40k: Forest Guard Sentinel

Recently I finished up another model/unit for my Imperial Guard Astra Militarum:

Who wants some?!

Who wants some?!

These pictures aren’t perfect, they’re a little dark, but I’m super happy with how this guy turned out. What I’m most pleased with is that the posing is pretty dynamic for a walker. It was a little fiddly to hold everything at the desired angles while also gluing the joints, but the whole leg assembly is really posable and the feet and cab are on ball joints so there was a lot of room to play.

Whoa, buddy, hold 'er steady!

Whoa, buddy, hold ‘er steady!

This was super fast to paint, and it came out simple but effective. I couldn’t come up with a two-tone vehicle scheme to match my Forest Guard infantry pattern that I was happy with, so I went with straight brown. In the end I think it’ll go well with the duders while also standing out from them, is more realistic than a two-tone, isn’t green or gray like GW’s demo models tend toward, and was easy to do. The core process was basically:

  • Primer: Army Painter white spray
  • Body: Steel Legion Drab base coat x2, Vermin Brown drybrush (this color name is no longer produced by GW), Agrax Earthshade wash
  • Metal bits: Leadbelcher base, Mithril silver drybrush highlights, Nuln Oil wash
  • Rubble: Skavenblight Dinge base coat x2, Codex Grey drybrush, Bleached Bone base & Skull White drybrush for the ossuary skeletons and skull, all washed with Nuln Oil
  • Base: Vermin Brown base coat, several coats along the outer rim

The Vermin Brown drybrush all over the body was heavier than I meant it to be and made the model a little lighter in color than I was originally thinking, but introduced some nice subtle colorations, particularly after the wash. On some of the larger panels it has a really neat sun-faded effect (hard to see in the photos).

Unfortunately I must have let too much matte sealer spray coat collect in some places because the colors shifted and muted a bit in places, particularly the metals. Some of the finer details also frosted over a bit. It’s particularly noticeable around the skulls on the weapons. Didn’t affect the cab too much though, and won’t be noticeable at all on the tabletop.

The rubble served two purposes: It let me build up a little height to give the body more of a loping, firing-on-the-move cant, and let me introduce a block of dark grey to subtly further connect the model visually with the Forest Guard infantry two-tone.

To the left!

To the left!

To the right!

To the right!

The weapon side of the cab is magnetized, and I have both a plasmacannon and a lascannon ready to go.

You feelin' lucky, punk?!

You feelin’ lucky, punk?!

A lascannon on a BS3 chassis.  Yep, that'll scare 'em.

A lascannon on a BS3 chassis. Yep, that’ll scare ’em.

Painting my Guard has been really fun so far, as long as I totally ignore how few points are getting done with each session. I’ve consciously worked to keep the painting process simple and to be a bit faster and less obsessive than I had been on my Kingbreakers. That’s paid dividends as I’ve then let loose a bit on those Marines as well and they are also now getting done faster, with no true consequences on the quality. Having this other small force going also helps a lot with the monotony of doing millions of shoulder pad trims, definitely the part I hate most about Space Marines. Not doing any hard edging or highlights, and having two core colors (brown body + gray armor) rather than four (tan legs, blue torso, green arms, red trim) makes quite a refreshing change in switching to the Guard for a bit. The Forest Guard also look quite different from my Kingbreakers, though they work together pretty well visually.

More to come!

40k: 7th Edition First Play

kingbreakers-iconJason, Lovell, Matt, and I got together to bash heads over the new 40k 7th edition rules. In some ways it was a pretty draining affair as we pored over the rulebook for every little thing. But it was also great to get that crew together—I don’t think Matt and I have played 40k since maybe 2010—especially once the game descended into farce, anarchy, and rampant questions of “Dear god, how can we be playing this so wrong?!?!”

A few more photos than those here are in the Flickr gallery.

Guys, I think we shoulda made a left back by Albuquerque!

Guys, I think we shoulda made a left back by Albuquerque!

Armies & Mission

We played the game as a doubles match:

  • Imperium
    • Joe: 1100 points of Kingbreakers Marines (Salamanders)—Angholan (Vulkan), Rorschach (Termie Libby), Ghosts (Sternguard), various Tacticals, Scouts, Bunker
    • Matt: 750 points of Valhallans—Company Command, Primaris, Platoon, Veterans, Sentinels, Leman Russ
  • Bad Dudes
    • Lovell: 1100 points of Dark Harvest Necrons—Some insane maniac, Immortals, Warriors, Monolith, Bomber
    • Jason: 750 points of Thousand Sons—Ahriman, psychic loonies, Thousand Sons, Obliterators

We didn’t even consider trying the new Maelstrom missions yet and wound up playing Crusade (4 objectives), Vanguard deployment. Imperials chose corners, deployed first, and played first.

Raaaaaaaahhhh!

Raaaaaaaahhhh!

Fight!

Thousand Sons reserved everything except a pair of lonely, wayward Oblits.  Dark Harvest started their troops on the board near objectives. Kingbreakers Ghosts attempted to assassinate the Oblits on the drop but couldn’t quite pull it off. The remaining Obliterator in turn powderpuffed Captain Angholan with a lucky powerfist strike. Lost in a grief of madness at this death, Librarian Rorschach wandered off into the ruins on his own and charged into a unit of Warriors. He was quickly brought to heel with Mind Scarabs and impaled himself on his own sword. Meanwhile, the Valhallans basically huffed around waiting for something to shoot at, and Ahriman went for pizza until his reserves could finally arrive.

Curving around the left flank into the midfield, Kingbreakers troops strategically created a tactical barricade out of their flaming Rhino wreckage (“Just as planned!”) between an objective and a pack of sneaking Immortals. On the Imperial left flank, Scouts running onto an objective in open ground were swept off the board by late arriving, outflanking Thousand Sons. A big fat Monolith then plopped down onto the objective to claim it for evil doers everywhere. Tacticals on the Imperial right were also wiped out by outflanking Thousand Sons finally showing up for the party, who then secured another objective despite the valiant flailings of a wildly confused, winterized Sentinel. Meanwhile, deep in the depths of the regional HQ bunker, the Valhallan Company Commander sipped his tea and admired his lovely objective and all the troops and tanks doing drills around it, wondering how those nice Marines he met the other day were getting on and maybe he should ring them up to see if they needed some artillery support.

Heelllooo! Anybody home?!?!

Heelllooo! Anybody home?!?!

Outcome

Evil prevails! The unholy alliance of Dark Harvest and Thousand Sons wins with 2 objectives and Slay, First Blood, and Linebreaker, versus 2 objectives and Linebreaker for the valiant but nonetheless dead Imperials.

General Thoughts

This was intentionally a goof game to play with the new rules, but even considering that I was way off the ball: Forgot to deploy Scouts, put Angholan and Rorschach in the same Drop Pod accidentally, all sorts of mess. But we did run through a bunch of new or revised mechanics, and there were interesting observations.

Things That Were Changes… Two Years Ago

I think it’s a fairly common lament about40k that for each new edition, or for old players returning to the game, the learning curve would be steeper but you’d be more likely to play correctly if you actually hadn’t played before. It’s just so easy to forget or entirely miss changes and revert or maintain old habits. There was a lot of that going on here. There wasn’t actually much shooting in this game and almost no mixed-weapons fire so it didn’t matter, but despite talking about it I don’t think we did a single round of shooting following the new grouped algorithm. We just kept falling into the old patterns without even thinking about it.

I also have to confess that I’ve been playing assaults wrong for 2+ years now, but in my defense so have tons of people! Say I’ve got a heroic independent character joined with a unit of some of the mightiest soldiers in the galaxy, and they wind up in combat with some chumps. In 5th edition the chumps would have to allocate attacks between the IC and the soldiers, following base-to-base priorities and so on. In 7th edition the chumps just attack the unit and wounds get allocated starting from the guys in base-to-base. Challenges to some extent replace the ability to target ICs. Of course, that’s also the way it worked in 6th edition! I, and seemingly everybody I’ve played with through that edition, just didn’t notice the change or me not applying it. Oopsies!

Look at those idiots over there! The only thing they're assaulting is any proper understanding of the rules.

Look at those idiots over there! The only thing they’re assaulting is any proper understanding of the rules.

Deployment

One change that may affect many people’s armies quite a bit is that there’s seemingly no longer a restriction that at most 50% of an army can go in reserve, unless we missed it. Opposing that though, there is a large number of abilities in the game at the moment that could make that a risky choice. For example, here Matt rolled the warlord trait that applies a -1 to the opponent’s reserve rolls, crippling Jason as he waited and waited until turn 4 to get his guys into the game.

On a related note, I’m not sure at all what to think about the player deploying first now getting to choose to go first or second. I have to believe that makes that roll off even more important, possibly too important, but I can’t tell by how much.

Doubles

Doubles games/tournaments are going to require some thought around the new psyker phase. We played that the team rolls 2D6 to set the base pool, adds in their combined mastery levels, and creates one big pool the two players share. An alternative would be to have each player create and use their own pool, but then you need to figure out how the opposing players pair up against that, presumably by just letting them choose. It seemed cleaner though to just have one shared pool. That feels like there could be shenanigans, but not more than usual given how loose the army construction rules are now. The critical tweak is to enforce allies matrix restrictions, which would not have mattered here, Jason only used witchfire spells, but we didn’t think about it.

Bunker Up!

Given the new anything-goes scoring and more robust vehicles, I expect to see Monoliths, Land Raiders, and other heavily armored vehicles to return in popularity for camping out on objectives, in addition to lighter vehicles. The Monolith in particular I think is a revitalized threat given its ability to deep strike directly onto or near an objective to potentially claim or contest it itself, effectively ignore most weapons, shoot at different targets with a bunch of weapons, and portal dudes from all over the place to claim the objective if necessary. Maybe the Blood Angels’ deep striking Land Raiders will also have a bit of a resurgence? In general a lot of vehicles will have to be reevaluated given their newfound scoring abilities.

I’d also expect some renewed interest in Bastions, Bunkers, and such given that units embarked inside buildings explicitly now score. Void Shields also got clarified and buffed in the process, now absorbing the entirety of blasts. A notable real world change is that all of the datasheets are now gone from the main rulebook, so you cannot field an Aegis Defense Line or such without buying Stronghold Assault. That’s unfortunate…

Kingbreakers

My very early initial impression is that this could be a good edition for the Kingbreakers. Looking at the things me or my army are weak against, I don’t think any of them got much stronger, and some got weaker: Assault armies are almost certainly still less strong than shooting, flyers are a little detuned, and kill points games are all but certainly still going to be the minority of missions at most venues. On the flip side, a bunch of my standard army elements picked back up, more toward the 5th edition metagame.

Transports and Bunkers

Drop Pods and Drop Pod armies are baller now: Quadguns and other Skyfire-Interceptors are less able to shoot the guys spilling out; vehicles are a fair bit more resilient; and now they can even claim objectives, let alone contest. Keep in mind, Drop Pods delivering Troops will also gain Objective Secured.

Rhinos and Razorbacks got the same deal on scoring, including Objective Secured for Troops transports, and improved vehicle robustness. I’ve got a whole fleet getting washed & waxed in the Kingbreakers’ garage ready to redeploy and bunker down on some objectives. The only minor cost to that improved resilience is that exploded vehicles don’t create craters anymore, which I made use of quite a bit. My read on that is GW caved to people neither buying craters nor making their own.

Already quickly becoming a regular of the Kingbreakers’ army, the Imperial Bunker got dramatically buffed as well: Void Shields now only take one hit from blast weapons so they’re much better, and dudes can claim or contest objectives from inside their AV14, hard to damage, Void Shielded party house! That’s awesome!

Does not compute!

Does not compute!

Objective Grabbing

Sternguard are now more valuable given that they can score. As such though they might be worth playing a touch more protectively to keep alive into the endgame. Their combi-melta access is also even more important in reliably popping vehicles. That said, I’ll have to think about my usual alpha strike patterns. They’re somewhat less likely to destroy a vehicle now, and thus less likely to easily take a vehicle target as well as claim First Blood.

Dreadnoughts might have a resurgence given that they’re stronger and can claim or contest. I’m thinking about mine a bit more, having not played them at all since 5th edition. They did lose the capability to pivot when shooting but can still overwatch, and a full 360 degrees at that, so I don’t think it’s a huge deal.

Landspeeders also got boosted back up a bit: I’ll still miss rerolling their flamers (lazy Salamanders, get back on it!), but since they also can now potentially score, let alone contest, their high mobility is super valuable provided you can keep them alive. No Objective Secured for these guys, but still a notable threat. Also, Landspeeder Storms: Highly mobile, and potentially able to apply Objective Secured to two objectives using the Scouts as well as the Landspeeder itself. That guy’s definitely getting promoted on my to-do list.

Throughout 6th edition I’ve been back and forth on my Predators, but generally not using them as much as I had in 5th. However, I’ll have to serious reconsider the value of a FA13 vehicle camping out or charging forward now that they score and are less explodable.

Very generally, this edition’s continued focus on objectives combined with the even more wide open scoring rules only increases the importance of having a large number of mobile units. Troops themselves are comparatively downplayed a bit since everyone can score, but still important to enable Objective Secured. Marines play that kind of game well, starting from their solid troops choices, boosted by the mission flexibility of all their infantry being able to break up into combat squads before deployment, and aided by their large selection of transports and other vehicles. They actually have even more flexibility and mobility now than previous incarnations, as the latest codex permits combat squads to embark transports together throughout the game, not just deploying out of Drop Pods.

Drop Pods: Deemed too loyal to be included in the heresy!

Drop Pods: Deemed too loyal to be included in the heresy!

Psykers

It’s going to take a while to figure out exactly what’s up with the new psychic phase—early thoughts are that it’s a bit clunky though not particularly slow playing, and psykers’ strength chaotically variable between useless and crippling—but I’m totally down with fielding Librarians, so within the Marines’ relatively limited abilities I can ride that wave whichever way it goes.

Warlords

So far the only big downside specific to my guys is that the Warlord Traits tables seem much much better this edition: More powerful overall and more evenly balanced inside the tables, there are fewer duds. Combine that with rerolling the trait if you have a battle forged army and they’re looking pretty solid. Vulkan, sadly, has a fixed trait that’s useful but not as good as most of those (+1 to combat results). Especially if Librarians make a comeback I could see swinging the warlord role to Rorschach, and would even consider playing Angholan as a generic captain to get access to those tables.

Summation

A number of those changes I’m either ambivalent about or against. For example, I think it’s good for empty transports and other non-walker vehicles to contest objectives, but it’s a little weird to me that they can claim. Despite my reservations though, a bunch of changes do seem to tilt in the Kingbreakers’ favor. Whether or not they tip in other’s favor more remains to be seen, particularly psychic armies.

Parting Shots

All in all I’m basically neutral on this edition so far, same as I was on 6th. In my mind, two more tiny changes of making traits & powers player selections instead of random rolls, and snap shots being -2 BS instead of rolling 6s, would have made this edition really good. GW though clearly doesn’t value strategy and tactics over randomness. The psychic phase mechanics seem funky but not necessarily outright terrible. Combined with extremely loose army construction rules though the phase almost certainly has a ton of problems, but they seem relatively easy to fix in tournament settings. The real question is how much can be preserved within those fixes, e.g., permitting unbound armies, which I have mixed feelings about.

Again, a few more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Wait, wait, I saw how to deal with this in a movie once! Quick, get some rope!

Wait, wait, I saw how to deal with this in a movie once! Quick, get some rope!

40k: Redcap’s 1000pt Tournament

kingbreakers-iconTen people showed up for Redcap’s May tournament, once again an excellent production. For whatever reason the theme was definitely strife within the Imperium, with Orks and Tyranids making an appearance but everybody else loyalists battling amongst themselves to determine who the Emperor loves most. Even the Sisters came to fight for the title of most blindly dedicated to the empire. Also notably, the overwhelming majority of armies were painted, and most of those pretty well. Full results and armies in play are up on the tournament page on Torrent of Fire. I will say, ToF’s interface remains amazingly terrible, specifically the non-intuitive navigation among pages, but it’s super cool to be able to see details of who played who and so on.

More photos, including other games/armies, are in the Flickr gallery.

It almost killed him, his dad, and even Tom M to get in done in time for Adepticon, but Colin's Blood Angels came out impressively well and superbly retro-40k styled.

It almost killed him, his dad, and even Tom M to get them done in time for Adepticon, but Colin’s Blood Angels came out impressively well and superbly retro-40k styled.

Army

I dropped the Predator and downgraded a Razorback from Thursday’s games to add some bodies and a quadgun:

  • Capt Angholan—Vulkan
  • Ghost Squad Harmon—Sternguard x5 w/ 3x Combi-Meltas, Poweraxe, Drop Pod
  • Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Multimelta, Drop Pod
  • Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Rhino
  • Scouts x5 w/ Camo Cloaks, Sniper Rifles
  • Imperial Bunker w/ Quadgun

Of course, having made that quadgun swap, nobody brought any flyers and only the Tyranids brought a flying monstrous creature…

Sniper Scouts fresh from the training yards infiltrate into position.

Sniper Scouts fresh from the training yards infiltrate into position.

Round 1

First up was John L and his Clan Raukaan Iron Hands Space Marines, fielding something like:

  • Librarian
  • Sternguard x10 w/ 5x Combi-Meltas in Drop Pod
  • Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino
  • Scouts 5x
  • Centurions x3 w/ Grav-Amps
  •  Stalker

The mission was 12″ table edge deployment, Scouring objectives. I went second by choice, both of us picked normal scoring.

Fight

Raukaan Sternguard dropped directly in front of the Kingbreakers’ bunker with massed combi-meltas, an ironic twist for the latter. Those Sternguard had some back and forth about which targets to prioritize—the bunker or the nearby troops—but eventually cracked the bunker open. They were in turn obliterated when Squad Scolirus dropped onto the Kingbreakers’ own base in a dramatic reinforcing action.

Meanwhile, Capt Angholan and the Ghosts claimed first blood by taking out the opposing Stalker on the drop, but were immediately knocked down by the Raukaan Centurions. The Centurions then began a slow march across the bridge dividing the table, a wall of hurricane bolter & grav-amp fire sheltering their advance and withering Kingbreakers all across the board. Kingbreakers Tacticals played a tight game of desperate and decreasing chances to pull off a win by hiding around their now-burning bunker to hold and contest their two home objectives in the endgame, but ultimately the margins grew too thin.

Whoah buddy, watch where you're pointing those things!

Whoah buddy, watch where you’re pointing those things!

Outcome & Analysis

A crushing loss for the Kingbreakers, finally swept off the table in Turn 7, one bonus point earned for John having no elites left.

The huge mistake I made here was underestimating the Centurions. I played John and basically this list plus some flyers and dreadnoughts in the January tournament. In that game the Centurions were very hard to eliminate, but didn’t actually achieve much either. However, that was on the dockyard cathedral board were they had almost no sightlines and I was able to drop all my guys into protective cover right near them before running in Angholan and Scolirus to tie them up (2+/3+ save on the captain) and slowly take them down (powerfist on the sergeant). On this bridge board however, once they got on the bridge they literally had sightlines to every part of the board except the tiny space behind my bunker.

So, in the drop I went for the assured First Blood kill with the Sternguard tagging the Stalker because that secondary is frequently critical, five Sternguard weren’t going to be able to wipe out the Centurions, and from that previous game I wasn’t super worried about them anyway. That was wrong. The Sternguard should have attacked the Centurions. Even if they’d only killed one that would have been a dramatic reduction in their firepower throughout the remainder of the game.

Alternatively, I could have gone for the Rhino with his Tac Squads. I saw that as a much less probable drop to get melta bonuses, but even without that I still would have had a good chance to pop it. Potentially I could even have separated the Sternguard and Angholan to crack it with the Sternguard and then heavy flame the guys inside. It would have been really helpful later to have his troops advancing slower, as well as to prevent him from using that Rhino to block in my own Rhino.

Raukaan and Kingbreakers apparently do not agree on Imperial philosophy.

Raukaan and Kingbreakers apparently do not agree on Imperial philosophy.

Round 2

Next was David H and his Sisters of Battle. I can’t recall when I last played against the Sororitas, so that was pretty cool. He fielded something like:

  • Celestine
  • Inquisitor
  • Battle Sisters x10 w/ Rhino
  • Battle Sisters x5
  • Seraphim x7
  • Dominion Squad x5 w/ Immolator
  • Exorcists x2

The mission was table corners deployment, four Big Guns Never Tire objectives. I went second by David’s choice, both of us picked alternate scoring.

Fight

Kingbreakers Scouts camped out on top of an objective while Tacticals did double duty manning the quadgun and covering another objective by their bunker. In the opposite corner, Exorcists (a scoring unit under Big Guns) attempted to hold down objectives alongside a small squad of Battle Sisters protecting an Inquisitor.

Angholan and the Ghosts tried to drop on the Exorcists but scattered badly, well out of direct contact. Squad Titus advanced quickly along the flank to support them, but was hung up by immobilizing missile fire. Hoofing it on foot, the squad was then raked and decimated by an outflanking Immolator and melta toting Dominions outflanking onto their side. Angholan and Harmon returned the favor, pivoting to wipe out Immolator and Dominions both in assault before switching back to march on and crush the nearest Exorcist.

Situation: Not good.

Situation: Not good.

Directly in the midst of all this, Squad Scolirus dropped onto an objective in the middle of the firefight. One combat squad took up defensive positions on that objective with their multi-melta while Scolirus lead a running gun battle through and under the dockyard ruins against the Sisters and Inquisitor on the other objective. Eventually clearing them off, the remains of Tactical 1 then hunkered down in dense ruins in hopes of outlasting sniping fire from the remaining Exorcist.

On the opposite table edge, the Kingbreakers quadgun immobilized an oncoming Rhino and forced a contingent of Battle Sisters to advance slowly toward their target objectives. Scout Snipers killed Saint Celestine but she resurrected to lead her Seraphim in overwhelming the Kingbreakers’ bunker and cruelly turning the quadgun against the snipers in retribution. Battle Sisters eventually took the bunker objective, but the Sororitas’ advance on the other was halted by a precision multi-melta shot from across the battlefield that put Celestine out for good.

Come down here and fight us!  No thanks!

Come down here and fight us! No thanks!

Outcome & Analysis

Max points for the Kingbreakers, a crushing victory and two bonus points for more secondary objectives (all three) and opponent having no HQs on the table.

One small trouble I had here was that I should have picked the laterally opposite corner with a nice ruin, and placed my fortification better.  As-was, the impassable building in my corner was a touch too high to claim the objective from on top of it so some of my Scouts had to hang out on the ground floor. Similarly, by putting an objective next to that my fortification wound up too close, so my second objective had to go a bit off and some Tacticals similarly had to hang out on the ground floor. When I selected that corner and set the bunker I was thinking in terms of running to claim on Turn 5 as for normal scoring, but I’d opted to go with alternate, per-turn scoring, for this round, so my defensive position was a little more brittle than it should have been.

I thoroughly enjoyed the one point where I had a choice between sniping at the oncoming Battle Sisters to try and pin them, or sniping my own now-vacant quadgun in hopes to sabotage it before the Seraphim could take it over…

Well, that used to be a nice quadgun. *sigh*

Well, that used to be a nice quadgun. *sigh*

Round 3

Finally up was Rob W and his Imperial Guard, forcefully debating which army had the true heroes of the February doubles tournament. He fielded something like:

  • Company Command w/ Officer of the Fleet, Artillery Spotter, Voxcaster, Autocannons
  • Inquisitor w/ 3x Servo Skulls, Liber Hereticus, Powerfist
  • Primaris Psyker
  • Ministorum Priest
  • Platoon Command Squad w/ 4x Flamers
  • Infantry Blob x20 w/ Lascannons
  • Conscripts x30
  • Veterans x10 w/ 3x Plasmaguns
  • Basilisk
  • Aegis Defense Line w/ Quadgun

Mission was 12″ table edges, four Crusade objectives. I went second by Rob’s choice, both of us picked alternate scoring.

Rob placed his two objectives surprisingly far apart, one in his corner artillery encampment as expected, the other near the opposite corner across from my base camp. I chose to deploy my Scouts as normal so that he couldn’t block their infiltration with his servo skulls. They then made a scout move up onto an objective in ruins just outside my deployment zone. This wound up being important as it upped the velocity toward combat on that flank, as well as eventually getting me a critical bonus point for having a troop mid-field.

Come get some.

Come get some.

The blob advances.

The blob advances.

Fight

Supporting the planetary governor to investigate rumors of imminent rebellion, Kingbreakers Scouts had just moved into reconnaissance positions to surveil a huge gathering of Conscripts suspiciously milling about a shadowy Inquisitor, Primaris Psyker, and a Ministorum Priest when they were shocked to see the blob suddenly leap to life and charge at their position under the trio’s raging exhortations! Facing a substantive threat to the Marines’ base camp as well as their own lives, all possible reinforcements were coolly called in as the tremendous volume of lasgun shots forced the Scouts to ground. Captain Angholan and Scolirus’ First Tactical themselves immediately dropped from orbit, bringing the flaming heart of the chapter to burn away the heretics before the psyker theology insurrection could continue. Gouts of flame halved the Conscripts’ numbers and rebuffed their countering assault, while the Kingbreakers’ fire-tempered armor shrugged off the blistering heat of the Platoon Command flamers come to reinforce the felons.

With fire & flame in the Emperor's name.

With fire & flame in the Emperor’s name.

Right back at ya!

Right back at ya!

The forecasted rebellion suddenly under way, the Kingbreakers’ camp found itself under barrage from the local Guard artillery corps. Marines dove for cover in their bunker and surrounding ruins, spooling up their quadgun and krak missiles to take out the Guard’s own anti-air defenses. The skies cleared, Harmon’s Ghosts dropped square into the heart of the traitors’ encampment, taking out the primary artillery before being forced out of the fight by crippling mass shooting surrounding their position.

Meanwhile, Angholan and Squad Scolirus hurled themselves into the Conscripts amid the whirling flames, Angholan bellowing forth challenges to any who would stand against the Emperor. Driven mad by his false visions, the Primaris rallied first but was cut through as quick as air. Stepping into his place, the Priest was similarly slain but not before driving in a near-fatal power blade. Leaping over the bleeding body of his crippled captain, Scolirus met the rogue Inquisitor in mid-strike, powerfist hammering powerfist and blasting both down in the titanic energies unleashed. Their heroes down but the rotten core of the rebellion excised, Tactical 1 redoubled their efforts and eliminated the stragglers before following Sergeant Titus, overdriving his Rhino through the thick of the combat, to take up defensive positions preventing the rebels from claiming their leaders’ bodies for martyrdom.

The Psyker's powers do nothing to stop Angholan's relic blade.

The Psyker’s powers do nothing to stop Angholan’s relic blade.

Titus leaps from his Rhino to halt oncoming traitors.

Titus leaps from his Rhino to halt oncoming traitors.

Outcome

Victory for the Kingbreakers, with a bonus point for having a troop in no-man’s land.

When the blob first started coming at me I was really worried about being swamped through sheer numbers, and it got really close to my forward line very quickly! With all the orders and special dudes going on it also caught me off guard (!) with a bunch of tricks—Scout move, 4+ Invulnerables, Fearless, debuffs on my guys, etc., in addition to then having a couple multi-wound power weapons buried in the blob. Fortunately in deployment I’d put Angholan with Tactical 1 specifically to go flame that blob, and that’s what they did. Flamer overwatch did me a huge service when it took out the whole front rank of the Conscripts, causing them to fail a charge by about half an inch. The Salamanders’ anti-flame buff also negated the Platoon Command flamers. Together that meant the whole squad got to charge rather than be charged in Turn 2, at full strength, and got in two rounds of flaming the blob beforehand.  Following that, neither of us remembered Rob’s maledictions forcing re-rolls on Invulnerable saves for a turn or so, which certainly helped Angholan survive longer.

That said, I’m not sure how much all those specifics mattered. All I really needed to do was tie up the Conscript blob for a while so that objective wasn’t being claimed, with Titus coming forward to claim or contest against the Platoon Command that came in. With that blob blunted Rob didn’t have much that’d be able to cross the board to claim or contest my objectives. The limited sightlines, Scout camo cloaks, and my bunker then basically ensured the large blasts coming down from his Basilisk and artillery officer wouldn’t be able to blast away all three of the troop units I had in my backfield to claim two objectives, particularly with the Sternguard available to most likely take out one or the other of those (the Basilisk in the end). So, this was a tight game of quarter inches and critical rolls, but once that blob wound up in combat back by its own objective I felt I was playing for the victory, and I don’t really see how he could have avoided that combat. Caveat some supremely bad scatter on Angholan and poor luck on run or charge rolls (very short for me and/or very long for him), I don’t think the blob could have kept pressing forward to change that basic calculus of two objectives for me, one for him, and his other contested or unclaimed.

Thwarted again!

Thwarted again!

Tournament Results

All of that was enough to take 2nd place, as I have in each of the three Redcap’s tournaments I’ve played in 2014 (one the doubles tournament teamed with Rob). John L’s Raukaan took top honors, beating my points by exactly that crushing victory in our first round battle. Tom M picked up a nice result, taking third with his Custodes (Grey Knights). Tom also drew the random award for painted armies, so he actually took home the biggest slice of the pot.

General Thoughts

Just a couple general tournament thoughts follow.

Painting

Obviously it’s a comparatively easy target at the 1000 point level, but my impression was that the random painted army award has already motivated quite a bit of activity. There was noticeably significantly more painted dudes around. Lots more players than previously were talking about last ditch efforts to finish up new units, or putting more emphasis in army selection on what they have painted.

You just made my list of things to do today...

You just made my list of things to do today…

The Scouring

Probably the Scouring mission should be tweaked for tournament play. I still got swept by John—after a grueling seven turns!—but it worked out that I had both the 4 point and a 3 point objective in my corner, versus the 8 points available across all four other objectives. An easy fix to this mission would be for players to alternate placing an objective along the centerline of the table, otherwise following the usual rules (6″ from table edges, 12″ from each other). These could also just be fixed at the 1st & 3rd quartiles on the centerline. Then the players alternate placing two objectives each in their deployment zones. A small tweak would be to place one in their own deployment and the second in their opponent’s, Apocalypse style. Then each player makes the obvious roll to determine which objective in their zone is a 3 point, the other being a 2 point. Another random roll is then made to determine which of the centerline objectives is the 4 point, the other being the 1 point.

If both players pick Redcap’s alternate scoring none of that matters as those points are irrelevant. But that’s also unfortunate as it makes the Scouring just a 6-objective mission rather than the actually different structure the variable value objectives give it compared to Crusade and such. In terms of increasing the number of interesting strategic decisions being made, having different missions, and eliminating random advantages (“I picked normal & the 4 pt objective is in my base, excellent!”), for the Scouring you should know which objectives are worth what before selecting normal or alternate scoring. But then scoring selection needs to be moved to just before any deployment, which sounds reasonable to me off the cuff as a general change. Then, of course, the previous about fair Scouring objective placement applies.

Custodes investigate a Chaos shrine.

Custodes investigate a Chaos shrine.

Alternate Scoring

This was my first tournament under Redcap’s new alternate scoring. It actually totally caught me off guard as I forgot about that entirely. In the first mission I picked normal scoring just because I didn’t have time to process what was going on and make an actual decision so I just went with my usual type strategy. With my half-castle and half-alpha strike contest army it would have gone better for me to pick alternate, though that’s not clear given I had the imbalance of valuable objectives.

In general though I think that’s probably true. I have trouble envisioning many armies or strategies that shouldn’t pick alternate scoring as it is currently. This is particularly true without any cap on how many times the objectives can be continually scored, offering a strong potential for that scheme to simply offer more points than the normal scheme. Neither of those is a problem if you’re actually effectively changing the game but leaving in the normal scoring just in case that does work better for someone, which isn’t an unreasonable position. But if the intent is to offer different victory paths than the rules should perhaps be tweaked, though I have to think about it more.

Closing

All in all, once again another excellent tournament at Redcap’s. More photos, including other games/armies, are in the Flickr gallery.

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