Hades Drake the New Terror of the Skies?

 By Chambers:

Sounds Better on Paper

Adepticon 2014: The Friendly Part 2

Sexy Beasts waiting for war

Adepticon 2014 - There and Back Again, a Burnout's Tale

Just...try to relax...

As some of you might be aware, a handful of members have had associations of some sort or another with Adepticon since about 2006.  It started with the Team Tournament, sprinkled in a few rounds of Combat Patrol, and the last two years have been dedicated to the 40k Friendly Tournament.

Discussions about the Team Tournament could take several blog posts to cover.  I'll spare you that, or you could just look back through the archives.  Suffice it to say that it takes luck to even get in to this very popular event, and a great deal of money and time to not embarrass yourself when you see the titans of industry who will inevitably win.  These are the teams who have spent thousands of dollars and man hours to put together truly masterful works of art.  Average participants?  Don't hold your breath.  This event truly rewards those who go above and beyond.  It's actually worth coming to the event, just to see the display bases the teams put together.

Combat patrol has never really been my thing, but others have enjoyed it.  I have trouble making a 1000 point 40k army, so 400 points really is an exercise in futility for me.  To each his own, I'm glad some of the other members have had fun with it.

This will be the third year for the 40k Friendly Tournament.  I had some friends participate in '12, and they gushed about how awesome it was.  Laid back, thematic lists, a complete lack of douchebaggery, it received rave reviews.  I did not bring Team Snake Eyes to the Team Tournament in '13 because I was a little burned out from that hectic experience and wanted something a little more relaxed.  The Friendly was my choice. Three of us came up last year (myself, Chambers, & Grenn Dal) and although I came in dead-ass-last place (it's a real thing, look it up) it was a good time.  After hearing the staff repeatedly say they would disallow hard lists, I was a little shocked at some of the things we saw last year "What do you mean my drop Wolves list with four Rune Priests with Jaws isn't friendly?" Chambers and I are a little worried about what we'll see this year.

Vulkan and the lads take the field once more

Sorry for the poor quality of the pics, but I've been having technical issues.  My list, which I feel is true to the "friendly" theme is as follows: Vulkan, (5) TH/SS Assault Terminators, (2) Tactical Squads with flamers, multi-meltas, combi-flamers, & TLLC Razorbacks, a Storm Talon w/typhoon ML, (3) Centurion Devastators w/Grav Cannons & Hurricane Bolters, a Thunderfire Cannon, and finally an Aegis Defense Line w/Quad Gun.  It's got a moderate amount of shooting with a counter assault/harassing unit in the terminators.

Chambers assured me his army was ready to go...

 Chambers army looks pretty cool too.  He's got a Dark Mechanicus army that has ties to Nurgle and Slaanesh using the Chaos Marine Codex: A Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor, (5) Chaos Terminators with combi-meltas, a squad of 12 Noise Marines with Icon of Excess, 7 sonic blasters and 2 blast masters, (2) squads of 6 Noise Marines with 2 sonic blasters and 1 blast master each, a Helldrake with Hades Autocannon (yes kids, Chambers can beat you without the bale flamer), 2 awesomely converted Obliterators, and finally a Bastion that has the Imperial iconography defaced and replaced with sacrifices and icons of the dark powers.  We'll add an army pic when he's ready for me to take it.  :)

Random Pics from the game room on Thursday:

This thing is about 5' high and is likely someone's display board.  These people do not mess around...

Iron Hands charity raffle army, there are better pics out there on the internet, and they are worth seeing.

Sisters of Battle display chapel/board.

This close-up of the floor detail proves once and for all that
you can never have too much awesome in your life.

Stay tuned, more tomorrow!

Battle Report: 1500pts. Chaos vs Inbred Dogs

 By: Chambers

Hello my name is Chambers, long time reader first time poster...

Chosen1 (not chaos) decided that his blog, other than being horfically slow to update, needed to be a little bit classier.  Yea about that, not sure why he let me in.  Maybe his plan is to make every else look better by comparison.

At any rate ‘ere we go…

10,000 years of "keeping the blood pure" has not been kind to the Imperial side of the family

The local league is currently running at 1500 points, which works out great for me as it gives me a chance to play and get used to my Adepticon Friendly list, now if work would just cooperate as well.  After missing the first two weeks of the League I was finally able to get my toy men on the table top last Thursday night.  My opponent was SeeJay87 from The Lonely Havocs.  A great guy despite his unnatural obsession with a dead body rotting in a chair, kind of creepy really.  

At rate below are the lists:

I took CSM with no allies

Terminator Lord with Mark of Slaanesh, Burning Brand, Power axe, Melta bombs and a signal of corruption. (War Lord)

5 CSM terminators with MoS, Icon of Excess, 4 melta guns and an assortment of close combat weapons.

2 – 6 man noise marine squads with 1 blastmaster and 2 sonic blasters

1 – 12 man noise marine squad with 2 blastmasters, 7 sonic blasters and an Icon of Excess on the champ.

1 –  hell drake with the hades autocannon

2 – Single obliterators without upgrades

1 –  “imperial” bastion complete with quad-gun

His List (from Memory) was also straight codex, Space Wolves to be exact

Rune Priest with runic armor and a chooser of the slain (War Lord)

4– 10 man grey hunter squads in drop pods with a single melta gun in each unit

1 – 10 man sky claw unit

1 – Max long fang unit all with missile launchers and a lascanon razorback

1 – Fire Raptor Gunship

PREGAME:

The deployment was short table edges with Kill points as the mission.

My warlord trait was Black Crusader, which would be pretty clutch this game.  While SeeJay87 rolled something that never came into play so we will just pretend that it never happened. 

I won the roll for placement and promptly took the side that would not have me rubbing asses with the next table, luckily for me the terrain was pretty even, not that it would have mattered if it had not been.  SeeJay87 won the roll for first turn.  There was no night fighting on the first turn.

Yea I get it "Road to Nowhere" what can say they are glued down

 

SeeJay87 deployed along his deployment edge as far forward as he could.  The razorback tucked away on the other side of the chapel.  I responded by counter deploying in north west corner of my zone so that when his grey hunters fell out of the skyin their stolen technology my units would be able to support one another.    As a note the two models laying down represent which units are in which buildings.   At this time the large squad has pretty good line of sight to the Long fangs which is not clear from the pictures so I attempt to seize hopefully knocking the missile launchers out for a turn.  I failed to seize and SeeJay87 proceeds to his first turn.

TURN ONE:

Two of his grey hunters squads come down on target and his sky claws move forward to secure a second turn counter to my response.  While he pours most of his firepower into my front noise marine squad I make a ridiculous amount of saves and loose only four marines to the combined weight of fire from his army.  The one shot that wasn’t put into the front noise marines came from the lascanon razorback, which he then manages to one shot my obliterator on the top of my bastion, Lady Luck is a fickle lover indeed.

 

Luck be a lady tonight...

 

My first turn is also pretty quick my only movement is to bring the final two noise marines from the first squad into coherency.  I decided to leave my terminators in the building for now, I wanted to wait until SeeJay87 was fully committed with his podding troops or at least until he was closer.  In the shooting phase my large squad did what it does best, deleting a unit of troops from the board.  The rest of my shooting knocked out a couple of long fangs but that was about it.  At 1500 points I feel that I am overspending on my terminators and on the large squad to the detriment of the rest of my army.  I should slim them down and drop some of the extras, but I probably won’t, I like sacred numbers and besides the models are painted. 

Luck if you've been a lady to begin with...

TURN TWO:

All of SeeJay87’s reserves come in and his pods scatter into better position than positioned and his flying gunboat screams up the side in order to lay waste to my large noise marine squad.  His sky claws move in and his remaining grey hunter squad from the first turn shuffles around in order to do some cleanup work on the 2man noise marine squad.  Remember what I said about Lady Luck? This was my roll to glance/ pen after SeeJay87 elected not to jinx.  I knocked out his turret heavy bolter closest to me, locked its velocity and shake it.  While the rest of his shooting is only average at best, manages to clean out the 2 man squad and half of the 12 man squad, the razorback again manages to one shot the remaining obliterator even after he went to ground. 

Luck be a lady tonight!

The Raptor is not dead yet, just with all the traffic coupled with
an unstable table it seemed prudent not to tempt fate.

At the bottom of two my drake decides to stay off the board so I disembark the terminators from the building that they were bravely holding.  I use the burning brand coupled with black crusader to good effect and drop the grey hunter squad behind the short wall down to a single model.  My large squad manages to reduce and pin the other fresh hunter squad that had been targeting them.  While the squad inside the bastion decides they would rather debase themselves than contribute to the fight. 

 

Bravely bold Sir Robin
rode forth from Camelot.

TURN THREE:

On SeeJay87’s turn he shifts his gunboat and homes in on the terminators killing two while the remaining heavy bolter knocks out another noise marine.  Bolter fire accounts for a third terminator but in another stellar display of rolling SeeJay87 comes up short on his charge.  Meanwhile the large noise marine squad, or what is left of it, does their best impression of a John Woo film dodging almost every missile, mind-bullet, and wrench throw at them, two drop to SeeJays87’s firepower but both heavy guns are still up and active as is the Icon of Bad Touch. 

At the bottom of three the drake phones in to let us know that he is still running a bit late and won’t show up this round either.  Other than that, the dice rolls went my way more than not.  The large squad of noise marines shuffle to get out of sight from the remaining long fangs while still gunning down several of the remaining grey hunters surrounding them.  The terminators manage to multi-charge the sky claws and a pack of grey hunters killing all but one sky claw who then decides to stick around despite needing snake eyes on his leadership test.  To top it all off the quad gun fires on the Fire Raptor on automated fire and still manages to remove the last hull point sending it crashing down.  In fact the only thing that I can’t seem to hurt is the razorback, all my shots directed at it wildly miss. 

 

Looks like there's dirty work afoot

TURN FOUR & END GAME:

At this point is just clean up, while SeeJay87 has more victory points than me at this point he doesn’t have much left on the board.  I start the process of by killing off a lone marine and dropping a pod with melta from the remaining terminators.  Brave Sir Robin my lord decides that bunker in the back without windows/ fire ports needs to be defended in case of a sneak attack.  The remaining two terminators shrug off missile fire and mind bullets to wreck the drop pods scattered about my deployment zone thus insuring that I will have more victory points at the end of the game.  The drake finally decides to show up and only accomplishes a couple of hull points against the drop pods.  Once again he fails to show up until the fourth turn and when he does fire off his gun he only hits with one shot of the four. 

On the northern hill there is a slap fight between three grey hunters and six noise marines that will go on for the rest of the game with not a single model dying in the process.  Maybe I should spend the points to upgrade the Aspiring Champion with a power weapon of some kind, but I already feel like the unit is bloated.  It takes two additional turns of combined fire from the unit in the bastion and the helldrake but I am finally able to strip off the last hull point from the razorback.  At this point SeeJay87 who has been keeping track of victory points declares that he can no longer win and calls the game. 

 

Brave Sir Robin ran away.  Bravely ran away away.
When danger reared it's ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.

POST GAME THOUGHTS:

MVP – the MVP for my side has to go to the terminators with the lord.  

While they hid for the first part of the game they ended up accounting for two squads of hunters, the sky claws and a couple of drop pods thus securing the game.  Recently I have stopped treated this unit as a shock unit and more like a group of school yard bullies.  While I was always happy with their performance before, they are now starting to win me games.  More and more I am becoming convinced that their roll is not to take on the enemy death star units hoping to buy a turn or two, but rather to go after the soft targets that can score. 

Goat – without a doubt the goat for this matchup has to be the hell drake

By the time he decided to show up the game was all but over and even then he failed to do more than strip a couple of hull points.  I have also continued with my streak of only hitting once with the hades autocannon every time I fire it, I have decided that all this means is that when I do get to Adepticon the Puff here will hit 3 or 4 times every round, maybe even five.  That is how maths works, right? 

On the whole no new revelations with my army.  It is a very static shooting army that is surprisingly resilient and wins in the long game.  Now that I can no longer take an escape hatch for my building I am at a loss for how to add mobility to this list at this point level.  Honestly unless I come up with something in fairly short order it will be too late as I am a very slow modeler and even slower to paint. 

Thoughts?  Comments?  

Iron Hands Venerable Dread & List Advice

Bannus has returned with some new conversion/paint work on a Venerable Dread for his Iron Hands.  I'm quite impressed actually.  Bannus has moved from my part of the world up to the Windy City.  We miss seeing him at the store, but we're awfully glad he's staying in touch by showing us his work.  Enjoy!

Pretty cool no?  I like that we've got a couple of TSE members churning out sweet Iron Hands conversions. Ol' Seth and Bannus need to hook up and make a monstrous Iron Hands force.

Additionally, Bannus offered up some list advice to break me out of my gaming rut recently.  He suggested that I make "elementally" themed lists and offered up a Water List as a suggestion.  I've copied both the list and a description in his words below:

HQ
Varro Tigurius

Troops
10 scouts w/ Bolters, Heavy bolter, Powerfist, combi-melta, Melta-Bombs
10 scouts w/ Bolters, Heavy bolter, Powerfist, combi-melta, Melta-Bombs
10 Scouts w/Sniper Rifles, Missile Launcher, Sergeant Telion

Elites
Ironclad Dreadnought w/Heavy Flamer, DCCW, Ironclad Assault Launchers, Drop Pod & Locator Beacon
Ironclad Dreadnought w/Heavy Flamer, DCCW, Ironclad Assault Launchers, Drop Pod & Locator Beacon
5 terminators w/Assault Cannon, 2 Chainfists

Fast Attack

Space Marine Bikes w/Additional biker, Melta Gun, Melta Bombs, Multi Melta Attack Bike

Heavy Support
Vindicator w/Dozer Blade
Vindicator w/Dozer Blade
Vindicator w/Dozer Blade

I created this list as a "water" list.  And the idea is, much like how water changes shape to fit whatever container it is in, this list will adapt to whatever enemy you might face.  It has one other strength, nobody will see it coming.

Tigurius is the key to the whole list, with his ability you can re-roll any reserve roll, so you will have an easier time controlling when your units enter the game.  This fits in perfectly with the scouts, drop pods, and terminators.  He also can use three psychic powers a turn, and may choose from all psychic powers, which adds versatility to any unit he is attached to.  He is vulnerable though, so keep him safe.

The scouts themselves are outfitted with anti-tank, anti-infantry, and a close combat weapon, and should be able to take on most enemies.  And they have many special rules that allow you to adapt to the situation, both while deploying and after.  Just avoid heavy flamers.

Ther Ironclads in drop pods can be deployed when and where you need them, and if you plan it right, the terminators can use the locator beacons to deepstrike with precision.  The Ironclads themselves have a meltagun and seismic hammer for vehicles, and a heavy flamer for infantry, so again, very versatile.

The attack bikes look anti-vehicle at first, but dont forget they have twin-linked bolters also.  Combined with relentless they can rapid-fire before charging to take on infantry units, have 5 wounds at T5, and can always choose to fail morale if they cet in an assault they didn't want to.

The terminators with chainfists, storm bolters, and assault cannon can take on almost anything.  And you should be able to drop them wherever they are needed, if your enemy decides to destroy your pods to stop this, then who cares?  He didnt shoot your other units, and all of them are dangerous.

And finally, the vindicators, though they are the most out of place, S10, AP2 large blasts are useful for anything.  And they are also useful mobile cover for other units because they can move while firing to full effect, so if you choose to deploy your scouts at your board edge, they will always have cover behind the vindicators.  They also leave your opponent no room to run if you deepstrike/outflank the rest of your army. 

This army's main weakness is against speed, once they are deployed they are slow, but speed isn't as necessary when every unit is equipped to handle every task.  Against a fast opponent I think you will be fine if you keep the units close enough together that they can support each other.


Let us know what you think!

Lusty Loganwing vs. Salamanders Rematch!

"Logan" vs. Vulkan...the outcome of this assault determined the result of the entire game.

Some of you may remember Chambers from The Back40k's blog.  He resides in the St. Louis area and plays at my store when he has the time.  Our first game was a 1500 point game where he pitted his gorgeously converted (by Ron Saikowski of +From the Warp+) Lustwing army utilized as Space Wolves against my Salamanders.  Before you purists go crazy, he uses the Space Wolf list instead of the Chaos list because the terminator army can't be faithfully done using the Chaos Space Marine Codex.  Honestly?  An army that looks this good gets all sorts of allowances when it plays against me.  Paint your models kids, it's part of the hobby.  :-)

I had played Chambers only twice prior to this game.  Game #1 = Severe beat-down against his Lusty Loganwing.  Game #2 = Severe beat-down against his Lamenters during the final round of the Ard Boyz prelims.  While I love playing with Chambers, I don't exactly love getting my teeth kicked in.  I was a bit nervous about this game.  We stuck with 1500 points, got capture & control with 5 objectives, and spearhead deployment.

Deployment

While Chamber's limited number of models limited his selection, he had three squads.  Two six man squads with various weapon load outs including missile launchers, one giant squad with a truck load of guys, Logan Grimnar and a Rune Priest, and a Lone Wolf to wrap it up.  I hate to have guys play the same list of mine twice if we can help it, so I played with Vulkan, a Land Raider Crusader, Land Speeder, two Dakka Preds, two assault terminator squads, and two tactical squads with Rhinos, Multi-meltas and flamers.  Objectives were placed in the middle of the board as well as in the middle of each table quarter.

End of Round 1

Chambers won the initiative and proceeded to take "hail Mary" shots with his missile launchers.  Seriously, that's what he called them.  He averages about 4 Str 8, AP 3 shots a round and reaps a disproportionate bounty of wrecked vehicles and my tears.  My Land Speeder (behind cover) was wrecked, and one Pred was immobilized and stunned.  He also dropped a few of my dismounted terminators and moved his lone wolf forward while his other two squads controlled one of his objectives, and moved towards another on my side of the board.  I only managed to kill a single terminator out of the large squad.

End of Round 2

Round two saw Chambers holding two objectives on his left of the board, as well as the center.  I killed off his Lone Wolf (man I hate those guys) and he wiped out my unmounted terminators.  I was not please with myself at this point.  I was moving a combat squad towards an objective with terminators on it in a vain attempt to contest an objective while my other combat squads were hunkered down for late game shenanigans.  I had five terminators in their tank, and my Preds hadn't had a full turns worth of shooting due to "stun-locking" from the missile launchers.  I had no desire to charge my boys into that mess with a dozen or so terminators in the middle, but that's where they had to go.

Wonder of Wonders!

My third round saw me throw every bullet I had at his large terminator squad.  It wasn't as small as I wanted it to be (1 or 2 left would have been nice...) but I managed a favorable assault since his squad was so spread out.  His Rune Priest wasn't able to join the assault this round.

This is getting better and better, but there's no way I can pull this off...

The next round left us with the epic match up you see at the top of the blog post, so you see, I was quite surprised when I saw this:

Last man standing!

This was classic!  After I took out that squad, he only had two remaining, thus he could only ever hold two objectives.  I moved one Rhino mounted combat squad to the middle of the board, the other went to an open objective, and my final combat squad stayed home to claim that one.  Final tally:  Salamanders 3 objectives to Lusty Loganwing's two.  It was an awesome game, but I can't fault Chambers' gameplay or anyone's dice rolls.  While winning the assault in the middle of the board was clutch, only having three expensive scoring units to my four cheap ones backed up with a Land Raider, Dakka Preds, Assault Terminators, etc...you get the idea.  The extra boots on the ground were the difference for me in a game with 5 objectives.

End Game

Genoside's Chaos Warband

Genoside owns enough 40k (and fantasy too if you're into that sort of thing) models to make a grown man cry.  Because of that not too much of his stuff gets painted.  He has a soft spot in his corrupted heart, however, for his Nurgle/Khorne - themed Chaos Space Marine Army.  Here are a few select shots of that force.

The drought is over!

Well, the wife and I have moved into our new apartment in Fairview Heights. It's had it's ups and downs as I'm sure anyone who's ever moved can attest. I loath moving and all that it entails. It was easy when I was in the Corps...if it didn't fit into my sea bag, I didn't own it. Now, however, I've a large baggage train (wife), a nine year old daughter, and a 40k hobby. None of those things keep me connected to my former life as a gypsy bachelor, but I think I'm better off in the long run. ;)

Speaking of 40k, I lost my Internet during the move and that has (obviously) been restored. Access to my 40k and Pathfinder content via the web has been restored, and it has done wonders for my grouchiness. I also managed to get in a game of 40k tonight at my new FLGS: Fantasy Games in O'Fallon, Il. This will be the worst battle report from me to date as I forgot my camera, but I'll do my best.

First off, I played a great guy, Tom, who fielded a fun yet effective Chaos Space Marine list. From memory his list was: vanilla lord with a chosen squad with a mix of plasma, melta, and flamers as their special weapons all riding in a land raider. There was a 10 man squad of marines on foot with a lascannon, a mounted plague marine squad, a mounted squad of thousand sons, a 5 man lesser daemon squad, a triple lascannon predator, and a plasma cannon dreadnought. There were meltas, fists, and plasma pistols sprinkled here and there throughout his list. My current 1850 list can be found here. It's been a while since I've played a chaos list without Abaddon or a Daemon Prince (and I've never played against Thousand Sons) so that was something new.

We played annihilation and dawn of war. I won the roll for side and neither of us deployed anything having all of our forces roll on at the start of turn one. We completely forgot about nightfighting which might have dramatically changed how the game was played, but I can't remember a single dawn of war game where I have remembered that rule, so I have only myself to blame (again).

Our deployments weren't at all fancy: we set up in a line in the middle of our deployment zones. I moved forward as far as I could while he held back fairly close to his table edge. Turn one saw him blast my landraider and a dreadnought right off the bat and I was working uphill from there. Remembering nighfighting might have kept them alive that turn, but that stuff happens.

I think I can say that neither one of us were too focused on kill points until the end game, and it was a slug fest till the end of turn 6. Without pictures, I won't get into too much detail but I managed to hold off his advances early on and had a very productive 5th turn. At the end of the game we calculated that it was a 7 - 7 draw, but Tom neglected to count his unit of lesser daemons and declared me the winner 8 - 7. I was previously happy with a draw since the game was so close, so a win was awesome.

The guys from the store seemed very cool, and my game with Tom was amazingly awesome with storybook moments of H.Q. dramatically battling H.Q., and sole survivors hanging on against the odds. In a way I'm almost ok with not having my camera because I got a chance to just B.S. with the guys and enjoy the game without having to worry about getting "a good shot for my blog". I also met up with Chambers from The Back 40k fame, and it looks like Tom may be spearheading an effort for us to get together and play a bit of Apocalypse in the near future. Perhaps I might get some use out of my Imperial Guard? You all have seen a lot of my Salamanders, but nothing of my guard as of yet.

All in all, it was a fantastic night, and I look forward to getting in some more games with the locals (in which group I am now included I suppose). Just remember: No matter how close to St. Louis, Mo. I live, I will always be a Cubs, Bears, & Blackhawks fan. :)

Team Snake Eyes Tournafeast Battle Reports

As mentioned here, the Despoiler hosted a game day picnic this weekend and myself, Genoside, Aerion, Ol Seth, & Warlock were in attendance. I got in three games: game 1 vs. Aerion's Black Templars, game 2 vs. Genoside's Tyranids, and finally game 3 vs. the Despoiler's Chaos Space Marines. The lads were preparing for DieCon's 1850 tournament, so that's the army size they wanted to play. I had a stock list for that point level (I keep a 1000, 1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, 2250, & 2500 point list handy in my Pack 1520 just in case...) and here is what that entailed:

130 Terminator Chaplain w/Melta Bombs
190 Vulkan
460 (5) TH/SS Terminators w/Land Raider Crusdader & Multi-Melta
410 (2) Tactical Squads with Flamer, Multi-Melta, & Rhino
230 (2) Dreadnoughts with Heavy Flamers & Multi-Meltas
140 (2) Land Speeders with Heavy Flamers & Multi-Meltas (individual units)
120 Vindicator
170 (2) Predators with Autocannons and Heavy Bolter Sponsons

Game 1 was an Annihilation mission with Pitched Battle deployment. Aerion won the roll to go first, but made me deploy. I set up everything, and he kept everything in reserve. Aerion's list can be found here. I moved everything up to midfield on my first two turns and waited for him to come on the board. He got about half his units on the first turn with most of the remainder on the second. His assault squad was his last unit to arrive on turn 3.



I stopped taking pictures by turn three. Things were going badly for Aerion since I had only to wait for his units to arrive on the table edge with ~24" between us and I shot him to pieces. This was a new list for Aerion, and not in a "Oh I'm not used to playing at this points level" sort of way. It was a dramatic departure from some of his other lists, and he wasn't used to playing it. It lacked the anti tank necessary to crack a mechanized list like mine, and his choice of deployment gave me the upper hand from the start and he just couldn't get anything going.

Game 2 was against Genoside's Tyranids. Genoside and I have joked that while we've known each other for years we've never really played a game together outside of Apocalypse. Added to that, if there's anything I know less about than the new Space Wolves, it's the new Tyranids. Going off of memory, he had 4 squads of Genestealers, 2 Zoanthropes, some kind of Hive Tyrant with 2 bodyguards, 2 assault oriented Carnifexes, a lictor, a Mawlock, and a Tyrgon Prime (sp?). Whatever the heck it was, it had an assault 12 electric attack!


Genoside kept the two big bugs in reserve along with his lictor. The two big bugs came in immediately, but the lictor hadn't arrived by turn four when Genoside conceeded the game because it was clear he had lost at that point and he needed to leave the party. I lost the roll to go first, but Genoside made me do it anyway. :-) Because I didn't know where the Genestealers were coming from or where those big bugs were going to go, I set up in the middle.


Genoside deployed and walked/ran everything but his deepstrikers from his 12" line. That gave me no other targets to worry about immediately when his Mawlock and buddy arrived, one on each side of my army. I fired every Mult-Melta in my army at those two creatures and killed them both in 2 turns. My other guns targeted two of the Genestealer squads (the other 2 were so far away from me that I never had to worry about them). With the big guys gone, I focused on the carnifexes. I killed one with shooting, and Vulkan took the other one out in assault.


He had a wounded Tyrant with two body guards and two Zoanthropes + 2 stealer squads (who were horribly out of position) when he conceeded. It was a good game, but Genoside doesn't get to play much, and needs a bit more practice with his beloved bugs (It's creepy really, how much this guy likes his Tyranids). The Tyranid book is a strong one, and I'm intimidated by the big bugs and their potent psychic powers.

Game three was against the host, Marvin the Despoiler and his Chaos Space Marines. By this point in the evening, Marvin had sampled quite a bit of his Yucca and while I enjoyed the game against him, his decision making clearly wasn't that crisp. :-)



This was another Kill Point mission (three? seriously?) but I thankfully didn't have pitched battle deployment since we managed to roll spearhead for this one. The long and short of this game was that we both pushed towards the center of the board, I made an insane amount of saves against Abaddon and two Khorne Berserker squads (I should have been destroyed 3 times over in that assault) and then cut the heart out of his army with the return attacks from my Thunderhammers. The rest of his stuff got shot out from under him by my Multi-meltas. This game was a fluke in my mind. I should have been crushed in that assault, but instead the near-impossible happened. His army is tough and getting tougher.

We all enjoyed ourselves, and next time I'll be getting in a game against Ol' Seth and his Eldar hopefully.