Tuesday 24 July 2012

Boooooks and such!

 Good old reliable Eisenhorn!

After munching my way through the Eisenhorn Omnibus a while ago I just had to get my hands on the Ravenor Omnibus (Dan Abnett is a great writer!) and now I have so I'm currently making my way through that (my Kindle is telling me I'm 41% percent through it) which means right now I'm all for the Inquisition! I also managed to get my mum to start reading Eisenhorn but she read the first few pages, looked at me and asked 'What is the warp?'. Sigh. I may regret this.

And before you say anything, no they haven't payed me to advertise their books! Although I do recommend you buy them as they are extremely well written!

Monday 23 July 2012

Summer Holiday...

Not much of a post here folks, more of an update. I'm off on my (theoretically) beautiful Summer Hols in Germany for the next 3 weeks. Posting frequency is likely to die down until I return but it depends what/how much ol' AssortedMelons has for you.

In the mean time, Auf Wiedersehen!
Prost!

Friday 20 July 2012

Shiny Model Syndrome

Right, I'm not too proud to say I am afflicted with 'Shiny model Syndrome' (personal coinage). I'm not ashamed of this (well, maybe I am a little...) but I do have a tendency to get completely distracted from my current projects by something 'shiny'. Be it a new model release for 40k that I could use, or one that I can't, if it looks cool I'm sold. I'm just that fickle.

ayyyy

Now whilst this leads to a lot of...pricy situations  I'm hoping it'll also work in my favour. If I hadn't loved the old Grey Knights enough I would likely never have started 40k. Small world and all. So:

Is shiny model syndrome a problem?

Well, I think the easy answer is yes. Financially it can be. It can lead to lots of half baked ideas, scraps of miniatures left, right, centre, behind, in etc etc. It's hard to settle on something and get an army fully running before you get distracted (yeah, maybe this is hyperbole, but you may be surprised). Yet, this can come down to a matter of perspective. It might not just be a mess, but a 'tribute' to your favourite miniatures. I have a Crom the Conqueror miniature in the other room, sitting there, all alone and despite me having no intention of finding any more Chaos to keep him company he's a nice enough sculpt for me to be happy with leaving there.
'Go forth, and find me a Sandwich'


What should I do about it?

Embrace it! Yeah, well, however nice a sentiment that may be it's not always a great idea. Personally, I employ a 2 week rule. This means if I see something that I 'have' to have. I leave it for at least 2 weeks. If I'm still as interested then then I consider getting it. Often just leaving things long enough for me to realise that I don't need it, and wouldn't gain anything from it. That's my solution, I'm sure that there's other methods or views and I would be open to them.
Can it work to my advantage?

Well, I hope it does. As I said before it can lead to new things, like my Grey Knights. I guess I may have a more definitive answer in the future as recently I've been looking a lot into Infinity.

Wolf Commandos go!
What can I say, the miniatures are gorgeous! It's a small skirmish game, it's interactive for both players in both turns. It has giant wolf men in it! Could this be the game I wasn't even looking for? Need to find people to play against (and start with) and some way of getting the huge amount of terrain needed but I'm thinking it may be worth the shot. What do you think interwebs?

 Of course, 2 week rule.

2 week rule.

Darn 2 week rule!

Wednesday 18 July 2012

First 6th ed game - Deldar and Space Wolves vs Chaos

The only fliers in this game were some swooping demons

Okay i finally got around to playing my first game with the new edition! Huzzah!
It was my Deldar and Euphemisms Space Wolves against alot of Chaos. (2 generals vs 1)
Points wise it ended up at 2250 per side. We had 1000 points of Wolves and 1250 points of Deldar with Eldar allies. We allowed our opponent to use 2 FoC to make it fair on him.

For Chaos I seem to remember it being something along the lines of
Land Raider with termies and Typhus
Another 2 squads of termies (1 of which was deep striking both with Reaper Autocannon. I think that's the correct plural anyway)
3 Rhinos, 2 with Plague Marines(double melta + icon) in and 1 with Khorne zerkers (powerfist champ) in
A 5 man squad of horrors with a changling 
A demon prince (Wings + breath of chaos I do believe)
Fateweaver

Space wolves brought:
Rune Priest - Chooser of the Slain, Runic Armour
Long Fang squad (2 lascannons, 2 heavy bolters and a missile launcher)
Swiftclaw Bikers x3 - flamer, multi melta attack bike + Wolf guard (bike, powerfist)
Squad of Blood Claws x9 - meltagun + wolf guard (Mark of the Wulfen)
Grey Hunters x9 - meltagun, Wolf Standard + wolf guard (Powerfist)
2 Lone Wolves - 1) Termie Armour, Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield
                            2) Termie Armour, 2x Wolf Claws

My Deldar with my astounding lack of heavy support! (I REALLY need to buy some Ravagers and/or fliers)
10x Kabalite Warriors w/ Dark Lance
10x Kabalite Warriors w/ Splinter Cannon
- In Raider w/ Night Shields, Splinter Racks (Swapped the Dark Lance to a Disintegrator Cannon too to try out the 3 AP2 shots)
3x Reavers w/ Heat Lance, Cluster Caltrops
3x Trueborn w/ 2x Dark Lance
- In Venom w/ Dual Splinter Cannons, Night Shields
4x Trueborn w/ 2x Shardcarbine, 2x Splinter Cannon
1x Haemonculus w/ Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun
- Shardborn and Haem in Venom w/ Dual Splinter Cannons, Night Shields
5x Wytches w/ 5x Haywire Grenades, Shardnet + Impaler 
- In Venom w/ Dual Splinter Cannons, Night Shields
5x Scourges w/ 2x Dark Lances
Eldar Allies:
Farseer w/ Doom, Singing Spear, Runes of Warding
5x Rangers

In the end it was an objectives game with 4 objectives (2 in each deployment zone) and by the end of turn 5 Deldar and Space Wolves were capturing 3 objectives and Chaos had 1 with their only remaining unit on the board (5 Plague Marines). We also got First Blood and kills the Enemy warlord so all in all it didn't go too well for Chaos.

Some highlights:
-Fateweaver deep stuck in and rolled a 2 when he mishapped so we got to place him where ever we pleased so we put him in a swampy crater thing quite far back in his deployment zone but still in range of our guns. We only put him in the swamp as he has an invun save anyway so the 5+ cover save was pretty useless and on the VERY slim chance he might get his foot stuck in some mud and fall flat on his beak. He did. Opponent got a 1. Then failed his armour. Then failed his rerolled armour. Not a good day to be a Demonic Bird.
-Doom. I love it. So much. His Demon Prince deep struck right next to the Long Fangs capturing the objective (we rolled the Big Guns Never Tire or whatever so heavy support was scoring) then used his breath weapon and hit 4 or 5. Didn't wound once. Ouch. Then my Farseer Doomed him and he was subjected to rather alot of fire from various sources including the rather sturdy Long Fangs who smelled like demon breath. Needless to say it didn't see another turn. Demons (and anything that relies on high toughness to stay alive) absolutely hates splinter fire.
-I was dubious about running just 5 Wytches in a Venom but they actually worked rather well and assaulted the Land Raider turn 1 and got 2 glances and 2 pens (the Land Raider had a 4+ invun from some ruins or other that it was within 6 inch of but it failed all 4) and all 220/250 points of Land Raider got wrecked! So the Wytches definitely got their points back! Although they did then get assaulted by some pretty angry termies and Typhus and went squish. 70 points of Wytches in a 75 point Venom is cheap and cheerful and makes high armor vehicles run away.
-My Haemonculus didn't see much action really but he still made his points back when I moved my Shardboat 6 inches then disembarked him 6 inches which put him nicely within flamer template range of Typhus and co. I rolled a 2 for my ap. 3 Termies melted into puddles. It was a good day. I'm considering making a squad of 10 Wracks just for the 2 liquifier guns as they have a 1 in 3 chance of being able to melt termies with ap 1 or 2 so a squad of 10 Wracks and a Haem means 3 liquifier guns. Mmmmm so much melty acid!

Conclusion:
Our opponent was VERY unlucky in his dice rolls but it happens to us all but other than that it was actually a close game as by turn 3 and 4 he was actually winning with 2 objectives captured by the 2 squads of plague marines and 1 objective contested by his Khorne zerkers whereas we only had the smelly Long Fangs holding our backfield objective.

The new Feel No Pain rules didn't really come into effect for me as I was only really in combat with my Wytches who didnt get a Pain Token from killing the Land Raider (the only other close combat I was involved in is when his Khorne zerkers assaulted my Raider which didn't end well for the paper plane) but my opponent had quite a few FnP saves and he passed quite a few from what a saw so im still undecided whether is has been nerfed or not.

Saturday 14 July 2012

Battle Report: Knights vs Deldar

What do you mean it's not got Skyfire‽

Well, this was the second outing for my Grey Knights since 6th ed hit, against the same opponent with the same list. Knights vs Deldar as stated in the title (naturally) First off a couple of notes: 1) I apologise for the quality of the pictures. It's not a great camera and if I zoomed in at all it would have gone blurry (at least that's the excuse I'm sticking with) 2) The pictures are all of the ends of each game turn, not player 3) The Stormraven is missing one of it's multimeltas because I lost it earlier in the day. Go me. Repairs are being made 4) I was using a trimmed down version of a relatively effective Knight list whilst my opponent (who plays very rarely) was using everything he'd collected, so was limited in his options.

Onto the action:

Army Lists

Brotherhood Champion 'Ezra'
5x Paladins - Sword, Psycannon, Hammer, Halberd, Halberd Psycannon
6x Termies -5x Halberd, 1x Hammer, Psycannon
10x Strike Squad - Justicar with Hammer, 2x Psycannon
Stormraven -Multimelta, Hurricane bolters
Dreadknight -Great Sword, Heavy Psycannon
Dreadnought - TL Lascannon, Missile Launcher

Archon - Power Weapon, Soultrap
Haemonculus
10x Trueborn- 2xShredders, 2x Dark Lances, 1x Blaster, 1x Blast Pistol
5x Incubi - Klaivex with Onslaught
10x Kabalites- Dark Lance
10x Kabalites
5x Wracks -Liquifier
5x Wracks -Liquifier
5x Scourges - 1x Blaster, 1x Blast Pistol, 1x Dark Lance
5x Hellions -Stun Claw
Razorwing - 4x (that 2+ poisened missile)
Talos

It's 'The Emperor's Will' mission with 'Dawn of War' deployment. Nightfight is up. Ezra gets Intimidating Presence, Archon gets Tenacity. Point of interest is that in 3 games Ezra has rolled Intimidating presence every time. It must be his special thing...I'm referring to him as Ezra from now on not just because it's his name but because it saves me tying BroChamp every time. Yes I know I'm lazy.

Deployment


Right flank 



Monday 9 July 2012

First 6th ed comments

Again, this is going to be a short summary, but this time it's what I noticed from my first game.
I took my Knights at 1500pts. The list is my old 1500pt one, with the GM with grenades downgraded to a Brotherhood Champ and the 7x Strike Squad removed so I could fit in the Thunderbird (apparently fliers are king...)

Brotherhood Champion
5x Paladins (Sword and MCpsycannon, Halberd and MCpsycannon, Sword, Halberd, Hammer
10x SS  (Hammer on Justicar and 2x psycannon)
6x Termies (1x Hammer 5x Halberds and 1x psycannon)
'Thunderbird 1' Stormraven (Multimelta, Hurricane bolters)
Dreadknight (Hpsycannon, Sword)
Dreadnought (Lascannon, Missile Launcher)

Against a foot Dark Eldar (who hadn't played 40k in a couple of years)

ZOOOOOM Mode
  • First a little confession, I missed in the rulebook where it said 'fliers must start in reserve' which led to Thunderbird 1 taking down the enemy Razorwing turn 1 before it did anything. This was very unfair and made the Thunderbird nigh untouchable.
  • That said Fliers are AMAZING! In capitals. Not only are they very effective in...zoom mode *sigh* but it's really fun. The maximum one, 90° turn before movement meant I really had to think about how fast to go to still see what I wanted to shoot. It lead to me flying off the board deliberately to come back on with a better angle, and seriously considering hover mode to swoop round units. It felt like a flier!
  • Terminators (and other 2+ stuff) whilst powerful in assault, aren't indestructible. I lost 2 to one assault from some hellions and only killed 1 in return. You don't need to counter their save with AP2 or 1, but you need to consider how to deal with them, whether it is those kind of weapons or just a bucket of wounds.
  • Warlord traits had no effect on the battle at all. His Archon got something to do with outflanking troops (of which he had none) and though mine got the 12" 'enemies use their worst leadership value' which sounded awesome, it just didn't come in to play.
  • Night fight. Against Dark Eldar. Night fight. "Oh god the shadow elves will slaughter me!" went through my pessimistic brain. Against my foot knights (I mounted nothing on the Thunderbird, I didn't trust it not to die and kill what was in it) it wasn't that much of an effect. It was only in play for turn 1, but with my range being about 24" anyway they were only really getting a...5+ cover I think. Which wasn't too bad. Might not be the game-ender I thought it might be.   
  • The random assault range. Now, the possiblility of making charges over 6" sounds great but remember to consider what happens if they fail. Unlike fantasy I didn't have a stock movement stat to add to my roll, which resulted in my DK charging a wopping 4" and so missing (even with HUGE legs) and so dting to shooting instead of gleefully poundin Wracks and my termies also missing an assault and therefore sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Yes it won't happen all the time but failed charges will occur when you don't want them                              
  • Finally, back to fliers, with defensive weapons being scrapped in favour of the much simpler 'fire X amount of guns' there seems now to be no reason not to take psybolt on the Thunderbird. That puts it to 6/12 (depending on rapid fire) S5 shots, 4 twin linked S7 rending, 1 S8 melta and 4 S4 missiles! Most of the time firing 5 of them (potentially one at a different target). This has to be tried at some point
Well that's what I noticed, I forgot my camera so now battle report. Stand by because I may have another one soon.


Friday 6 July 2012

What's new pussycat?

This doesn't really need a caption.

10 Interesting 6th ed facts that I have gathered from the book and the internet:
  • Frost axe like a power fist but only +2 S not x2.
  • All Nemesis weapons for Grey Knights are unusual force weapons which seems to mean that Daemon hammers are ap3...bad news if enemy terminators turn up. (note: on reflection of the Grey Knights book the Daemon Hammer entry says 'use the rules for Thunder Hammers', so they are in fact AP2) 
  • Cavalry and MCs have hammer of wrath so Dreadknight and Thunderwolves get extra hits on the assault.
  • (not a change but...) there is a box labeled 'Wobbly Model Syndrome'. I hope this is a reference.
  • The stats for all Temple assassins are in there seperately, despite them being identical, however Grey Knight Interceptors are not present. Hm...
  • Termies (and any 2+ save stuff) look set to be very dangerous in assaults now.
  • Dark Eldar are the unprecedented KINGS of nightfight. Lots of extra defence (3+ cover at dark lance range, immunity further away) and yet when shooting back they just ignore the penalties entirely. And with night fight possibly present every mission for about 2 turns at least this could be very powerful.
  • An interesting point was raised over on 3++, Allies of convenience are treated as enemies, therefore Eldar Runes of Warding and Space Wolf Runic staff count against Allies powers.
  • There is now 'extremely bulky' as a special rule (takes up 5 models in transport capacity). There may be some interesting new miniatures in future books. Fat ones.
  • The Witchblade is Flesh & Armour bane but AP - . So though it wounds enemies on 2+ it doesn't ignore saves.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Thinking about High Elves

As I'm not currently in possession of a copy of the 6th ed 40k book I don't think there's any point in me thinking too much about it. When I manage to get my grubby mits on one I'll take a look and see how it'll affect my current lists.
It's all in the small print. Honest.

So now I'm going to be looking at my current 1000pt High Elf list. This is the point size I've played most, so I think the list is more secure.
I'm going to look at this list with respects to how it works together, and how it performs in each of the phases and in deployment. It's kind of a whistle stop tour so hold onto your hats folks.

After looking at this picture for a while he now looks
like he's about to fall over backwards...

Heroes
Lvl2 Mage - Lore of Shadow
                   - Silver Wand
                   - Gem of Courage
Core
15xSea Guard -Full Command
                        -Shields
                        - Banner of Eternal Flame
10xArchers
Special
15xPhoenix Guard - Full Command
                               -Gleaming Pennant
5x Shadow warriors - Shadow walker
Rare
Repeater Bolt Thrower
Great Eagle

Synergy: No real complaints about this. It's a small army, possibly even for Elves but I find the Phoenix Guard and Sea Guard make a fairly solid fighting base, particularly with magical support. Regrettably the other units are there to die, but that's to draw enemies away from the real fighting base - the Sea/Phoenix Guard.

Deployment: Ok 5 drops isn't great. If my opponent hordes up I can equal or perhaps best him, but it's unlikely. Ideally I would have more Eagles for drops. A refused flank can work well with the Archers, Eagle and possibly RBT on one flank and the rest on the other. It's risky and not very High Elf but it has worked.

Movement: Yeah. Movement...I usually assign redirecting to the Eagle, Shadow Warriors and Archers. In that order. The Eagle is marvelous, with fly it can get right in the face of something big and scary to send it out the way for a turn. Apart from that and the Shadow Warriors (who do the same thing only not as well) it's fairly static sadly. The Sea Guard generally sit (stay...) to volley fire, though it is only 3 more shots...maybe some horsies are needed.

Magic: Well well well...magic. When it works it is sweet. I had resignations about leaving my beloved High Magic at home but the lore of Shadows is fantastic for Elves. It really needs a post all to itself to explain the whole thing. In general, I keep the hexes, or swap for them. The 'Pit' and the 'Pendulum' (...little nod to literary works there) are usually lower priority to 'Enfeebling', 'Withering' and the amazing 'Mindrazor' (who is coincidently not a superhero). Only problem is that it's 1  lvl2 wizard. It's not a strong magical presence but I'm not sure how to rectify that what with their cost. A Lvl 3 with no upgrades perhaps?

Shooting: BOWS! Lots of bows! 28 s3 shots + the bolt thrower. So actually a medium amount of bows, but as most stuff shoots it's quite a shooty army. The Sea guard usually go first to take off any regen that needs to be gone and then it's target priority. Choice here is focus fire, or remove rank bonus. Needs more research. Overall the low strength isn't great but becomes ok with 'Enfeebling'. If I get it.

Combat: Now, having chosen Pheonix Guard over Swordmasters or White Lions I've lost a lot of hitting power. The Guard are more defensive though, and can hold their own (pennant is there because I cannot roll LD checks to save my life...or theirs) for a few rounds but usually need support against tough-ish opponents. They need to work together with the Sea Guard who have a similiar problem (except they're even squishier). Again combat relies on magic to beat tough opponents, but is fine against most things.


What could be better: Well looking back it performs well in most phases. I feel however I could tweak it to make it better. More eagles + sea guard - archers perhaps. I also think it relies on the Mage too much. One poor magic phase and sad faces all round.

I'll come back to it when I've been able to get a few more practices in with it and see if it can be improved from there.
Any thoughts are welcome.

Tuesday 3 July 2012

The Beginnings

Greetings and salutations fellow blog readers! 
I shall be the second (yet hopefully not the last) contributor to this blog. (insert happy face here)
Seeing as how Mr Euphemism (thats right, his surname actually is 'Euphemism' with 'The' being his first name! . . . imagine him trying to learn how to spell his own name! Poor chap) has done a short introduction for himself, I thought I may as well duplicate this.

I.
Am.

AssortedMelons.


*pause for dramatic effect*

Anyhow! Time for a little history:

As with The Euphemism I have been playing WarHammer and WarHammer 40k (I do prefer 40k though) although not as long as him.
I originally started with just buying a few models quite a while back (me and my memory stay at a healthy, and large distance from each other) but I was rather young at this stage and didn't really know what to do with them other than the fact that they looked pretty cool! I got one of my friends interested too so we had a few fun afternoons just slapping whatever paint we had on whatever models we had (ahh, youth!). 

After a few years and a bit of growing (no more maturity however) I discovered that The Euphemism played it and decided to scavenge what models had survived the years out of the loft and started actually putting together a feasible army (the friend I mentioned before didn't rekindle his interest however). Nowadays I play when i can. I'm not particularly good and i could really do with some other models although i never seem to have enough money (what can I say? Cake is just too nice) but despite this i can field enough points and a dangerous enough army to very occasionally win! I do say VERY occasionally though. 
Also on a side note my uncle used to play too! He kept all his models and passed them on to me! My previously mentioned friend who i got interested also gave me all his goodies so i have now have bits of a few different armies.


My Armies:

I'll start with fantasy as i only have one force: 

Skaven:

Not too many and I don't use them much. I do occasionally have a game against Euphemisms High Elves (I use his Skaven force to bolster my own). I got these little critters from my uncle.

Now onto the grim darkness of 40k:

Dark Eldar:

My one true (spikey) love! Also my main army. These were the guys I first started with and may say a bit too much about me but hey! If I'm a little sadistic, so be it!

Eldar:

The only Eldar models are the ones i had donated to me by my uncle along with my Skaven as these we're his 40k army.

Tyranids:

Got these models from my friend as he no longer needed them because he had no intention of carrying on this hobby.

Chaos:

I have 5 Chaos termies that were in the box of Eldar my uncle gave me. Not too sure why in all honesty but 5 Chaos termies are 5 Chaos termies! Just means if I ever start Chaos its 5 less i have to buy.

I was thinking about actually starting a new 40k army and until this point it was either going to be Blood Angels or Chaos but now that i have seen that I actually have at least the beginnings of 4 40k armies, it just seems a little unnecessary!

As with The Euphemism, i started gaming during 5th ed and now i have seen some of the changes going into 6th ed it seems my already squishy Deldar (Dark Eldar for the ones who didn't know) are about to become even LESS survivable! From 4+ FNP to 5+ FNP thats 1 in every 2 passing to 1 in every 3 passing. Crud. My dead pile is going to fill up even quicker now. Although you can now take FNP saves against power weapons i think but I'll just have to play a few games with the new rules before i can make any proper decisions.

But that's all for another post.

As I'm looking back over this one post it seems a little lengthy in comparison to The Euphemism's . . . Whoops! I may have got a little carried away there!

Anyhow, I shall post what I can when I can.

Toodles for now!





 

Sunday 1 July 2012

Ogres WIP (+some 6th ed stuff)

Just a quick update on my ogres. I've been trying to convert each one somehow to practice green stuff-ing. I'm relatively pleased.


Basic Bulls (or Ogres as they are now called). This unit's going to be called 'The Oddjobbers' as they're going to be ogres with menial jobs.. The Banner bearer is a sailer (with bandana and ship plank standard) and the basic guy is supposed to be a farmer (with straw hat, corn in mouth and braces), he'll hopefully be better when painted.

As for 6th ed rumours most of what I'm hearing sounds fairly promising. I like the new jump pack charge thing (bonus I10 hit) as the image of a unit flying headfirst into the enemy's pretty cool, and also outflank being allowed if one model in a unit has it. Tempted to Saga of the hunter some Thunderwolves now...
Another thing is the sad 'demise' of the Frost Axe. Same price as a power fist, both I1 hits but the Axe is just +2 strength. I hope it is at least reduced in cost because otherwise I can't see any point in it.

Just saying I haven't personally bought the rulebook I'm going off other sources and FAQs at the moment so if I'm at all wrong do point it out.
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