Getting Pumped for ADEPTICON! (and some new stuff!)

Hello everyone!

I am getting really REALLY excited for my first Adepticon! I have been not doing much to prepare as most of my models have been done for months. I did some extra dry brush coats and touched up the washes on my warlocks and my beast pack (I am still debating which list to bring...but that's pretty typical for me). I am sort of expecting loads of centurion type star armies to be present (after the big space marine win at TOF invitational) and of course the prevalent love of space marines it seems an easy choice. As well as those kinds of lists I expect a bunch of bike armies but we will see I guess. 

I actually am thinking that many council players will be disappearing in the next few months as centurion death stars with all the inquisition stuff and Imperial Knights give the seer council a rough shake. Anyway I have no plans to abandon my lovely warlocks but I am working to mess around with some other armies (Playing other things has been improving my game play and in game decision making). 

I like the concept of the beast pack as it plays very similar to my council but it suffers less without fortune than the warlocks do. Also I am getting to the point where I think if I want to play my warlocks I should ditch Eldrad for the mobility of the second farseer on the bike. But if I use the beast pack Eldrad fits right in as the whole unit is a bit slower and this means that Eldrad can keep up a bit better (also the huge footprint of the unit means dragging him along is not a huge deal). Anyway I'll be taking some pictures of my models for display board placement choices later today or tomorrow so I will be sure to post those images up here. 

In other news I sold off my imperial guard allied detachment and almost my entire ravenwing/bike army. I then used that cash to start a small Daemon Army! So Ordo-Bob when you read this..I let some of the evil darkness in! So without further ado...here are some pictures of the newest members of my collection!

The Black mace prince! the armor plates are blue with gold trim which will be the main colors of the army. The black maceis a bunch of bits and green stuff all hand molded to create what I think is a cool, big, nasty looking mace for this guy to wield. 

This guy is just a generic Daemon Prince (I call him my Daemon Ork!) he comes with his very own, very bloody sword! Again I did the blue and gold armor plates to try to show some cohesion (my Initial thoughts are that all the Daemon Princes are Company Captains from some as yet to be named traitor chapter.

This is my Axe Prince (another generic Daemon Prince) he again has that same armor plating and his axe is also covered in that new Citadel Blood Effect paint. I'm actually really happy with how the basing came out, I wanted some grass (but not too much as I figure the corrupting presence of the Daemons would probably kill most of the grass. I also bought those black stones a few weeks ago and I had been trying to figure out a way to use them with my Eldar and...that just wasnt working.

Next up we have a heldrake (who doesn't have one right?!) I was a bit nervous to start painting one of these things. It took HOURS like..7-8 hours to do all that trim and it honestly still needs to be touched up. But what ever..its done enough for me. I just need to do his base (I hadn't decided how to do the bases yet when I did him...I actually didn't figure out how to do the bases until yesterday right before bed!)

Lastly is just a picture of all the models i currently have. I am still waiting on Fateweaver to get here (I one on eBay for real cheap so who knows...it might not show up for another few weeks as I think its coming from China or maybe Russia..? Anyway...I have 30 pink (blue) horrors on the far left and next to them is a set of 20 daemonettes. I figure that's probably enough small daemons and the guys behind the black mace prince primed bright blue is a set of 10 cultists. For now I am quite happy with these things as they have been a blast to build and paint. But I don't really know if I will keep this army long term. I got most of these things discounted so I may just paint it all up and eBay after a few RTT's if I don't like the play style.

Anyway..thats all the news I have..as I said I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow of my Eldar armies on the display board. 

Regards,

Farseer Tsarith

Codex: Imperial Knights. is here! Uh oh...

Hello,

So I usually don't bother posting too much about new releases not pertaining to my armies...but I am a bit fearful of the newest thing from Games Workshop. So lets start that from a fluff perspective I love the Imperial Knights. They are fun, exciting, and a cool breadth of fresh air. However...as T.O's look at this new book I hope they will look past the "D weapons will end death stars thought process" because...no they won't. Anyone who thinks that is pretty much a fool...we have had deathstar 40k since I started playing warhammer back in 3rd edition and its not going anywhere. What we WILL HAVE is deathstar 40k + a bunch of imperial knights. So to start...we shall have a sample list I just created which...would be quite rude.

Farseer (shard of anaris, both runes, bike, spear)
Farseer (soulshrive, both runes, bike, spear)
Baron Sathonyx
Beast pack (5 beast masters, 20 kyhmeras, 2 razorwing flocks)
5x3 windrider jetbike squads
1x5 kabalite warrior squad
2x Knight Paladin

So this....This is a pretty standard beast-star list which literally lost nothing except it exchanged its old heavy support units for 2 Imperial Knights...so you come across this army..which was already nearly un-killable and quite annoying except now the OTHER deathstars which did at least provide counters for it are no longer even a concern...because you simply throw a Knight into the other deathstar and even if the other deathstar kills your Knight...when the Knight explodes it will take out most of the that death-star with it. So given that example I am sure you readers can all come up with other silly lists that also abuse this new detachment (I cant wait to see the space marine centurion death stars taking an Imperial Knight as well) All we are doing by using this new "codex" is forcing all the players to go out and buy 1-3 Knights...It won't change anything. We will still be playing death-star 40k...so honestly I suggest we just leave the Imperial Knight Codex at home...the codex doesn't need to be banned...that's wrong..simply continue with what we are doing at events and say, "No units with D-Weapons are allowed." But if we allow un-restricted use of this new unit then I do think it would be unfair to continue disallowing the usage of other Titans and such. Personally I think Codex: Imperial Knights should be reserved for events that use Escalation and Stronghold Assault. It really isn't that the unit itself is too crazy strong...it just seems dumb to me that the already very powerful armies get these things...and the other weak armies get nothing.

Another silly list:
Farseer (shard of anaris, both runes, bike, spear)
Farseer (both runes, bike, spear)
Baron Sathonyx
8x warlocks on bikes (2x spears)
4x3 windrider bike squads
1x5 kabalite warrior squad
2x Knight Paladin

Or how about:

Iron Hands:
Chapter master (bike, shield eternal, thunder hammer, artificer armor)
2x5 scouts
1x4Centurion Devastators (grav cannons, sergeant with twin linked las and omniscope)
Ultramarine allies:
Tigurius
1x5 scouts
Inquisition Allies:
Coteaz
Xenos Inquisitor (rad grenades, psychotroke grenades, liber heresius, 3x servo skulls)
Imperial Knight Allies:
2xKnight Paladin

So...I'd like to know how the addition of this extra detachment changes deathstar 40k..? I mean you send your Knights into your opponents knights...abuse charging through cover rules to keep your deathstar from getting really charged by the enemy knights...and then use your deathstar to kill the meager amount of other stuff your opponent has...I like the Knights I really do...I just don't see how they solve any problems..I think they merely continue to aggravate an already bad situation. It just seems like the already annoying abusive armies will just take them (I know I probably will go pick up a pair of them if I get the green light from a few major events).

Anyway..I am sure I will post up more thoughts in the next week or so...but I want to close with this.

I really do like that Games Workshop is giving us so much more to play with...but just as the warmachine community does for competitive play...we can as a community continue to allow/disallow on an event by event basis whatever we want. Just because GW says you CAN use something, does not mean you HAVE to use it.

-Farseer Tsarith

(PS I am sure those are not the MOST abusive lists they are just what I came up with after my first look through of the codex, I have not compared the two Knight variants much I just picked the more expensive one for my theory lists)

Torrent of Fire Invitational! Results! Yay!

 Hello,

So the Torrent of Fire Invitational is over and the results are in! I am happy to inform any loyal readers that I performed better than I expected (although not quite what I had hoped!). You can check out the results here: torrentoffire.com and the direct link to the article is: http://www.torrentoffire.com/3755/thats-the-chicago-way-tim-gorhams-the-champion.

Anyway so the event itself was a very well run, the missions were a nice mix of east coast, west coast, and adepticon style missions. The first round was the primer mission 1 which was created by Mike Brandt and honestly although it is a hard mission, it is well designed. More missions like this would be great! I also really enjoyed the pre-brackets, it added another layer of tactics as I thought about my potential match-ups but it also removed some stress as I was able to focus on my likely early round matches instead of it just being a complete and utter mystery. So all in all, it a was a great event which I hope I will be invited to again next year. Great job Chip and the Torrent of Fire crew!

So I didnt take too many pictures so I think I can run through each game pretty quick to give a recap of my experience:

All of the lists for players can be found: http://www.torrentoffire.com/tof_inv

So I wont go into too much detail but I will summarize the lists and highlight major things from the games.

Game 1:
TJ Meyers running a Tau/Space Marine/Inquisition
Farsight
Ovesa
Sha'vastos (puretide, vectored retro, shield generator)
riptide w/ talisman of arthas malach, target lock
5x1 crisis suits w/ 2x flamers
1x3 crisis suit w/ 2x flamers each
skyray
broadsides w/ high yield missiles
Tigurius
1x5 scouts
thunderfire
xenos inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls

My powers:
Eldrad: death mission, executioner, eldritch storm, guide
Shardseer: executioner, mind war, guide
Warlord trait:I got scoring! (this was clutch for this game to be honest)

So not rolling fortune game one...rather sucked but it was interesting, of the 4 people running some form of seer council only ONE PERSON rolled fortune in round one! But oh well. Anyway TJ and I both flopped big time on turn one shooting, but in turn two I managed to remove the broadsides with my riptide (if I recall correctly I killed 1 of them and then the other 2 ran off the table). Other than that I hid from him for most of the game and scored points each turn (this was mission primer one so I was able to score 1 point each turn I held an objective and with a scoring warlord it was not hard to get a minimum of 2 points a turn) and put all my focus toward killing his small crisis suit teams. Something that really helped was honestly that in total both of our shooting was terrible. But it hurt TJ more than me since as a tau primary...shooting is mostly all the army has. In any case the highlight was my one jetbike who was shot by the thunderfire cannon in every turn of the game and still surived to the end, making 2-3 armor saves a turn.

On turn 6 TJ and I ended up having our death stars do some battle in the mid-field which looked like this:

So the game ended with me scoring 10 points and winning by a small margin. It was a super tight game and it could have easily gone much better for TJ if the shooting phases had been a bit more lucrative.

Game 2:

Simon Leen running Sisters of Battle/Inquisition

His army was mostly MSU it had something like:

Cannoness

2x5 Sisters of battle troop squads with lots of flamers inside rhino's

3x5 dominion sister units w/ 5 melta guns each inside immolators w/ twin linked multi-meltas

3x exorcists

coteaz

xenos inquisitor w/ rad grenades, liber heresius (lets his unit scout)

a big deathcult deathstar in a landraider crusader

2x3 acolyte units

My powers:

Eldrad: mind war, fortune, misfortune, perfect timing

Farseer: guide, perfect timing, prescience

(these powers are soooo much better than last time!)

Simon was rolling off a victory over Tony Kopach running his version of the seer council with wave serpent support. When I rolled fortune he looked less than optimistic but he did go first and made a solid attempt at crippling me. However this event was very well terrain-ed so I was able to hide my council and ended up just having my bastion blown up turn 1. Afterward I shot forward with my powered up council and ate the landraider crusader, the deathcults, and the dominion squads. After that it was pretty much just a game running around and killing the remaining units. The game ended with a victory for the seer council some maxed out battle points!

Game 3:

Tim Gorham running Iron Hands/Ultramarines/Inquisition

2 beefy biker lords

a grav centurion squad

tigurius

coteaz

xenos inquisitor w/ all the grenades

2x stalkers

2x5 scouts

1x5 legion of the damned unit w/ plasma

2x3 acolytes in razorbacks

My powers:

Eldrad: mind war executioner, fortune, prescience

Farseer: Guide, scriers gaze, misfortune 

Tim played a decent game and had some luck early on which helped him greatly. Turn one (he went first) he moved forward and dropped the two orbital bombardments on my council, i spaced pretty well so he only got 2-3 hits on either one but he put 1 right on top of the shardseer who promptly failed 2/3 look out sirs and then failed an invulnerable save and died (this gave Tim first blood and warlord in one swoop which actually won him the game). Other than that we moved around our deathstars fought, I probably should have played it cagey and just hung back all game but if his deathstar had broken, my farseer had not died turn one, or if I could have gotten a big hit and run move off his unit, then I most likely could have done much better. I will need to watch iron hands players in the future, I recall that during the game some feel no pains were taken on a 5+ (most likely IF this happened it was 100% accidental/heat of the moment/excitement induced). It is an easy mistake to make IF it happened. In any case the lesson for me is to pay take a closer look at the space marine codex and make sure I know everything about my opponents rules. Congrats to Tim on a well fought victory, he won the game 10-9. Hopefully I'll get a rematch at Adepticon this year!

Game 4:

Brad Nichols Tau/Tau

Primary Tau 

Commander, 2 melta, target lock, vectored thrusters, iridium armor, 

puretide, 2 shield drones 

Commander, flamer, vectored thrusters, command node, sensor suite, drone 

controller, 2 marker drones 

Riptide, Ion, melta, interceptor 

10 kroot 

2x6 fire warriors 

Skyray, smart missiles, blacksun 

Longstrike, submunitions, 2 seeker missiles, sensor spines, smart missiles 

3 broadsides, high yield missiles, 3 target locks, 6 missile drones 

Ally Farsight 

Ethereal 

Riptide, Ion, melta, interceptor, talisman, earth caste 

3 crisis suites, 2 missile pods and target locks each, bonding knives, 6 

marker drones 

My powers:

Eldrad: Executioner, death mission, doom, fortune

Farseer: Perfect timing, prescience, guide

I went first and it kind of went down hill for brad from there. We discussed after the game that honestly in order for his style list to have a solid chance he needed to either go first or have me roll crummy powers. But this was by far the most fun game I had. Brad and I did some wonky stuff (he had a fire warrior ride around on a skyray all game which just didnt want to die!) Also he still made a game of it, he kept me from getting the relic for 4 turns with some oddly resiliant kroot and I think I lost about half my windriders to dangerous tests! We ended on turn 5 after Eldrad force weaponed his third riptide! (Yeah we had one of them come back to life to try for some redemption). I won the game with full points which put me in second place right behind Sean Nayden for the most battle points of the potential 4-1 players and the third place "Battle Master" prize.

Game 5:

Paul Murphy Space Marines/Space Wolves

Chapter master on bike with lots of wargear

Khan on bike

bike command squad w/ 4x grav gun and apothecary

2x10 tactical squad in rhino's

2x stalkers

wolf lord on wolf w/ saga of bear and lots of wargear

runepriest on bike w/ 2+ armor

1x5 grey hunter pack in rhino

My powers:

Eldrad: Fortune, perfect timing, prescience, guide

Farseer: Death mission, prescience, perfect timing

The game went pretty quick. He scouted forward...I seized...I killed some stuff. Our deathstars went through 3 rounds of combat which involved lots of hit and running. Eventually he had a terrible round of saves in which I inflicted maybe...12-15 wounds? He rolled probably 7-8 1's which killed off wolf lord, chapter master, rune priest, and most of the bikes. The game was pretty much over after that.

I took a full point win which ended me with 70 total battle points which carried me to victory for the 4-1 battle master award! I received a medal (you can watch myself and the other winners getting our awards here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU9t72xzntw&feature=youtu.be) and $100 cash. It was a great weekend!

-Farseer Tsarith

A picture of the army and the cool medal that Torrent of Fire gave the winners!