my tactics going in seemed to work reasonably well. Terminators are good, but perhaps not good enough. The Dark Angels codex is a little old now, and it seems like a good time for GW to bring a new version out. Will they? Who knows. Playing against them it felt a little dated and a tad underpowered. Mark did well with what he had but some of the limitations were a little harsh. A win for me and another enjoyable game=]

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!