New project: Chaos Space Marines

I got a text message from my buddy Aslak this summer:
Do you want to do a few painting sessions with me this fall? Want to try 40k (Tau).

Huzzah! We talked about it and decided to try a tale of two gamers, building our forces in manageable chunks. This is his first 40k army, only having played Warhammer Fantasy so far.

The seven steps to glory

1. One unit of Troops
2. 400 points and at least two Troops
3. 500 points and at least one HQ unit
4. 750 points
   
5. 1000 points
6. 1250 points
7. 1500 points and done

The master plan
My seven step program should keep things interesting and manageable for both of us. The game after step 1 should be pretty one-sided, but at step 2 and 3 things will start to get interesting.

1. 10 Chaos Space Marines with champion, icon, plasma rifle and lascannon, mounted in a Rhino transport
2. 10 Lesser Daemons
3. Chaos Lord (have to take a lot of his gear away to fit him into 500 points)
4. I need some anti-tank at this stage, so I'll take 2 Obliterators and 5 Raptors with Meltaguns
5. 4 Terminators won't bring me to 1000 points, but using the Chaos Lord at full power will
6. 8 Khorne Berzerkers with Skull Champion in a Rhino
7. 9 Thousand Sons in a Rhino

That's it. 1499 points of Chaos Space Marines. The army has a very high model count (for CSM), in all 52 models. This is balanced fairly neatly with the fact that I lack anti-tank weaponry, have no heavy vehicles at all, and no blast or template weapons. A fun army that I am looking forward to painting and playing with.

Back to 40k for 5th edition

Aaand I'm back.

The 5th edition of Warhammer 40k is out, and MAN what a blast it is! I played my first game yesterday at GW Oslo, a 1000 point game with the following list:

• Necron Lord with Chronometron and Time Shifter
• 10 Necron Warriors
• 10 Necron Warriors
• 5 Necron Destroyers
• 1 Tomb Spyder
• 3 Necron Heavy Destroyers

I was up against Erik and his Eldar. His list was something like

• Farseer with Spirit Stones, Singing Spear, Doom and Guide
• 6 Fire Dragons with Exarch
• 5 Pathfinders
• 10 Guardians with Starcannon and Warlock with Conceal
• 6 Warp Spiders with Exarch
• Falcon with Scatter Laser, Holofield and Spirit Stones
• Wraithlord with Bright Lance

We were playing the "Seize Ground" mission and rolled four Loot Counters. The deployment type was "Dawn of War", in which only two troops and a HQ unit deploys at the start of the battle. The rest enters the game from each player's table edges in turn 1.

Highlights of the game

• Me making all my "We'll be back" rolls the first two turns of the game
• The Wraithlord falling to mere Gauss Flayer damage (He's normally impervious to mere S4 shots)
• The Necron Warriors sprinting up the field in one turn, and sprinting back the next as the small unit of Warp Spiders appeared. The Necron Warriors got slaughtered by the Warp Spider Exarch the turn after.
• The revelation for both players, when we found out that Troops are scoring to the last man!
• The Eldar attempt to kill the Necron Lord in the final stages of the game, almost succeeding, but the Lord lived thanks to his 4+ invulnerable save. No Orb no problem!

All in all, the 5th edition looks to be a keeper. I had a lot of fun in this first game, and it was very useful for learning some of the new stuff in the rulebook. It will doubtless be some rule changes we overlooked, but who cares as long as we both had a good time.

Chaos Cultist with Claws

Chaos Cultist with Claws
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

Blood Bowl is simply a fantastic game.

A few friends of me and I regularly rent a cabin and go away for a weekend of Blood Bowl. We use a modified version of Games Workshop's LRB4, which suits me just fine.

My team is an experimental Chaos team, which I have written about earlier in these pages. I just got a couple of new players, and promptly rolled a 12 for this Chaos Cultist's random mutation. I selected the mutation Claws, which we have modified to always roll vs Av7. This will hopefully make it easier for me to break those pesky dwarfs.

Destroyers en masse!

Necron Destroyers
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

Necrons Destroyers is an extremely shooty unit in the world of Warhammer 40k. Capable of taking out any unit in the game at 36 inches, while moving as a jetbike, makes them very versatile.

I will have 10 Destroyers and 4 Heavy Destroyers in my new tournament army, which means that I will probably dominate the movement and shooting phase. The assault phase presents a problem, but I may just have an ace up my sleeve...

Necron Lord and Warriors

Necron Lord and Warriors
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

When the Necron army list was released some years ago, my brother immediately started collecting them. He has since stopped playing, so I have adopted his armies. Last year I made his Tyranid army tournament worthy (requiring very little actual work, the list was already very solid), now I am attempting to finish his work on the Necrons.

Currently I have one Lord (pictured), 22 Warriors, 2 Wraiths, 2 Tomb Spyders and 7 Scarab bases painted, and three Destroyers built, but unpainted. The final list will be very Destroyer-heavy, with 10 Destroyers and 3 Heavy Destroyers. It will feature some much needed hand-to-hand elements, but the main emphasis will be 24"-36" shooting at high strength.

Reaver Jetbikes

Reaver Jetbikes
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

I recently bought a lot of Dark Eldar miniatures from a regular at GW Oslo. I am now planning to attend Strategikon using a 1700 point Dark Eldar Webway Portal army.

The list looks something like this:
Dark Eldar Dracon w/Incubi retinue
2 Haemonculi w/webway portals
10 Wyches
3 Warp beasts
5 Mandrakes
2x10 Sniper squad
16 Warriors shielding a Haemoculus
5 Reaver Jetbikes
Talos
2 Ravagers

The game plan revolves around the Webway portals ensuring that the hard assault elements arrive safely in close combat. The Sniper squads provide fire support against tanks and elite units so that the large warrior squad and one Haemonculus can advance relatively safe.

One portal is deployed as far forward as possible in the second turn. The Mandrakes will try to disrupt units that can threaten the portal carrier, such as light artillery units and snipers. If there is no such threat, they will try to appear as a potential threat to make the portal carrier able to deploy the portal before he is killed.

Napariel and Azapiel

Napariel and Azapiel
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

These two guys are the two first Chaos Warriors in my new Blood Bowl team "Disciples of Ahriman". I have played in Torshov Touchdown for a few years now, and recently switched from the Lizardmen team "Lounge Lizards" to an experimental Tzeentchian Chaos Team. They are ridiculously expensive, but very interesting to play. Each Warrior (5 4 3 9) and Cultist (6 3 3 8) start with a Random Mutation. This makes them a great challenge to play. I have so far lost four of my six first games, but this only makes the victories sweeter.

My new Blood Bowl team

My new Blood Bowl team
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

Wow, half a year just flies by, and no new painted miniatures has appeared on my shelf. My interest in miniature wargaming is obviously like a roller coaster, and I'm on my way up the hill again.

I have started on a new Blood Bowl team, the Disciples of Ahriman. They are from an unofficial team list by Jervis Johnson, posted on the GW website for Blood Bowl, www.bloodbowl.com.

They all start with a random mutation, which is selected by rolling 2d6 and consulting a special mutation chart. I got four guys with Foul Appearance, three with Extra Arms, and an assortment of other strangeness. The minis are converted and awaiting a lick of paint. I have approximately three weeks to paint the team, but this shouldn't be a problem, should it?

Tyranid Gunfex

Tyranid Gunfex
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

The Gunfex is the final spoke in the wheel that is my Tyranid army. It makes short work of skimmers, heavy tanks, light tanks and any and all infantry, bar terminators and power armour.

This guy was a major factor in my beating Speed Freeks to a man (an Ork?) in just four turns during Recon. Except for one Trukk, the poor saps didn't even get out of their deployment zone due do the horrendous amount of incoming fire. Of course, the fact that the Venom Cannon can get penetrating hits against open-topped vehicles helped a lot!

PS: I keep missing the "G", writing Funfex instead of Gunfex. My spelling error has a point, this really is a funfex.

Tyranids vs Death Guard

My Tyranids vs Alf's Death Guard
Originally uploaded by Xadhoom.

I played Alf's Death Guard a week ago and took this picture. After posting it on Flickr, I got a question about the number of Tyranid Warriors I was fielding.

bzarcher says:

I'm surprised at the Warriors - do you get good use out of them for the points? Mine never quite feel like they're making their points back.

Xadhoom says:

Yes, they do perform admirably against many opponents, but tend to fall quickly against a prepared opponent. Heavy Bolters, Autocannons, Pulse Rifles and Bolters too often spell doom for a unit of Warriors. There are, as I see it, three remedies:

1: Keep them out of range. Only an option if they have guns, preferably a Venom Cannon and Deathspitters. They won't make a dent in a dug-in Marine unit, though.

2: Keep them out of sight. This is often the best way of ensuring that they are effective. Just sneak up and try get as few turns of incoming fire as possible. This trick works best if the whole army is "revealed" at the same time, which means that there are too many threatening targets for the enemy to kill. More often than not, the Warriors are seen as a lesser threat than, say, a Carnifex or Hive Tyrant, or even better, two Carnifexes and a Hive Tyrant!

3: Get more of them. That's right. Strenght in numbers. If you have a lot, some of them will arrive to do the job. Keeping in mind that they can't be autokilled or routed, they are quite resilient agaist the correct foe (Predator with all Lascannons, Defiler, Dreadnought with Lascannon, Devastator Squad with single-shot weaponry, etc.)

If you see my deployment on this picture (from turn 2, I believe), I have tried a combination of all three tactics. The only units killable to my opponent are the two Carnifexes, gaunts and the Hive Tyrant.

The Warriors on the right are out of range and will try to stay that way until the Death Guard in the left building are occupied fighting Genestealers, the ones on the top left are facing an opponent unsuited to kill enough of them (a Predator with three Lascannons). The Warriors with guns will try to take out the Rhino and Defiler, and the winged Warriors will fly from cover to cover and counter charge the Terminators hiding behind the big towers.