AutoBrit & Adepticon: 40K Friendly: Round 2

Game two was against Dark Angels, an enemy I have a fair bit of experience going against now.  There are a lot of Ravenwing fans where I come from!  This army was a mix of raven and regular, with the seemingly obligatory Sammael leading them to unlock some bike troops choices.  The army consisted of a big Ravenwing squad, an attack bike, a couple of speeders, some Black Knights and then, rather incongruously, a squad of scouts, an Aegis Defence line with a quad gun and a Vindicator.  Fortunately for me, the mission rules were against my opponent slightly.  The main objectives were kill points, with Fast Attacks being worth two points apiece and if the opponent’s entire Heavy Support was destroyed, you got a bonus three.  As I was only packing one Fast Attack choice and three Heavies, and my opponent was the other way round, I definitely had the rules in my favour.  He started off with a very defensive setup.  You know that you can do things in the game that make tactical sense as far as the rules go, but don’t really fit in a narrative or cinematic sense?  This was one of those examples.  He used his defence line to form a rough corral and stuck his Vindicator in it.  It makes sense rules-wise, but who goes around fencing in their own tanks?

Anyway, he took first turn and tried for a cheeky first blood, with a scouting multi-melta Attack Bike and one of my Soul Grinders.  It’s always a risky proposition that.  When the melta failed to do anything noteworthy, the bike was swiftly annihilated, giving me the first blood instead.  He was just in range of too much of my stuff to last the turn.  There were a couple of interesting things that happened in that game, but they centred on the additional special rules.  The big special rule for this round was ‘Stuck in the Cocoon’, where one unit of your opponent’s choice would be unable to do anything, or be attacked by anything until they freed themselves.  6+ on turn 1, 5+ on turn 2, 4+ on turn 3 and auto-free on turn 4 (thankfully).  I chose Sammael (forcing the bike squad to soldier on without him and separating him out for the rest of the game) and my opponent chose the Bloodthirster.  Can’t say I’m surprised at the choice!  I’d most likely have done the same thing in his place.  But the rules bit me a little hard as Sammael freed himself on turn 2 and my poor Bloodthirster had to wait until turn 4.  Arse.  To make matters worse, we only got to turn 4 before time was called, so I only had one turn to have him accomplish anything.  He jumped out in front of a lone Black Knight, ready to grab a nice juicy kill point for himself, and the Slaanesh butts his/her androgynous head into the game and decides: No, I’ll kill that biker.  And I’ll fling two wounds on the Bloodthirster for giggles.  I get the feeling it won’t be the last time I call out a god for kill-stealing…

The other big thing that happened in that game was that my Warpsmith challenged a Black Knight Champion, beat him raw and bloodily into the ground and then spawned himself.  Surprisingly, that’s the first time that’s actually happened for me.  It puts my Warpsmith at one ascension and one spawnhood, so he’s batting average.  On the plus side, he didn’t actually die.  He spent the rest of the game rambling up the board and ended it tearing some scouts apart.  Who could ask for more, eh?  Anyway, with the game ending the way it did, it was a pretty big win for my army.  There was not enough anti-tank in my opponent’s list to deal with the armour I was bringing and the victory conditions themselves put the situation in my favour regardless.  Sometimes you just get good matchups.  You just have to play well enough not to botch them!

AutoBrit & Adepticon: 40K Friendly, Round 1

I’ll start off by saying that the Friendly was a great deal of fun.  3 games with a points limit of 1,500, which was surprisingly small (most American tournament tend to err on the higher side in my experience).  There was a theme to the event, which was Spinal Tap.  An odd choice, but the TO really made it work for him!  It would not have been as fun without that guy’s endless bellowing enthusiasm and occasionally distressing leather trousers.  There were 52 players split into four teams and, through whatever metric the TOs deemed appropriate, I was made the leader of the yellow team, thereafter referred to as Bo-nana. 

The three rounds each had their own special rules, with a variety of the standard mission objectives so people weren’t scrambling around in confusion too much.  To add even more flavour to the event, at the beginning of each round, the team captains had to spin a special rule on a wheel their entire team got that special rule.  These were highly variable, running the gamut between +D6 to run moves, +1 to hit with Plasma Weapons, eternal warrior for your HQs and a lot more besides.  It was nice an occasionally funny to have these ad hoc rules flying about, but they never seemed to ruin the game or spoil the balance, so I have nothing but praise for that aspect. 

My list was very similar to the one I posted in my buildup section of the blog, so have a look at that if you want.  The only changes I made were to replace the Quad Gun with an Icarus Lascannon and ditch a few cultists from the big squad in order free up some points for the Baleful Torrent upgrades from my Soul Grinders.  I may tweak it a little in the future but overall I’m quite pleased with the list.  The Bastion didn’t ride roughshod over anyone and the list was good and resilient, with my Troop choice not collapsing into bloodied piles of mush as often as I expected.  The only changes I’ll make would probably be to find 20 pints somewhere to give my Bloodthirster a Greater Reward (4 out of 6 of them play very well with him and the weapon upgrade is always useful as an alternative to the roll result).  Oh, and change the Heldrake to a Hades Autocannon instead of a Baleflamer.  Maybe it’s the contrarian streak I’ve got, but there was barely a single CSM player there not packing a Heldrake with Baleflamer, and I don’t want to add to that number. We’ll see.

In the first round I was pitted against Tyranids in a standard objective mission. Tyranids are one of bane armies.  I seem to have a bit of blind spot when I’m up against them.  Even when I was running my DE they were a concern, despite all the poison and lance I was bringing.  I just don’t have a great track record against them, so this wasn’t looking massively positive.  He was bringing a Tervigon, a flying Tyrant, a couple of Gaunts, the Doom of Malantai, a few Warriors, some Hive Guard and the Swarmlord.  A tough list, but definitely not ‘teh hardcorz’ as the kids say.  Nevertheless, I don’t think anyone looks forward to fighting the Swarmlord…

Anyway, there were a few interesting things that happened that game.  The first was that in my first roll on the Warp Storm table, I got the Psyker Possession result and, wouldn’t you know it, the Swarmlord was randomly picked to have a Herald explode from his chest!  Almost a reverse ‘Alien’, if you will.  Unfortunately, he manage to pass his 3D6 Ld test with flying colours (only 6 in total!) and that particular sliver of awesomeness was suddenly removed from my game.  Turnabout’s fair play however and when his Doom landed, it was unable to kill a single Cultist, despite having three tries.  Neither of us was failing our 3D6 Lds in that game!

It was bit of an odd game, all told, with the Tyranids having to move up and cope with the Chaos firepower before steamrolling the close combats.  This tactic works fine for me, as the majority of the close combat elements in my army are there for counter-assault and if the opponent is going to be weakened by defensive shooting, then so much the better.  Unfortunately, I made one crucial mistake during that game, and that was to fall prey to the ‘epic’ factor.  I had two options for targets for my Bloodthirster:  the Tervigon or the Swarmlord.  The Tervigon could roll up the flank because, although it is a poor assault MC for Tyranid standards, my MC takedown is usually in my vehicles and with Smash attacks being what they are, even the Tervigon can cause some major damage.  The Swarmlord is an assault monster, but would realistically do not better than the Tervigon versus my vehicles.  Tactically I should have gone of the Tervigon and taken it out of the picture quickly, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a titanic duel between two of the heaviest hitters in the game.

The Bloodthirster started well, scored a couple of wounds and couple of Instant Death attacks on the Swarmlord, but they were all saved.  From that point, I knew it was over.  Unless you’re packing eternal warrior or massive numbers, you do not survive more than one round of combat with the Swarmlord.  And so it was that the Thirster died after having scored zero wounds during the entire battle.  Luckily for me, the Swarmlord’s next target was my Forgefiend, who won MVP that game by stubbornly refusing to die until the end of the game.  He didn’t punch back or anything, but holding up the Swarmlord for three straight turns definitely helped the situation.  My Heldrake did well enough, hurting things and setting stuff on fire, as he is wont to do, but it was the indefatigable Forgefiend who truly earned his keep.

The end result of the game was a draw, hard fought by both sides.  It could easily have gone either way, but outrageous luck for both armies kept everything on an even keel.  And that was game 1.  Next up, the inventively named ‘Game 2’.  But that can wait until later.

Until next time, Underlings…

AutoBrit & Adepticon: Intro

In capsule, I thought Adepticon was brilliant.  Just so you know.  You need not lay awake wondering any more.  It was fantastic and (provided I can afford it) I definitely want to go again next year.   I wish it was held on a different weekend to Salute, but given the choice between the two, the Americans win, much as my natural jingoistic pride and xenophobia is loath to admit it…

This is no slight on Salute, obviously, but the scope of Adepticon is just so much bigger, encompassing new systems, trade shows, and more tournaments and events you can shake a squig at; whereas Salute is pretty focussed on the trade and club recruitment elements.  I arrived a touch early to the venue, and I’m glad I did.  Having that extra day or two to acclimatise to the place a get to know some of the other people there was immensely helpful and allowed me to prepare for the forthcoming hectic nature of the con itself.

And hectic it was.  A good few thousand people milling around the place, games aplenty and the highest beard:person ratio I’ve ever seen since the Great Lumberjacking Hobo Invasion of 1989.  There’s a lot to cover, obviously, so I’ll split the review/reliving up into a few sections: The 40K Friendly, The Malifaux Midnighter, Listener Games/Interesting People & Impulse Buys.

This post is just the capsule review of the event, which was overwhelmingly positive.  Thanks to Teras (of course) for arranging the whole thing, as I went as a fully paid-up Geek Nation Tours customer.  I definitely recommend the GNT packages for these things, provided you can afford them.  They are certainly worth the money!

But anyway, I have to go now and draw up a logo for my Chaos Blood Bowl team.  God, I’m such a nerd…

Adepticon Build-Up: The Battle Plan

Right-oh, this is the post for those who are attending Adepticon and wish to find me, but it’s also an aide memoire for me as to where I’m meant to be going and when, and it’s easier to reference than cross-checking my emails.

Or just writing it down on a piece of paper.  Ah, to hell with that!  This is the FUTURE!

I’m heading to the event under the auspices of Geek Nation Tours and the very affable and considerate Teras, and I’ll be landing in the state on Tuesday afternoon.  I’ve got nothing planned in particular until the main event other than just acclimatising to the similar but different surroundings and the general, well, bigness that America seems to bring in almost everything it does.

When it comes to the Adepticon itself, I’ll taking place in the 40K Friendly on Friday and bringing the list that everyone who reads my blog now knows how to beat (there’s no excuse now!).  I’ve been veering away from the competitive scene of late, as the pressure and the general samey-ness of the lists is something I find quite disheartening.  That’s not to denigrate anyway who does go in heavy in that area, but I just do enjoy that style of play any more.  I fair prefer semi-comp nowadays and to design and play against more characterful lists.  That’s an 8 hour play time, starting at 12.

Saturday is a busy one.  I’m starting off with the Dirty Tricks seminar, to give me a bit of a boost in painting, as I am not a painter by nature and dislike the process in general.  The seminar should either help me speed things up even more, or make my usual stuff look a bit better.  That one’s from 10.30-11.30.

After that there’s an Inquisitor game at noon.  I am so looking forward to this!  Inquisitor is possibly my favourite spin-off game from GW and it has been far too long since I had a go.  I’ve just got to get my arse into gear and paint my models for it, although it appears that could be unnecessary, as the description does say that they have spares.  Nevertheless, there is some degree of pride in me!

I then lie in wait until 7 for the final event of the day (and night); the Malifaux evening.  This will be my first ever Malifaux event, so I have no idea what to expect, but I’ll be flying the flag high for the Outcasts until it ends and 2 in the morning.  A very unusual timeslot, that, so I wonder how I’ll be playing that early in the following morning!  Could either be fun or torture…

Thankfully, Sunday has no plans for me and I’ll just be free-roaming the halls and looking at stuff, or just recovering from the previous two day’s worth of gaming.  If any of you are coming, feel free to track me down or send me an email at ciaran@theoverlords.co.uk and we can arrange time for a drink or two.

So long all!

Adepticon Build-Up: The Stractics

Well, yesterday you got the setup.  Today it’s time for the punchline.  It was a deliberate choice to go for a full Bastion instead of the traditional Aegis Line plus Quad Gun and it was made for two reasons.  The first is that every bugger brings an Aegis Line, and I like to try different things to the choices everyone else is making.  The second is to see how many people know how buildings work.  It’s a point of curiosity to me.  Buildings are big, they can be scary, but they are nowhere near as hard to take down as people think.  They also force a different style of play to counter them.  I mean, yeah the usual heavy tank-busting equipment can certainly do for them, like anything else, but anti-troop stuff can actually be more effective.  If you can clear out the occupants, then you can take the building for yourself, and that can be a hell of an advantage.  All it takes is a few frag and krak grenades and maybe a couple of flamers.  You just need to get close.

Anyway, the basic plan behind the army focuses round the Bastion, set up in a non-dickish manner (that is certainly something to bear in mind when using buildings) and fully populated.  One of the problems I have with this list is that it seems a little troop-light.  It’s got 50 foot troops in it, sure, but they are all really quite squishy, and what can I do if they get wiped out?  The Bastion should go a fair way to keeping some of troops alive for the late game objective rush.  I plan to have the small squad of cultists occupying the building and a squad of bloodletters on the battlements with the Quad Gun.  The Bloodletters, despite being a heavy assault unit are actually really well suited to this kind of duty.  They all have a Ballistic Skill of 5, making them excellent gunners regardless of who in the squad is taking the job and they automatically pass all Morale tests, mean that they can’t be forced off base.  Always go for Fearless (or semi-Fearless) when manning battlements if you can.  You really don’t want them panicking and flinging themselves off the building!

For outside the building, I have some big guns, in the shape of my two Soul Grinders and the Forgefiend, who can fling a decent amount of fire downfield, although the Grinders will have to be on the advance for me to get to most out of them.  All three are also handy for dealing with incoming air traffic; the Grinders skyfiring and the fiend just soaking the skies with S8, all the while supported by a twin-linked BS5 Quad Gun.  A decent wall of flak there.  Now we’re talking about aerial superiority, I have the Bloodthirster and the Heldrake as a pair of durable flying units (although not entirely effective versus other flyers) to help keep the pressure on the opponent’s defences.  Both are very capable of dealing with ground targets, whilst being scary in their own right.

My Warpsmith pulls double duty in this list, useful in aiding and repairing my various vehicles, but also able to really hurt something in assault.  Provided I don’t roll a 1 for the daemon weapon, he’s pulling a hefty 8 AP2 attacks in a single turn.  His Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill take downgrades due to the weapon, but if he’s against Marines, then he’s still more than capable of chewing through squad leaders or even most characters.  Particularly because most of the weapons that can nullify his 2+ armour save will be striking after him in an assault.  For most of the game, he’ll be tooling around with a squad of 20 cultists for a bit of survivability versus enemy fire, although concentrated flak will definitely whittle that number down quickly.  I’m hoping that he and his squad will be overlooked in favour of the multitude of bigger, nastier things that’ll be taking the field with them.

The main weakness in this army, from my view, is the troops.  Once they are gone (and it won’t take too much to make that happen), then I have practically no denial units in the entire army and that spells trouble for any list.  The basic plan will have to be to concentrate on taking down enemy troop number to limit their objective-scoring capacity and bring it in line with mine before going in for the kill.  I should have enough high strength firepower to deal with a wall of light to medium vehicles.  The heavier ones will have to be dealt with in assault though.  Hopefully my Bloodthirster is up to the job there.

That's about it, really.  I’ve just got to hope to play well, and roll high on the Warp Storm table!

So long.

Adepticon Build-Up: The List

The sky cracked, spilling a baleful red light over the blasted landscape.  Iorveth Threx looked up from his work and surveyed the approaching army.  Significantly larger than anticipated.  No matter.  He would adapt.  The dark, red-tinted clouds swirled high in the air as he completed the final connections on his latest project.  The formerly inactive machine shuddered as energies, both electric and aetheric, flooded through its systems.  Cogs and gear clanked and ground.  Pistons slid in and out of their housings.  The machine stirred.  What had once been misshapen mound of metal shifted and reordered itself, forming itself into a distinct predatory shape.  The cannons that comprised its forelimbs spun a slow cycle and the beast took a step forward, its ironclad foot planting on the decking with a resounding clang.  Threx laid his iron hand on the creature’s flank.  Dark energies pulsed under his touch.  Acceptable.

A servitor approached and blurted a fractured spurt of nonsense code.  Either reprogramming or sacrifice lay in its immediate future.  It turned and shambled away.  Threx followed.  The preparations were complete and soon the enemy would have more than just his machines to contend with…

I’m taking a bit of an odd list to Adepticon.  It’s not a list I planned on making.  Not for this event anyway.  I mentioned a list late last year, in the wake of the Chaos Marine Codex.  It was a pure Chaos Marine list and combined some Khorne elements with a lot of Slaanesh.  A tonne of cultists, some Noise Marines, a big squad of Slaaneshi Marines.  Slightly hordeish.  That was this list I was going to take, but I ran into a problem, and that was painting the thing.  In particular, painting the Marines.  I had a colour scheme vaguely in mind, but the models themselves were just so busy with detail, I couldn’t visualise it properly.  I was going to go with a grey base and black trim, with a bright red/pink/purple colour for lights and sigils and what have you.  But I couldn’t settle on a look that seemed right.  The scheme would take a while to paint on each marine due to the detail on the models and as each test was taking upward of forty minutes to complete, I was fast running out of patience.  I seriously considered bringing Necrons or Dark Eldar to the event.  But thanks to the Daemon Codex, I now have an alternative plan.

My Warpsmith was always going to be a Chaos Iron Hand, because, you know, me and the Iron Hands.  So it was a natural fit to have him in charge of the Daemon engines and fortifications, rather than my Slaaneshi Chaos Lord, who would have all the Marine resources.  The Warpsmith (Iorveth Threx) would have scrapcode infested servitors and menial workers that would fit into the cultist mould quite nicely so I could have two distinct armies that could nevertheless fit together in what I called a storyline list focusing on the corruption and capture of a forgeworld.

Given the problems I had getting Chaos Marines painted, daemons were tempting, as they all have broadly the same schemes and the models were less detail-heavy and could be painted faster.  But I didn’t have enough Daemons to form a list I was happy with.  Then in steps Iorveth Threx.  Being Khorne-worshipping already, it was a simple matter to write some Khorne Daemons into the list, focus on a relatively low model count so I could get everything painted in time (still ongoing, as it happens), and have it fit my storyline nicely.  And so, I present to you: The Malicant Locus, Defence of the Daemonforge.

Primary Detachment

HQ: Bloodthirster

Troops: 10 x Bloodletters

Troops: 10 x Bloodletters

Heavy Support: Soul Grinder with Mark of Khorne

Heavy Support: Soul Grinder with Mark of Khorne

Allied Detachment

Warpsmith Iroveth Threx: Mark of Khorne, Veteran of the Long War, Axe of Blind Fury

Troops: 10 x Cultists

Troops: 20 x Cultists with 2 Flamers

Fast Attack: Heldrake with Bale Flamer

Heavy Support: Forgefiend with 2 Hades Autocannons

Fortifications

Bastion with Quad Gun

All that comes in at 1,500 points.  I’ll get into some tactics and try to justify myself tomorrow.

So long!

Computer Games I Like: Probotector

Way back in the mists of time, before every games console had context-less numbers and letters after their names, I owned a Sega Megadrive (or Genesis in the US).  As a family we were quite late into consoles, I suppose.  I mean, we had an old Sinclair Spectrum that we could boot up on the black and white TV.  Tape-fed, man.  There’s no sound quite like the skkkkkrrrreeeeeeecccchh of a data tape firing up whilst nonsense fluctuating lines pulsate on the screen.  Seriously; that’s what scrapcode sounds like.  Horrible, but a price we all paid to play Dizzy or Horace Goes Skiing or Rainbow Island.  Anyway, eventually (upon entering secondary school, I think) I got a Megadrive for my birthday and that was one of the most awesome presents ever.  Sonic 2 was the game that came in with the console and it still holds a very special place in my heart.  We even got a colour television for the Megadrive that Christmas and it was one of the most fantastic Christmas mornings I have ever had.

Anyway, all this is preamble to say that I have a large amount of fond memories wrapped up in that device, but above them there were a few games that I really connected with and have stayed with me.  So let’s get started with Probotector.  Yes, yes.  It is a very silly name.  But the game is awesome!

See: things explode!

Probotector was really just a reskinning and renaming of one of the games in the Contra franchise for the European market.  I think it was Contra 3: Hard Corps.  Basically, the Contra stuff had more of a human angle and human sprites participating in this mass carnage and slaughter and some of the countries in Europe had tighter censorship laws for that kind of thing.  So the entire game was reskinned to have robots in a couple of the key roles rather than humans.  Apparently that helped.

The game itself was a side scrolling shooter and was very pretty for the time, boasted an absolutely awesome soundtrack for 16 bit and was brutally difficult.  One hit would kill you, lives weren’t all that easy to come by and you see that explosion on the screenshot above?  Nearly all the enemies exploded like that, often obscuring other enemies in the blast and occasionally getting the odd cheap shot in because of it.  And with so few lives and no capacity for taking punches, this could get infuriating at times.  Nevertheless, there was something about the game that kept me and brother just coming back for more punishment.

Maybe it was the challenge, maybe just something about the sheer ridiculousness of it of all, but I think it was the variety.  There were different routes through each of the game’s missions and that really helped the longevity of the game as you could always try out that ‘other’ option and encounter an entirely different level and bosses.  The sheer inventiveness of some to the levels was a joy to behold.  Want to fight a cyclopean skyscraper-tall robot who throws cars at you?  Done. Want to fight a jetpacking robot assassin whilst hanging to the underside of a Police Jet?  No problem.  Want to fight a Cthuloid horror on the top of planet-busting warhead rocketing into the stratosphere? Go ahead.  Personally, I prefer dealing death to a bobble-headed robot Elvis who tries to kill me with projectile kippers.  Oh, they have that too?

There were not only different paths through the levels, there were different game endings too.  I never completed the game to one of the full ‘proper’ endings until I went ROM and had access to savestates, but when I was a kid I didn’t manage to uncover one of the hidden endings instead.  In one of the levels, one of the climbable wall lead off screen and up to an arena, wherein you fought a gauntlet of very weird and difficult bosses, until the last one you beat opens up a rift in space and time and you get sucked into it.  You are taken back to the dawn of humanity and become the Robot Kings of the Cavemen!  Yeah, this game was strange.

Help me, gun!

There were also four characters to choose from, each with their own armoury of special weapons, which certainly helped the longevity.  You had a Blue Guy (who was on the punchier side of average), a Red Guy (who worked more on homing weapons), a Little Guy (who had a jetpack for short-term hovering and a smaller hitbox) and the fourth guy, Lord Doomblast von Wolfington.  At least, that’s what I cal him.  He was definitely the trickiest character to use, as he stood taller than the Red & Blue and about double the height of the Little Guy (CX-04 was his name, I think) and dealt pure damage.  Definitely the hardest hitter of the four, but with a complete lack of homing weapons and two gun which could even reach the other side of the screen.  I can’t remember which my brother favoured, but I’m certain it wasn’t as good as mine.

Anyway, that’s my brief run through of one of my favourite Megadrive games, and one I will be returning to every now and again, purely for shits and giggles.  Relentless silly, still really pretty to look at and the soundtrack was one of the best noises ever to come out of the system!

Continue kicking arse, you mismatched weirdos!