Those are some pretty bad bugs

Everyone's favourite omnivores have just had an update, and after an initial look the general consensus is that the bugs are not adapting well to their new dietary requirements.
At least according to the internet, and the internet is always right.

There are very few major changes, just lots of little ones that push the book in a perhaps the wrong direction.
A few units got updated for the better, a few got a little bit worse, some got a lot better, and one crucial bug forgot it was lactose intolerant and has swelled in points to the point of blowing up parts of your army.
This is the much beloved Tervigon.

These had several very important roles in the previous book, which it now can't fulfill,
leaving a rather horrible gap in the army.
They had the combined roles of providing synapse, being a tough scoring unit,
making more troops, and generating lots of psychic powers.

On the psychic powers front, they are still mastery level 1, but can now only generate a single
power (instead of two or three), leaving them with much less choice.
On becoming a scoring unit, they now require three times as many termagants to be unlocked,
pushing the points investment up even further.

The next big hit is how they interact with termagants. They can still spawn more as before, but the new unit can't move or assault this turn, making the whole section of the army much slower.
The termagants no longer gain the benefit of biomorph upgrades from the mummy tervigon, so all the neat tricks of termagants bringing down wraithknights and so on are gone.
Perhaps worst of all, the detonation radius when the tervigon dies has been doubled!
In order to keep the gaunts safe, they now have to stay outside of basic synapse range, which defeats the whole point of having a tervigon in the first place.

This is a pretty big punch to the nether-regions. The poor bugs are going to have to use other
gribblies as troops, which are far less reliable and need to be babysat by yet another unit.
One option is warriors, but they are still very pricey and as vulnerable as ever to high strength attacks.

It's not all doom and gloom though, there are some new and improved units to sugarcoat it all.
Flyrants got a bit better, with a price drop and an improvement to BS, they are now a very solid HQ choice with good anti-air, and a boost to psychic powers.

The new Crone FMC is a nifty choice, again with good anti-air and a very powerful vector strike. They are a little bit flimsy, and won't stand up to much shooting, but they are the
second cheapest FMC in the game after the Harpy.

The Exocrine has a pretty good shooting attack, being able to plasma pie plate marines and terminators, and add a bit of additional anti-air spammed firepower. A bit on the pricey side, but still a good choice.

Mawlocs, so these guys got a bit of a nerf in disguise. The unburrow attack is now pretty nasty, and will clear out most infantry where it arrives. The downside is that it can only be once per game. Burrowing puts the mawloc into ongoing reserves, so when it arrives it will just stroll on from the board edge, and not burrow-strike again.


After a bit of thinking and complaining about how things have changed, I came with a list that should just about be able to hold it's own.

2* Flyrants: 2 Devourers each, 1 hive commander, 1 old adversary.
2*2 Zoanthropes
2 Venomthropes

3* 15 Termagants
20 Hormagaunts

2* Crones

3 Biovores
2 Exocrines


Total: 1840


The Flyrants rather obviously do what flyrants do, but better now.
Due to loosing mycetic spores and such, troops are a bit less mobile now,so a hive commander
is essential for getting a unit in position. Old adversary no longer buffs other units, and only works in combat, so the points may be better spent elsewhere.
What they don't have are the new nifty flamer thorax weapons, which can do a variety of anti-infantry and anti-tank duties, and are worth a look.

The zoanthropes provide the essential synapse coverage, and can buff units or add a little bit of extra shooting.
They are still a little bit vulnarable to sustained firepower, but considering the points cost they are a better investment than warriors or tervigons.

Venomthropes I'm still not sure on. They give shrouded to nearby units, which helps keep the squishier bugs alive, but they really need some LOS blocking terrain to hide behind, or else they will blow up pretty quickly. Also, with the advent of Ignore Cover, the shrouded bonus might just not work anyway.

Two Crones make the rest of the air force. Due to being flimsy, I didn't want to go all out on them. The vector striking ability is great, and the additional haywire and flamer shooting is ok, but they are not as tough of powerful as say a helldrake.

2 Exocrines are the next bit of shooty goodness. AP2 is always good, and is something nids have not really had direct access to before. The two firing modes also gives them a lot of options in terms of how to prioritize targets. A bit short ranged, but lately a lot of new weapons in the 6th ed books have had shorter ranges, so it's not too bad.

Now the quirky bit, 3 Biovores. Great at blowing up light to medium infantry, and very cheap. But that's not what I want them for.
The new spore mine rules open up a lot of silly tactics. If the biovores miss (totally by accident of course), a sizable group of spore mines get's placed down. They can be placed anywhere under the large blast template, so can cover quite a bit of ground.
This is where the fun begins.
You can lay down minefields on top of objectives. You can block off movement paths just by landing in front of the enemy. And most importantly, the mines can force the enemy to dedicate a bit of shooting to them, taking heat off the rest of your army.
And if they aren't dealt with, they will eventually reach a critical number where they can do some serious damage to enemy troops

Finally, the contentious bit of the list, the Troops.
These guys are pretty much just going to hide in reserve and hope not to die horribly.
The hormagants were chosen as they are a bit faster when it comes to running for objectives.
A mere 65 troops models with no protection other than LOS blocking terrain the venomthropes is still pretty flimsy.
The old nid tactics of victory through attrition may have to be ditched, in favour of hiding troops and hoping they don't get spotted.
The only way these guys will survive is if the enemy is too distracted getting beaten up by all the other MC's, assuming of course the MC's have survived.
These guys don't have any upgrades, as they are a bit expensive and might not be used very often, considering that they will be hiding rather than fighting. The Devourer upgrade for the Termagants got a bit cheaper, so a squad of them is an option.

The more astute amongst you will have noticed that the army is mainly about shooting,
which is traditionally not Nids' greatest strength.
Getting into combat with medium toughness and medium save infantry is pretty hard. You could try and rush the enemy down with Raveners and such, but that's not a guaranteed tactic and relies on there being plenty of LOS blocking terrain.
There are still 6 MC if things really require a bit of combat punch, and 4 FMC's can get in assault positions quickly.

What I haven't covered are the psychic powers, partly because I haven't seen them in action yet.
Most bug lovers are mourning the loss of Biomancy, but the new table has some decent defensive and offensive powers, which can become very nasty when combined with Shadow in the Warp and such.

Merry Christmas!

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!

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.

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!

Suddenly, priests

Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and saviour, the God Emperor of Mankind?

In keeping with my tradition of writing entertaining but ultimately terrible lists, I decided to have a look at the new Adepta Sororitas codex just to see what nonsense was available. And there certainly is some busted units in there, but only one of them is a sister...

In addition to the usual smattering of sisters units in each force org slot, all of which function roughly similar to how they did before, there are a few key points that immediately jumped out. The first was the points of the Immolators and Exorcist tanks, which have both gone down in cost to quite the bargain. Though unfortunately these are both vehicles, and you all know how terrible I am with them...

Next up are the two special characters, Celestine and Jacobus. Jacobus has had a bit of a change, and is not quite as scary when combined with death cult assassins. However, he does give a very nice large fearless and counter-attack bubble, in addition to being a priest, which we'll get to in a bit.
Celestine isn't quite as infuriating to deal with anymore, she's gone up in points (but is still a cheap date), and can't get up as often as she used to, but can give Hit & Run to a unit she joins, which in itself is very useful.

So now we get to the really fun part, the priests:
These guys are fairly unassuming at first look, coming in at the price of a power fist with the stats of a guardsman sergeant. But then the list of special rules kicks in. First up, you can take 5 of these guys, and they don't take up a force org slot. They come with a rosarius, which starts making them fairly good value. Next, they all have zealot: giving a unit fearless and hatred is now very much worth the points cost.
But why do you need 5 sets of fearless in one unit? Hymns, that's why. Let them sing you the song of their people.

There are 3 Hymns to pick from each assault phase, requiring a leadership test to activate. The first allows the entire unit to reroll armour and invulnerable saves, the second allows rerolls to wound, and the final one gives the priest smash. All of those are pretty tasty, and scale out of control with bigger units. And the 'free' smash attacks mean that some points can be trimmed by not needing to buy power weapons.

Let's see what kind of death blob we can make:


Celestine: Warlord
Jacobus
5 Priests: 1 Litanies of Faith, 5 Condemnor Boltguns
3* 5 Battle Sisters: Condemnor Boltgun

Company Command Squad: Vox Caster
Platoon Command:
5* Infantry Squads: 5 Autocannons, Vox Caster
Platoon Command:
5* Infantry Squads: 5 Autocannons, Vox Caster
2 Vendettas

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor: Rad Greandes, Psycho Greandes, 3 Servo Skulls, Hammerhand
Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor: Psyocculum, Liber Heresius, Hammerhand

Aegis Defense Line


So, everyone joins a 50 man guard blob, bringing their toys to the party. A quick count gives the unit:

• Fearless
• Counter-Attack
• Hit & Run
• Psycho Grenades
• Rad Grenades
• Psych-out Grenades
• +2 strength with Hammerhands
• A potential scout move at the start of the game
• BS10 against psykers
• Reroll saves in combat
• Reroll hits in the first round of combat
• Reroll wounds in combat
• Four characters with smash attacks, in addition to Celestine's high number of attacks
• Adamantium Will.
• Oh, and imperial guard orders.
• And an ADL to hide behind.

Yeah, that will do.

And if something goes wrong, there is a spare blob tagging along behind just in case.

To explain some of the choices a bit:
The Condemnor Boltguns are combi-weapons that cause a perils on any psyker hit. There is a bit of a grey area with regards to what happens when a psyker is part of a normal unit, but the wording suggest that they would take a perils, as it refers to any unit hit, not model. Traditional scary things such as Fateweaver, Nurgle Daemon Princes, Mephiston, Jetlock Councils and even Screamer Councils suddenly evaporate.
The Litanies of Faith allow the Priests to automatically pass the test to activate the hymns, which makes them much better than the inquisiton equivalent, as normally they only have ld7.
And the vendettas are there because PQ keeps complaining that I never bring any anti-air...

Building a list around a single expensive unit, what could possibly go wrong?

Magic Gravity Bullets

Ah yes, this still exists. I suppose I had better do something with it...

So after a brief hiatus (ie: a year) to test lots of silly ETC lists, I'm back to playing something more my style. And luckily, after a very long time, I think I've found an army that suits my playstyle. The brand spanking shiny new Space Marines.

After a quick look at the book, chapter tactics, and special characters, the immediate conclusion is that Ultramarines and White Scars are fairly awesome. As I don't own anywhere near enough bikes, fluffy smurfs are the choice for the moment. They offer a great special character in the form of TIggy, and the doctrines provide very good on-demand flexibility.

Now we get to the real treat in the new book: The Magic Gravity Bullets.
More specifically, grav cannons wielded by centurions. These guys come in at a fairly high cost, but are very tough, and have a horrific amount of firepower that can deal with any target. With the Ultramarine Devastator doctrine, they have plenty of shots to take down flyers. Tanks and heavy infantry just evaporate. Even hordes suffer due to the grav-amps and hurricane bolters.

My original plan was to just spam these guys as much as possible (yes, you can get 18 into 1850pts), but assembling so many of these not so giant robots proved too time consuming, and the deadline for the next tournament was fast approaching.

The final thing these guys need is a bit of a general boost in terms of survivability and dealing with cover saves. That's where Tiggy and Commander Helpful come in. Between them, they give the Centurions ignore cover, twin linked shots, hit and run, and the potential for a 4+ invulnerable save.

Here's the list I ended up using at Gaelcon on 26th Oct. The fluffy highlander Ultramarine and Tau battle buddies:

Tiggy: Warlord
Chapter Master: Power Fist, The Shield Eternal, Bike, Artificer Armour

9 Scouts
10 Tactical Marines
Rhino

6 Devastator Centurions: Grav Cannon & Grav Amps, Omni Scope
Thunderfire Cannon

Commander Helpful: Command & Control Node, Multi-spectrum Sensor Suite, Iridium Armour, Vectored Retro Thrusters, Puretide Engram Chip

Riptide: Ion Accelerator, Twin Fusion Blaster, Intercept, Skyfire

10 Kroot

Skyray: BS filter, Disruption Pod.



See, fluffy.

So my thinking was that whilst centurions are amazing, they are a bit short ranged, so finding ways to get more reach into the army was essential, especially given the shooty nature of recent armies, and the anticipated lack of cover.

The Chapter Master has a very handy Orbital Bombardment, which can try to take out something nasty in turn 1. Combined with Commander Helpful and the Riptide, a lot of tank-hunting ordinance can be thrown out.
He is also pretty good in combat, and makes for a very good tanking unit to sit in front the of the centurions

Tiggy is of course very good, and is almost guaranteed to get 3 good powers on Divination. THe main ones I was looking for were Forewarning, and Perfect Timing. This gives the centurions a change against all the s10 ap2 wondering around, and allows Commander Helpful to go off with other units if needs be. Scryers Gaze is also amazing with Tiggy, the chance of reserves coming on at an inconvenient time is next to zero.

Commander Helpful is obviously very handy, but the two main reasons for his inclusion were a guaranteed ignore cover ability, and Hit & Run if the Cents ever got caught in assault.

Riptide and Skyray were the anti-air contingent, which when combined with the volume of shots the Cents can put out, should be just about enough to deal with most air threats. The Riptide, in conjunction with the Chapter Master, is also good for squishing things like flesh hounds in assault.

The Thunderfire Cannon was a bit of an afterthought. I wanted to try it out just to see how useful it was, and the long range was obviously a good addition to balance out all the short range firepower. And if all else failed, having a fortified piece of terrain to hide in seemed like a safe plan.

So that's my first Tournament Space Marines list. Tune in next time to see how it faired on the battlefield, and what the next iteration will be.

So I Won…

Yes, I returned from the weekend triumphant, with all opposition crushed beneath the might of my overwhelming cheese. After my first five competitive games of 6th edition all I can say is WOW, wound allocation takes forever!

With a total of 6 ICs and upgrade characters spread across two units, my games were rife with wound allocation shenanigans. And some of it wasn't even intentional, just the pure fact of having various different saves and toughness values in a unit meant that save rolls usually had to be split into batches of 3 and rolled over and over again, including any fortune saves. 

And I wasn't even the only culprit, almost everyone had units with a sergeant or IC leading them, and that just slowed every shooting phase into a slow grind. And as for the assault phase, well lets just say we don't like to talk about the assault phase…

My 5 games (in order) were against a very nice nurgle themed chaos/traitor army from one of the imperial armour books, a mixed Tyranid army, the national horde Ork army, some IG with BA allies, and a nifty Space Wolf force. I won't go through them all turn by turn because so many battle reports often turn into something like this.

But instead, I'll point out some interesting (and by that I mean nasty and cheesy) moments from some of the games, and go through how each unit performed.

Lets start with the star unit from the weekend, the Wraithguard. These guys were just amazing. The stealthed 4+ fortuned cover save just made them far too tough for anything to really make a dent. 3 Vendettas and a Storm Raven blasted them for a turn and did no significant damage. 

Hit and run thwarted several attempts to bog them down in combat, and actually gave this otherwise slow unit a nice speedboost into enemy lines. The firepower was pretty neat too, whatever they looked at tended to die rather quickly.

I am very familiar with Eldar, particularly Eldrad, but have never actually used them in a game before. It was pretty fun using new units, or at least once I had got the hang of remembering to cast psychic powers. The various combinations of doom, fortune and guide all worked pretty well. 

The only issue was the short range on the powers, which meant I had to deploy fairly clumped up and stay like that for most of the game, which became a real problem in the later turns when units had to spread out to get objectives and get stuck in close combat. 

Overall I'm happy with the Eldrad/Baron/Wraithguard unit, even though the slow speed is still a big issue.

As for the rest of the troops: The jetbikes claimed objectives and generally stayed out of trouble. The ridiculously high speed on them was rather entertaining. I wouldn't rely solely on these for scoring, the low model count lets them down. 

A few nice big blobs of dudesmen are needed, the two 10 man warriors squads did pretty well for themselves. Either just by adding a little bit of extra firepower, or by hiding on objectives and being a bit tougher to shift than a 5 or 3 man squad. 

Having said that, all three of these units rarely survived an game. A few times they needed to heroically sacrificed to ensure the future of the species, other times they just got shot or assaulted.

Most of the time though, they just ran away. Time to invest in some fearless units…

Fearless. Now this led to some interesting situations. Despite the nerf to cover, the punitive wound allocation, the greater amount of anti-infantry weaponry, overwatch fire, and not being allowed to go to ground any more, the Ork Horde still packed a big punch. And against me, it was all due to fearless.

With warwalkers, a harliestar, and plenty more shooting besides, I would normally have been pretty confident against the horde. But the old trick to killing off masses of ors in combat couldn't work anymore. Under 5th ed rules, I would have no problem pulling off a nasty multi-charge and blowing up several boyz mobs through fearless wounds. 

But that can't be done any more. I had to sit and wait until the mobs were suitably whittled down so as they could be killed off the good old fashioned way, ork by ork, and make sure I didn't get counter charged by any other mobs. 

Through lots and lots and lots of shooting, and some nasty assaults, I did eventually kill off all 150 scoring orks, but the pointy eared people had suffered horrific casualties of their own. I had a depleted warrior squad, two harlies, a single wraithguard, and all three HQs left at the end, desperately trying to hide from the fail of loota fire coming their way.

A similar situation occurred against the nurgle chaos/guard army, with fearless plague zombies with FnP. Now they were a bit easier as the units were only 20 strong and not that potent in combat, but it still took a while to clear them out, whilst still worrying about the other nasty units trying to rip my army to shreds. 

Even fortuned harlies charging into a doomed mob of boyz can't do the job reliably. In this case they did, but in short my opponents dice were rubbish while mine were far too good. The harliestar fails due to the strict pile in order at each initiative step, which I think I'll have to explain in a separate article.

The harlies were good for the most part, just about killing what they charged into. They did encounter a few problem though, mainly in the form of characters with an invulnerable or 2+ save, and any unit with Feel no Pain. The main issue is that they are fragile, they need to kill whatever they go into before the opposition gets a chance to strike back, otherwise they will just start falling over. 

Not to say they are a bad unit, they are still pretty awesome, but they need to be kept back more as a deterrent or for counter-attacks. Flamers and barrage weapons also make them cry.

As for Vect, well he can be best described as a leaky sack of monkey feces. He was useless, beyond useless infect, he actually hampered the army more than helped it.

The first problem is being only AP3 in combat. This makes him great against bog standard troops, but rubbish against anything tough, which is kinda what I needed the unit to be killing.

Next, he slowed down the harlies. Several times they got bogged down in terrain that they could have ignored if Vect wasn't telling them all to wait up while he puffed along with his zimmer frame.

Finally, he nearly led to their demise more than once due to the initiative pile in steps. Without him, I would have been a bit more cautious and tactical in their usage, and used the points elsewhere, rather than having to plow this rather expensive deathstar into things that it perhaps shouldn't be going near.

Now, he was not all bad. Giving the harlies Fearless was very important, and saved them from an embarrassing lost combat more than once. Preferred Enemy is also brilliant on harlies, it allows them to reroll half their misses in combat, and with doom up the number of attacks which wound drastically increases. But still not quite worth it, the points would have been better spent on another character or unit.

That leaves us with the heavy support. 

The Warwalkers were fun, and killed more than their fair share of stuff. But they like to stay near Eldrad, which clumps the army up a bit.

The Ravagers did their thing. The dark lances had bit of a problem, either there were so few tanks or MCs that they ran out of targets after turn 2, or there were too many tanks and they couldn't make a dent before getting blown up themselves. However, the disintegrator ravager was awesome, blasting apart light vehicles and any infantry unit which dared look at it funny.

Overall, I was impressed by how effective the firepower out of these unit was, but that is more a symptom of this edition, everyone's firepower was just so much more effective.

Now, a few notes on what went right and what went wrong in my games.

-Right: Shooting. Lots of shooting, I want more of it, lots more of it.

-Wrong: Assaults. We don't like the talk about assault. Even with rerolls from fleet, I failed more point blank assaults than succeeded over the weekend. This wasn't limited to me, everyone failed a lot of sensible charges, and got punished from overwatch fire on the way in to boot.

-Right: Psychic powers. Guide to take out flyers, doom to kill off infantry with assault and poison shots, and fortune to keep all my expensive stuff alive. Now I almost always had to use fortune twice, so that limited options a bit.

-Wrong: Leadership tests. So many failed tests… From now on, everyone is to be fearless! Warriors running off an objective did cost me a game that would have otherwise been a massacre. It's the sort of thing that would make me rage for months had I not won the event…

-Right: Infantry. It's no secret that I just don't get vehicles, aside from light skimmers. Lots of infantry on both sides of the board makes life so much easier for my poor feeble mind.

-Wrong: Speed. The downside of infantry is that it's a bit slow, both to play with and in terms of movement. Faster moving armies will generally perform better, and be a bit safer to use.

-Right: The Baron. I'm a big fan of the Baron (except when he decides to run away, which is quite often), I will try to keep him in my lists as much as possible. The shear amount of stuff he offers an army (especially elder allies) for the points cost, it makes it hard to justify not including him.

-Wrong: Wound Allocation and Look out Scrub. This has since been fixed with the latest batch of FAQs, but the amount of abuse this got, combined with just how unbelievably time consuming this was made for some exhausting games.

-Right: Flyers. Well, not my flyers. There was the foundation for a nasty IG/BA list, with 3 vendettas and a storm raven, which when added to al the other stuff BA and IG can field, can make quite a nasty army.

-Wrong: The Meta.

Ok, so I had better add the disclaimer that there were no Necrons at this event, so no Necron Air Force (or NAFfy as I like to call it) to mess anyone up. My list was slightly ahead of the meta at the time, and it was generally agreed going in that it as one of the nastier armies there. 

A lot of the armies were fluffy or experimental, with lots of squishy infantry, not too much shooting, and not too many flyers. The poor nids just died in droves to my sustained firepower and assaults, whereas I played against 5 flyers in total, and just had to ignore all of them.

Against more competitive lists, mine would quickly fall apart due to lack of proper anti-air firepower and speed. This is something I'm looking to rectify in future iterations of this army, but the NAFfy has already proven itself pretty effective in every tournament since.

I've already looked at a few options for updating the list, which I will post up here soon, but it's quite hard to get good, killy, and inexpensive units without resorting to assault units. And I really don't want to go back to venoms…

If you have any more questions about the games or this army, let me know in the comments below.

Next up, I take an in depth look at what makes the harliestar work, and more importantly, why it doesn't work.