Battle Report: Salamanders vs. Lusty Loganwing

Last Thursday I played a guy's Space Wolf army at the store. It was a great game that ended in a draw, but I didn't have my camera so didn't post a battle report. While there, however, I made arrangements with Chambers, of The Back 40k fame, to play a 1500 point game this Thursday. You see, he had an army he bought off a guy, you may have heard of him...Ron Saikowski of +From the Warp+. It wasn't just any army though, that wouldn't make a good enough story. This was Ron's old Lustwing army. If you haven't seen it, follow the link and check it out. Go ahead, I'll wait. You see? Absofrigginlutely gorgeous. I HAD to play this army. End. Of. Story. He used the Space Wolf codex for these guys as there is no option to run all chaos terminators

Our table had 25% terrain and wasn't anything too special. My list was changed up a little bit from my usual 1500 list since I'm trying a few things out to see how they play. I had a librarian (null zone & fury of the ancients); (2) Tac Squads w/power weapons, multi-meltas, flamers, & rhinos; (2) MM/HF dreadnoughts; (2) MM/HF Landspeeders; (5) TH/SS Terminators w/ Land Raider Crusader w/MM; and a Vindicator. I'd love to tell you what his list was, but I know squat about the Space Wolf codex...as in I just bought the dang thing tonight. We played an annihilation mission and he had 5 kill points to my 12 if that tells you anything. He had (2) six man squads with missile launchers, a ten man squad with wolf lord, a rune priest, and a lone wolf (I think). As I said, we played annihilation with dawn of war deployment. He deployed his two six man squads, and I left everything to come in on my board edge first turn. He went first, and here's what the board looked like.

Nothing too fancy here. Like an idiot I split my forces again. I might learn, but one would think I would have picked up on it before now...Speeders pushed forward 24" on my left, tac squads sat right where you see them (doing nothing) till turn four, while the dreads, vindicator and landraider made mischief in the middle.

Turn 2 I moved up my terminators to intercept his lone wolf, which was his plan. I flippin hate those guys. You don't get anything from killing them, and if you ignore them for the kill point they run all over your army. Nice.

The next few turns saw my terminators and their librarian owned by his 10 man squad with a wolf lord in it. Absolutely sick. Seriously, there ought to be a law. What you see in the above picture is evidence of my public shame. (1) Vindicator, a point blank land raider crusader, (1) tactical squad, and a rhino shot at that squad. Plenty of hits, plenty of forced saves...I killed three of them. That's pretty much how my night went in a nutshell.

At the end of the day, while I had killed quite a few of his terminators, I only gained 2 kill points. Chambers had 9. It was an uphill fight from the beginning, my deployment wasn't ideal, and Chambers played a smart game. He was a fantastic opponent that I won't hesitate to play again and I got to play against an army that I drooled over on the internet. Ironically, my librarian HQ was converted by Ron, and killed like a little #$%^ before he could perform. So while I learned it's probably worth while for me to equip my Tac Sgts. with power weapons, I still have doubts about power armored librarians...and no terminator librarians to try out. It was a tough night for the Salamanders as a whole but my biggest failing was not having a decent camera to take better pictures. You just cannot imagine how beautiful this Lustwing army was.

Take home messages? Play Space Wolves, they're better than you are. Seriously though, that is one tough codex, and Loganwing is no joke either (for my typical army build anyway). I made a few mistakes, but none were truly epic. A few different choices and I might have earned a few more kill points, but I would have needed to table this army to earn a win and that would have required Chambers to fail just a few of those 5+ invulnerable saves he was making. ;-)

Leveling Up.

As this blurry phone pic might show, I gots bling. But this time its national bling.

I entered Totem Hunter in the Privateer Press P3 Grandmaster paint competition and was awarded a silver token for my efforts. As the name implies it's the award level between Gold and Bronze. The competition this year was changed to a "European" format in which each piece is rated on it's own merit. So in a category containing 30 entries there may be 4 golds, 7 silvers, 15 bronzes, and 4 non-medal winners. The overall best is chosen from the gold medalists and the Best of Show is chosen from that lot of all the categories.

So what this shiney bit of metal means for me is that I'm on the right track. I'm neither the best nor the worst, but among the (judging from the other entrants) very talented painters competing in the competition with the potential to reach that next level. I walk away with some pride knowing that my efforts have not been in vain and that I have something to look forward to in the future.

Speaking of phenomenally talented painters, I'd like to take a few moments to give a huge shout-out and thanks to my amazing teachers this year.

I've already introduced you to Marike Reimer and Zach Lanier (who is now up to 16 Golden Demons). What I haven't shared with you is that I was competing against BOTH of them in the Grandmasters lol. Zach was next to me when we were picking up our entries on Sunday and apparently he did better than I but still didn't bring home Best of Show. I don't yet know who did but I'm eager to find out when the results are posted in No Quarter Magazine in a couple months.

My other teachers were no less amazing. On Saturday I had the honor of meeting Mathieu Fontaine who did some amazing things with an air brush, making my desire to own one that much harder to silence. And finally I met the legendary Joe Orteza, the man who sculpted the Adepticon skull as well as some other projects you'd drool over. Joe doesn't have a dedicated page other than Facebook but if you google him you'll see some truly jaw-dropping stuff. His contribution to the Primarch Project from Chicago GD 2007 alone is worth a few hours study. In 2 hours he taught me to do some things with green stuff I never thought I'd manage (like a length of chain. Turns out it's really pretty easy!)

In summary, the highpoint of this year's GenCon was of course spending some much-needed away time with the wife. Also high on the list is being told by Ron Kruzie, Studio Director for Privateer Press, that he had never really liked the Totem Hunter model until he saw mine. I'll carry that warm and fuzzy feeling for a while, and I'll try not to be a jerk about it.