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.