Pre Game Battle Report Thoughts

Mission: Unknown

Well it is our first unaugural report for the site and we just wanted to test how we will do future bat reps on the site, hey we have to start somewhere don't we? The mission is unknown till we actually meet to game, the points limit is 1000pts, and i am aiming for playing only (or mostly) with painted models.

Since i put the limitation of playing with painted models it does put me at a disadvantage since i'm not tooling up to fight necrons. Not that it matters much, most everyone in the group has one set list and we stick to it no matter who we face. It makes lists more balanced and ready for just about anything.

First up on the roster is Gregol the Cursed, named because no matter what he attempts to do he horribly fails at i tried to go for something cheap yet still a threat. I armed him with a power weapon, frag grenades, demonic strength, demonic visage and mark of chaos undiveded. The mark will keep him and any squad under his command in the fight for as long as possible, the power weapon is just handy.

For my Troops i have 3 choices three chaos marine squads two eight men strong and one nine men strong. Two squads are armed with bolters (one with a missile launcher the other with double plasma guns). The other squad is armed with close combat weapons double flamers and an aspiring champion with powerfist and other assorted goodies. All have the mark of chaos undivided to keep them from running out on a fight.

Next was eight furies quick and simple, i can't find better words to describe how good these demons are for their cost. Sure they aren't daemonettes or blood letters but the demonic flight move defintely helps out if you get a bad scatter, strength and initiative 5 help a bit too.

Three obliterators were added for pure versatility, the ability to morph any weapon to keep up with the battle is fantastic. Add to the fact that they can fight in hand to hand with powerfists if the occasion calls make them a good buy in my book.

Last but not least is a dreadnought, i've never used them before i always think they would attract too much fire and just die. But hey i wanted to try out the model not armed with the best of weapons (hey assembled and painted on ebay for $10 including shipping = good deal!). He is armed with an autocannon, not the most lethal of weapons but atleast if he goes nuts it won't exactly kill my troops fast either. I added demonic possession because well its just a bargain! the ability to ignore most of the results on the chart and keep on moving or firing is great.

With that my list is done, i have six scoring units and thirty-eight models. A good array of weapons for versatility, i'm not too mobile which can hurt given certain missions but i'm willing to accept that. All i have to do now is see what mission we play...

Cloud in the skies.

Well i've been working on the guard slowly but surely as all my work actually. But working with mostly all catachan parts gets a bit difficult when you want to make your troops are varied as possible.

I've taken a pic or two of the two more units done (bringing me up to about 45 infantry). I've ttried to givem the sarges Lasgun carbines (not teh best but simple conversions). I figured the carbines which we light (shorter barrel) and less bulky (no stock) could run as both lasgun and/or shotgun if i needed it.





I even made my commander, nothing really special but i wanted him not be in the thick of fights rather just directing them and for moral support. His wargear will be nothing fancy probs just a Power Weapon and CCW. I've run into the dilemma of wether or not i should give command sections mroe than 1 special weapon? i want them to be mobile for a mini counter attack (vrs depleted units). But i could see the light of why to include 2 of the same special weapon (everything but the flamer has abouta 50% of hitting).



i'm still toying around with teh doctrine system and trying to see exactly whats units will get what abilities. So i can't make heads or tails out of it yet. I want to try and push for atleast 1k pts to play with in teh beginning but when are you looking at models that are 6pts a piece its somewhat hard.

I'm bidding on Ebay to look for another Catachan Battleforce box which will help me fill out a few holes for missing men (command sections and what have you). I've been thinking of using Close Order Drill, Light Infantry, Drop Troops and Iron Discipline so far can't think of what i want for the last doctrine, i think ill switch i want to do vets ands pecial weapons, but dont have the sprues/guys enough to do it. Atleast for now so i'm going to have to scounge up some things t o see what i CAN do.

Im going to GenCon in Indy on Wed so i will be back in about 1 1/2 weeks! As hectic work schedule and frantic packing has me all tied up. Just wanted to update so everyone out there doens't lose faith and think i'm ditching the whole blog thing. Well i'm off ill see everyone later

~Andrew

Change of face?

Now many of you are wondering maybe worried about what the title might entail but do not. I had to pause teh campaign as the one of the two main protagnists of the campaign is having some "down" time as always. Maybe i should of figured it out earlier but ah well. So i took it upon myself to speed up my army some what i've pput my lost and damned force in suspension.....

Allow me to try and explain this convoluted situation, what i'm going to do is start my "traitor guard" (Imperial guard codex). This ties into the campaign me and the regular guard player i'm trying to establish some fluff for my army. So my choices will be somewhat limited (we haven't agreed yet what stays and gos's). It is part of a 3 part campaign something of "the beginning", "the rise" and "the fall". The beginning is the codex guard army without almost any doctrines maybe 1-2 and its my army starting out in rebellion against the imperium.

So with these shocking new developments my army has changed drastically (about half is somewhat invalidated). But moving on i did paint those 5 hounds which i will be subbing as "roughriders" w/ no upgrades of course. Though not as useful as actual hounds make sense that they have large hunting beasts to help them weed out enemies.





In quick starting the whole motif ive bought a box of catachans and a heavy weapons box. I'm still up in the air in weapon combinations for squads and command sections but i'm sure something will pop up in my head. Probs have a few pictures up as ill have the whole weekend to myself to convert/paint we'll see how that venture goes... till next time!

~Andy

A traitor wears his taint on the inside...

Sorry everyone its been such a long time since i've posted, i've been caught up on too many things. That and i'm also still on "conversion block" i built my russ and hounds but i can't for the life of me think of how to make them more personalized. And already we are on the next month so i am given another $50 to splurge onto GW products lol. Here in the picture you can see the start of my conversions on the russ that honestly came within the last couple of days rather than weeks that i've had it built...



nothin' too fancy but i'm trying to work on it more as ideas come to me. I've always been slowed by accepting a painting job 1500pts of Wordbearers legion, i've started with the bloodletters and think they look alright, still have some work to do on them but overall i'm already priming the next batch of four.



Should be interesting trying to joggle painting two armies... but ah well more pressure better results i say. I haven't played in a couple of weeks which is always slows down any gaming aspect being a GM sucks sometimes lol the responsibility. We had a week off since my friends went to origins in ohio so this week we should get some more gaming in and hopefully get me more inspired with conversions and what not.

With the $50 i think i'm going to invest in another bloated mutant squad w/ attached aspiring champ. This would bulk up my numbers a bit more and hopefully give my opponent too many targets to kill so some should get through and cause damage. I've seen that in all my games everyone concentrates on the mutants and hounds and the traitors usually pull me through by busting a large tank or squad.

I was thinking about getting two smallish squads (8-10) w/ autocannons and plasmaguns i think that would be pretty good to destroy light tanks and infantry. Decisions... what a bitch lol. I better get my ass in gear i defintely want to get atleast to 1500pts by the end of summer... and actually play more than once a week... we'll see how it goes, i think ill pay the warmongers a visit haven't seen them in awhile...

~Andy

On a shadow's wings we soar...

Sorry my updates have been slowing down guys but i've been devising a campaign for my group. Instead of painting/converting i'm having mental blocks about how to piece together a whole system along with scenarios/battles/etc. So rough work ahead for sure, though i did manage to finally paint somethings...





the daemonettes have been underperforming... but the furies have been my MOST valuable unit bar none!! Even my mutants do not perform as good as them, i think its because they are converted. The skin is one of the most difficult but rewarding that i have done and i think gives them a quite an otherworldly appearance so it was defintely worth it.

I have started building my leman russ and chaos hounds, the russ came apart pretty easily although i really wanted to "chaosify" it and having quite a hard time doing it. I built the stock model with little to no changes, but yet can't think of anything that would scream "traitors" out to me. I'm sure ill figure something out as soon as i get the ol' brain rolling again. The hounds are really neat models and seem to be twice the size of my infantry! which i found pretty shocking actually.

Have only played 1 game with 1k points so dont have many tactical observations (russ blew up first turn and hounds only had one real turn of combat...). But other than that things are going smoothly, i'm amazingly making "crappy ld checks" with my traitors which i thought i would fail more often so i'm quite pleased.

On a side note referring to the info above i think i will make a blog for my campaign for now its between guard and feral orks but as i fine tune the logistics of it all it will include my army as well as many others. When i do play, they will be one off games recorded here or more thoughts/ponderings. So till next time which will hopefully soon see ya!

~Andy

The mighty SPS (standard piece of sh!t) lasgun!

Back from the fields of battle and i must say that this outing has been more effective, i learned plenty of "new tricks" as well as got a better overall feel of the army. I played a total of three battles (varying missions) and i will try and give you a quick and dirty bat rep for each. Like 2-3 pictures and a mini synopsis.

His list (roughly) for all the games was:
-Brother Captain Grey Knight (second level hero)
-armoured fist squad (a priesrt went in here)
-platoon with a flamer in each squad (sancioned psyker went in one of these squads)
- conscripts x30, w/ 3 heavy bolters

My list: "Uprising in the Eastern sector.."
-Aspiring Champ w/ lightining claws & daemonic strength (joins mutants)
- Mutants x15 w/ flamer x2, icon. Mutant BOss w/ power fist (all bloated)
- Traitors x10 w/ meltagun n missile launcher. Agitator w/ personal icon, bolt pistol n ccw
- Traitors x15 w/ lascannon n plasmagun. Agitator w/ plasma pistol n ccw
- Daemonettes x6
- Furies x8


Battle One: Recon, Alpha



Here is the set up of the enemy in our group we allow some proxies although we are trying to enforce a WYSIWYG rule. With only three small squads starting 2 of them being very fragile (damn that leadership 7!) i was afraid.



My main line i made the mistake thinking i can just go straight through the enemy and hope not to get fired upon by every unit.. Sadly thats what happened, he surrounded my army on all sides and brought all the guns he had in his force to bear on my main cc unit: the mutants.. Well after every single shot he wiped them utterly off the board... And had enough to kill off my traitors w/ the icon... But not before i scattered my daemonettes off the table!!!



Here is the army pic/casualty pile, i was massacred but i must say in every loss you learn something or curse the dice lol. In this case i defintely learned that i should not try to face so many squads head on, my army required more strategy as well as thinking more than the next turn ahead.

Battle Two: Take n Hold, Alpha

This game i did a lot better! i can't stress it enough, my friend was getting so cocky that he massacred me last game that he went into this game too overconfident.



The enemy advances onto the objective almost surrounding it...



But i have plans of my own, immobilizing his armoured fist squad along w/ his HQ who must now trudge to the objective.



Though my furies scattered off the board, my daemonettes showed up and on time to cause some damage to the enemy. Though they didn't do as well as i hoped, they proved an excellent form of distraction.



At the end of the game "Barker's Brigands" (15man traitor unit) hold the objective and do not run after being fired on from ALL the conscripts in short range! And manage to hold the objective because they were 5 more pts than the conscript unit!

Battle Three: Seek & Destroy, Omega? (middle one)

Not much to say in this battle, everything went right for me, i managed to hide my units from the majority of his army, all the while i set them up to "ambush" other units. I did this my clever positioning, because i could use infiltrate though i put my units in my deployment zone.. Which my friend commented "you didn't even infiltrate them" i used the knowledge of seeing where he put everything to put my units in places where i could get the most opportunistic fire.



When he got close my daemons and mutants launched a "break out" offensive that caught most if not all guard units. Though this was somewhat unwise (bad rolling caused some of my line to falter... in the end it turned out for the better...




When we finished this was the enemy line or lack thereof... all units were running while i still had one unit Moreno's Mauraders still on the board, and the Brigands running but atleast on the board lol. What went well? Hiding my units behind terrain to limit their field of fire where i KNEW the enemy had to come through and just set up house in those locations blasting away.

The Brigands did particularly good because they held up the brother captain for two turns (3 combats) and as they ran away, they killed him! (with shooting... from a the noble lasgun shot). What went wrong? My daemonettes clearly need to be finished to perform better they aren't having much luck at all! and my mutants performed a bit under par getting hit viciously and gettuing run down in the process of it all was sad times.

As for my purchases for this month, i was thinking long and hard... I wanted to have a mixed lost and damned force, but at the same time my choices reflected a guard force in hiding. So i decided A) i needed some more Anti Armour/Horde fire and B) Something that Screams more CHAOS! Well for A) i bought a leman russ! nothing cna beat a stock leman russ, my orks have been using it for ages and a trusty old russ is a nice way to get some armour into the list.

For the choice of B) after much thought i settled on a unit of chaos hounds! Because of the new way calvary is used (fleeting rocks!) they are fast and deadly. Pretty good stats to boot (except armour, 6+ sv.). Still really cool models and cool rules = i like em!


And i bought my purchases at the WarStore online store! I saved me $16 in Games Workshop purches, and i picked up a thing or two on the side to get free shipping hehe. So i spent $64 instead of $50 this month dont blame me! I think in the next building an army the "allowance" should be raised to $60 because of the price hikes. Well i've written way more than enough! And i found a can of black primer so i hope to get some furies done before me next gaming session. Till something of note happens ill see you guys later!

~Andy

"his robes make him flammable!" ::as my friend fails two saves for chaplain...::

Keeping to my promise (somewhat atleast) i did actually get a handful of games at 500pts and though i was brutally beat ( i think 1 win out of 5 games) i did learn plenty of things about my army. First that mutants really cannot survive in 4th ed. without either burly (4+ sv) or leaping (calvary) upgrades! Because as i walked up to assault a unit of marines i was torn apart by those damn rapid fire bolters ::waves fist:: And though the whole squad was not wiped out, their effectiveness was severly cut. What i did like was that between the champion and mutant boss the casualties they cause are great for combat res! Now i'm trying to figure out what else to kit out my champion with as he is quite an imposing figure now (atleast me and my friends think) and should have more abilities. Oh yes i did say leader let me show you a pic or two.







Overall i was very happy on how he turned out, though i wanted to go for an "all human" type of army (subbing marine units for just souped up guard/traitors/mutants) after looking through my bits box i had lots more chaos marine bits than human.

Another observation i had while getting massacred was that my traitors low leadership really hurts. Though i managed to make the leadership checks throughout the game having to rely on getting a "6 or 7" was horrifying. So now i'm going to not even question adding an agitator to every squad of atleast 10 guys. I'm thinking of setting up small 5-6 man squads w/ heavy bolters/stubbers just for the annoying/shooty factor. Because if if they are sneezed at most will die anyway ::shrugs::.

Infiltration i recieved in most missions and since my previous army had little to no infiltration (orks) i wasn't sure how exactly to press my advantage in this area. It sort of makes my squads more mobile because they can pour enfilade fire from the flanks while hiding in terrain. But still i miss that mobile firepower.. so i figured it was time to build those sentinels...



They carry lascannons because they are supposed to be tankhunters, if i come against a horde i figure i can keep moving to stay out of heavy weapon reach and if it comes to an assualt tie up a unit that can't hurt me, i can stall for a turn or two, or straight into a powerfist and hope they blow the sentinels to bits... with the surrounding enemies engulfed in flames of course.

Now that our little group has a taste of battle everyone is excited again to be back into the gaming fold. Already i hear the clamor of everyone building up to 750pts thinking both what would look good and be effective. For me my list was more or less already laid out for me, i might tweak it some but nothing over the top. I already started painting the daemonettes because i needed to test out this color scheme





I've seen what these ladies can do to opposition be it guard, marine, or other they are excellent. I'm satisfied on how the skin turned out even if i had to mix colors every step of the way with slight variations. Though i didn't finish them i think within a day or two they should be ready for some combat fully painted.

We are up to the next month in the "recruiting a regiment..." but i've not yet decided what i could possibly want so for now ill save that for the next update or two. Till then though, stay cool

~Andy