Not quite feeling the Christmas spirit?
Don't worry, Father Farsight and his helper Rune Priests are here to spread some holiday cheer!
And we all know the true meaning of holiday cheer is death and destruction.
This list is not exactly clever or subtle. It is in fact going to come crashing straight down your chimney in a cloud of soot and jet fumes.
4 Mall Santas: 4 Jaws, and a selection box of you favourite festive powers.
3 Turkey Guards: combi-candy-canes.
3*5 Gift Hunters: 3 Drop pods dropping, 2 Meltaguns, and a Flamer for turn 2 or 3.
Father Farsight.
7 Reindeer suits: Missiles, Fusions, Plasmas, and target locks for distributed gift delivery.
14 Gun Elves.
10 Grinch.
Skyray Sleigh.
That amount of joy should get everyone in a festive mood!
And don't worry if you've been naughty, you won't get coal in your stocking. You'll get a small red laser dot that seems to follow you around the room....
Merry Christmas everyone!
Monday 23 December 2013
Friday 13 December 2013
Centurions take up power-walking
Time for white scars!
The drawback of Centurions was their slow speed and short range, and getting them into a good position early on was difficult.
This can be solved with a healthy application of Scout.
This starts off with White Scars being the primary army, as we need Khan to be the warlord. He will of course be rocking his pimped out bicycle.
This unlocks two things: First is 5-man bike squads are troops, always a good choice. But more importantly, he gives Scout to models on bikes, which includes Khan himself.
Next are some actual bikes, as we want to build an army true to the fluff...
5 Squads of 5 bikes should, do all with 2 grav guns and a combi-grav. After careful consideration, there are only a few cases where plasma is better than grav, all other times it's best just to stack more ap2 shots.
To round it off, a Storm Talon.
Next come the allies. Which will be more Space Marines, Ultramarines.
The grand toolbox himself makes an appearance, Tiggy. He can still be a bit of a double-edged crutch, but we have a few other tricks now just in case he screws up and brings the Ikea coffee table assembly instructions instead of the correct divination scrolls to battle again.
For troops, 5 Scouts make a brave appearance, sporting a single melta bomb.
Another Storm Talon, which make use of Tiggy's reserves reroll, giving us some light anti-air, and general supporting fire.
And now the actual important part, 6 Centurions.
The trick is to join Tiggy and Khan onto the Centurions during deployment, so now the entire unit can scout thanks to Khan's bicycle.
This is enough to get them onto the half way line in turn 1, and now they can start shooting away at things all game.
As they are still Ultramarines, they still get all the nice combat doctrine bonuses, in addition to scout.
All the other Scouting bikes and grav make for a nice first turn strike against an unprepared army, and having so much mobility around a central firebase is quite advantageous.
The white scars Storm Talon escort the scouts in reserve, so now both planes get to make use of Tiggy's rerolls.
So, the list looks like this:
Khan: Moonbicycle
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
Storm Talon: Skyhammer Missiles
Tiggy
5 Scouts: Melta Bomb
Storm Talon: Skyhammer Missiles
6 Centurions: Grav-Cannons, Omni Scope
That looks to be an adequate amount of magic gravity bullets.
The one major downside to the list is that there aren't actually many troops, and the bikes can be surprisingly squishy. Keeping them safe in reserve means less firepower, although so many outflanking units does have it's benefits.
The main thing is that everything is much more mobile than the previous iteration.
The drawback of Centurions was their slow speed and short range, and getting them into a good position early on was difficult.
This can be solved with a healthy application of Scout.
This starts off with White Scars being the primary army, as we need Khan to be the warlord. He will of course be rocking his pimped out bicycle.
This unlocks two things: First is 5-man bike squads are troops, always a good choice. But more importantly, he gives Scout to models on bikes, which includes Khan himself.
Next are some actual bikes, as we want to build an army true to the fluff...
5 Squads of 5 bikes should, do all with 2 grav guns and a combi-grav. After careful consideration, there are only a few cases where plasma is better than grav, all other times it's best just to stack more ap2 shots.
To round it off, a Storm Talon.
Next come the allies. Which will be more Space Marines, Ultramarines.
The grand toolbox himself makes an appearance, Tiggy. He can still be a bit of a double-edged crutch, but we have a few other tricks now just in case he screws up and brings the Ikea coffee table assembly instructions instead of the correct divination scrolls to battle again.
For troops, 5 Scouts make a brave appearance, sporting a single melta bomb.
Another Storm Talon, which make use of Tiggy's reserves reroll, giving us some light anti-air, and general supporting fire.
And now the actual important part, 6 Centurions.
The trick is to join Tiggy and Khan onto the Centurions during deployment, so now the entire unit can scout thanks to Khan's bicycle.
This is enough to get them onto the half way line in turn 1, and now they can start shooting away at things all game.
As they are still Ultramarines, they still get all the nice combat doctrine bonuses, in addition to scout.
All the other Scouting bikes and grav make for a nice first turn strike against an unprepared army, and having so much mobility around a central firebase is quite advantageous.
The white scars Storm Talon escort the scouts in reserve, so now both planes get to make use of Tiggy's rerolls.
So, the list looks like this:
Khan: Moonbicycle
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
5 Bikes: 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav
Storm Talon: Skyhammer Missiles
Tiggy
5 Scouts: Melta Bomb
Storm Talon: Skyhammer Missiles
6 Centurions: Grav-Cannons, Omni Scope
That looks to be an adequate amount of magic gravity bullets.
The one major downside to the list is that there aren't actually many troops, and the bikes can be surprisingly squishy. Keeping them safe in reserve means less firepower, although so many outflanking units does have it's benefits.
The main thing is that everything is much more mobile than the previous iteration.
Thursday 5 December 2013
Fluffy is the real way to play
And now back to our regular schedule...
I went off to Gaelcon with my fluffy and friendly army, packed to the brim wih narrative.
Somehow, despite only being able to play four of the five rounds, I managed to sneak into 2nd place.
First thing I noticed about this army as a whole is that it lends itself very well to the corner-hammer style of play, almost too well.
Bunkering up in fortified terrain and picking off anything that came to close proved to be fairly effective, to the point where I ended up staying in cover when there really was no need to.
Being able to vaporize any unit that ventured within 24" allowed me to create great board control. The main downside was that as soon as a few of the opposing forces had been taken off the table, opponents quickly backed off and started taking pot shots from outside the death zone. A general lack of mobility meant that there was little I could about this, other than stay put and point some guns at objectives.
Let's start the quarterly performance evaluation, starting form the top:
Tiggy. So this guy, whilst sometimes being a liability, was generally pretty awesome. I got the exact powers I needed every round, which was a huge help in some of the more worrying match-ups. Everyone knows Divination is a pretty good discipline, but a few of the powers become game-breakers in a low unit count army like this. The real winner was Scryer's Gaze; with so few scoring units, having absolute control on when they arrived from reserve was crucial for late game objective grabbing.
So overall this guy was pretty good. My main concern is that he starts to become a huge crutch for the army, to the point where getting the wrong powers can cripple the list before the game starts. A list should still be able to make use of his abilities without solely reliant on him.
Chapter Master... what exactly is it that you do? From a really critical perspective, not much. His main use was to blow something up on turn 1, then sit in front of the Centurions until he eventually dies. Now this sounds unkind, keeping the cents alive for a few extra turns was a very important task, but it just didn't feel like it was worth the points. He was an investment as a safety net for certain situations, but never really got used.
Scouts. These guys generally did their job. In fact, all the troops choices were surprisingly good, considering I had so little faith in them. Outflanking, combined with both Tiggy and Scryers Gaze, meant that they were always exactly where I wanted them. Not necessarily amazing, but grabbing and clearing objectives is all they needed to do to win games.
Kroot, again similar role and performance to the scouts. A handy combo was to rapidfire a squishy unit down to size with these guys, so the scouts could charge in to combat and safely mop them up.
Tactical Marines. These actually lived up to their name for once, and were very tactical. Their killing power isn't great, particularly as I hadn't actually given any useful guns, but they could take a little bit more punishment than the other troops.
The great trick these guys performed was to combat squad, but still stay inside the one Rhino. They could stay off the board (thanks Tiggy) until turn 4, then flat out in between two objectives. Next turn, 5 guys would get out one side and run to an objective, and the other 5 would wonder off in a different direction to the next nearest objective. This allowed the single rhino to cover a huge area in terms of objective grabbing, and proved to be very handy in almost every game.
The Thunderfire cannon. Or should I say, blunderfire cannon. This guy was not consistent. He did manage to do a lot of damage, and was great at blowing away enemy troops on the far side of the table, but it wasn't always that particular unit that I was aiming at. Overall he did pull his weight in terms of dealing damage, but it would have been nice to have a bit of control over what he decided to shoot at each turn.
The fortified terrain was a great bonus, especially when the riptide starting taking several lascannons to the face and had to hide behind a small reinforced bush.
Centurions, the heavy hitters. Ok, so there is good and bad news about these guys. Good news is they were generally pretty awesome, did a lots of damage, shrugged off most incoming fire, and gave great board control. Just about worth the points invested, and kept the army chugging along.
The bad news, they were not mobile enough to do the real damage that they should have been able to. No more than three of hem got to shoot at a time. Now just three was enough to kill whatever they were shooting at, but it did mean there was a lot of points invested in ablative wounds. Getting these guys up the board where they can do more damage and pose a bigger threat is the next big challenge.
And now onto the real heroes, the Tau.
Commander Helpful. Such a hero. Due to Tiggy getting good powers most of the time, Helpful usually got to go off on some adventures with the riptide. Highly mobile, effective tank killing, and being able to stamp on troops on objectives made this pair great fun to use.
The Riptide. So these things are pretty good. Someone should try using thee of them sometime just to see what they are like in large numbers. Yeah, no one has thought of that before...
And finally the Skyray. This was a great addition. Didn't deal huge amounts of damage, but was great at adding in extra bits of firepower and markerlight support, in addition to blowing up the odd flyer.
The Tau actually did most of the damage each game, the longer range allowed me to get at all the enemy units running away from the Centurions, and the faster riptide was good at jumping onto objectives late game. I can see why so many people like using them...
So that's the list. Very quirky, with little room for error, but has all the tools for the job.
The games themselves were a lot of fun, and required some tactical thinking to get the most out of the list, as opposed to the good old fashioned NextVenomSameTarget. The real challenge each game was making the most of my long rage firepower, which usually boiled down to what is the best way to keep the Riptide alive.
Next up, we take a look at how to get the grav-weaponry a little bit more mobile: White Scars!
I went off to Gaelcon with my fluffy and friendly army, packed to the brim wih narrative.
Somehow, despite only being able to play four of the five rounds, I managed to sneak into 2nd place.
First thing I noticed about this army as a whole is that it lends itself very well to the corner-hammer style of play, almost too well.
Bunkering up in fortified terrain and picking off anything that came to close proved to be fairly effective, to the point where I ended up staying in cover when there really was no need to.
Being able to vaporize any unit that ventured within 24" allowed me to create great board control. The main downside was that as soon as a few of the opposing forces had been taken off the table, opponents quickly backed off and started taking pot shots from outside the death zone. A general lack of mobility meant that there was little I could about this, other than stay put and point some guns at objectives.
Let's start the quarterly performance evaluation, starting form the top:
Tiggy. So this guy, whilst sometimes being a liability, was generally pretty awesome. I got the exact powers I needed every round, which was a huge help in some of the more worrying match-ups. Everyone knows Divination is a pretty good discipline, but a few of the powers become game-breakers in a low unit count army like this. The real winner was Scryer's Gaze; with so few scoring units, having absolute control on when they arrived from reserve was crucial for late game objective grabbing.
So overall this guy was pretty good. My main concern is that he starts to become a huge crutch for the army, to the point where getting the wrong powers can cripple the list before the game starts. A list should still be able to make use of his abilities without solely reliant on him.
Chapter Master... what exactly is it that you do? From a really critical perspective, not much. His main use was to blow something up on turn 1, then sit in front of the Centurions until he eventually dies. Now this sounds unkind, keeping the cents alive for a few extra turns was a very important task, but it just didn't feel like it was worth the points. He was an investment as a safety net for certain situations, but never really got used.
Scouts. These guys generally did their job. In fact, all the troops choices were surprisingly good, considering I had so little faith in them. Outflanking, combined with both Tiggy and Scryers Gaze, meant that they were always exactly where I wanted them. Not necessarily amazing, but grabbing and clearing objectives is all they needed to do to win games.
Kroot, again similar role and performance to the scouts. A handy combo was to rapidfire a squishy unit down to size with these guys, so the scouts could charge in to combat and safely mop them up.
Tactical Marines. These actually lived up to their name for once, and were very tactical. Their killing power isn't great, particularly as I hadn't actually given any useful guns, but they could take a little bit more punishment than the other troops.
The great trick these guys performed was to combat squad, but still stay inside the one Rhino. They could stay off the board (thanks Tiggy) until turn 4, then flat out in between two objectives. Next turn, 5 guys would get out one side and run to an objective, and the other 5 would wonder off in a different direction to the next nearest objective. This allowed the single rhino to cover a huge area in terms of objective grabbing, and proved to be very handy in almost every game.
The Thunderfire cannon. Or should I say, blunderfire cannon. This guy was not consistent. He did manage to do a lot of damage, and was great at blowing away enemy troops on the far side of the table, but it wasn't always that particular unit that I was aiming at. Overall he did pull his weight in terms of dealing damage, but it would have been nice to have a bit of control over what he decided to shoot at each turn.
The fortified terrain was a great bonus, especially when the riptide starting taking several lascannons to the face and had to hide behind a small reinforced bush.
Centurions, the heavy hitters. Ok, so there is good and bad news about these guys. Good news is they were generally pretty awesome, did a lots of damage, shrugged off most incoming fire, and gave great board control. Just about worth the points invested, and kept the army chugging along.
The bad news, they were not mobile enough to do the real damage that they should have been able to. No more than three of hem got to shoot at a time. Now just three was enough to kill whatever they were shooting at, but it did mean there was a lot of points invested in ablative wounds. Getting these guys up the board where they can do more damage and pose a bigger threat is the next big challenge.
And now onto the real heroes, the Tau.
Commander Helpful. Such a hero. Due to Tiggy getting good powers most of the time, Helpful usually got to go off on some adventures with the riptide. Highly mobile, effective tank killing, and being able to stamp on troops on objectives made this pair great fun to use.
The Riptide. So these things are pretty good. Someone should try using thee of them sometime just to see what they are like in large numbers. Yeah, no one has thought of that before...
And finally the Skyray. This was a great addition. Didn't deal huge amounts of damage, but was great at adding in extra bits of firepower and markerlight support, in addition to blowing up the odd flyer.
The Tau actually did most of the damage each game, the longer range allowed me to get at all the enemy units running away from the Centurions, and the faster riptide was good at jumping onto objectives late game. I can see why so many people like using them...
So that's the list. Very quirky, with little room for error, but has all the tools for the job.
The games themselves were a lot of fun, and required some tactical thinking to get the most out of the list, as opposed to the good old fashioned NextVenomSameTarget. The real challenge each game was making the most of my long rage firepower, which usually boiled down to what is the best way to keep the Riptide alive.
Next up, we take a look at how to get the grav-weaponry a little bit more mobile: White Scars!
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