Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Citadel Tools are a rip off - See why



So apparently I lied, this blogpost is not about the team tourney, that'll have to be the next one. Mark brought this blog to my attention and I just wanted to spread the word. This basically breaks down why the citadel toolkit is a waste of money, and what the comparable price is on the market, as it were.

http://tomschadleminiatures.blogspot.com/2014/04/games-workshop-has-recently-advertised.html

I think it's worth spreading, maybe someone at the GW headquarters will read it, and realize their stuff isn't making sense.

Encourage everyone to go take a read.


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Adepticon - The GT 2014 Recap

Greets all,


To get it out of the way, I think the new IG book is fantastic, and barring some future ork release before NOVA, I anticipate the player/list that wins nova will use IG in some form.

Our next RTT at Huzzah will be May 18th, 1850, we will be using NOVA missions. If you want an idea in your head, look at the Delewar missions.

Let me say straight out, I'm very proud of Matt S who won Best Xenos for the GT, and Rob T, who got 2nd placed (second in command award) at the GT. These guys played super well and it was really well deserved. So all of you coming to our RTT's, that's the caliber of players we have! Come practice, take advantage of playing against them and learning from them, and get your skills up!


So, a bit delayed by a few weeks, but here in is my recap of my Adepticon 2014 GT adventures. Next post will detail the team tourney. Let me say in advance, obviously this was a few weeks ago, try to forgive inconsistencies. I probably made some mistakes, but the overall flow of the game is more or less correct.
I'll update/attach pictures when I get home tonight

We drove out to adepticon, made good time and arrived there just in time for dinner with buddies at Rockbottom. The breakfast burger there is AmAZING! Went to bed on time to make sure we were all prepared for the GT the next day, and amazingly, not drunk/hungover! (not yet!)

Then, disaster, a friend of mine who will remain anonymous forgot a significant portion of his Adepticon army. Rather than see him not play, I volunteered the use of my models to supplement his army, and I opted to play my necrons we had brought for my Adepticon Team Tourney team.

So my list for the GT, instead of my classic spawntide, became.

Zandrak, Obryn, Destroyer Lord w/ mindshackle / sept weave
4x5 warriors w/ night scythes
2x5 wraiths
1x3 spyders
1x1 Annihilation barge
1x3 scarabs


This turned out to be a pretty good list, and gave me the tools I needed to handle the armies I came up against.

Round 1 -Space marines with dark angel allies

Killpoint - 5 Objectives -  Dawn of War

So his list was interesting, a mish-mash of allied units from DA, and I give big props for him being ballsy enough to bring it to the event. He was also a really nice guy, and we had a good game, lots of laughter and shenigans.

Several meltagun tactical squads w/ 2 assault cannon razorbacks -
Librarian
Vulkan
Sternguard x 7 in drop pod
Legion of the damned w/ melta / mm / grav gun
Dark Angels flyer
T-fire
Those deepstriky assault terminators dark angels get

Dreadnought w/ flamer + MM in drop pod.

Something like that.

So this game, I almost ended up losing due to a bit of the old overconfidence. My opponent had first go, and deployed his tactical squads and razorbacks board middle on his side in terrain. I hid my spyderstar / annihilation barge / scarabs behind a los blocker and decided to simply wait out his turn of shooting then move forward.

Turn 1
 His dreadnought + drop podding vulkan/sternguard landed next to my spyderstar. The meltaguns blew up my annihilation barge.  The T-fire missed.  I opted to be cheeky and use zandraks deployment ability to have my wraith squads deep strike in in his face. This pretty much backfired as he cut them down without taking any real losses. Their only accomplishments were blowing up his two razorbacks before dying.. and I guess soaking up firepower, that wouldn't have been able to shoot at anything else anyways.

My spyderstar assaulted the drop pod / dreadnought and wiped them out for first blood. Scarabs ran out and helped kill a drop pod. Wraiths kill the two razorbacks. One of the two wraith squads multi-assaults a tactical squad with its razorback. This ends up being being a losing fight.

Turn 2
Libby misfortunes the wraiths in combat with the tactical squad. His terminators deepstrike in next to the spyderstar and shoot them a bit. Sternguard takes shots at the free wraith squad. Legion of the damned arrive and all but finish the wraith squad the sternguard shot at. His flyer comes on and shoots the crap out of some wraiths but they boss their saves.


3 Night scythes come in and shoot at tactical squads / his flyer but don't cause many casualties. The flyer loses 2 hullpoints and a gun but is otherwise unaffected. Spyderstar multi-assaults terminators and sternguard squad, a few sternguard die but that's the only tangible result. My solo wraith assaults the legion of the damned squad- makes it to combat but does nothing, so we hang out. Scarabs attempt to go places and do things, but fail.
Combat between spyderstar / terminators / sternguard / vulkan drags on.

Turn 3 
His flyer opts to be cheeky and fly off the board. The libby re-ups the misfortune on the wraiths, and a tact squad is making a run for my board side objective. The T-fire in this turn manages to get several S5 ignore cover hits on my scarabs, wiping them all out. The solo wraith in combat with the legion of the damned dies.
Combat between spyderstar / terminators / sternguard / vulkan drag but now a terminator has died (so 4 left) and all the sternguard are dead, but Vulkan lives
My remaining night scythe comes on, and shoots at the libby's tactical squad killing a few guys. Two other night scythes fly over and kill the t-fire. The 4th night scythe tries to help kill the libby's tactical squad but basically does nothing. Oh - I guess they do something, I manage to kill one of my own wraiths due to arcing and misfortune., so I got that going for me.
Combat between spyderstar / terminators / sternguard drags on, vulkan dies after taking a load of AP2 wounds. Now.. just 4 fearless terminators to contend with. At this point, I was afraid I'd never escape the combat, b/c i forgot I could simply teleport out of it. More wraiths die.

Turn 4
His tactical squad running across the board now basically has my objective, woo. He blows up one of my night scythes somehow I think. My wraiths in combat all die. Legion of the damned advance to board middle to be mischievous. His flyer comes on and does.. something? I don't remember. The spyerstar finally crushes the terminators in combat in a furious round, but only just barely.

All my flyers zip off.. The spyder star deepstrikes right in front of his army, ready to multi-assault and wipe it all out next turn. EXCEPT the destroy lord, who breaks off to go deal with those cheeky rebels, err tactical squad guys who snuck into my backfield objective. This he does somewhat admirably, and by that, I mean he actually kills 2 in combat, they run and get away. My walk on squad has come on near the objective he was attempting to hold with the tact squad, but their shooting only kills a tact marine.

Turn 5
His flyer / rallied tactical squad shoots at my destroyer lord a ton, causing him to die. But he by some miracle he gets back up. The libby misfortunes my spyderstar, and I think I deny it. The legion of the damned move to shoot / assault the spyderstar, they'll need an 11, and they get it! The rest of his tactical squads shoot at my spyderstar ineffectually. The legion gives me two wounds on a spyder though. In close combat, the legion guys all die except for one guy. Boo.

My turn, all my night scythes fly on, drop troops onto two objectives to ensure a win (as he currently has two, one with a tact squad by itself that the wraiths failed to kill, the other with the libby's squad). The walking squad moves onto their objective.  I use one night scythe to try and kill his flyer, and it passes, no joke, 5 penetrating jink rolls. 5. 5!! We both just kinda looked at each other and laughed our asses off. He was  promptly nominated as an honorary Daemon player. So the spyderstar finished off the lone legion of the damned guy and moved into position to assault for turn 6. I kill off the tact squad that was trying to hold my objective, and my other shooting blasted his non libby tact squad on the objective down to just 2-3 guys, and that was the turn.

So I'm holding objectives 3-2 and KP is 10-4 in my favor, so I think I've pretty much got this thing wrapped up. I've gotten warlord and linebreaker.
We roll to see if it continues, of course, it does!

Turn 6 and 7 just basically involved me trying to kill the his flyer, the spyderstar finished off his remaining ground forces. So natural end turn 7, with time left in the round.


Round 2 - Eldarrrrrr - 
2x Dire avengers in wave serpents
1x wraithguard w/ spirit seer w/ wave serpent
2x wraithknight
Warp spyders
Large jetbike squad w/ cannons + farseer on jetbike
some smaller jetbike squads.


This gentleman was on the Sons of Shatner adepticon team.

So this mission was interesting. Instead of objectives, you had to capture terrain pieces. In order to score/deny them, the entire squad had to be completely inside the terrain piece. The secondary objective was relic. Vanguard deployment.

So he went first, so that was good. He deployed everything more or less along his board middle after correctly assessing he had nothing to worry about from my shooting turn 1. I had a weirdish large catcus to block los in my corner, and a bridge thing. So I deployed the spyderstar, some scarabs, and the annihilation barge.behind these.

Turn 1

He moves forward and shoots at the annihilation barge / scarabs a bunch.

I aggressively deepstrike my spyder star and misshap.. oh noes =( Was placed into ongoing reserves, so I guess that's ok.? I think the annihilation barge shoots a wave serpent and does a lot of damage.

Turn 2
He moves his stuff board center more, tries to finish off the scarabs and annihilation barge. He's successful in killing barge, not all the scarabs though. All his reserves are now on and hiding.

I deepstrike the spyders in essentially the same place - His backfield. This time they stick. 3 of my night scythes come on. I use them to crack open a wave serpent, badly damage the other one, and I think killed some jetbikes and mauled dire avengers.

Turn 3

He finishes off the scarabs and uses his wave serpents + warp spyders to drop a flyer, and damage another one. Most of his army is sitting on or near the relic in board middle. There are some dire avengers which were running, and continue to run off the board.

My 5 man warrior squad advances onto the board as dead men walking. I put them on aggressively and use them to hose a squad of guardian jetbikes. My spyderstar advances into the board middle hoping for a multi-charge off onto a wraith knight and the wraithguards wave serpent, both of these fail. I spray things with night scythe fire but its not super effective. Also my wraiths came in, which I deepstruck board middle, then had to /pray they'd live.

Turn 4
This turn might as well be called, they all die horribly. Because that's pretttty much what happened. Two wraithknights and the warp spyders double team a wraith squad eliminating them. The other squad is decimated by wave serpents and jetbikes. Crucially, my dead men walking are ignored, completely. Though the warp spyders bounce to set up for the next turn to take them out. The spyderstar gets shot at a little bit by the wraithguard who have now disembarked and moved into a piece of terrain next to the relic to hold it

I break the destroyer lord off to go chase down the fleeing dire avengers, I did not want to risk them rallying as they were still about 25%.The spyderstar sat on top of the relic after crunching the wave serpent belonging to the wraithguard. My night scythes buzz around and are killing his troops.

Turn 5
Also known as the turn I stopped getting my ass handed to me.
It was clear to both of us that the relic was not going to be had by either side. It came down to those crucial objective/terrain thingies. He consolidates his remaining two troops into terrain, this was the jetbike squad w/ the farseer, and the wraithguard. His wraithknights went after the spyderstar, killing them all in combo with the wraithguard. Zanny and Obyn hop back up though thanks to the rez orb. Then the part that changed the whole game, his warpspyders go after my dead men walking, and completely wiff it. No problem says the warp spyders, w're 2 inches away, we'll just assault the bastids. It's 7 warp spyders vs. 4 necron warriors, what can go wrong? Lets try, completly going insane in combat, winning it, then running down the fleeing warp spyders.

Yes, that was a thing, it happened, and it stunned us both.

That turn I deepstruck zanny/oby into the farseers piece of terrain in an attempt to contest it but rolled to far. That's ok, because I was able to drop off two other squads from night scythes and was now winning 3-2. I needed the game to end so badly it hurt, but ... it didnt!

Turn 6

Farseer tries to go kill zanny and oby, epic wiffing by the farseer, but she takes two wounds. The wraithknights move into two of the three pieces of terrain I am holding to contest them. The wraithguard try to decide if its worth going for the relic, but decide not to. Jetbikes / wraithknights shoot at my 5 man squad in a ruin which is uncontested, they go to ground and boss it.

I deepstrike zanny /oby into the terrain held by the wraithguard, I scatter off, but not by much so am sitting half in half out. My night scythes try to kill the now 3-4 jetbikes holding the terrain, but fail miserably.

So bottom of 6, I'm still holding 3-2,  i neeeeed it to end. It doesn't.

Turn 7

Zanny and oby are mutilated by the wraithguard, but luckily zanny stands back up, and now he's in terrain. woo. That one's contested! Thennn he gets assaulted, but, he holds his own! Yay! Wraithknights + jetbikes again shoot at the single squad standing uncontested. I opt not to go to ground this time, knowing what's coming next. Luckily i pass my saves. Then, as I thought, his farseer turbo-boosts into that terrain to contest it. He cleverly places the farseer out of LOS from any night scythes. If I don't kill the farseer, he will win on secondaries (first blood), as no one has warlord, and both have linebreaker.
 2 things need to go right for me here, zanny needs to not die in combat, or if he does, he needs to get back up, and i need to kill the farseer. Not looking good for me, not going to lie.

Magic moment, 4 necron warriors line up, they all double tap. 5 wounds. Not bad for 4 warriors. He fails 3, 2 more than what was needed.

I GOT IT! wooo.

Then zanny lives. Magic.

Thus concludes a super rough game. 

So a very close win for me.

Round 3 Tau
Broadside's with lots of drones
60+ kroot
3x riptide
Etherreal
Buffcommander
2x skyray


I played Jon Willingham, who was very proud of his ETC.  Also at this point, tired of being sober while playing 40k, I had started drinking a... a bit, shall we say. Long island anyone?

So, hammer and anvil.

He had first go, set up all his guys pretty far forward to maximize range, pretty much knowing I'd want to hide from him. Infiltrated 2x 20 of the kroot to set up 18 inches away to shoot me turn 1.

I deployed the spyderstar in the far corner, along with scarabs. All else in reserve. In hindsight, should have deployed the barge to give him more to shoot at and menace the kroots.

Turn 1
He shot me a lot and killed all but one scarab base.

I deepstruck forward right behind his broadsides.

Turn 2

His reserves came on - and this is where I fucked up, because i used zandrak's counter-deployment thing to bring on my wraiths and deepstrike them right around my spyderstar. The problem was, I kindaa maybe let him move his shit after I brought the wraiths on. Which is not how its supposed to be order of operation wise. So that, that hurt me a lot. It let a lot more kroot double / triple tap wraiths. Then he shot the piss out of me. Killed one wraith squad, and all but 1 of the other. I lost a spyder, and wounds on the destroyer lord.

Turn 2, I assaulted the broadsides, sucked at it, killed a single broadside, he hit and run away, and that was game.

Seriously. Full stop, it was over. My 4 night scythes, assuming they lived through 3 skyfiring ion/fusion and burst/SMS riptides, plus a ton of broadsides, have no way to kill that many kroot.

So that was it. The game basically ended / was lost based on my deepstrike position of the wraiths.

So, heres a question that came up. He was using the ethereals power to fire extra shots with all his kroots. To do this, he'd only have a single model from the squad in range of the ethereals aura, but used this to let all of the kroot including those out of range get the extra shots. If i had been a lot less drunk, I probably would have investigated this a bit better in game time, rather than just being super stunned / unchallenging. That, and the redeploy thing, oh well.


So since this game, I've had a ton of GT players tell me both ways on this rule, is it simply model by model, or is it an entire squad if a single models in range? I want to know for future games, and because it was such a devastating impact on this game I wasn't prepared for. In conjunction with me letting him redeploy his reserves location on the board edge, that extra firepower made all the difference between the wraiths living and dying.... So, Internet, answer my question! Did he do it right? or wrong? I seriously don't know.  I probably should.

**EDIT**

I stopped being lazy and went to go look it up. The exact text is.. "


 
The Ethereal, and all friendly non-vehicle models from this codex in units within 12", benefit from the effects of the elemental power.... "


Debate away


 
So, then I went to the bar there with several friends and indulged in some relaxing beverage.



Round 4 Space Marines with space wolf allies

Objectives - Kill points, Dawn of war - Big guns never tire - Middle objective is worth 2 of the corner objectives.

I played a British guy, whoooo I think gave me a bad sports rating. Which is fair, I was drunk, said a lot of stupid shit, and was probably irritating / annoying. Nothing mean mind you, just, retarded. Also I think it was pretty clear I was heavily intoxicated, so that might have hedged his expectations to simply roll over me, especially after round 1, read below!

So what did he have. SM Biker grav gun spam! 
3 or 4 squads of grav gun bikes
Super beefy chapter master with all the good stuff
1x Tactical squad in a rhino for some reason
1 or 2 rune priests on bikes
Grey hunters on foot w/ missiles or something
Storm talons x2?
t-fire x2 ?

So, he had first go, deployed all his bikes centrally, and his rhino squad off to one side.. I hid my spyderstar, wraiths, in the corner on the same side as the rhino behind some terrain along with the annihilation barge. This was purposeful, I was basically doing a - come at me bro -. And he def did.
Scouted right at me.

Turn 1
He came at me hard,. Pretty much killed all but 3 of my wraiths, and I think killed a spyder. The annihilation barge died. Luckily I denied the witch to his jaws.. or woo.. that woulda been bad.

So I moved out, and assaulted his bike star. I assumed I'd do pretty well with all the AP2 attacks I have, andddd I was completely and utterly wrong. My spyderstar bounced off of him, and he just kept adding wounds to my stuff.

So if I'm him, bottom of turn 1, he's killed something like 60% of my ground components and only lost I think a single bike in return. I imagine he was highly optimistic.

Turn 2

The bikers continue to ravage my stuff, all my wraiths die, and in combat the wounds start to pile up on zandrak. His stormtalons stay off I think

Then, my night scythes come on, as does the scarabs which hide far away. The night scythes go and kill a t-fire, as well as blowing up the rhino with the tac squad inside. yay me. Combat continues to suck for me and zandrak is now about to die.
  
Turn 3

His stormtalons come on and try to blow up my night scythes, and I think wiff awfully. Combat continues and zandrak bites it. Oby now only has a wound left, so its time to cut my losses and run. His ground forces fire at my stuff.

I teleport out of the combat next to his remaining t-fire which is on the complete opposite side of the board. Only two models make this trip, oby, and a spyder with all its wounds. Everything else died. My nightscythes smoke his storm talons, and lay down some fire on the now free bikes. Scarabs make a run for one of the free bike squads and make it into assault, but do nothing. He hits and runs out to move them to a better spot.

Turn 4

He fires the techmarine at oby/spyder doing a wound. Everything else fires at the flyers, which actually get a few grav gun hits but I manage to jink them off.

I fly off two of my flyers, in preparation for next turn drops. The others move around to kill bike squads. Oby and the spyder move in and assault the techmarine, wrecking him. I should mention that the techmarine in this case was on top of an objective. (as was the other one I had killed)

Turn 5 - He spreads out his army to surround the middle objective, using the grey hunters to hold it.. Consolidates the tact squad which had been in the rhino onto one of my objectives. Then shoots everything at the two flyers in the air, doing nothing. So at this point, he's up on objectives 3-1.I need some ballsy moves to pull this one off.

So, in true balls out ork fashion, Oby leaves the spyder behind, and deepstrikes directly onto the middle objective. No scatter ftw, and now that's contested. I fly on one of my night scythes and drop troops next to the tact squad holding my objective. It's contested, but I blast them anyways for good measure killing most of them. My scarabs which had been lurking around, assault his bike squad just to try and get an extra KP (they fail, but w/e). I drop another squad of warriors into his back left objective just for good measure.

So if game ends, now I'm winning 2-0 objectives. It's time to figure out killpoints, which I'm sweating big time. It feels like he's killed a lot of my stuff. Then I do the math, and realize despite the devastating losses, it really wasn't so bad. 2 wraiths, 1 barge( counts for 2 b/c of big gunz), and zandrak. That's it. So 5 for him, and.. 2x-t-fire (4), plus 2 stormtalons, plus rhino, plus a bike squad... so I'm winning that 8-5.

We roll, game ends.

Fin.

So I ended up 3-1. With 3 wins on primary objectives, and 1 crushing loss. I had a pretty good time, and I learned a lot that would turn out to be useful for the team tourney.

And Matt S got some revenge for me, as he  beat Jon the next round, wooo.



 



 



Tuesday, April 8, 2014

RTT @ Huzzah Hobbies this sunday April 13th!

Just wanted to put out a quick reminder for our monthly RTT at Huzzah Hobbies in Ashburn, VA  www.huzzahhobbies.com will be held this Sunday April 13th. Registration starts at 10am, and games begin at 10:45. If you are going to be late please call the store at 703-466-0460 and let us know. Pre-registration is not a requirement.

Entry fee is $15, and covers a pizza lunch and two drinks. The remaining cash is rolled entirely into prize support.

1850 pts.

The new IG codex will be legal - so be prepared!

We allow stronghold assault, but with the caveat that no networked systems, D-weapons or AV15 buildings are legal. Escalation is not legal. If you want to bring forgeworld please email me ahead of time with your units rules so i can decide if its ok. (for the most part it should be cool). All dataslates and formations are legal. Formations have a provision that they are a special slot 0-1, so no more than one formation for an army.

Sorry for the late notice, being at Adepticon made me forget all my posting responsibilities. I will post a recap of adepticon later this week.