Heresy Painting Time: White Scars Unleashed

So I've finally had the time and the parts to catch up with the Tale of X Gamers: Heresy Edition painting group I joined up for over at Pete's blog, Thefieldsofblood.com. Its proved a slight problem to get done due to my recent move to Melbourne and my need to get High Elves done for tournaments, but I've finally done it!


First some background; I decided to paint up a White Scars force, as:
a) I love general history of the Mongols and the style of Mongolian Hit'n'Run type warfare the White Scars employ, based on Lightning Strikes on Bikes, Landspeeders and generally mounted troops.
b) The paint scheme is a wonderful contrast of Red and White. White being a colour I've always found very challenging to do properly, so it gave me some practice.
c) With White Scars being fairly tribal due to their Mongol heritage, I get to try my hand at freehand symbols and markings to denote squads and company. Another thing I've always wanted to do but never had the courage before now.


The general theme of the army is the White Scars fighting to take back the Lionsgate Spaceport during the Battle for Terra. Sadly this is the only substantial battle the White Scars took part in during the Heresy, as Horus with the aid of Alpharius/Omegon wisely distracted us with Orks in the Chondax system during the Dropsite Massacre (things would have been different otherwise!!)

So without further ado, here is Squad Kerait which I painted as my initial squad of 10 Tactical Marines:

As you can see, I went kinda crazy on the freehand with Tactical symbols and White Scars Legion symbols on the shoulders. Its actually been surprisingly easier than I thought it would be! I've also gone with the Jagged Spike markings on the left legs to denote the 4th Company of the White Scars, and will carry through on every model I paint.

I have also, for the second part of the Tale, painted Squad Kerait's Rhino, Shite Utga (Stallion in Mongolian, that's Cyrillic on the Rhino if you're confused) as no White Scar worth his salt would be caught dead without his loyal steed.

Its not quite finished as I sadly don't have the paints to do the green of the viewing Lens on the roof hatchbut that should be sorted as soon as I can get to a GW.

Next up will be an old Metal Landspeeder I acquired at the HGC after some ladies dumped their adult sons long forgotten gaming stuff off for us to rummage through. Score! It was supposed to be this months unit but I sadly left the Oils I bought to paint it in my Jacket at the club and haven't been able to get it off Mark while he's in NZ.

Following that will be a unit of Bikers, which were gonna be all Jetbikes but GW then released their Beautiful Outrider Bike models, so the Jetbikes shall be saved for my command squad at a later date.

Laters all!

VICC-tory Day 2 - the Hobby Killing

SO day 2 dawned, and I felt like winning! mainly because I'd somehow got 12 hours of sleep....

Today was two rounds of doubles and I felt kinda bad for my opponents because me and Greg were playing with quite possiblyu the filthiest combo of armies to ever grace a table... Seriously it waas hobby killing goodness of the highest order!

Combined we had the following:

40 S3 shots from archers
40 S4 AP shots from handgunners
2 Cannons and a S5 GrudgeThrower
3 Eagles and my archers effectively being 4 units of chaff too, plus my chaffmasters and some Trollslayers
Level 4 Heavens (Harmonic Convergence gunline ftw baby!) and level 2 Death (Purple Sun on top?)
+3 dispel dice a turn and 2 scrolls
and to cap it all,
2 massive Stubborn blocks of White Lions and Hammerers, with a Rune of Challenge hero

Yeah, we probably should have been punched in the face...

Round 4: Ringwood - Infantry Vamps and Full Khorne Chaos Warriors

Mission: Meeting Engagement - Some silly effects buffed your characters before the game which we all forgot. My BSB got +T and Armour and Gregs Runelord got +1WS, A, and I or something silly

So the first thing I said to Greg was, "None of that Khorne stuff is making combat with anything but an Eagle", I was almost right. They got 10 archers and some swordmasters too.

Vamp army was:
heinrich, Krell and wight BSB in big block of GG
Big Ghouls
Lvl2 in Skelies
Some zombies and dogs
Coach

Khorne was:
Lord and BSB on foot
2 blocks of Khorne Warriors
2 units of Crushers
dogs

So pretty much march forward and kill stuff was the plan. Again I forgot photos sorry!

Deployment:

They lined up as on the edge of their deployment and we castled like a boss. Crucially their was a building about a third in from one corner along the centre line which split them in half.

Turn one:

They shoved everything up in our face as much as possible but they put 3 Crushers flank on to a Cannon behind some Dogs. Nothing was cast as the magical vortex of High Elves and Dwarfs came to the fore.

My Lions charged some Dire Wolves that moved up to block them on the short side of the building, Swordies jumped into the building and that was it. After about 15 minutes of explaining the rules of True Line of Sight, they finally allowed us to Cannon the Crushers flank (No Dogs do not block TLoS to the spot for the Cannon ball...) killing 2. we shot a bunch of Soulblighted Ghouls to about half size but the Coach made 2 ward saves from the other cannon and Grudge Thrower. My archers shot some dogs. The Lions killed the dogs and reformed to face the Skellies, and Chaos Warriors coming around the building.

Turn 2:
         The Skeletons and some Warhounds charged my White Lions allowing the Warriors behind to get into the building which I did not see, but oh well. Again I was forced to explain rules for a few minutes as they argued that even if both units were successful, the dogs could charge the middle of my Lions and force fail the skeletons... Skellies failed anyway, but I hate having to argue some of the actually very clearly written rules in Fantasy.  Otherwise the Coach charged the Troll Slayers with Daemon Slayer and everything else moved up a bit further. And the remaining Crusher from the half dead unit charged some bait archers.
         Magic did nothing (see the theme here?).
         The Lions killed the dogs. The Swordies in the building got obliterated but killed about 6 Warriors on the way out and now the Warriors were out of play for a couple turns. Massively though the Coach only killed 2 Slayers on the charge, and took a wound in return. That was one problem suddenly dealt with!

         Our turn we shuffled back where necessary moved out an Eagle to block the 2nd Crusher unit, and then shot some more!
         Magic, think I failed cast early on unfortunately.
         We shot off half of the unit of Warriors not in the building with nearly everything, then proceeded to have yet another 10 minute debate about targetting buildings with Cannons. FYI, yes you can make the point the side of a building. In the end think we killed like 2 warriors. At this stage, I was completely over this game, as I hate having to sit and explain basic rules constantly. I'm not sure they were happy about constantly proving them wrong either as this was the only round we didn't get best Sports for the record...
        Anyway, in combat the Troll Slayers smashed the Coach to pieces to everyone's surprise. (Wounding on 4s helps alot!), and my bait archers finally gapped it from the lone Crusher.

Turn 3:

        The GG bus charges the Trollslayers as they now aren't blocked by the Coach. The halved Warriors with Lord/BSB and Ghouls both declare longish charges at the Thunderers on our left flank, losing another 5 Warriors (after yet another debate about the order of S&S and Hold declarations.) Ghouls make it, Warriors fail. We debate for a while whether the Warriors can get out of the building but they decide to pop out for safety on the far side after the TO tells us we are running low on time. Full Crusher unit kills a budgie.
        Magic, nothing
        In combat, the Ghouls, and thunderers have a slap fest. but the GG bus demolishes the TrollSlayers overrunning into some Chaffmasters right behind them.

       Our Turn 3 and all good so far, but we are struggling to finish anything off. I turn the Lions to threaten the GG bus if they wanna come forward. The Thunderers on the left flank charge the lone Crusher to our opponents surprise, they'd left them with a flank charge and only 5 Thunderers could see so why not!?
We shuffled everything else out of the way of the GG bus and leave them a choice of Hammerers and White Lions.
      Magic, I 6 dice big Soulblight ftw baby! best spell in Death btw. then Harmonic Converge my Swordmasters
      Shooting doesn't do much as everything useful is in combat
      Swordmasters kill about 10 GG and 2 two wounds to Krell, but I lose them all.  and the GG after much pondering go for the Hammerers. Probably the wise choice as at least they go at the same time. Acceptable exchange I think. Thunderer/Ghoul combat continues to be full of fail, but the lone Crusher gets run off the board.
     
Turn 4: and last turn

     Graveguard charge the Hammerers. Full crushers charge another Eagle. Everything else moves back to save  points.
     Magic, nothing
     The Graveguard/Hammerer combat results in Krell, the Runelord, and the BSB dieing, but not much else.  Greg non-chalantly passes his Stubborn 9 test while I shit bricks! Thunderer/Ghoul combat is still full of fail (seriously the most embarrasing combat I've ever seen, and I've seen Eagles kill stuff...). Eagle dies a noble death.

      Our turn and we try to figure out where to get points, which comes down to Killing the GG bus, as we don't have enough tools in the right places to get anything else. The White Lions however decide to fail a 10inch charge to flank the Bus, damn!
      Magic, I start spamming spells on the combat. end result, GG have Iceshard Blizzard, and Soulblight on them but Convergence and Midnight Wind are dispelled. 4 good cheap buff spells ftw!
      We don't shoot a thing as we don't wanna blow up warmachines given at this stage we only really have a 300ish point lead...
      Combat, The Ghouls finally decide to go nuts killing about 6-7 Thunderers and without a BSB needing 3s to pass Greg rolls a 3. Like a Boss! In the major combat, my spells prove the difference, as the GG roll an absurd number of 3s to hit (+1hit banner if you're wondering why that matters) then alot of 2s to wound killing like 2 dwarfs. Meanwhile the Hammerers kill all of the remaining GG and Greg wins combat by just enough to perfectly pop Heinrich and the BSB. BEAUTIFUL!

And that is that, we escaped with a big win from a game that was looking draw all over.

Nick and Ben smashed up their opponents too and Hampton destroyed Monash, so suddenly it was all to play for! Just win the last round boys!

Round 5: Grots(?), Ian running Double Chaos Warriors

Mission: Dawn Attack, claim table 1/8ths

So we got one guy playing two Chaos Warrior armies, and they were both fairly soft armies at that. Me and Greg had to go through Army 2 twice to make sure we weren't missing something.

Army 1:

Level 4 Nurgle
BSB Nurgle
Big block of Nurgle Warriors
2 Nurgle Chariots
Nurgle Knights
Hellcannon

Army 2:
Level 4 Fire
BSB
Big block of Warriors
Block of Marauders
Dogs
Marauder Horsemen
2 units of Knights
Shaggoth

So this may have been my most unenjoyable victory in the history of warhammer. Not becuase of rules issues or anything like that but because we shot the living fuck out of Ians armies to the point it was embarrassing for me to be there... Gregs warmachines missed once and that was turn 5. Warriors had one substantial combat that was even remotely in their favour and fluffed.

Rather than even bother giving a detailed account, I'll summarise the pain.

Turn 1: Chain Lightning killed half of each Knight unit. Shooting killed the rest of one unit. Also took off all his dogs and all but one Horseman. Cannon did 4 wounds to Hellcannon.

Turn 2: the two units of 3 Knights charged 7 swordmasters, who proceed to take them all off. Shaggoth killed some archers before getting hit by Hammerers in the face.

Turn 3: Comet kills half of the unmarked Warriors, Shooting kills everything else in the unit but the BSB. Cannon kills a Chariot. My Level 4 however Cascades, and takes off 10 White Lions ( I informed Greg of the 100% chance of this happening the turn before but she had nowhere else to go, after the Hellcannon took off most of her archer bunker).

Turn 4: A Nurgle Chariot kills some Chaffmasters, then gets taken off by archers in combat. We shoot the Marauders to death then Rune of Challenge the Level 4 fire mage into the remaining White Lions.

Turn 5: I'm not sure there was much left at this stage...

The face of a broken man...

So yup, that my friends is how you ruin a hobby. Ian took it like a champ though. We even offered to let him punch Greg in the face but he wouldn't take it. Poor choice imo...

Ben and Nick got stuck with a draw, but it was enough to win the round and the rest is history.

For the record, Hampton, Monash and Shirts off all ended on 4-1, but the tiebreaker was decided to be sports and we got so many more votes than any other team it wasn't funny. Apparently we make ruining hobbies fun!

Anyway thats all folks, thanks for skipping to this point. I might give some thoughts on my list at a later date.

Glorious VICC-tory! Day One

So hilarious pun titles aside, I'll just start by leaving this here:

Its good to be King!

Yes, our plucky team of upstart invading Kiwis, and a couple of locals along for the ride (love you guys!) went in, smashed up the place and won the VICCs tournament, much to the delight of everyone not from Hampton Games Club!

The prize support was freaking amazing too. We each got $25 of vouchers, and Ben and Greg get to split a custom built tables worth of terrain between them, which is frankly amazing as by my estimates thats about $300-400 worth of stuff.

Anyway, I shall get onto my tales of glorious victory. Somehow I managed to go 4 wins 1 draw and no losses with my High Elf army which matched the best army results there, and far exceeded my expectations for the weekend, especially considering the hangover I rocked up with on day 1.... I apologise for the sporadic photos, its hard to get used to taking them, when you don't usually do it.

So my High army was:

Archmage - Level 4 Heavens, Silver Wand, Loremaster's Cloak
BSB - Reaver Bow, Charmed Shield
Level 2 - Death, Scroll

12 Archers w/ Flaming Banner
10 Archers
10 Archers
10 Archers

24 White Lions w/ Banner of Sorcery
7 Swordmasters w/champ Talisman of Loec
7 Swordmasters

3 Eagles

So all in all very defensive but highly able to conserve pts through bait and flee archers/eagles while blasting things at range with Lightning and Comets and Purple Suns

Game 1: Hampton, Ben Leopold, Ogres 

Mission - Battle for the Pass, Tower Assault.

Straight off the bat, our biggest rivals, and me with a massive hangover, playing against Ogres with the Watch Tower in his Deployment Zone, and I was assaulting it.lengthwise down the table... Yay... Anyway, I resigned myself to taking one for the team as we managed to get Nick and Ben pretty good matchup, so hopefully we could get a couple wins and draw the round.

His list was:

SM with Heavens
BSB
Level 1
Massive GutStar
2 Big units of Leadbelchers
Cannon
Dogs

So three big ass units which could smash me up especially if Convergence got off on the Belchers. Sadly I had to run at  it too. Ben didn't roll Comet though, and only had one of the Lightning spells, which was pretty big for my magic defense, as I could focus on dispelling just Convergence and Lightning as the two dangerous spells.

His deployment was Guts next to the Tower, to remain threatening rather than being locked in the Tower, and the Belchers on either side with the dogs in behind waiting to hold up anything that got close. I put my Lions in the centre with everything fairly evenly spread to either side.

Turn 1:

He also got first turn, because apparently that makes sense too in an already shit matchup, but oh well... when in Rome. Both Belchers moved up with the Guts holding back and but only one had range.Ben then rolled some shocking to hit rolls and killed like 2 Lions with 30 S4 shots (this was a recurring theme.). Cannon did 1 wound to an Eagle.

I moved forward as I gained nothing by sitting back, trying to get a unit of Swordmasters and the Lions to both threaten the closer Belchers on the right (so he could only shoot one of them) but the Lions were a bit far out. Archers shot a couple wounds off the same Belchers, but generally nothing happened.

Turn 2:

Ben again moved up the Belchers to get them in range and took off most of one unit of Swordies and another Eagle. I again moved up but not too far to avoid combo Bull charges.

I charged the remnants of the swordies into the Belchers to die heroically. My level 2 jumped into the Lions and I 6 diced Purple Sun at the Belchers on my Left figuring I needed to get rid of one unit fast or get shot to death. It worked as IFed for the win (as a rule if I have a wizard in my White Lions I will IF 100% of the time and then Cascade to kill them all on the way out) , the Purple Sun went 30" killed 6 Belchers and the Eagle I'd jumped behind them to sneak into the tower, but I killed 9 White Lions in the process, meaning I effectively had no combat unit left to assault the tower, which I assumed would be full of Iron Guts and characters. Balls, there goes any chance I had...or did it?

Turn 3:

I think Ben got greedy here, and to be fair the game was his to win big... but I only needed one unit to make the now empty and unguarded tower and I had more units than he did to stop me. He pushed up the Gutstar to finish me off. He then chain lightning the second unit of Swordmasters to mostly dead and the remaining Lead Belcher unit went nuts at last and killed every WL but the Champ, who got a Cannonball to the head. Hmm...

The Archers on my left flank started a sprint to the tower while I shot the second unit of Belchers some more and prepared to draw off the Gutstar with double fleeing archers.

Turn 4:

Ben kept running the Guts at me, shot my last Eagle with the Blaster and finished my remaining Swordmasters with the remnants of the Belchers

I kept moving back and shooting the Belchers to Death, while my ninja archers continued running up field unmolested. Two turns to go and I could get to it, but the Dogs were still guarding their Kennel so I didn't have much hope.

Turn 5:

Again fled the Guts losing some archers in the process, but nothing much else happened. FYI Our magic was pretty much cancelling each other out.

I got the Archers to about 6" from the building but realised I couldn't make it in, and almost gave up but decided to kill some more pts (a brilliant decision apparently), so finally killed the Belchers.

Turn 6:

Ben then proceeded to have the brain fart to end all brain farts. We both forgot that you could win by being the closest unit to the tower so he moved one dog into the tower (which should have just sat behind it out of LOS) and the other to redirect my archers.

I figured I could deny him the bonus pts for the Tower, so left everything to shoot the dog in the tower, completely by luck not charging the second dog. Then my BSB stepped up with his Reaver Bow, 2 hits 2 Wounds, dead Dog, paniced the second dog (not in combat) and someone watching pointed out that my Archers were now the closest unit and I held the Tower... WTF?!?!?

Here you see my Glorious Archers holding the Tower from the fleeing Sabre Tusk. Also Chris Cousen's fine arse apparently...

So by shear and utter accident, I got the 1000 VPs for the Tower which gave me a 500pt Win. Them's Skills baby!

Elsewhere Ben deleted Dave's Warriors with some DP Cascade help, Greg expectedly got smashed up by Nick's Warriors, but Nick managed to beat Cousen's and we got 3 Wins out of 4, to everyones surprise. BOOM, How's them apples!?!?

Game 2: Phoenix, I totally can't recall his name, which sucks cause it was a really good game too - High Elves

Mission: Kill over half their unit for bonus pts, Pitched Battle

Greg had a very soft High Elf list:

Chariot Prince with Reaver Boow
2 Level 2s with Beasts and Fire
NO BSB....

Big Spears
Big Archers
Big Swordmaster unit
Big White Lion unit
Chariot
Bolt Thrower
2 Eagles

So um yeah... no BSB, wow...

Deployment was basically as below minus a couple turns. Diagonally opposed across the marsh in the middle, with y Level 2 and some Swordies on my far right flank

End of Turn 2: You can see the remaining Banner Bearer gapping it behind the nearest hill at the bottom

I went first moved up a bit but not much was in range, My Swordmasters on the Left boosted it into the forest to take the archers with a supporting eagle. He scrolled my first Comet but I got through Caress of Laniph and took out his Beast Wizard.

He marched toward me as well so we were kind of standing off across the marsh. Then his 16 archers shot my Level 4/BSBs archer unit and did 7 wounds out of 8 hits on 5s... the Bolt Thrower then killed 4 leaving me with just the Standard and very happy he had no more archers as neither character had any armour to speak of!

Turn 2:

My characters bolted to the next unit of archers. The swordies moved up to the edge of the forest as seen above. I then got a Comet off just in front of his lines, excellent! I shot every archer in my army at the bolt thrower and did one wound, sigh...

He umed and ahhed about the comet and finally decided to take it on the chin and move up. The comet came down, killed half the White Lions, ten Spearmen and his Tiranoc Chariot, which paniced the Swordmasters as he had no BSB. More good news! His archers didn't kill a single Swordmaster at close range (clearly tired after last turn...)

Turn 3:

I charged the Swordmasters, and an Eagle at his Archers, but only the Eagle made it. The White Lions decided they could be slightly more aggressive about life now that everything was dead and moved up in front of the Spearmen block, but leaving a largish charge for his WL and Prince. I doom and darknessed the fleeing swordmasters to take them out for another turn, and dropped another comet next to the Lions/Chariot Prince.
Then the funniest thing happened, the Eagle didn't do much, and fled from the archers, who in a fit of insane bravery decided they just had to chase it down the hill straight into the Swordmasters at the bottom... :-D

Silly Archers...

My opponent charged everything at the White Lions but only the Spears made it. Win! He flanked my Swordmasters with Lvl 2 with an Eagle out of desperation, and his Swordmasters kept running due to D&D.
The Eagle then proceed to do 2 wounds to the Swordmasters who couldn't kill it and then ran away due to flank charge bonus, and lost me 300pts to an Eagle... However the WLs chewed a large number of Spears losing a fair few in return but the Spears stayed on Stubborn 10 from the Prince. The SMs ate the Archers and ran them down right in front of the Bolt Thrower  (who had survived another 30 odd shots...) but without LoS to it.

Turn 4:

Swordies faced the BT, assuming their friendly archers would finally take the last wound and save them (no... no, they wouldn't...). The Lions with the help of my now dominant magic phase ate the remaining spears but had to pursue them out of BSB range to get the points.

His Sowrdmasters finally rallied, and the Lord and Lions charged into my Lions. Massive mutual destruction resulted in me killing all but one of his Lions, and a couple wounds from the chariot but with the added impact hits I lost combat, rolled a 9 without reroll and lost all my silly WLs... The Sowrdies got pasted by the BT at short range but the last two stayed put to kill it next turn.

Turn 5:

Swordies killed the BT, and my BSB shot the last WL, and I knocked a few of his Swordmasters off with archers.

Without much left to do, or indeed on the table, for either of us at this point, he ran away with the Lord and remaining Eagle, and killed my last two SMs with his SMs

What remained. It wasn't much of anything.

I shot off  the last of his SMs in my T6 and we called it there, for a win to me, though not as big as it should've been had my Lions stuck around another turn... Anyway really fun game and brutal massacre of a civil war.

Elsewhere Ben and Greg got big wins, but Nick found out what a horde of Witch Elves does to Bloodletters. (Hint: Its not pretty...) But still an overall round win to Shirts Off.

Round 3: Monash, Chris - Orcs and Goblin Warmachines

Mission: Bonus for Tablequarters captured.

Chris had:

Warboss
Level 4 Orc Shaman
BSB
Level 2 Goblin

2 big units of Big'Unz
5 Wolfs
3 single trolls
Rock Lobber
2 Giants

Interesting and very different list but I really didn't see what it did... so I was pretty happy, mainly as no Doom Divers!

Sorry this one won't be highly in depth as it ended up abit dull for both of us after Turn 3. I also forgot to take photos again...

Turn 1:
Chris moved up aggressively  with Giants on either flank of his Big Uns, tried to Foot of Gork me but Loremasters Cloak said no!!! and then chucked Hand on a Giant. Didn't see that coming! suddenly had a Giant standing in the flank of my White Lions. Interesting...

I moved the Lions abit away and managed to get an Eagle in the way of the Giant in my flank, but without much way to avoid the overrun so let it hit the Lions in the front on the overrun and shot the crap out of the second one.

Turn 2:
Giant charged the Eagle, everything else kept moving up. Eagle did two wounds to the Giant, like a boss and survived. Dispelled Foot, but Chris sent a Bad Moon through a unit of Archers.

I moved up some archers to block both blocks of Big Unz which were too close together and shuiffled back some more. the Eagle took 12 wounds this turn from a club, lol

Turn 3:
Giant charged the WLs, Orcs killed some archers. Again 6 dice Foot of Gork without IF, killed afew archers but the Cloak was seriously saving my ass this game. Giant died in combat, then fell on my Lions and killed about half of them. Balls...  theres goes any chance of killing his Orc blocks.

As I suddenly did not have the tools left, I had to go into plan shoot and run, which I did effectively for the rest of the game but its not a great read so I'll just give a couple highlights:

• 6 dice Purple Sun killed 60% of one of the Big Un units but I couldn't get them leaving 4 alive at the end.

• Talisman of Loec dude did no wounds to the Shaman in a sacrificial charge for some pts.

Otherwise I faffed about with archers baiting and fleeing and shooting til the game ended with a draw of about 500VPs each

As for the rest of the team, Nick ran over some Dwarves as a good Daemon player should, but Greg got all his toys taken off by turn 4 by a HE Light Council, and Ben couldnt stop Papa Nurgle getting off his table edge as a mission objective and lost his only game of the weekend. So we went down 1-1-2 to Monash, and had to hope the Hampton boys destroyed them in the doubles in the morning, to put us all back on par at 3-1 goin into the final round.

So that was day 1 at the VICCs, pretty damn successful all round, and all to play for in the morning!


Day two to follow and the unleashiing of the most unfriendly doubles combo known to Warhammer.

Laters!

VICCs this Weekend

So after some rather unexciting trash talk by the HGC boys, (Seriously I think there's been more talk about the shorts will be worn... ) the VICCs are almost here and with that the start of what should be a rather interesting Warhammer tournament if all the stories I've heard are anything to go by... and its my first Fantasy Tournament in Australia too! I'm heading off as part of Team Shirts Off Warhammer, with my old Welly mate, Ben Wadsworth and his local gaming mates.

Sadly, Aussies like this will not be at the VICCs...

I'll be honest I really haven't paid that much attention to the specifics as it all sounds like a bit of a mess tbh so I'm just going for a laugh, and as an excuse to wear stubbies (see I can discuss fashion too!). I really just wanna roll some dice for a weekend so can't wait! However I shall try to give an overview of the tournie for everyone else.

Basic format is thus:

All the local Melbourne wargaming clubs send in a team for each major gaming system, and the overall team score decides the winning club. We only have Fantasy for our team, as actually there's only 4 of us...

Fantasy works as follows (I think other systems are the same but I really don't care...)

Each team has 4-5 players, and 4 games each round, so you can have a spare army if you want to sub in/out certain armies.

Armies are 2k with judge comp score (1-5) added in at the end of each game to adjust the 20-0 score as far as I understand it.

Day 1 - 3 1v1 Games
Day 2 - 2 Doubles Games

The match up process is something along the lines of:

You get given a mission and 4 tables and your team selects an army for each table, and then you find out who the other team has chosen for that table. So a bit of control but not much.

The real factor will be the missions the TO has written, we have no idea what they are, noone has been consulted, and based on chats with Nick Hoen and Dave Durie-Smith about previous years will probably be an absolute debacle, but hey, its all about the hobby right? Highlights of previous scenarios include, all magic miscasts on any doubles; and Watchtower in Battle for the Pass, except the Tower is in one guy's deployment zone.... so yeah... could be fun...

Fantasy scores also include a chunk of points for Painting, Comp (per army as discussed above, and I look forward to the scores. yay, Judge comp...) and providing fluff to justify your teams army choices. (I fucking hate fluff as its always complete BS... I wrote ours and its basically "a Daemon did it").

I'm not sure we'll win the Fantasy section, but I think Team Shirts Off can defo compete with the top clubs. To be honest I think we have some guys kinda worried :-D

No, our team looks nothing like this

Our team consists of:

Me with my High Elves of doom
Ben with his Orcs and Goblin warmachines
Greg with Tombking Chariot horde, and an alternate Dwarf army if we need to bore our opponents to death
Nick with Billy and his Bloodletter friends in a last send off for the old book.

I think we have a strong group there, though I did find out this week you could use the same army book multiple times (I play too much ETC so just figured it'd work the same way) thus there are apparently 5 Hell Cannons in the HGC teams Chaos Siege force... woot!


I'll endeavour to tweet out results and news over the weekend and some bat reps should follow, along with tales of glory and failure. Hopefully I'll remember to take some photos too...

Catch ya laters guys!

Some Random Musings

So as I sit here not achieving much on a lazy Friday I thought I'd post a few lazy thoughts on a mish-mash of various thoughts and topics that have bouncing around lately.

Firstly, the Cricket

After a surprisingly successful first innings in the Dunedin Test, the Black Caps and England seem to have remembered their respective status in world cricket, and are finally playing as such. Our team of hard working but generally average bowlers are currently toiling away on a seemingly dead pitch in Wellington, while the English score runs at will. I feel the world is right again.

Here in Australia, the once mighty, overly arrogant and obnoxious Australian cricket team is collapsing in a heap in India, with players thrown out for not doing their homework and packing tantrums. Its really quite joyous to see! Come on, India!!!

Meanwhile in other sports news, I'm trying to get my head around this game they call Australian Footy without much success... All I can tell is that apparently you have to be injected with drugs to play??

Also F1 Weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

VICC Team Tournament

Oh yes, the shirts are coming off!

For the past week or two I've been getting stuck into catch up painting my High Elves in preparation for the upcoming VICCs team tournament. Basically its the tournament for all the local gaming clubs to prove they collectively have a bigger cock than everyone else. It sounds like its gonna be interesting, based on the stories I've heard from the Hampton guys. Apparently the scenarios are awful and completely messed up, but I'll just aim for a bit of a laugh at the end of the day.

I got roped in to play by Ben (found at: http://shirtsoffwarhammer.blogspot.com.au/) and his mates, to form Team Shirts Off Warhammer, so the elves are coming out to drop big rocks on gunlines, and generally hide in a corner. After a couple of practice games, I'm pretty happy with my list (I won't share it yet as its all very serious business ;-)) and Chaffmasters may now be my favourite unit in Warhammer after one unit destroyed a unit of 8TK Chariots and most of a horde of Bloodletters singlehandley in consecutive games. Seriously, they are 100 odd points on OMG WTF Choppiness. Glad no one takes BS shooting these days!

My teammates are taking the following:

Ben - his trusty Doom Divers plus some other O&G
Nick - one last run with Billy and his friendly Letter horde
Greg - Dwarves (for the doubles Day 2 with my Elves, we aim to ruin hobbies quite spectacularly) and his back up, TKs for the singles

I think we have a good strong mix of army types, but unfortunately I have to spend the weekend writing some kind of fluff justification for this mix of armies, cause you get points for your team for it. (they seriously seem to have an unhealthy obsession with it over here). Any ideas on how the 5 most unlikely armies to ever hold hands would join together to kill the world will be greatly welcomed!

Tournaments in a couple of weeks so I may give a rundown of what happens, if I feel excited.

Daemons

Apparently this happened...

After much pondering, I think I've come up with a list I'll enjoy playing. Idea behind the list is Twin Sisters, the Slaanesh Prnice is Little Miss Perfect but utterly callous and cruel (think Sarah Michelle Gellar from Cruel Intentions) and the other is jealous and angry of all the attention she gets and turned to Khorne in order to outdo her sister.

See I have fluff justification for the Cannon, honest!

Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, Greater Gift (aiming for the Whip so she can sit back and smash stuff at range with 2d6 S6 shots)

Daemon Prince of Khorne, Chaos Armour, Lesser Gift (I'll take what ever, opponent dependant, but ASF or some S8 KB for armour smashing will be preferred I think)

Herald of Slaanesh,  on Steed, Beguiling, 2 Lesser Gifts (Assassin herald ftw?)

Herald of Khorne, BSB, Greater Gift (ideally 2+ armour, but +3 attacks works alright I think)

28 Bloodletters, Full Command

13 Daemonettes, Standard, Muso (mainly to satisfy Watch Tower/B&G requirements)

6 Seekers (for the Herald)

2 Seeker Chariots

4 Crushers (hide the DPs a little and good fast support for them too)

Skull Cannon (because... well... Cannon!)

Pretty smash-tastic. No magic, no shooting, just get stuck in fast and hurt stuff. Something about 2 Princes and 2 Chariots and Crushers hitting a unit at once sounds appealing!

Thoughts are welcome.

Other Warhammer News

In other news, Equinox is on this weekend in Auckland, and the Twitterati have been discussing it loud and long. 

The long promised lists have finally arrived, but from what I'm reading half of them are wrong, including 1 WoC army using the old book (seriously???) and 1 army with 3 Manglers. This makes me wonder why? Its really not that hard to write a correct list, is it? 

I honestly feel for Phil (and all TO's) having this sort of crap dumped on him, when there's so much other stuff to sort out. I really think TO's need to take a hard line on this sort of stuff (and for the record I will happily accept the punishments if I receive them) or it just gets out of hand. It came to the fore in the UK last year, and seems to have been accepted by the community with, last I heard, lists being much better than 6 months ago. I realise how hard it is to make that decision, given the negative connotations it brings, but surely players can see how much extra time and effort it places on the TO, when an extra 5 minutes spent on their list to check it twice could save all the hassle.

Guess this brings into question how seriously we are taking things, but having to deal with some guy and his illegal list 3 rounds into a tournament isn't exactly fun either imo.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing the results and hope everyone has fun. Should be interesting to see how the new Warriors go with all their fancy toys.

Well that's my random thoughts for the week. Have a good weekend everybody, I shall be getting horribly sunburnt on the hill at the Melbourne F! Grand Prix :-D

Rambling Daemons

There's probably not much here...

So now that the Daemon book has been out for a few days, and I’ve had time to fully digest it myself, I thought I’d take a quick look at some of the things I find interesting and then post a couple of the lists I’ve been tossing about in my head.


The Inspiring Presence, Hold Your Ground Nerf.

This is probably the biggest change of the book, and seriously impacts on list design. Combined with the possibility of army wide Instability tests from a bad roll on the Winds of Magic, players will seriously have to consider if its worth taking the 7th Ed Liquorice Allsorts list anymore (I suspect not, other than a couple side units like Cannons...). You’ll definitely have to make sure that the majority of your important points can use the BSB to avoid tragedy.

Random Gifts charts

While the internet is crying about randomness being terrible and making it impossible to play Daemons anymore. This randomness is a huge benefit to the Daemon players. Being able to effectively tune your characters abilities to your opposition army is a huge upside. Playing hordes? take extra attack weapons. Playing Armour? take +S or no armour save weapons. Seems like a massive win to me!

No Scrolls

What you must see is that there is no scroll...

No Dispel Scroll, combined with the fact the only source of high level casters are cannonball vulnerable monsters, is going to be interesting. Light spam will be horrible to face, but I guess it just means you need to get stuck in ASAP to avoid it. Killing the opposition wizard is a pretty damn effective scroll.

Lack of Armour

There is no reliable way to get decent armour saves on anyone in the book, other than one roll on the Greater gifts table. This one’s gonna be tricky, as particularly on the Heralds, you need them in the action providing Locii, but that leaves them horribly vulnerable as a stiff breeze kills them. Not new to most of them but the Khorne BSB which always had a 3+ save now has nothing... Nurgle for Regen will be the most seen BSB I imagine.

Locus Options

This is a change I very much like! All the old abilities are there, but now you can also tune your heralds for a specific purpose in game. Particularly of note: Tzeentch combat heralds giving Horrors Sd6, do you engage that unit and roll the dice? (see randomness can be useful!), mounted Slaanesh assassins hunting out characters (mages), Slaanesh heralds making units immune to Dwellers :-) or funnier yet, standing by units and being immune to Chariots through LOS! abuse.


And finally for today.....

Warpflame!

                               

It's not actually Flaming....

This is probably the one thats stuck in the claw of most gamers. Kinda of a silly rule, and why its a T test is beyond me (it should’ve been kept as the  1 or 6 roll in the White Dwarf), as nearly everything has a T4 or better in the game these days, but hey, we work with what we’ve got.

The thing thats really annoying me though, is that everyone has written off anything Tzeentch instantaneously because of it... Frankly I really don’t see it this way. First off its one test a phase, cast 3 spells or shoot 3 units and its one test to possibly give a 6+ Regen. (don’t give me any of that “but Aboms get a 3+” nonsense, don’t F**king shoot them then!!!). Just make sure you smash the damn unit when you target it! Don’t cast Flickering Fire at a unit of Slaves and cry when you kill 2 of them and they get Regen. Aim for chaff where a Magic Missile will kill most if not all of them. Aim the Template Weapons at horde units and kill half or more of them in one magic/shooting phase. Who the hell cares if the 5 remaining guys of 30 get a 6+ regen!  Aim the Bolt/Gateway/Blue Fire at small cavalry units/monsters and either take them off or seriously make them worried

Is it perfect? No, its not, but it can definitely still do something... As an opponent, I’m seriously not gonna let an utterly random spell through because it could do one wound and give me some pointless regen. I’m gonna think “Jebus, that cheapo magic missile could do 6S6 hits and kill that unit” or “that Bolt could take off my Dragon in a turn!”


Anyway, in conclusion to this ramble, I really like the new book, and think it has plenty of options for fun and power. IMO the old book was dull to the point just short of suicide, so the new randomness can only provide some excitement as the army takes you on a seat of the pants ride through crazy-ville every game, and frankly that’s only a good thing to me, as I firmly believe the best players are those who can save, or turn around a game, when the unforeseen happens. At the very least, at long last all the power gamers will fuck off and leave me to my daemons and us Daemon players will finally be appreciated for taking something “soft and fluffy”


And with that I'll attach a couple copies of possible Daemon lists for your perusal:

Mindrazor spam list

Daemon Prince of Slaanesh
Chaos Armour, Flight
Level 4 - Shadow, Greater Gifts (Lash time), Lesser Gifts (ASF?)

Herald of Slaanesh
BSB, Greater Locus of Swiftness
Greater Gift (wound or armour would be nice)

Herald of Slaanesh on Steed
Exalted Locus
Lesser Gifts (anything is good)

35 Nettes
Full Command - Banner of Swiftness

14 Nettes
Muso

6 Seekers
Seeker chariot
Seeker Chariot
5 Furies of Slaaneshh

Soulgrinder - Phlegm
Skullcannon (because I can!)


Double Prince smash!:


Daemon Prince of Slaanesh - Greater Gifts
Daemon Prince of Khorne
Chaos Armour, Lesser Gift

Herald of Slaanesh
Greater Locus (ASF), lesser Gifts

Herald of Khorne - BSB
Greater locus of Frenzy, Greater Gift


27 Nettes - Full Command, Banner of Swiftness
27 Letters - FC

5 Seekers
2 Seeker Chariots
3 Crushers

Skullcannon



Any thoughts appreciated!

Laters all