Campaign Begins!

For a while now our group has been talking about putting together a Campaign in order to give us something a little more to focus on besides the normal 1v1 or 2v2 battles be had been doing for a while now. Personally I was just looking for a change. So we came up with a slightly modified change to the good old Planetary Empires rules. So what I am going to post here is the first part of Campaign Turn 1. We have chosen our controller sectors and played the first round of Battles.

Here is the Turn 1 Sector Map with the Army holding and Attacks.

Turn 1 Sector Objectives 

Imperial Guard

Sectors – 9

Space Ports - 2 (1 Hive)

Power Station – 2 (1 Hive): 12

Command Bastion – 2 (1 Hive): 16

Shield Generator – 2 (1 Hive)

Manufactorum – 2 (1 Hive): 22

Blood Angels

Sectors – 9

Space Ports – 2 (1 Hive)

Power Station – 2 (1 Hive): 20

Command Bastion – 1 (Hive): 10

Shield Generator – 1 (Hive)

Manufactorum – 1 (Hive): 6

Eldar

Sectors – 9

Space Ports – 2 (1 Hive)

Power Station – 1 (Hive): 10

Command Bastion – 3 (1 Hive): 33

Shield Generator – 1 (Hive)

Manufactorum – 2 (1 Hive): 12

Tau

Sectors – 9

Space Ports – 2 (1 Hive)

Power Station – 2 (1 Hive): 16

Command Bastion – 2 (1 Hive): 18

Shield Generator – 2 (1 Hive)

Manufactorum – 1 (Hive): 8

Turn 1 – Actions

Imperial Guard: Attacked Tau 4,3 Hive – Imperial Guard Win 4+ VP – Sector Secured Failed

Blood Angel: Attacked Eldar 1,2 Space Port - ?? -??

Eldar: Attacked Blood Angel 4,4 – Blood Angel Win 2 VP – Sector Defended

Tau: Attacked Eldar 4,1 Manufactorum - ?? - ??

So we played the first to games this weekend. My Imperial Guard attacked the Tau Controlled Hive sector and I won the battle with something around 7 victory points but still required a 9 on a roll of 2d6 due to the Shield Generator in the Hive to take it. I failed with a 3. Go figure that I smash Austin's Tau and I cannot hold the territory. I completely forgot to get pictures of the battles but I will try to do better in the future. 

G's Eldar also attack the Blood Angels and while the list looked good it was all G could do to prevent Scott's Blood Angels getting the 4+ victory points on defense to get a Counter Attack. If the battle hadn't gone on for a full 7 turns I am not sure G could have done it. Actually I am pretty sure Scott would be counter attacking if it had ended earlier.

I am hoping to get the games army list posted as soon as i can get them together.

Next up, it looks like G's Eldar get to defend their lines against both the Blood Angels and Tau. It seems I get away pretty easily this turn. 

Sister Test Paint - WIP

A while back my daughter asked me to build her a Sisters of Battle army and I said sure. At the time she wanted a them to be pink and black but now that has all changed. Fortunately for me I really hadn't done much with them and I only have enough for the minimum of Allied Detachments.

Seeing as I now have time to do a little bit of painting while my daughter does here homework I figured I would post the first test paint of one of her sisters. This is just the base coats but it is the best I could do with the time I had. At least my daughter is getting her homework done in a reasonable amount of time now.

This is what my daughter agreed upon.

I took the base primed picture more for detail reference for myself since I tend to lose sight of the detail on occasion.

List: Space Wolves vs Tau

So I said I would post the list as soon as i had the chance and Scott came through rather quickly. So here is the Tau list that kicked the puppies.

Darkstrider 100

8 Fire Warriors 72
• Devilfish: disruption pod; twin-linked smart missile system; seeker missile 113

3 Farsight Enclaves XV8 Crisis Team: Bonding Knife Ritual; Crisis Shas'vre (plasma rifle; missile pod; vectored retro-thrusters; shield drone; shield drone); Crisis Shas'ui (missile pod; plasma rifle; vectored retro-thrusters); Crisis Shas'ui (missile pod; plasma rifle; vectored retro-thrusters) 208

3 Farsight Enclaves XV8 Crisis Team: Bonding Knife Ritual; Crisis Shas'vre (plasma rifle; missile pod; vectored retro-thrusters; shield drone; shield drone); Crisis Shas'ui (missile pod; plasma rifle; vectored retro-thrusters); Crisis Shas'ui (missile pod; plasma rifle; vectored retro-thrusters) 208

5 Pathfinders: EMP grenades; Bonding Knife Ritual; Pathfinder Shas'ui (shield drone; shield drone) 104

2 XV88 Broadside Team: Bonding Knife Ritual; Broadside Shas'vre (advanced targeting system; shield drone; shield drone; twin-linked plasma rifles; seeker missile); Broadside Shas'ui (advanced targeting system; twin-linked plasma rifles; seeker missile) 198

And here are the puppies that got kicked.

Rune Priest 

6 man Blood Claws w/ Flamer; Wolf Guard Pack Leader w/ Power Sword; Rhino

2x 5 man Gray Hunters w/ Meltaguns

5 man Scout Squad w/ Camo Cloaks and Meltagun

4 man Wolf Gaurd Terminators w/ 2x Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields, 1x Dual Wolf Claws, 1x Assault Cannon and Power Fist

1 Vindicator w/ Siege Shield

1 Venerable Dreadnaught w/ Helfrost Cannon, Dread Fist w/ Heavy Flamer; Drop Pod w/ Deathwind Launcher and Locator Beacon

The last three of the options on my list were a rather miserable failure. My Terminators love to roll "1"s for Armor Saves. The Vindicator is a pie plate but I have never really done enough hits with it to cover its cost and the Dread was simply poorly deployed. I cannot complain about it since it was my fault. Bad deployment is bad deployment. 

On the other hand my Blood Claws and Rune Priest that accompanied them where rather awesome. They charged a unit of Crisis Suits and wiped them out and then followed up by charging the Broadsides and while they were decimated they did get the Rune Priest in place to charge and then rout them. 

Friday evening beating! Tau vs Space Wolves

So I had a Space Wolves Test Army that I was pretty sure was going to fail and it did. I ran a 1000 point list which included the 500 points that I already had for my wife plus a squad of scouts, a venerable dread in a drop pod, a vindicator, and a additional terminator with an assault cannon. This is not the norm for me since I would rather have more infantry but since I wanted to see how the Drop Pod Dread and Vindicator played with the Space Wolves I decided to give them a try. I must say I wasn't impressed.

So the game took place on a rather cluttered table with lots of ruins and some forest and for the most part I got the advantage but then again I was going up against Austin's Tau. I hate how the Tau can just up a ignore cover saves. The scenario was a Relic run and like the game I played against Scott the week before the game was won by the fact that the Relic and Objective was denied in turn 5. This time though I was the one that got denied. I would like to say that the Dice Gods weren't on my side and complain about this and that but the fact is that I left my left flank open and Austin took advantage of it. There was also a early turn 5 move I could have made to secure the Relic better but I didn't. Austin exploited most all the wholes in my defense and seeing that this was a friendly game when he had questions I answered them. The better he gets the more fun the games will be so since i was just playing to test I had no issue helping him out with questions.

So in the end Austin got his first win, I remember why I don't take Vindicators in lower point armies and need to figure out a better way to deploy reserve troops. The game was fun and hopefully I will get a copy of both armies some time later in the week.

Tau Test Paint - WIP

Scott sent me a couple of pictures of the test paint job he was doing for his son's Tau army. Figured i would share them.

He did mention this morning that they were probably going to go with a Farsight paint scheme for the Tau. Some times it seems you just have to put paint on a model before you can decide if you like it or not.

Blood Angels - 500 Test List

So Scott decided to send me the info on his list from last Friday and I decided I would pass it on and comment.


Blood Angel 500

HQ - Librarian

Troop - 10 man Tactical Squad; Rhino

Troop - 5 man Scout Squad

Fast Attack - 5 man Assault Squad; Drop Pod

Heavy Support - Predator



I must say that between the Drop Pod Assault and the Scouts infiltrating he had me on the defense early on. We were playing with the Relic being the Primary Mission and the Scouring being the Secondary. Scott started with his Scouts deployed 3" from the Relic and the Drop Pod just out of my deployment due to deviation and that is all the luck he seemed to have in turn one. I had a bit more luck in that I one shot his Rhino with a meltagun causing it to explode at max range. It took out 2 Tactical Marines and a couple of scouts.

The next couple of turns were maneuvering and minor casualties due to shooting. Scott's Scout move the Relic towards his deployment and a 4 point objective. We did had an assault between his Assault Marines and one of my Grey Hunter squads which held out long enough for my second Grey Hunter squad to come an assist. At this point Scott had 7 points and I had 5. The only way i was going to win this game was to deny the Relic to him and man did I get lucky with a boltgun shot from close to max range through forest against his last scout with the Relic. I made the shot and Scott failed the save. While we did roll for another turn we came to the consensus the while his Predator could hold the 4 point objective he had no way of grabbing the Relic since I had his only infantry unit locked in melee with my Blood Claws and Librarian.

My Wolf Guard Terminators had a bad Deep Strike and worse armor saves but did a very good job keeping Scott's units from firing at my grey hunters for a couple of turns and let me get my Blood Claws into a good position, but all in all they were nothing more than an expensive decoy. Hopefully I wont get so unlucky with them in the next game.

A New Start and a new army....

So the group seems to be getting back to playing again after a very busy holiday season. We have plans to try out a campaign based on Planetary Empires with a couple minor changes though I think we are still a couple of weeks out on that due to scheduling. The big news isn't the fact that we started up playing again or the campaign but the fact that after a year or so of talking about it I have finally started working on my wife's Space Wolf army.

I got a base 500 army built for her and play tested it last weekend against Scott's Blood Angels. The games was friendly since we were both trying to learn an army since this was his first game with the new codex and i haven't played Space Wolves since 2nd Edition.


Space Wolf Core 500 

HQ - Rune Priest

Troop - 2 x 5 man Gray Hunters w/ Meltagun

Troop - 5 man Blood Claws w/ Flamer; 1 Wolf Guard Pack Leader w/ Power Weapon; Rhino

Elite - 3 man Wolf Guard Terminators w/ 2 x Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields and 1 x Pair of Wolf Claws


I do have a test list for 1000 points that will most likely see a revised 1000 Blood Angel list this weekend. The test list isn't what i am looking for in the Space Wolves but it will be good to see a couple of options that I wouldn't normally take with my Dark Angels but I have no issue using with the Wolves.

Trees and Buildings.Our latest table layout.

I wasn't really motivated enough to get a battle report for the game we played on this table but I did want to get a couple of pictures of the table. We currently have 3 buildings using templates that we grabbed off of Confessions of a 40k Addict. I have to thank Scott for putting these together for us and from the last time we talked about them it sounded like he had a couple more and possibly some ruins as well. If you like the buildings you can pick up the templates from here: STC

Another reason I wanted to get a couple of pictures was for the fact that I now have some trees to cover the tree stands and the city park that I had started. At the time if the pictures I didn't have anything to cover them with so they are a bit stark. We joked that it was winter.

Plans surviving first contact?

Yes the Tau are dead will not be joining us this weekend. So the plan to have the 2 games this weekend seem to be ending up as a 2v1 battle between Dark Angels/Blood Angels and Eldar. Scott and myself will be running 1250 points each of Angels while George seems to think he has 2500 points of Eldar, we will see.

The funny thing about that picture is that my Imperial Guard have actually won a couple of assaults. Go figure.

Plans for the weekend. 1v1x2 I think.

It is Tuesday and we think we have a plan and unfortunately it does not include my Imperial Guard since they are now retired until they grow up to be the Astra Militarum. It does include my Dark Angels though, 1250 points worth of them and a lot of randomness.

Friday if everything goes as plan two side by side games where we chose our opponents and our missions randomly. It will be 1250 points a side and all list should be done before Friday. So I get to take a experimental list of Dark Angels against....well I don't know yet. My wife claims that she will be the person that randomly determines opponents and I think I will let her do just that, not sure how she plans of determining the outcome. This is good then, we don't know who our opponent is, we don't know what our mission will be or the mission of our opponent, and we don't know what table we will get. We will just do everything in a random fashion.

So this is the plan. I am taking a DA list that is out of my norm and there is no knowledge of the battle ahead. I guess I have a bit to think on in the coming days. Maybe I can come up with a way to counter every possible list my opponents can bring to bear or maybe I will just go take a nap. A nap sounds good actually.

Weekend Battle: Tau/Imperial Guard vs Iyanden/Blood Angels

So the Tau/Imperial Guard were just barely victorious and it took me until Saturday morning before I remembered that I got a VP for each fast attack unit that I destroyed (Thank you Scott for taking that Land Speeder). So the game was long and very Chaotic and for for our part the Tau/IG side should have lost, but by chance along we won it. Did we have tactics? NO. Did we have good dice rolls? NO. Did I just happen to draw "The Scouring" and then Austin kill that Land Speeder? Yes. Now if Scott or George had drawn "Big Guns Never Tire" we would have lost by about 4 VP. So we are going to call this simply a lucky win and probably the last game I will play with my Imperial Guard. Yes I am retiring them with a win for the two or so weeks until the new codex. The next time they play they will officially be Astra Militarum.

I had meant to get some pictures but once things got started I completely forgot in the excitement of actually getting to play again. Sorry. Hopefully I can get some picture of something up soon. I will be doing so work on my Daughter's Sisters this week.

Wrecked Vehicles

I have never been one to mess with wreck templates or marker or really do anything else to show that a vehicle of mine was destroyed other than pull the turret off and/or flip the tank, but then I came across these and thought wow those are kind of nice, I may have to try that.

Upcoming Battle: Tau/Imperial Guard vs Iyanden/Blood Angels

Yes Chaos! for that is what this battle is going to be. 2000 points per side or 1000 points per army which ever you would like. Two Warlords per team so that is twice as many points for Slay the Warlord. We are running with the random missions and the deck now has 2 of each of the basic missions in it so each team will have two missions. Each player has to complete their mission individually and all VP is added up at the end of the game to determine the winning team.

We have done the random mission deck before and it works pretty well but this will be the first time that each player will have their own draw of the deck instead of just one draw per team. So while their will be no Chaos armies on the field of play this evening, Chaos will most definitely be on the battlefield.


Victory Points

Primary
- Objectives - Once per Army
- Kills - Once per Team
- Relic - Once per Team, Double VP if in owning Players Deployment Zone

Secondary
- Slayer the Warlord - Once per Team
- First Blood - Once per Team
- Line Breaker - Once per Team

Win, Lose. or Draw (Tie)!

I have officially killed the old Win/Lose list on the site since it really didn't show anything and I didn't really care for the way I formatted. I also figured it was a good time since we should have a good game tomorrow and since everyone should now mostly be caught up on the rules it would give us a better indication of where everyone is at. This time around I have it list by player and then their army, if someone plays a different army I will simply add it beneath the player.

Time Lost

So it appears that Christmas happened and then a sever lack of gaming followed. Not sure why but it happened. With the lack of interest in Tyranids and Imperial Knights and little time to actually paint anything I haven't really had anything to post nor have I wanted to post something just for the sake of posting something. Fortunately a bit has changed, we now have some rumors about the some to arrive Imperi.... Adeptus Militarum (think i spelled that correctly.... oh well) and I also have a compressor and airbrush. With this I should soon have new rules for my motley band of Guardsmen and the speed at which I can get them painted should be much increased (having to hand base 40 guardsmen was kind of depressing).

This weekend should see our first game in quite a while. At this moment it looks like a 2v2 game between Blood Angels and Iyanden versus Tau and Imperial Guard (They aren't Militarum yet!). The plan is to have each player draw a random mission and the team with the most VP at the end is the winning team. So that would be 2 missions per a team and since there are 2 cards for each mission it is possible for both players on a team to get the same mission for double the VP. Figured it should at least be interesting and probably rather chaotic if nothing else.

Oh and has anyone noticed that one of the new Ogryn for the Militarum kind of looks like Sloth from the Goonies?

New Print and Play Building over on Confessions of a 40k Addict

OK firstly, I meant to post this over the weekend but due to some personal issues I never had a chance to do so. Secondly I really like the buildings and the fact that Dave took the time to put out another one is just great. Yes I understand that this is just a a color variance on his other building but when you have two or three of these on the board it is so much nicer than having all one color.

If you missed Dave's post over on his blog then here you go

Terrain is everything - Hail the Omnissiah a new Print & Play building scheme

Allies for my Imperial Guard

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to have found several boxes of old miniatures from when I played what is probably over a decade ago at this point. One of the things I found in those boxes was enough Adepta Sororitas figs to fulfill a promise to my Daughter. Over the weekend I was able to sit down and look at what I had and compare them to the new rules. What I found much to my Daughters delight is that I had enough stuff for a 250 point Allied Detachment.

Hopefully I will have the time sometime soon as well as a camera on hand to get these figs together and primed and possibly even a pic or two.

Planetstrike Campaign

So I spent the morning looking over a copy of the 5e Planetstrike Expansion and it looks like my group may run through the 6 mission campaign in the near future. We will be running two teams with a total army value of 2500 points to be split between the two armies on the team are the players see fit. At the moment that I type this the groups look to be Scott and George with Blood Angels and Iyanden Eldar as Attackers against Austin and myself running Tau and Imperial Forces (Imperial Guard, Dark Angels, Adepta Sororitas) as the Defenders.

I will say that we are still in discussion about what we are going to be doing but if all goes well we should have our first game in two weeks.

Missed a Week, Blood Angels vs Iyanden, and how armies differ between Editions....

So I missed a week, sorry. We didn't have a game the previous week so I didn't have much to say on the matter. On top of all that I am not really that interested in Tyranid at the moment since I cannot find my HQs and I have no interest in the Fantasy Dwarves at all. Ok so some of the new figs for the Dwarves look pretty nice.

Fortunately this week we did get a game in between Scott's Blood Angels and George's Iyanden armies. They ran with the random Missions Cards, Scott getting Purge the Alien and George getting Big Guns Never Tire. We gave Scott a chance to see what his Blood Angels may look like in 6e by allowing him to use the point values from the Space Marine Codex for any units that actually showed up in that book. It gave him approximately another unit and a half which seems to be a major difference in point values to me. I guess i will need to go back and see if the points for my Dark Angels were that bad as well. An y how, the Dice Gods hated George with a passion and after about 8 or 9 "1"s in Scott's opening turn, George really didn't have a whole lot of Scoring Units left that weren't in reverse. I must say though that while George did take a hit with the dice this last game he fought hard and still had a chance up until turn 4 when he had to concede.

Last Friday's Battle - 2nd Variable Mission game

As you may or may not know, our group has been running a couple of games with variable missions. We are currently running with a single deck of 6 cards that each represent one of the 6 basic missions from the Core Rulebook. Last Friday night we played our second game using this system and it seems to work great, or well it did for Scott and myself.

So a run down of how this works, you get 6 cue cards or similar sized item and put the names of each of the missions on a card, shuffle them and put them to the side. Set up the table in what ever manner you see fit, we usually just have someone do the whole thing up in as even a manner as possible. Place a marker for the Relic and then 6 markers (with the variable point values for the Scouring) as evenly around the table as possible. Determine all the normal stuff such as Warlord Traits, Deployment, etc. and then each side chooses a card.

Now we talk a lot while we are playing so in order to not give away our mission we tend to talk objectives in a way that it can be any mission. Oh I forgot to say this but, DON'T SHOW YOUR OPPONENT YOUR MISSION CARD! What fun would it be if he/she knew what it was. Also we have always played where in the Scouring you don't flip the Objective Marks to determine their value until the end of the game. I guess we are just weird like that.

So how did our game play out, Scott and I played Blood Angels and Dark Angels against George and Austin who were playing Eldar and Tau. Austin and myself were the Warlords with Austin drawing the Relic mission and myself drawing Purge the Alien (I had to refrain from doing the Happy Dance). Deployment saw Scott and myself just outside of range for two objectives and our opponents a little further back. We blocked Infiltration by getting first deployment for them and I set up a group of scouts on the Relic (remember we didn't know they had the mission). Our battle plan was rather simple, march straight across the board and hold as many objectives as possible while attempting to eliminate what ever presented itself. Austin and George were going to flank to our rear, slay the warlord and retrieve the relic from there. Well that was a great plan except my Librarian decided that he was going to Perils of the Warp himself to death in turn two (2 turns of double 6s). This kind of broke their battle plans and they never did recover from it. Mean while my Scouts sat on the Relic for 5 turns and in the end we walked away with more than their 3 VP for First Blood, Slay the Warlord, and Line Breaker. I didn't think it was necessary to do the math once we counted 4 kills.

So if you want to change up your game a bit I definitely suggest giving the mission cards a try.