First blood for the Chaos!

Hey guys.  Just a quick one today, as work is being little mental.  IT issues.  Don’t ask.

I played my first game with the new CSM codex last night.  Not really an ideal matchup for the Chaos (that would be Codex Marines, obviously!) as I was pitted against Eldar.  It was a bits and pieces Eldar list with nothing spectacular or new in it, just decent workhorse units.  Squad of Guardians, squad of Rangers, Farseer, Fire Dragons and Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents, War Walkers and a Wraithlord.

Also, some D-cannons.  Alright then, maybe this was a little interesting!  Anyway, I was packing 40 cultists, in two small squads of ranged guys, one big for assaults, led by my Chaos Lord and…  Hang on.  If I continue like this then this post isn’t going to be short at all.

The important thing was that I was playing with some new units.  I got a delivery from the fine folks at Triple Helix on Monday and so I spent  most of that evening assembling the new plastic hotness and came away with a Forgefiend, a Heldrake, 5 Warp Talons and a headache.  The Talons, Drake and Fiend all got a debut performance in that Eldar game.

The Heldrake was vicious, zooming onto the board and Vector striking a squadron of Warwalkers, (killing one) before blitzing a load of guardians with the Baleflamer.  It only got one more shot with the flamer before an Icarus lascannon took the gun away, but it still made its presence felt with the Vector strikes.  Overall, it performed well and I think I rank the Baleflamer higher than the Hades Autocannon and the precision you can get with it is insane and it denies practically all saves.  However, it has no capacity to take down fliers and is only of middling effectiveness concerning vehicle takedown.  So the field is very much open on that score, as vector strike is not an ideal method of flyer killing (although it’s far from useless).

The Forgefiend did well, despite a poor start.  It didn’t manage to damage a single vehicle, but it can annihilation non-MEQ squads with almost insulting ease and it can deal enough raw damage in a round to break through 3+ saves as well.  Daemonforge is only really worth triggering for vehicle shots in my opinion, although the risks are low enough for it to be a valid all-purpose play.  Really, the biggest impact it had on the game was the fact that my opponent was oddly, almost myopically focussed on taking it down, and I just kept it wandering out of range of his tank-killing guns, forcing his troops into crossfires.

The Warp Talons were disappointing, but that wasn’t the fault of the actual unit.  I deep struck them and they didn’t turn up until Turn 4 and couldn’t charge anything until Turn 5, so they didn’t have much of an impact, particularly because their Warpstrike blindy-power is next to useless versus Eldar.  I still think they’re probably overpriced at 30 points apiece and no grenades (seriously, that is a massive black mark against them, although they are manoeuvrable enough to mitigate this somewhat), but they’re very cool models and a bit of fun for the army.  I’ll probably take a couple of small squads, max out on mutations for the Champion.

Speaking of which, the Boon Table.  Quite frankly it didn’t have a great impact on the game.  My Possessed champion got Icy Aura (all enemies in base contact get a S4, AP5 hit at I1 in assault), but never got into a fight with anything that wasn’t a tank.  My Lord earned an Instant Death Melee upgrade, but only ended up against single wound models.  The best result I got on the table was that my Warp talon Champion got Shrouded, but that was squandered by me putting them in reserve.  I should have deployed them on the board in cover and used the cover to advance (they’re certainly fast enough to cover hop) and eat something worthwhile.

Final note: Chaos Artefacts.  I think the go to Chaos Artefact (certainly for me) is the Black Mace.  It is positively brutal.  So many attacks, decent chance of instant death and the 3” wave is horrific (although it won’t affect combat resolution).  It is possibly overpowered.  If you see an opponent equip one of his characters with this, then stay the hell away from that character.  Even models not involved in the same combat (or any combat at all) can get nuked by the range of the Cursed effect.

Anyway that’s all for today folks.  Fingers’ crossed for another blog post tomorrow!