Hello all,
So I played in the local Huzzah Hobbies RTT (got to birdux.blogspot.com for more info on date/time/place) and it was an interesting jump into 7th. I have since the book came out played a few dozen games (yes I have been QUITE BUSY!) and as with most people I like the edition overall. I dislike the psychic phase (I think its dumb and bla bla bla, no reason to harp on this as this is what we have and I don't believe in making changes to the book and it is far too integrated to really ban in any sensible way).
Anyways...
So this RTT allowed us to try out 2 CAD (combined arms detachments) but limited every player to two sources per list (so 2 CAD, 1 CAD and an ally detachment, 1 CAD and inquistion, etc etc etc). So of course I jumped on the chance and played this:
Farseer w/ bike
Farseer w/ bike, spear
Farseer w/ bike, spear
Baharroth
9x warlock w/ bikes and 2x spears
4x3 windrider bikes w/ 1 shuriken cannon each
2x wraithknight
1x6 swooping hawk
So the game plan was...roll for fortune or invis (if I played against someone with natural ignore cover (serpents, guard, etc etc) and then roll on whatever is needed. Warlocks would roll a few times on runes of battle and then 4-6 warlocks on malefic daemonology each game. So in 2/3 of games I got fortune and/or invis (the first game I rolled terribly) and 1-2 warlocks got possession and some other goodies. Every game turn 1 I turned a warlock into a Lord of Change (LoC) and he flew around doing more summons while my wraithknights and council did work. The strategy actually was pretty good, but round 2 I ran into 5 imperial knights (a match ive only theorized and never played) and got beaten pretty badly. My wraithknights performed horribly that game, which is unusual as they usually do well vs imperial knights. So I ended up 2-1 for the event but I did beat a droppod space marine army round 1 (17 objective secured units and 22 scoring units i believe) and I beat a draigowing player in game 3 pretty handily due to my very mobile army.
Deny the witch is soooo random by the way. I had many times throwing 15-16 dice hoping for just 1-2 6's and still you cant fail. I know those charts are apps are all over the place (hell I did the math for the Torrent of Fire power app) and still it can be surprising how difficult it is to block a power. I think that is the true weakness of 7th edition psykers, one turn you get everything off no problems, the next turn everything fails. Yes that happened in old editions but with a prevalence of LD 10 it was rare. Most games you would only see 1-2 powers fail to go off. Now you could easily see 1-2 turns where most powers fail to go off or are blocked by denial dice. Also the crazy amount of dice needed to have decent odds means that most armies going all into the psychic phase don't really have a shooting phase. Yes your opponent might summon 500ish points of stuff...but if you then kill that 500ish points you have actually more than leveled the playing field as the stuff that those daemon armies have..its not good at much else besides summoning. Then if in a good turn you kill the summoned stuff AND some actual stuff..well you can actually quite easily do near catastrophic damage to most summoning armies with a few well placed shots (example: opponent has 3-5 units of 11-16 man horror units...kill a few horrors in each unit and you drop their army by 3-10 warp charges, which a shooty army can easily do in a single turn).
I think that double CAD is really no worse than what we get with normal lists but I can see plenty of places keeping the old 6th edition limit of 1 CAD and some other detachment type for the second source. That is fine by me as honestly I would like to run a third wraithknight and if I lose baharroth, a farseer, and the hawks I get just enough space for this:
Farseer w/ bike
Farseer w/ bike, spear
Baron Sathonyx
9x warlock w/ bikes and 2x spears
1x5 kabbalite warriors
5x3 windrider bikes
3x wraithknight
Now that...that looks fun! I have come to realize that I just really really like wraithknights. I know they have bad match ups (venoms...mass str7 can take them down too) but they are fun and assaulty and tough! Which is fun for eldar. My other possible list I am looking at in a world that dissallows two CAD's is something like:
Autarch
1x5 fire dragons in a serpent w/ scatter laser, ghostwalk, shuriken cannon
4x5 dire avengers in a serpent w/ scatter laser, ghostwalk, shuriken cannon
3x wraithknight
It has lots of firepower, good ways to kill high AV, can easily kill low AV, and infantry. But it is 100% empty on the psychic phase which...I am not sure about. It should be fine as the loads of shooting and assault power in the serpents and the wraithknights should kill tons of stuff and dissuade things from coming near me. I don't know though, I love playing a seer council but...it would be nice to have 8 objective secured units in my army!
In any case none of these lists require me to buy anything new (I just have to build/paint that third wraithknight, but that should only take a day or so). Hopefully I'll start getting some games in with these two lists and I can decide if this really is the way I want to go. I know most people love hawks and I agree they are amazing, but sadly whenever I bring them..they never seem to really do what I need them to do. Hence why I am leaning toward just taking what I know and love (wraithknights and warlocks :D).
On another note, I spent a number of games trying to use a beastpack with 5 spiritseers and Eldrad...it works well..but I actually just think the seer council ends up performing better in many match ups now. Anyway I will probably discuss the beastpack more next week.
Regards,
-Tsarith
Welcome,
I am Farseer Tsarith and I have been playing Warhammer 40k for about 14 years. I play in most of the major events in and around the DC area and I frequent Huzzah Hobbies in Sterling, VA. My main passion is my Eldar force which I have been growing since the tail end of 3rd edition. I generally post about events I will be attending, upcoming DC area events, my event results, and of course sometimes just my random thoughts and musings.
-Farseer Tsarith
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
7th edition early games etc...
So I played a game today with a friend and we tried out some more of the new edition fun stuff.
He played a daemon army using:
3 FMC Tzeentch princes
lord of change
4x heralds of tzeentch
3x11 pink horrors
I played:
Eldrad
5xSpiritseer
5x3 windrider bikes
2x wraithknights
Baron Sathonyx
1x5 kabbalite warriors in a venom w/ night shield, grisly trophies, and an extra splinter cannon
5x beastmaster w/ 20x khymerae, 2x razorwing flock
We played a big guns never tire mission, had 4 objectives, used dawn of war deployment, and night fight.
I won the roll to go first (thanks to the bonus from Baron as usual!) so I set up first and then redeployed with Eldrad and chose to still go first as well. To preface the game, we used ALOT of terrain and we had 4 12x12inch based ruins that we called the whole thing the new kind of ruin so just touching the base gave you the lovely 4+ cover save. We also used two large forests which we used the new GW forest so it still granted a 5+ cover for being in it. Lastly we used two large hills which we called difficult terrain on top so they would grant a 6+ cover for standing on top and as a hill it would give a 5+ if it obscured you. (If any of these terrain ruling seem wrong please comment!)
So we have two armies here with LOADS of psychic potential. The daemon army clocks in at 30 warp charges and my eldar army starts with 14. So I am severely outclassed in total casting power right off the bat. We both rolled for lots of telepathy and daemonology powers. I used spiritseers to roll on telepathy until i rolled an invisibility (I got it on the 5th roll and then I rolled straight daemonology stuff) I got 2 possessions on spirit seers, an incursion, and I ended up with 3 spiritseers with the summoning. Eldrad rolled on runes of fate and got crap powers...so he didnt do much all game. My daemon opponent had a solid mix of all the daemonology powers and he also had an invisibility and a smattering of biomancy powers (one endurance I believe).
I am not going to go into extensive details of the game itself as we only played 3 turns (we spent alot of time discussing rules and making sure we did everything as close to right as possible, so we wasted ALOT of time) but I don't actually think the game takes longer to play than before. What I mean is that although we have an extra phase...those players who used psykers before already had that phase it was just split between shooting and beginning of turn casting. So for me (I have been playing seer councils...) it is not a huge extra time sink. If anything its actually nice to have all the powers happen at once in such a clearly structured way.
So we had some interesting situations arise. The first to discuss is that denying powers is hard. Sometimes it feels damn near impossible. But thats not a bad thing IMO. The reason is that in 6th edition unless you played space wolves you flat out period, could do NOTHING about my casting blessings and as Torrent of Fire was kind enough to share, I had about a 90ish% chance to cast my power. In most cases now I have found that honestly, I fail powers. Several times I tossed 6-7 dice at a warp charge 2 power and failed. I also had a number of times I failed to cast a daemonology power and suffered a perils for my trouble. Rolling 8 dice, getting all 1's, 2's, and 3's is rather sad. But it happens! I also had an instance in my game where on turn 2 my spiritseer turned into a lord of change and then on turn 3 I had forgotten about the "One Eye Open" rule and I ended up rolling a 1 for my Lord of Change so he sat and did nothing all turn. I doubt many players will make that error, but sometimes you cant avoid it. If you are using these new powers and you are not daemons then at times you will just scatter badly and then you will have to take those checks.
I also came to the conclusion that windrider jetbikes are very good at killing pink horrors :D I had 3 units go over and kill 11 pink horrors and 2 heralds of tzeentch between shooting and charging. Now what was a bit annoying was that we both had invisible units. Two invisible units fighting it out in close combat is a bit silly. So in some regards this kind of match up is just about who gets their powers off. But that is more our fault as players. We both chose to bring this style of list. I actually feel we had some really cool psychic battles going. Now I have yet to really try a game using my psychic style list vs a non psyker oriented army. I fear it will feel one sided, but I am also a bit fearful that honestly that army might slaughter everything else in my army other than my one beefed up psychic unit.
So I look forward to more test games with this edition. On a side note has anyone considered this:
So due to come the apocolypse allies you cannot deploy within 12 inches. When you deepstrike you are told to "deploy your models" but you have to per the daemonology tree deepstrike within 6-12 inches (power depending)...but being unable to deploy like this does not cause a mishap. So if you summon...does this mean you cant summon unless you scatter out? Or is this some sort of accidental error? I am (for now) assuming that I can summon freely and just suffer the One Eye Open rule if on my next turn I am still within 6 inches of those units. The reason being is that this specific (not allowed to deploy) is not listed as a thing that can cause a mishap. Also my view is that the not allowed to deploy statement is meant in reference to beginning the game. I see how I could be wrong..but again then it seems odd as it is impossible for anyone but Daemons or CSM to use the conjuration powers. If that is the case...then that does seem a bit unfair if only those two armies can use those powers.
Thats all I have so far guys...
-Farseer Tsarith
He played a daemon army using:
3 FMC Tzeentch princes
lord of change
4x heralds of tzeentch
3x11 pink horrors
I played:
Eldrad
5xSpiritseer
5x3 windrider bikes
2x wraithknights
Baron Sathonyx
1x5 kabbalite warriors in a venom w/ night shield, grisly trophies, and an extra splinter cannon
5x beastmaster w/ 20x khymerae, 2x razorwing flock
We played a big guns never tire mission, had 4 objectives, used dawn of war deployment, and night fight.
I won the roll to go first (thanks to the bonus from Baron as usual!) so I set up first and then redeployed with Eldrad and chose to still go first as well. To preface the game, we used ALOT of terrain and we had 4 12x12inch based ruins that we called the whole thing the new kind of ruin so just touching the base gave you the lovely 4+ cover save. We also used two large forests which we used the new GW forest so it still granted a 5+ cover for being in it. Lastly we used two large hills which we called difficult terrain on top so they would grant a 6+ cover for standing on top and as a hill it would give a 5+ if it obscured you. (If any of these terrain ruling seem wrong please comment!)
So we have two armies here with LOADS of psychic potential. The daemon army clocks in at 30 warp charges and my eldar army starts with 14. So I am severely outclassed in total casting power right off the bat. We both rolled for lots of telepathy and daemonology powers. I used spiritseers to roll on telepathy until i rolled an invisibility (I got it on the 5th roll and then I rolled straight daemonology stuff) I got 2 possessions on spirit seers, an incursion, and I ended up with 3 spiritseers with the summoning. Eldrad rolled on runes of fate and got crap powers...so he didnt do much all game. My daemon opponent had a solid mix of all the daemonology powers and he also had an invisibility and a smattering of biomancy powers (one endurance I believe).
I am not going to go into extensive details of the game itself as we only played 3 turns (we spent alot of time discussing rules and making sure we did everything as close to right as possible, so we wasted ALOT of time) but I don't actually think the game takes longer to play than before. What I mean is that although we have an extra phase...those players who used psykers before already had that phase it was just split between shooting and beginning of turn casting. So for me (I have been playing seer councils...) it is not a huge extra time sink. If anything its actually nice to have all the powers happen at once in such a clearly structured way.
So we had some interesting situations arise. The first to discuss is that denying powers is hard. Sometimes it feels damn near impossible. But thats not a bad thing IMO. The reason is that in 6th edition unless you played space wolves you flat out period, could do NOTHING about my casting blessings and as Torrent of Fire was kind enough to share, I had about a 90ish% chance to cast my power. In most cases now I have found that honestly, I fail powers. Several times I tossed 6-7 dice at a warp charge 2 power and failed. I also had a number of times I failed to cast a daemonology power and suffered a perils for my trouble. Rolling 8 dice, getting all 1's, 2's, and 3's is rather sad. But it happens! I also had an instance in my game where on turn 2 my spiritseer turned into a lord of change and then on turn 3 I had forgotten about the "One Eye Open" rule and I ended up rolling a 1 for my Lord of Change so he sat and did nothing all turn. I doubt many players will make that error, but sometimes you cant avoid it. If you are using these new powers and you are not daemons then at times you will just scatter badly and then you will have to take those checks.
I also came to the conclusion that windrider jetbikes are very good at killing pink horrors :D I had 3 units go over and kill 11 pink horrors and 2 heralds of tzeentch between shooting and charging. Now what was a bit annoying was that we both had invisible units. Two invisible units fighting it out in close combat is a bit silly. So in some regards this kind of match up is just about who gets their powers off. But that is more our fault as players. We both chose to bring this style of list. I actually feel we had some really cool psychic battles going. Now I have yet to really try a game using my psychic style list vs a non psyker oriented army. I fear it will feel one sided, but I am also a bit fearful that honestly that army might slaughter everything else in my army other than my one beefed up psychic unit.
So I look forward to more test games with this edition. On a side note has anyone considered this:
So due to come the apocolypse allies you cannot deploy within 12 inches. When you deepstrike you are told to "deploy your models" but you have to per the daemonology tree deepstrike within 6-12 inches (power depending)...but being unable to deploy like this does not cause a mishap. So if you summon...does this mean you cant summon unless you scatter out? Or is this some sort of accidental error? I am (for now) assuming that I can summon freely and just suffer the One Eye Open rule if on my next turn I am still within 6 inches of those units. The reason being is that this specific (not allowed to deploy) is not listed as a thing that can cause a mishap. Also my view is that the not allowed to deploy statement is meant in reference to beginning the game. I see how I could be wrong..but again then it seems odd as it is impossible for anyone but Daemons or CSM to use the conjuration powers. If that is the case...then that does seem a bit unfair if only those two armies can use those powers.
Thats all I have so far guys...
-Farseer Tsarith
Thursday, May 22, 2014
7th Edition impending in 24 hours....
!?!?! 7th Edition!?
So tomorrow afternoon/evening many people will have hands on the new rule book. I know so far we have loads of confirmed rumors and even pictures of books from notable names such as Kirby over at 3++. But I will be holding most of my thoughts close to the chest until I have looked at the book with my own eyes (hopefully tomorrow afternoon).
However looking at what is confirmed so far...
It seems that psychic armies will be even more of the hotness, well at least those psychic armies with access to loads of psychic units and more than a few mastery level 3 units (Daemons and Eldar?). It sort of seems that we will have basically Eldar and Daemons taking psykers and few other races will bother as they will just see their powers constantly denied unless of course some mechanic for limiting the amount of dice you can use to deny powers comes into play. However given how many books are out there already and that NO ONE has said anything about something like that...I am assuming that there will just be "have" and "have nots" as far as powers go.
I am happy about how battle forged troops will get benefits to scoring (uncontestable accept by other troops or units with objective secured) but it will be nice that if all my troops are killed I can potentially score with my non troop choices as well. I also particularly like what I have read a few times about FMC's not being able to score while swooping (I am not sure if this was debunked or is confirmed it was just something I remember reading on the many sites I frequent). But I do personally think that FMC based armies needed a bit of a nerf as far as how easy it was to bully an opponent with 4-5 flying 300 point monsters. I think the power inherent in playing tons of them (loads of mastery level dice) and the addition of the daemonology tree (summoning....) should balance that out for those players so they wont feel their army got nerfed to death...it is more changing. Honestly I think it might be even more powerful than before it will just play differently. I expect Belakor will be making more appearances since invisibility is pretty boss now (consider putting it on an FMC who switches modes so it still can only be snap fired at accept....skyfire wont matter as far as shooting at that particular guy). But all of those kinds of wonky strategy will be quite risky assuming the psychic phase happens after moving...well you have to decide if you want to drop out of flight mode and risk failing that crucial psychic power.
I am expecting that my style lists (Eldar Seer Council and Eldar/Dark Eldar Beast Pack) will remain strong if not gain a bit of strength as the armies that I will now fear are an even smaller pool (just other equally psychic beefy armies). And things like O'Vesa Star are effectively dead (no joining FMC's with IC's should kill that list nicely, although Tau will still be strong, riptides are quite powerful even if they dont get loads of special rules).
I sure am glad I built/painted those Daemon prince's a few weeks ago...I forsee them getting alot of play time in the future.
Well thats all I have for now..but I expect I will be posting again in a few days once I have my book!
-Farseer Tsarith
So tomorrow afternoon/evening many people will have hands on the new rule book. I know so far we have loads of confirmed rumors and even pictures of books from notable names such as Kirby over at 3++. But I will be holding most of my thoughts close to the chest until I have looked at the book with my own eyes (hopefully tomorrow afternoon).
However looking at what is confirmed so far...
It seems that psychic armies will be even more of the hotness, well at least those psychic armies with access to loads of psychic units and more than a few mastery level 3 units (Daemons and Eldar?). It sort of seems that we will have basically Eldar and Daemons taking psykers and few other races will bother as they will just see their powers constantly denied unless of course some mechanic for limiting the amount of dice you can use to deny powers comes into play. However given how many books are out there already and that NO ONE has said anything about something like that...I am assuming that there will just be "have" and "have nots" as far as powers go.
I am happy about how battle forged troops will get benefits to scoring (uncontestable accept by other troops or units with objective secured) but it will be nice that if all my troops are killed I can potentially score with my non troop choices as well. I also particularly like what I have read a few times about FMC's not being able to score while swooping (I am not sure if this was debunked or is confirmed it was just something I remember reading on the many sites I frequent). But I do personally think that FMC based armies needed a bit of a nerf as far as how easy it was to bully an opponent with 4-5 flying 300 point monsters. I think the power inherent in playing tons of them (loads of mastery level dice) and the addition of the daemonology tree (summoning....) should balance that out for those players so they wont feel their army got nerfed to death...it is more changing. Honestly I think it might be even more powerful than before it will just play differently. I expect Belakor will be making more appearances since invisibility is pretty boss now (consider putting it on an FMC who switches modes so it still can only be snap fired at accept....skyfire wont matter as far as shooting at that particular guy). But all of those kinds of wonky strategy will be quite risky assuming the psychic phase happens after moving...well you have to decide if you want to drop out of flight mode and risk failing that crucial psychic power.
I am expecting that my style lists (Eldar Seer Council and Eldar/Dark Eldar Beast Pack) will remain strong if not gain a bit of strength as the armies that I will now fear are an even smaller pool (just other equally psychic beefy armies). And things like O'Vesa Star are effectively dead (no joining FMC's with IC's should kill that list nicely, although Tau will still be strong, riptides are quite powerful even if they dont get loads of special rules).
I sure am glad I built/painted those Daemon prince's a few weeks ago...I forsee them getting alot of play time in the future.
Well thats all I have for now..but I expect I will be posting again in a few days once I have my book!
-Farseer Tsarith
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
So...Kill Team!?
So I had the pleasure of playing Kill Team a few days ago...it's pretty fun. It plays very much like War Machine but you get to use all of your cool 40k models. I have only managed to win 2 games thus far, but it is cool. A run down for those who don't know the basics:
-The game size is limited to 200 points
-You may not take anything with a save better than a 3+ and no model can have more than 3 wounds
-Your army is composed of up to: 2 troops, 1 elite, 1 fast attack
-No flyers
-No reserves of any kind except for outflank
-Everything scores (even vehicles!) unless it specifically says it does not (example death company)
-You play on a 4x4 table
You get to select 3 guys to be "specialists" meaning they get to pick a special rule from a table. You also nominate one guy to be the "leader" who gets to roll for a leader trait each game.
In the game every model acts independently so units that naturally are of size 1+ are great as you can just buy the 1 guy. Things like guardian squads are iffy as they come stock standard with 10 guys...but each guy alone is less than spectacular. Anyone some early lists I have been playing with:
Dark Eldar:
3x trueborn w/ 2x splinter cannon and a blaster in a venom
1x beastmaster w/ 5x khymerae
This list worked alright, although I have found that space marines are just the fucking shit at this game. As expected a guy in power armor functions in this game much like how they did back in the hay day of 40k. The lack of 2+ saves and the fact that power weapons and low ap guns are fairly rare makes having that best of saves really really nice. Also space marines naturally have loads of special rules (sterngard...jump packs) etc etc.
So with that in mind I played against my brother wielding this list:
Raven Guard:
5x assault marines w/ 2x flamers
5x scouts w/ a melta bomb in a land speeder storm
In almost all of our games he was able to crush me due to his entire army having combinations of infiltrate, scout, and outflank. Outflank is retarded good in this game. As each model acts independently they come in on their own and with the smaller table size and moving 12 inches...assault marines are just really really good. With the basic marine kit (grenades, bolt pistol, close combat weapon) they can threaten just about anything and with the alpha strike they do really really well.
So...the list I finally managed to win with is similar but I used Dark Angels.
Dark Angels:
3x black knight
5x scouts w/ a heavy bolter
Basically I went second so my outflankers out flanked his outflankers and used their plasma talons to rip apart the assault marines.
I highly recommend anyone who plays 40k to pick up this little book from GW as its a cool fun game. It also only takes about...20 minutes to learn the rules if you already play 40k and each game takes 20-30 minutes tops to play.
In other news I am working on painting up more of my Tau stuff to help me combat the new Astra Militarum book...which is pretty freaking awesome. You can cram something like 33+ las cannons into a single list...and with easy access to prescience and ignore cover orders..you should wreck most things. I will need to play test more against this new threat before I can determine if my warlocks and/or my beast pack can handle them.
So in closing... TRY KILL TEAM! It's alot of fun and it is a nice quick game to play when you don't have the time or drive to play a full game of 40k.
-Farseer Tsarith
-The game size is limited to 200 points
-You may not take anything with a save better than a 3+ and no model can have more than 3 wounds
-Your army is composed of up to: 2 troops, 1 elite, 1 fast attack
-No flyers
-No reserves of any kind except for outflank
-Everything scores (even vehicles!) unless it specifically says it does not (example death company)
-You play on a 4x4 table
You get to select 3 guys to be "specialists" meaning they get to pick a special rule from a table. You also nominate one guy to be the "leader" who gets to roll for a leader trait each game.
In the game every model acts independently so units that naturally are of size 1+ are great as you can just buy the 1 guy. Things like guardian squads are iffy as they come stock standard with 10 guys...but each guy alone is less than spectacular. Anyone some early lists I have been playing with:
Dark Eldar:
3x trueborn w/ 2x splinter cannon and a blaster in a venom
1x beastmaster w/ 5x khymerae
This list worked alright, although I have found that space marines are just the fucking shit at this game. As expected a guy in power armor functions in this game much like how they did back in the hay day of 40k. The lack of 2+ saves and the fact that power weapons and low ap guns are fairly rare makes having that best of saves really really nice. Also space marines naturally have loads of special rules (sterngard...jump packs) etc etc.
So with that in mind I played against my brother wielding this list:
Raven Guard:
5x assault marines w/ 2x flamers
5x scouts w/ a melta bomb in a land speeder storm
In almost all of our games he was able to crush me due to his entire army having combinations of infiltrate, scout, and outflank. Outflank is retarded good in this game. As each model acts independently they come in on their own and with the smaller table size and moving 12 inches...assault marines are just really really good. With the basic marine kit (grenades, bolt pistol, close combat weapon) they can threaten just about anything and with the alpha strike they do really really well.
So...the list I finally managed to win with is similar but I used Dark Angels.
Dark Angels:
3x black knight
5x scouts w/ a heavy bolter
Basically I went second so my outflankers out flanked his outflankers and used their plasma talons to rip apart the assault marines.
I highly recommend anyone who plays 40k to pick up this little book from GW as its a cool fun game. It also only takes about...20 minutes to learn the rules if you already play 40k and each game takes 20-30 minutes tops to play.
In other news I am working on painting up more of my Tau stuff to help me combat the new Astra Militarum book...which is pretty freaking awesome. You can cram something like 33+ las cannons into a single list...and with easy access to prescience and ignore cover orders..you should wreck most things. I will need to play test more against this new threat before I can determine if my warlocks and/or my beast pack can handle them.
So in closing... TRY KILL TEAM! It's alot of fun and it is a nice quick game to play when you don't have the time or drive to play a full game of 40k.
-Farseer Tsarith
Monday, April 14, 2014
De La Warr!!! Asymmetrical Missions!? Results?!
Hello,
It has been a crazy two weeks with Adepticon last week and the De La Warr Open this past weekend. I attended both and as I mentioned I did decently well at Adepticon last week and again I think I performed quite well at the De La Warr Open. So to start this event utilized all of the new asymmetrical missions that Mike Brandt and the other TO's have been working on (the goal of these missions being to allow the weaker army builds (non death stars!) to excel). I honestly think that the goal was pretty successful, yes a death star did win the Best General Prize, but battle master was won by a non death star list (it was actually a fluffy Ravenwing army piloted by Matt Defranza). There were also a number of Daemon FMC armies in attendance, actually none other than Justin Cook (the NOVA GT winner) was running Nick Nanavatis Adepticon army which did JUST LAST WEEK win Adepticon. So these missions are very complicated and need a bit more refinement in the wording still but I highly recommend using them, they can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XJ20WB96DzRE635aokDX3XbhOHzw4Xt0UobUZ5j56JM/pub
So the games:
I was running my exact Adepticon list:
Shard Seer (warlord)
Eldrad
Baron
Beast pack (20x khymerae, 2x razorwing flock, 5x beast master)
1x5 kabalite warriors
4x3 windrider squads
2x wraithknights
sky shield landing pad
2x6 swooping hawks
inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls
My first game was against:
a fairly old fashioned Draigo-wing army.
Lord Draigo
Coteaz
10x paladin w/ 4x psy cannons, apoth, some halbards, and some swords.
1x1 paladin (scoring unit obvi)
3x3 henchmen units
1x10 interceptor squad
dreadknight w/ flamer and teleporter
ordo xenos inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls and liber heresius
The game:
I got solid powers (that means fortune and invisibility wooohoooo)
It turns out the invisibility was clutch for the game as it basically neutralized any shooting he could have done to me and it crippled his combat power. The game was pretty much my beast pack fighting his paladin unit in the center of the table for 8 rounds of combat with me slowly wearing him down and my hawks and wraithknights running around killing everything else. It would have been much more difficult but I was able to kill the dreadknight turn 1 due to it failing 4/8 armor saves. The army is actually pretty solid if only those pesky tau riptides didnt exist (they really do a number on paladins). But over all it was fun, my opponent was friendly and we had a good time. I made baron do a cool epic challenge with draigo in the bottom of turn 6 or 7 which was legend....wait for it....DARY LEGENDARY! Anyway I advanced to round two with a full 15 points from round 1.
Game 2:
This round I played a well known GT winner Matt Defranza (he is most well known for his very powerful seer council list which he plays quite well). But for this event he was running his Ravenguard which he has been running on and off to my knowledge at his local game store but this was its first appearance at a GT. Anyway I again received decent enough powers. This game was the relic or you could do turn by turn objectives (every turn you hold it you get a point etc etc). I chose the relic and he chose the turn by turn objective as his army was well suited for board control. He had:
Shrike
command squad in drop pod w/ 5x melta
2x10 scouts
4x10 tactical marines in rhinos w/ melta gun, multi melta, combi melta, melta bomb
10x assault marines w/ melta bomb
2x thunder fire cannon
He combat squad-ed the whole army and rushed his rhinos forward to block me from grabbing the relic early. I mitigated round one shooting by hiding under my sky shield. Sadly he got a bit out of whack and thought my beast pack scored this round so he hesitated on the mid field and i was able to get my pack all over the objective and start killing rhinos and marines. If he had realized it didn't score a turn sooner he could have just dumped 40 marines on top of it which at the least could have kept me off it until turn 4-5 which would have let him get enough ahead on points so it wouldn't matter if I picked up the relic. In the end I won 11-10 (mostly because I got line breaker and he did not).
Game 3:
This round was straight kill points and I was playing against NOVA local Brad Voorhees and his Ovesa Star list. I have actually played and beaten Brad before but this time would be different.
Brad's list:
Farsight
buff commander (no hit and run, this confused me and ultimately tempted me to make a huge fatal error, so good job brad)
O' Vesa
heavy burst cannon riptide
2x ion accel rip tides
1x6 fire warriors
1x3 suits with flamers
4x1 suits (half of them had flamers)
3x sky ray
inquisitor w/ servo skulls
I did well early by killing all the sky rays and getting a riptide. I should have backed off after that (note I did not roll fortune this game, this was probably the only game I actually NEEDED to have it...so boo for me i suppose) anyway I would have actually been fine if I'd done that. I could have drawn brad back onto my side and used characters to soak some damage. But I got greedy and thought I could catch Ovesa who was without hit and run. This led to a 2 turn chase in which I skipped out on 3 easy kill points and let brad pummel me with fire power. The lesson is to keep the focus on the mission and especially in these new missions, 1-2 tactical errors will lead to a quick defeat. I ended up losing but Brad only got 5 points off of the game so I did manage to really keep him from pulling ahead of me battle points wise.
Game 4:
This game was against a space marine/dark angel army consisting of:
Beat face chapter master
1x10 tactical squad in a rhino
2x5 tactical squad in a rhino
2x5 scouts (one of these was the dark angel troop choice)
2x2 attack bike squads
2x5 devastators w/ las cannons
thunder fire cannon
Ravenwing command squad
Dark Angel Libby on a bike
I pretty crappy powers but I did manage to swing fortune on the last roll...so that was nice i suppose. Our HQ's all met in the middle of the table round 1...bounced off each other and then I spent about 2 turns killing the bike command squad and the chapter master. While my beast pack dealt with that my wraithknights ran up the other flank and killed off the thunder fire and the devastator squads. At the end of 4 my opponent conceded and we took an early lunch. I proceeded to round 5 with a total of 41 battle points and a 3-1 record.
Game 5:
At this point the event only had one 4-0 player (TJ Meyers and his O'Vesa army). He ended up playing Matt Defranza. There game basically was set up like thus, if TJ beat Matt then TJ would be the Best General. If Matt Beat TJ and got a decent amount of points he would win Best General purely on Battle points. If the pummeled eachother and neither got a load of points I would actually have jumped ahead and even with my loss to Brad win the whole shebang.
My opponent played:
Wolves and Tau
Logan Grimnar
2x rune priest
1x wolf priest
3x7 wolf guard in drop pods lots of combi plasma and combi flamers
Cadre fire blade
riptide w/ ion accel
12x fire warriors
3x broadsides
I ended up winning by a small margin and adding another 12 battle points to bring my total up to 53 battle points and a 4-1 record. TJ won his game and claimed the Best General Prize with a total of 53 battle points and a 5-0 record. He received a huge amount of Ork models (pretty much a decent sized army) and the coveted NOVA Invitational ticket. Matt Defranza ended up with the most battle points at I believe 57 (that was a with a 3-2 record). I think that right there shows some good missions with a ton of victory paths. He was able to to LOSE TWO GAMES and still even in defeat in some of the missions you can score 12-15 points. Congratulations to him and the large amount of Imperial Guard he received. I ended up winning Best Overall/Renaissances Man which awarded me approx 325 of Space Marine loot and the NOVA Invitational Alternate Ticket.
It has been a crazy two weeks with Adepticon last week and the De La Warr Open this past weekend. I attended both and as I mentioned I did decently well at Adepticon last week and again I think I performed quite well at the De La Warr Open. So to start this event utilized all of the new asymmetrical missions that Mike Brandt and the other TO's have been working on (the goal of these missions being to allow the weaker army builds (non death stars!) to excel). I honestly think that the goal was pretty successful, yes a death star did win the Best General Prize, but battle master was won by a non death star list (it was actually a fluffy Ravenwing army piloted by Matt Defranza). There were also a number of Daemon FMC armies in attendance, actually none other than Justin Cook (the NOVA GT winner) was running Nick Nanavatis Adepticon army which did JUST LAST WEEK win Adepticon. So these missions are very complicated and need a bit more refinement in the wording still but I highly recommend using them, they can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XJ20WB96DzRE635aokDX3XbhOHzw4Xt0UobUZ5j56JM/pub
So the games:
I was running my exact Adepticon list:
Shard Seer (warlord)
Eldrad
Baron
Beast pack (20x khymerae, 2x razorwing flock, 5x beast master)
1x5 kabalite warriors
4x3 windrider squads
2x wraithknights
sky shield landing pad
2x6 swooping hawks
inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls
My first game was against:
a fairly old fashioned Draigo-wing army.
Lord Draigo
Coteaz
10x paladin w/ 4x psy cannons, apoth, some halbards, and some swords.
1x1 paladin (scoring unit obvi)
3x3 henchmen units
1x10 interceptor squad
dreadknight w/ flamer and teleporter
ordo xenos inquisitor w/ 3x servo skulls and liber heresius
The game:
I got solid powers (that means fortune and invisibility wooohoooo)
It turns out the invisibility was clutch for the game as it basically neutralized any shooting he could have done to me and it crippled his combat power. The game was pretty much my beast pack fighting his paladin unit in the center of the table for 8 rounds of combat with me slowly wearing him down and my hawks and wraithknights running around killing everything else. It would have been much more difficult but I was able to kill the dreadknight turn 1 due to it failing 4/8 armor saves. The army is actually pretty solid if only those pesky tau riptides didnt exist (they really do a number on paladins). But over all it was fun, my opponent was friendly and we had a good time. I made baron do a cool epic challenge with draigo in the bottom of turn 6 or 7 which was legend....wait for it....DARY LEGENDARY! Anyway I advanced to round two with a full 15 points from round 1.
Game 2:
This round I played a well known GT winner Matt Defranza (he is most well known for his very powerful seer council list which he plays quite well). But for this event he was running his Ravenguard which he has been running on and off to my knowledge at his local game store but this was its first appearance at a GT. Anyway I again received decent enough powers. This game was the relic or you could do turn by turn objectives (every turn you hold it you get a point etc etc). I chose the relic and he chose the turn by turn objective as his army was well suited for board control. He had:
Shrike
command squad in drop pod w/ 5x melta
2x10 scouts
4x10 tactical marines in rhinos w/ melta gun, multi melta, combi melta, melta bomb
10x assault marines w/ melta bomb
2x thunder fire cannon
He combat squad-ed the whole army and rushed his rhinos forward to block me from grabbing the relic early. I mitigated round one shooting by hiding under my sky shield. Sadly he got a bit out of whack and thought my beast pack scored this round so he hesitated on the mid field and i was able to get my pack all over the objective and start killing rhinos and marines. If he had realized it didn't score a turn sooner he could have just dumped 40 marines on top of it which at the least could have kept me off it until turn 4-5 which would have let him get enough ahead on points so it wouldn't matter if I picked up the relic. In the end I won 11-10 (mostly because I got line breaker and he did not).
Game 3:
This round was straight kill points and I was playing against NOVA local Brad Voorhees and his Ovesa Star list. I have actually played and beaten Brad before but this time would be different.
Brad's list:
Farsight
buff commander (no hit and run, this confused me and ultimately tempted me to make a huge fatal error, so good job brad)
O' Vesa
heavy burst cannon riptide
2x ion accel rip tides
1x6 fire warriors
1x3 suits with flamers
4x1 suits (half of them had flamers)
3x sky ray
inquisitor w/ servo skulls
I did well early by killing all the sky rays and getting a riptide. I should have backed off after that (note I did not roll fortune this game, this was probably the only game I actually NEEDED to have it...so boo for me i suppose) anyway I would have actually been fine if I'd done that. I could have drawn brad back onto my side and used characters to soak some damage. But I got greedy and thought I could catch Ovesa who was without hit and run. This led to a 2 turn chase in which I skipped out on 3 easy kill points and let brad pummel me with fire power. The lesson is to keep the focus on the mission and especially in these new missions, 1-2 tactical errors will lead to a quick defeat. I ended up losing but Brad only got 5 points off of the game so I did manage to really keep him from pulling ahead of me battle points wise.
Game 4:
This game was against a space marine/dark angel army consisting of:
Beat face chapter master
1x10 tactical squad in a rhino
2x5 tactical squad in a rhino
2x5 scouts (one of these was the dark angel troop choice)
2x2 attack bike squads
2x5 devastators w/ las cannons
thunder fire cannon
Ravenwing command squad
Dark Angel Libby on a bike
I pretty crappy powers but I did manage to swing fortune on the last roll...so that was nice i suppose. Our HQ's all met in the middle of the table round 1...bounced off each other and then I spent about 2 turns killing the bike command squad and the chapter master. While my beast pack dealt with that my wraithknights ran up the other flank and killed off the thunder fire and the devastator squads. At the end of 4 my opponent conceded and we took an early lunch. I proceeded to round 5 with a total of 41 battle points and a 3-1 record.
Game 5:
At this point the event only had one 4-0 player (TJ Meyers and his O'Vesa army). He ended up playing Matt Defranza. There game basically was set up like thus, if TJ beat Matt then TJ would be the Best General. If Matt Beat TJ and got a decent amount of points he would win Best General purely on Battle points. If the pummeled eachother and neither got a load of points I would actually have jumped ahead and even with my loss to Brad win the whole shebang.
My opponent played:
Wolves and Tau
Logan Grimnar
2x rune priest
1x wolf priest
3x7 wolf guard in drop pods lots of combi plasma and combi flamers
Cadre fire blade
riptide w/ ion accel
12x fire warriors
3x broadsides
I ended up winning by a small margin and adding another 12 battle points to bring my total up to 53 battle points and a 4-1 record. TJ won his game and claimed the Best General Prize with a total of 53 battle points and a 5-0 record. He received a huge amount of Ork models (pretty much a decent sized army) and the coveted NOVA Invitational ticket. Matt Defranza ended up with the most battle points at I believe 57 (that was a with a 3-2 record). I think that right there shows some good missions with a ton of victory paths. He was able to to LOSE TWO GAMES and still even in defeat in some of the missions you can score 12-15 points. Congratulations to him and the large amount of Imperial Guard he received. I ended up winning Best Overall/Renaissances Man which awarded me approx 325 of Space Marine loot and the NOVA Invitational Alternate Ticket.
A picture of my prizes!
So over-all it was a great event and I hope to attend it again next year. The Icehouse Warriors put on a great event and it was a blast.
-Farseer Tsarith
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Adepticon Results! Best Xenos!!
Hello,
I just got back from Adepticon last night (I left after the GT as I was not participating in the Team Event). It was a blast and I will post up some more information about my games later this week. But the long story short is that I did quite well day 1. I went 4-0 and achieved my goal of making it into the top 16 (huge achievement for my FIRST Adepticon!) I also won Best Xenos Showing for day 1 and I was third overall (just a few points shy of best overall actually!). Anyway my good friend Robert Tilly went on to beat me pretty soundly game one of day 2 and then he went all the way to the top two and was defeated by none other than Nick Nanavati who can now claim to have won Adepticon two years running. So overall Adepticon was a great experience and I think I will probably try to attend next year. I want to shout out to my great opponents who tolerated my silly deathstar list and were even kind enough to give me some good sportsmanship points! So without further ado thanks to Curtis Kamitski (playing Dark Eldar/Eldar), Nick
Rose (playing Eldar), Matt Root (playing Necrons), and Jonathan Willingham (playing Tau). I will post up some battle details in a week or two when I get some more time but all 4 of those games were tough solid games against some very strong opponents.
Thanks for a great first Adepticon guys!
-Farseer Tsarith
I just got back from Adepticon last night (I left after the GT as I was not participating in the Team Event). It was a blast and I will post up some more information about my games later this week. But the long story short is that I did quite well day 1. I went 4-0 and achieved my goal of making it into the top 16 (huge achievement for my FIRST Adepticon!) I also won Best Xenos Showing for day 1 and I was third overall (just a few points shy of best overall actually!). Anyway my good friend Robert Tilly went on to beat me pretty soundly game one of day 2 and then he went all the way to the top two and was defeated by none other than Nick Nanavati who can now claim to have won Adepticon two years running. So overall Adepticon was a great experience and I think I will probably try to attend next year. I want to shout out to my great opponents who tolerated my silly deathstar list and were even kind enough to give me some good sportsmanship points! So without further ado thanks to Curtis Kamitski (playing Dark Eldar/Eldar), Nick
Rose (playing Eldar), Matt Root (playing Necrons), and Jonathan Willingham (playing Tau). I will post up some battle details in a week or two when I get some more time but all 4 of those games were tough solid games against some very strong opponents.
Thanks for a great first Adepticon guys!
-Farseer Tsarith
Saturday, March 29, 2014
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
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