Last Friday's Battle - IG w/ Dark Angels vs Eldar. No vehicles!

So George and myself had our selves a friendly little battle last Friday. The battle was between Georges Iyanden Eldar and my Imperial Guard w/ Dark Angel allies. The set the battle at 1000 points and had Crusader as the Mission on a Dawn of War Battlefield, No Night Fighting occurred and the game ended at the end of turn 4 beginning of turn 5. So nothing special thus far but George wanted to figure out what he needed to fill out his Infantry so we played a game with no vehicles or more specifically, no figures that have the Hull Point stat.

This isn't really and issue for me since I am used to running heavy infantry with both my IG and my Dark Angels but George had some issues. George brought 2 10 man units of Guardians but only has 1 support platform. He also brought 2 5 man Dire Avenger squads, a 3 man bike squad, a Pathfinder squad w/ Illic (sorry I am not going to bother looking up the correct spelling but I know i spelt it wrong), and a unit of Wraithblades with Power Axes and Shields. All in all this should have been an OK force to take, except if wasn't.

I pretty much took my norm for the IG with the Company Command w/ MoO, my Platoon and a Vet squad then added a DA librarian, Deathwing, a Devastator squad, and 2 units of Sniper scouts. Both scouts infiltrated onto objectives and every thing else advanced at about 4" a turn except the Command squad, Devastators and librarian. The eldar for all their movement pretty much got mowed down as they came into LoS as they came into view of 2 or more units or fell to the MoO (who rolled great for everything and only missed completely on 1 or 2 turns).

The truth is I knew George was trying out stuff and I gave him the nastiest list I could so he could really test what he had. I had little hope of him winning but I knew there was always the chance that he had something that I didn't know about. I was very surprised by the survivability of his Wraithblades and if I hadn't killed his Spiritseer early on that unit probably would have walked through the center of my firing line. I took a unit of Deathwing to counter these guys but with that Spiritseer I think he could have taken them. As is I ended a very long assault with only one Deathwing terminator to my name.

The game ended at the beginning of turn 5 with George giving up. Having a unit of Pathfinders and 2 Dire Avengers wasn't going to be enough to claim 2 objectives while I still had a full unit of Scouts, 2 command squads and a Devastator squad as well as a half strength infantry squad with a flamer. I also would have still had a full turn of shooting to go. Hopefully George figured out what he needs to do with his infantry and maybe we can try this again once he makes his changes. I enjoyed the game and I learned a couple of things from it as well.

Hey Kids, Lets Play 40K!

 I thought this was pretty funny

Deployment 101 – Against Tau @ 3++

Very informative article over on 3++ about deployment.

Deployment 101 – Against Tau @ 3++

Battle Blood Angels versus Imperial Guard

So Scott and myself had a friendly 1000 point game last Friday and for the last couple of weeks I have been trying to get him to field an Assault list for his Blood Angels. Well Friday he did so and in turn one wiped out 20 of my 56 guys in turn one before I any any chance at all to do anything. The then proceeded to systematically pick what was left of my army apart. At the end of turn 6 I had 6 figs on the board, my Company Commander and the Unit of Dark Angel Scouts that I took as allies. I wasn't disappointed with the game since when the first Drop Pod hit I knew I was getting what I had asked for and it worked wonders against my static line.

Here is a short run down of what happened.

BA Turn 1: Drop Pod lands 3 inch in front of my Leman Russ and Furioso deploys and promptly puts a Heavy Flamer and Meltagun on my Exterminator. 4 Guardsmen gone, 1 Hull Point off the Ex. Whirlwind fires and takes out 8 Guardsmen from another unit and they flee from the board.

IG Turn 1: Bust, I fire a Battle Cannon and scatter causing 1 Hull Point to the Ex.

BA & IG Turn 2: Was  uneventful.

BA Turn 3: Assault Troops land wipe out must of my Command Squad

IG Turn 3: I put some damage on the Furioso, Rhino and Baal.

BA Turn 4: Terminators and Librarian in a Drop Pod decide to say hello to my front line. The Rhino drops off a Tactical Squad. My Leman Russ takes a hull point from something. At this point I am just trying to see the end of turn 5 with the Objectives I have.

IG Turn 4: Did some damage to the Tactical Squad but the dice gods were hating on me pretty badly by this point or maybe they just really liked Scott.

BA Turn 5: more Devastation. I am down to a Platoon Command Squad, DA Scout Squad, a Lord Commissar, a Dark Angel Librarian, and my Company Commander (minus the squad).

IG Turn 5: I finally kill the Furioso (though I may be a turn off on this because I think this was the turn Scott's Terminators destroy my Leman Russ. Anyways they are both dead by this point.)

BA Turn 6: I now have a unit of DA Scouts and a Company Commander, due mostly to Terminators with Storm Bolters and a Heavy Flamer.

IG Turn 6: We flip the objective counters and for me to tie I would have needed a 4 point Objective and I 1, assuming Scott flip a 2 and a 3 for his objectives.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Well at least I had fun even if it was an uphill battle that I truly had no way of winning. Sorry for the crappy report but since I am two reports behind and wont be able to do anything until my new laptop shows up at the beginning of December I decided not to give my self yet more work.


Now if everything goes as planned and it didn't last week we may be playing a 1000 point Eldar vs. IG non-vehicle Crusader/Dawn of War match this coming Friday.

Codex Inquisition

So there are some confusing rumors going around. Firstly we were told (via rumor) that this was going to be a Allied Supplement so all our Imperial Army can take an Inquisitor as an Allied Detachment. OK fine I can deal with that not an issue. This is pretty much standard now for GW and these kinds of books and it doesn't change the way the core system works. I would still get the book and would still have Eisenhorn in my IG army. Now the rumor is that you can replace your mandatory 1 HQ with an Inquisitor. Wow now that isn't what I expected from GW. Of course this is how the Inquisition actually works but it was a bit of a surprised for me since I never actually expected them to go there. So after the shock of that rumor wore off I got to thinking, would I actually replace my Company Command Squad for an Inquisitor. It didn't take long for me to come up with an answer, HELL NO! Unless this codex gives me something better than the Company Commands Orders which I doubt it will then I will have to relegate Eisenhorn to a secondary HQ slot. Now this is all currently based on a RUMOR so as all the rumor sites like to say I am going to take the whole thing with a grain of salt, but it is interesting how some of these rumors change the way you look at stuff.

Observer POV: Chaos Space Marines vs. Tau - 500 Points

So Austin received his first win, the second win for Tau in 8 games. I do believe that the fact that the Mission was Purge the Alien played a large part in this game since Austin probably didn't move more than 24" total with his army and never really left his deployment zone. The Final tally I believe was 4 to 2 (maybe 3 I need to go back and see if Dreese made Line Breaker or not). either way that is a win for the fish.

The game was mostly Dreese walking into the Tau fire and not having much luck with his saves. It also hurt quiet a bit that the Sorcerer never actually hit with his power. In truth he only passed his Psychic test once and even that was a Peril. The Dice Gods were not of Dreese's side for this game.

The whole thing reminded me of a dog biting at a snapping turtle where the turtle would occasionally pop it's head out to take a bite at the dog while the dog just took it. Eventually the dog gives up due to all the bites and the turtle goes on its way. That is how this game played out. Austin turtles in the back and took bites at Dreese as he moved into position to do something useful which never really panned out. Sure he got some bites in but it wasn't enough to get the points.

I saw nothing wrong with Austins list though I would have liked to see him to be a little more aggressive at the start just in case Dreese got a couple of shoots into him and caused a route. Dreese while having an OK list needs some sort of support in order to fight against shooting armies. Having to walk into a firing line was murder on him.

The game was at least entertaining to watch and I had a good time sitting on the side lines. Since I usually run as the arbiter for any game I don't play this was a refreshing change.

Upcoming Battle: Chaos Space Marines vs Tau - 500 Points

So we have come full circle and are now back to the postponed CSM vs Tau battle that had been slated for the end of September/ beginning of October. I waited till now just to make sure the game was actually going to happen. Well it was verified not long ago and here we are posting about it.

Mission - Purge the Aliens
Battlefield - Vanguard Strike
Night Fight - 1st Turn

This is a pretty straight forward battle and we expect it to be bloody.

He is the list that will be taken by Dreese

HQ1 - Sorcerer w/ the Mark of Tzeentch, Veteran of the Long War and Aura of Dark Glory

E1 - 5x Chosen w/ the Mark of Tzeentch, Veteran of the Long War, 1x Power Weapon, and 1x Power Fist

E2 - Hellbrute w/ Heavy Flamer

T1 - 10x Cultist w/ Autoguns and 1x Heavy Stubber. Champion w/ Shotgun

T2 - 10x Cultist w/ 1x Flamer

This is the same list that he took against me a month or so ago and it has the potential to hurt someone. I definitely under estimated its destructive power in our game so I will be interested I seeing how it fairs in this match.


Austin have a new line up for his Tau, hoping that a transport may help him out. From what I can tell this is going to be what he fields.

HQ1 - Cadre Fireblade w/ Shield Drone

E1 - 2x Crisis Suits w/ Missile Pod and Plasma Rifle

T1 & T2 - 6x Fire Warriors w/ Sahs'ui and Shield Drone

T3 - 7 Fire Warriors and Devilfish w/ Twin-Lingked Smart Missile System and 2x Seeker Missiles

I am not sure what to say about the list other than it has potential. I have seen Austin go into battles with similar and then lose because of bad luck. So I am going to hold judgement until I actually see him play.


I went in to this battle backing Dreese for the win without knowing the Mission since he almost stole the game from me when we ran Relic, but this is Purge the Alien and Austin won't have to make an Objective grab and can comfortably sit back and shoot across the field. I believe the mission favors Austin. Dreese is going to have to work a little bit harder to walk away with a win.

Space Marine Scouts

After reading this article I went back and started looking through Space Marine list on the internet and was surprised by how many list did not include Scouts. Personally I have almost always taken at least one squad of scouts even if it was just for sniper support or advance deployment (I love starting the game on an Objective). Now while the article was not completely news to me it did shed some light on alternative ways to use them. So for anyone that may be interested I an providing the link to the article over on Bell of Lost Souls. Enjoy


Editorial: You Should Be Taking Space Marines Scouts

Escalation and the Lords of War

So it looks like I may at some point be able to dust of at least one of my Baneblades. With the latest rumors for the Escalation expansion the Imperial Guard will get to take a single Baneblade or Shadowsword. Since I have both and tend to play a balanced army list I would probably settler for the Bane though I do own a Shadowsword as well. Here is the latest news from Faeit 212

Escalation and the Lords of War

Codex Inquisition

I will tell you right now that I was only slightly interested in the upcoming Codex Inquisition. Since it is basically just an ally codex and with the fact that I never did get any models that will be represented in the codex with the exception of a couple of priest. I couldn't really see picking the codex up without some sort of incentive. I had thought about getting it for the lore but seeing that I am broke most of the time it really was pretty far off on the list of wants. Then they did this.

Being a huge fan of Dan Abnett and the Eisenhorn series, this brought the codex back to the top of my want list. To have the chance to field Eisenhorn in my Imperial Guard army was just to much for me to push the codex away. So once I can scrounge up the money and of course assuming they actually release a fig for him I am hoping to pick this up. Fortunately until this happens, the codex can slowly slide back down to a more comfortable place.