14th Grand Company

So I haven’t really been that active in the 40k world this last month for many reasons, one of which was a low excitement for the hobby. This was in part due to not playing a game in nearly 2 months. In the last two weeks though I have had the chance to play my traitor guard twice and took part in a ridiculously huge Apocalypse game.

My traitor guard played brilliant and pulled off a win in the last turn in both games. The first was against a small, elite space marine bike army that hit hard but was brittle. Highlight of that game was one of my platoon commanders surviving an assault of 3 bikers and in return cutting all three down with his power weapon! Game two was against a drop pod army hurt the turn it came in but lacked any mobility. Highlight of that game was my banewolves coming in from reserve and toasting an entire tactical squad. In revenge my opponent dropped his sternguard squad with 8 (yes eight!) combi-meltas next to my poor, innocent bane wolves and destroyed them both in a fiery, toxic blossom.

As for the Apoc game, I brought 3,500 points of my Iron Warriors with some of my traitor guard vehicles (I didn’t fell like pushing around 50+ guys in the 15 minute turns we would have). The game used all 5 of the store’s tables to create a 6′x20′ board! The mission was themed around the space wolves (surprise!) attempting to escape after stealing an artifact from the Thousand Sons, so the Space wolves and company setup on the three middle boards and were trying to make it off the small board edges. The enemy team (me being part of it) could set up to 12″ along any board edge. As you can see in the picture below I set up in one of the corners, determined to keep any of those loyal fools from escaping.

Next to me was a huge hoard of Dark Eldar (I was surprised any one still plays them!) and holding the other corner was some Thousand Sons.

Directly in front of my was a spear head of Space Wolves and various other Space Marines. This picture was taken about 1/2 before the game started and before most of the rest of the board was filled. Turn one say this force surge towards my line and 8 drop pods land next to me, disgorging a dreadnought from each. My defiler, Land Raider and vindicator never had a chance to wreck havoc. In fact the only thing I had left at the end of the game was two of my Basilisks and a Rhino with a troop squad hiding inside. I did my job though and only one enemy squad made it off the board.

What can’t be seen in any of my pictures is the 40+ people crowding in around the table trying to push there men along and blow things up. Needless to say I left with a splitting head ache and a desire to play more 40k!

ToEMP challenge #6 is due in about a week, and after the high of an Apoc game I am determined to not only meet the challenge but to finish my banewolves as part of the bonus challenge!

Sunday was the tournament at my local GW store. There were eight armies present: two IG, two Dark Angles, Orks Space Wolves, Daemons, and my Iron Warriors. The missions had not only the primary objective, but a secondary, tertiary and bonus objectives. This added to both the fun and the challenge of each game.

Round One

First round had me placed on the city fight table against one of the DA armies.  The primary mission was to capture table quarters, secondary was to kill the most expensive unit, and the third was destroy the enemy’s fast attack. Set up was spear head. Luckily my opponent was also a compact, elite army, so trying to claim full table quarters was easier than it might have been against the orks or IG. My two troop squads claimed both of the non-deployment zone quarters, my berserkers and lord took out Azerel (his most expensive unit), and my defiler (after loosing as his guns) charged the enemy jump troops hiding in a near-by building. I claimed two quarters, denied my opponent the other two, and killed his most expensive unit and his only fast attack. This was a good start to the tournament for me.

Round Two

Second round I was matched up against one of the guys I often play against but instead of his normal Death Guard, the green was in the form of Orks. Set up was table halves with the main objective to claim the 5 pieces of junk on the board. Any squad (except tanks) could claim an objective my rolling a 3+ in their movement phase. The squad then counted as moving in difficult terrain, but could move the objective with them. The secondary objective was to move at least two pieces of junk into your deployment zone. The third objective was to make an enemy unit run off the board. After stealing the initiative from my opponent I made a big mistake of jumping my berserkers out of the land raider to claim one of the objectives. This mistake became apparent on his turn, when a truck full of nobz rolled up and wiped them out. I got some payback when my vindicator came onto the board and took out 8 nobz, sending the remainder back into the truck and towards his table edge. The tank then went on to kill another 7 nobz in another squad and make them flee off the board! One of my troops did manage to grab another objective, jump back in the rhino and make it back to my deployment zone. The other attempted to steal an objective from a squad of decimated boyz (thanks to the defiler) but was run of by nobz. My opponent got both the first and second objectives, but I earned the third and the moral victory of making nobz run!

Round Three

The third game was against the Space Wolves. This was by far my favorite game. The main objective was to kill the opponent’s HQ, secondary was to kill all his vehicles, and third was to have more of your units in the enemy’s deployment zone than your own. The game started with taking 7 rolls to determine who went first! I figured I could easily attain the third goal (my army is very aggressive as is), the first would be a bit more difficult since he took a venerable dreadnought as his HQ and the second objective would be a challenge indeed: he also had a land raider.

Leaving my vindicator and defiler in reserves, my first turn saw my three tanks full speed ahead then popping smoke. Keeping the dread behind his land raider, he open fired and destroyed one of my rhinos.

Turn 2 had my now foot slogging squad march towards the land raider while the other disembarked near his Vanquisher, my vindicator and defiler moved on and I opened fire. The Vanquisher disappeared, taking one my troops with it. The land raider survived two lascannons, a meltagun and a battle cannon, power fist and 9 krak grenades with only a stunned result. On his turn he brought on his jump-pack blood claws near my disembarked squad, brought scouts in near the read of my vindicator, took his grey hunters out of the land raider and moved the dread around the land raider. The grey hunters and dread assaulted my troop squad near his land raider while the blood claws assaulted the squad near the smoking ruin of the Vanquisher. Neither of my squads survived, but at least the scouts failed to do anything to my vindicator.

Turn three had me disembark my berserkers and lord near his grey hunter squad, hungry for revenge. The rest of my army opened fire on the now visible dreadnought HQ and blew it apart. The defiler opened fire on the scouts with the heavy flamer and cooked them all alive. The berserkers charged the hunters and my lord and skull champion alone did 7 power weapon wounds, killing off the squad instantly. On his turn his land raider killed three berserkers standing in front of it while the remaining blood claws assaulted my land raider with three power fists, but failed to even scratch the paint.

Turn 4 and my berserkers were still hungry for blood so they charged the blood claws. Meanwhile by vindicator, defiler and land raider all piled shots into his land raider, but again failed to do much of anything. The blood claws were wiped out and more skulls were offered up. His turn he shot my defiler (because he was angry at it!) with his land raider and blew off the battle cannon. He also was desperately running his other squad of grey hunters (who had been ill-placed on the other side of the board) toward my board edge so he could attain the third objective.

Turn 5 and all I could do was run my berserkers into his deployment zone and open fire against his land raider yet again. This time I managed to immobilize it, took off one of the lascannons and stun it yet again. He only had his wandering grey hunters to move into my deployment zone and rolled to determine there was no 6th turn.

Summary

I had a great time and it was wonderful to get in so many games in one day. The missions were different, which made them fun, and the gamers all had a great time. I am really happy with my list and how well it played (other than my mistakes the second game) and will need to think long and hard on what to add to bring it up to the typical 1850 point game.

I was voted as best painted army, which made me excited, I was a bit worried my painting score would be dinked because of my berserkers. I haven’t even posted pictures of these yet because they are really poorly painted (some of my finer work from 10 years ago!).

So I stopped by the hobby shop near my new place last night to try out the 1500 point list for my Iron Warriors and found I need to rethink my list. I played against one of the store owners with his IG list (you can read his battle report here). Moral of last night’s battle: don’t take two Chaos Dreads at 1500 points. These guys did nothing but shoot at each other and make their ‘team’ mates go running the whole game. This is motivating me to take one f the two alternatives I made it the original list. Right now I’m leaning towards the defiler due to his versitility and the fact he doesn’t go crazy. Also I’m going to take Zen’s suggestion and remove both dreads and give my other tanks daemonic possession. So here it is: 1500 CSM list take two:

• Chaos Lord with terminator armor, twin lightning claws and mark of khorne (140 pnts)
• CSM x10 AC w/ power fist and plasma pistol; plasma gun; meltagun; icon of chaos undivided (240 pnts)
  • Rhino, extra armor (50 pnts)
• CSM x10 AC w/ power fist and plasma pistol; plasma gun; meltagun; icon of chaos undivided (240 pnts)
  • Rhino, extra armor (50 pnts)
• Khorne Berserkers x8 AC w/ power weapon, plasma pistol and melta bomb; 2 plasma pistols (248 pnts)
• Land Raider, daemonic possession (240 pnts)
• Vindicator, daemonic possession, twin linked bolter (145 pnts)
• Defiler, reaper auto cannon, heavy flamer (150 pnts)

Total Points: 1498

Kill Points: 9; Scoring Units: 3; AP 2 weapons: 13, large blasts: 2

In the future I am going to remove the Defiler’s other guns and give him more close combat attacks but I don’t have models for that yet. Also I was advised to remove one of the assault weapons from each of my troop squads and give a longer range, heavy weapon, or at least trade a melta and plasma. This came up from the game last night where I had my meltagun troop squad stuck in a ruin hiding from two Demolishers but nothing to hurt them with.  You may have noticed I did switch the two guns, but I don’t have anything but old (and crummy looking) missile launchers right now to try the heavy weapon option. I will have to build and paint the two lascannons I have sitting in my bitz box to try this out.

Thoughts, criticisms and comments welcome!

The local Games Workshop store had their monthly painting competition on Sunday for three categories: single vehicle, supper heavy and vehicle squad. The 14th was represented by a defilier (which i still need to get a picture up of!), the Baneblade and Basilisk squad (I have the pictures but need to post them!). There were some great entries but the  Baneblade and Basilisk won! The devilier was beat out by a great look Ork Truck. I really enjoy the painting competitions because not only do my models get to be looked at a bit closer than normal, but I can look at other peoples works and enjoy their skills.

Yesterday I played one of my buddies at the local GW store to a 1750 point game, my Iron Warriors versus his Death Guard.  The setup was spearhead with the always-a-tie mission of capture and control.

I used the 1750 pt list here. He brought to the table two units of Plague Marines, Land Raider full of Terminators and a Terminator Lord, a Greater Demon, 20 strong unit of lesser demons, 2 Oblitorators and a Defiler with 2 close combat weapons.

All in all this was a very crummy game for both of us as the dice never seemed to work out. My tanks took multiple las-cannon shots that either failed to glace/penetrate or simple caused crew shaken. A nice demolisher shot to his terminators only wounded one (yes four 1s were rolled). My multi-melta dreadnought was charged by his defiler but neither did anything short of crew shaken and a lost limb on the defiler (bringing it down to only 4 s10 attacks!).

The game ended at the end of turn 5 with my objective under the control of his defiler (with only 1 cc arm now!) and the greater demon. His objective was contested with his last remaining plague marines holding off my khorne berserkers and my unit of troops in the rhino on their way to help out. If the game lasted an additional turn i may have been able to wipe out his last troop unit and claim his objective for the win. As it is, the game was yet another tie.