Saturday, April 29, 2017

Thoughts on the 40K 8th Edition News So Far (Week 1)

Well it seems GW are sticking to their promise of releasing new information about the 8th edition of 40K every day. Well, today it wasn't particularly rules related but for the past week we've been treated to nuggets of info about how the new edition of the game will play. Today I'll run through the officially released information that has been posted up this week on Warhammer Community. There's been the odd snippet on FB, Twitter and Faeit too which I'll touch on.

First things first. It seems from the rumours that are around that June 10th will be launch weekend. This is pretty much what I expected. Their vague suggestion of "this year" was never going to mean anything past June. To release this much info and then say "out in September" would be pointless. Basically, they'll use Warhammer Fest to reveal a chunk of new things (and maybe even the starter set) and then put pre-orders up. This makes me happy for two reasons. Firstly, we don't have to wait long but also, and more importantly, Double Trouble 2 will be the last tournament of 7th edition and will take place on launch weekend for 8th. That means we'll all be in a room together studying our new rules whilst throwing some dice together. I'll also try to theme the raffle prizes around 8th edition stuff assuming we get info on what's being released early enough.

Day One - Three Ways to Play
Nothing we didn't already know really. Open play sounds like the version of the game that I'm least likely to play. Having no restrictions at all doesn't appeal to me. The game isn't balanced even with points but just taking whatever you feel like won't make for much sport in my opinion. I was never a fan of Unbound but, hey, it's there if you're into that kind of thing.

Narrative play is something that really interests me. We're constantly talking about running a campaign or playing battles that have a vague theme to them at least. We rarely actually get round to these games though because we're normally testing something for a tournament on the rare occasion we actually have time of a game. Having a framework for playing these games might be the motivation we need to finally make it happen.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly but the version of the game that interests me the most is Matched play. I'm a mixture of relieved and disappointed to learn that the Eternal War and Maelstrom missions are returning. Hopefully they've been updated more than "a little" like the post suggests. I'd love some more interesting deployment options than the three we've gotten used to and some tweaks to the objective missions in Eternal War to stop them feeling so samey. It's a shame that things like control points (objectives you score points for controlling every turn) don't sound likely to appear. I'd be happy knowing I didn't need to buy new Maelstrom cards but also disappointed if some of them weren't fixed a little bit. Get rid of the D3 points for a start. I'm hoping they'll make the "ditch the impossible cards" rule (that most of us play anyway) official.

The talk of revisions to points values and units becoming competitive again is exciting but you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical. What I'm a little worried about is the bit about "Stratagems". They're something that's appeared in things like Planetstrike and I'm not really a huge fan of them. Feel like the Blood Bowl special play cards. I'll reserve judgement until I see them though.

Finally, they reckon a 1,000-2,000 point game takes just over two hours. That's a promising sign that the game has been streamlined. As I said before, it's nice to think we might be able to get a fourth or even fifth game into a one-day event.

Day Two - Unit Profiles
Tell me you aren't intrigued to know just how far Hormagaunts can move! I'm pleased that Movement is back as a stat. All infantry essentially moving at the same speed has always felt wrong. It's interesting that vehicles are given a profile too. Will this mean that they have differing movement values too? Maybe they can shoot everything at standard movement and limited weapons at double movement for example and a Leman Russ will move slower than a Devilfish.

Giving vehicles wounds is intriguing too. Nice that they've simplified things. Mind you, they say they're getting rid of AV but surely a vehicle will now have a Toughness value instead which will likely have a similar mechanic. There's still some residual whinging about lasguns killing land raiders but I'm sure it'll be a case of 500 might be able to strip a wound or something to that effect. Theoretically they can kill a land raider but you'd likely be wasting your time. Let's hope so at least. Imperial Knights with "dozens of wounds" sounds fun.

Having a standard system means that anti-tank weaponry should make a come back. The humble lascannon has been a rare sight of late with players favouring spamming S6-S8 firepower to strip hull points. There'll still probably be an advantage to massed fire like that but hopefully it won't be the only option. More on this in the weapon profiles bit though.

It's interesting that 'fexes are getting more wounds too. My big hope for 8th edition is that Tyranids will become instantly more viable. I'd love to own a 'nid army but I've never been able to persuade myself when they've been comparatively weak or mono-build.

I'm liking what I'm hearing about no Super Heavy rules too. This all sounds like huge swathes of the rulebook will have gone and we'll hopefully be left with a more manageable ruleset that still makes things play like we'd expect them too. That's a big ask but what we've seen so far is promising.

Onto the statlines then. The first thing to notice is that Initiative is gone. I'll wait until the Combat Phase post to get too worried about this but I do have concerns about the way melee will work in 8th. Benefit of the doubt for now. Anyway, I like that they've made Guilliman at least a little faster than a normal marine and that they've finally just printed what the rolls required are. Yeah we all know it's just 7-BS but why bother with the extra step. Modifying them is the exciting thing for me. Hopefully cover saves will work in a similar way to Necromunda and faster moving targets will be harder to hit. Jink never really sat well with me as a mechanic.

Terminators aren't, so far at least, the beasts that I was hoping they'd become. Obviously two wounds is great but I was hoping for their save being taken on 2D6 like in the old days. There's a lot of people seemingly losing their shit about how good dreadnoughts will be though. Sure they've got 8 wounds and a 3+ save now but unless something else gets released about them I'm not getting too carried away yet. Am I missing something?

Day Three - Weapon Profiles
Well, more confirmation (seemed people needed it) that templates are a thing of the past. Instead the flamer will be doing D6 shots that automatically hit. Obviously screws over single models but big units potentially benefit. No more getting out of a rhino only to have your entire 10-man unit fit perfectly under a flame template. Also, and this is important, no hitting two or more units at once. There seems to be a buzz that flamers are back but we really need to see more from the other special weapons before we get carried away.

The thing that's really upset people though is how the mass reactive rounds of the bolter don't have any extra armour penetrating power. I'm not too worried about this though. We don't know what saves things like guardsmen are going to get, we don't know how cover works and we don't even know how rapid fire works either.

As I hinted at above, I'm hoping that lascannons can make a bit of a comeback. They're an iconic part of 40K for me and they've been relegated to novelty items of late. Causing a potential 6 wounds against a vehicle, MC, character for example is a huge plus. I'm assuming that it'll effectively work like a D weapon does now. Single save against the shot and then D6 wounds lost if you fail. Anti-tank weapons should be better against vehicles and MCs and it seems like they're heading the right direction.

The interesting thing is, assuming it works like I expect, a space marine will get a 6+ save against a lascannon. Sure it'll still have a great chance of wounding him but we'll have to see what the AP is of some of the other weapons. Will old AP1 be -4 for example? Will a meltagun be -5 or more?

What's really awesome about this post is that D weapons are gone. It'll be interesting to see what profile the former D weapons get though. I'm assuming they'll still be quite likely to one-shot all but the toughest models but hopefully they'll not just be 6s to kill (pretty much) anything. It's also intriguing to find out how blast weapons will work. I might be one of few people who are pleased to see the back of the current mechanic but I hope they still feel like they're doing splash damage of some kind.

Day Four - Movement Phase
Thinking about bikes having a movement value that's much higher than infantry got me thinking about what will happen to Turbo-boost. Will they simply be able to "Advance" faster than infantry? I like the idea that flyers get different movement values too. Hopefully DE flyers will end up better than they were.

The idea of running in the movement phase is certainly going to speed the game up a little. In practice a lot of us would allow opponents to do this anyway but it does mean that the tactical decision has to be taken early. No more killing something sooner than you expected and running a unit forward who now has nothing to shoot.

Sounds like, the Movement Phase isn't going to be drastically different though. They did, however, tease something about the assault phase. You can pull out of combat in your turn. Sounds a lot like Hit & Run but without being able to shoot your assailants. No dropping out of combat in your opponent's turn and charging back in your own either. Not sure how I feel about this yet. On the face of it it'll make combat less powerful but there's still so much we don't know.

Day Five - Psychic Phase
I play Tau and Dark Eldar so my interest isn't as high as it might be but obviously my Wolves, DE and Orks care. Anyway, this new plan for psychic attacks sounds significantly better. No more throwing in some psychic battery units to boost a single powerful psyker. Seems like it'll basically be the same chance of casting a power no matter how many other psykers you have. I like that having multiple psykers is useful now. Often in 7th, one of your psykers might never actually use a power whilst another stole their dice to make it more likely to get one of their powers off.

Seems like the mechanic will work a lot like a leadership test does now. Weaker powers will be easier to get off whilst the big stuff should be requiring 11s or even 12s to cast. My only hope is that they've thought about the power levels a bit more. In 7th there were some Warp Charge 3 powers that were significantly worse than others that were only WC1.

The mechanic for blocking powers also seems sensible and cinematic. A psyker in 24" gets a chance to block the power. Presumably that means non-psychic units can't stop them anymore but that felt a bit silly anyway sometimes. Especially when a nearby friendly psyker would stand idly by and let the unit next to him be hit by a power without trying to intervene.

I'm hoping that the rulebook powers are gone. Clearly Smite remains but hopefully each faction will get themed powers rather than everyone being able to use Daemonology for example or defaulting to Telepathy to get Psy Shriek. Speaking of Smite, that sounds pretty good to me. D3 wounds that you can't stop and only needing a relatively low roll to cast it. Could be pretty nasty to have a pile of cheap psykers just throwing this out every turn.

Mortal Wounds are interesting and they confirm that invulnerable saves are still a thing. I'm assuming what were once D weapons will have a much higher chance of causing Mortal Wounds.

Conclusion
There's very little cause for concern here, well, for me at least. There's obviously a lot that we're still speculating on when we've only got little bits of info to go on. What I've seen so far though makes me think they've really put the effort in this time. No more tweaking of the existing rules and trying to make them work. If they feel like a mechanic is flawed they've simply rewritten it (e.g. casting powers). Seems like the new rules will be a lot more straightforward which is good because I also think the game will have changed quite a bit and getting used to the new rules quickly will be a bonus.

Already it seems like we'll need to rethink what units, and indeed weapons, we consider to be powerful. A shake up like this is obviously going to be good for GW's sales too which I'm certain crossed their mind in doing this. They don't really want any range of models to undersell and having pretty much everything as viable is obviously good business. Not only that but suddenly finding that your specific OP list isn't what it was will force people to buy some new stuff.

Ultimately, there's no point drawing too many conclusions just yet until we know more. They're releasing new information every day so I'm sure we'll have a fair idea of what the game is going to be like before June 10th rolls around.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Thoughts on the New Edition of 40K Q&A Session

I wasn't intending to post again so soon after the report from Battle Brothers so go back and read that if you're interested. I also want to take this opportunity to say that no matter when 8th edition is released, Double Trouble will still be using 7th edition. The event is just under six weeks away (tickets are still available...) and I don't think it's fair to suddenly change the rules for it when some of us won't have had much chance to playtest. Perhaps I'll run an event later in the year making full use of the new system once we've all had more time to get to grips with it.

Right, this post is just a collection of thoughts I had after watching the Q&A video that GW posted on Facebook. You should go and check that out first if you haven't already. This post might seem a bit randomly ordered but it's the order I thought of things as they were talking about them. I've tried to add headings to make it easier to follow but they're a bit vague. Anyway, here goes...

Movement
I'm really pleased that movement values are back. It feels a lot more realistic that everything moves at a different speed. Sure the different unit types moved differently e.g. bikes and jump units but all of the footslogging stuff moved 6". That doesn't make sense to me. I imagine Terminators being slow but tough and wyches being lightning fast but flimsy. Obviously they tried to incorporate this with initiative and things like Fleet but it never really felt right. It also will hopefully simplify things a bit. That might not initially make any sense but I think a lot of the special rules won't be necessary any more which will save a lot of book work during the game to look up the less common ones. I'd welcome any system that doesn't require me to constantly check the rulebook/codex for things I don't remember clearly.

Morale
I know the morale check thing is kind of old news now but I haven't had much chance to thing about it. I like the idea that units don't fall back anymore. Well, that's assuming they don't eventually do so. All of the models in the game have supposedly been fighting these wars for years (if not centuries or even millennia) yet they fall back when a handful of their squad die. It's one thing making a tactical withdrawal but having no say in it and legging it off the field never felt quite right. Obviously some units bypassed this but a lot that should've didn't e.g. CSM. At first glance the new mechanic seems strange:

"Roll a D6, add that to the number of models your unit has lost this turn, subtract your Leadership and take that many additional casualties"

The problem is we're thinking of applying it in our current system. They've said in this latest video that stats are no longer capped at 10. Let's say Space Marines are Ld 12. They'd need to lose 7 models before they lost anything and that's assuming you rolled a 6. That would make them effectively fearless without needing a rule for it. An Ork unit might get better leadership depending on how many models are in the unit at the time of being shot at. Would make sense from a fluff point of view too. Basically, like a lot of things there's a wait and see element but this sounds promising.

Vehicle/MC Damage
Vehicle/MC damage charts are yet more evidence that they're returning to a lot of the ideas from the earlier editions. I only hope that having a chart for each vehicle/MC doesn't get too complicated. It'd be nice if they release a PDF of all of these so you can print them out and have them to hand. If not I'm sure some enterprising person will make some - might even be me! We'd definitely need some way of keeping track of these things. It sounds more fun though. Obviously it was there in the current edition but taking out a dreadnought's legs feels more thematic than just immobilising it. Hope this pans out as well as I think it will. The most important thing is HP is gone so you'll actually feel like you're hampering a vehicle by doing some damage to it rather than it being at full strength with 1 of it's 9 HP remaining!

Having a damage chart for each individual vehicle is an interesting idea. I like that vehicles get weaker the more damage they take. Let's face it, this was the old system that they're basically bringing back. My concern is that it'll over-complicate things and it'll be difficult to keep track of what damage has been done. It's certainly more fun though to think that you're ripping an arm off a dreadnought or damaging the tracks on a tank than simply stripping hull points.

Damage, Templates, Modifiers, etc.
I was initially concerned about their comment that everything can hurt everything. Whilst I know it's frustrating to feel like your army can literally do nothing to your opponent (this happened with my Venoms this weekend against Astra Militarum), it doesn't make sense that a poxy lasgun could damage a tank with incredibly thick armour or shielding. However, it seems their bringing Damage back as a stat for the guns. If you aren't familiar with it, check out the Necromunda/Shadow War rules. It was instead of instant death and it's a much better system. Be interesting to see how it all works out and interacts together.

Speaking of which, modifiers to hit sound like they're back which I'm in favour of. If that takes away things like cover saves from the game then I'm happy. It's stupid that my space marine in the open is as easy to hit as one who can barely be seen in the gaps in a barricade. He'd be taking his armour save most of the time anyway! Cover really doesn't feel cinematic enough to me. It always felt much better in Necromunda and early 40K though. Making me want to flick through my old rulebooks to see what they've borrowed. Perhaps I will when we finally get 8th. I've got 2nd, 3rd, 5th & 6th on the shelf above my head.

One of the things I'd hoped would return from the old editions were the other dice! Bring me back my D20! If stats are going to go above 10 then I think a D6 system will be too limiting. It'd also be a good opportunity to flog us some dice and give a bit of variety to things. On that subject, I'm probably one of the few people in favour of the removal of templates. Of course their an iconic part of 40K, I get that, they're limiting though. They've never felt quite right to me either. A flamer isn't filling the room with gouts of flame, it's kept them in a very neat teardrop instead. A space marine with a frag missile can't hit something 10 feet in front of him because it scatters away. Whilst scattering back onto yourself is entertaining it doesn't make much sense. Templates/blasts have always been a source of argument at tournaments too so anything that minimises that has to be a good move.

The biggest thing for the removal of templates though is that deployment will be significantly quicker. Not having to spend time spreading out your unit whilst avoiding the scenery etc is a bonus. When I've played games against lists without any blasts it's refreshing to just plonk the models down and get on with it. Anything that makes games quicker whilst also making things feel like they should is fine by me.

Faster Games
Speaking of quicker games. I love the idea that a game could be done in 90 minutes. That might mean we could get four or even five games into a single day tournament. That makes a big difference to Swiss Pairs for a start. We might have to all accept that things don't feel as resilient as they used to though. More decisive battles would be cool. We played some Armada this week and it's limited to six rounds to the damage comes thick and fast and ships are blown up pretty quickly when things fall right. I wish 40K were that dramatic. Of course it is at times but often you're chipping away at a huge fearless unit for several turns or combats drag on for the whole game. Having epic games that take a whole day to play are part of the joy of 40K at times but when it's a one-sided affair at a tournament and it drags on for two hours after the point you know you've lost is no good for anyone.

Command Points and FOCs
I'm intrigued by command points but perhaps a little worried that they'll be the thing that gets exploited. It'll add a new tactical dimension having a pool of command points and deciding when to spend them for maximum effect. Having different ways to spend them depending on faction is a nice idea too. I also like that FOCs are still there but there'll be more to choose from. I can only pray that they don't feel like Formations. If the only bonus is command points then they probably won't but only time will tell. From the snippets we've got so far it does sound like there'll be less opportunity to break the game. Supposedly all of the myriad units in the game will be useful in some way. I'd welcome this but I'm hugely skeptical that this is possible without removing some of their identity in the process.

Melee
I really hope close combat can come back to the fore. Recently, apart from a couple of exceptions, it's all been about shooting. Combat has always been my favourite part of any game and it's frustrating that a lot of my favourite combat-centric units aren't much use at the moment. The charging unit hitting first makes huge sense! Obviously there's Hammer of Wrath but it doesn't really feel right.

Allies and Filth
Sounds like they've reduced the opportunities for creating dirty combinations. That's a good thing to me. Allies are all well and good but they've stripped away a lot of the identity of the armies. Dark Eldar for example have been reduced to a means to webway our wraithguard into a battle. I'd have preferred them to get rid completely but I wasn't really expecting this to happen. Seems like they're still there but there'll be a big benefit to taking an army from a single faction. Reducing the number of combinations might sound like a road to monotony but the game at the moment is almost impossible to keep track of for those of us who don't play several times a week.

Conclusion
It was funny watching the comments coming in on FB as I was watching it back. As ever with these things there's going to be hordes of people overreacting to the snippets of information that we've got without seeing the rules as a whole. I think that's the key thing here. Wait until you've got the rules in your hand and have had time to digest them before you start burning your models (yes, I know it was a parody). As a community we like to make snap judgements on things. I know I'm making positive assumptions here too but I think that's healthier than all of the negativity around at the moment.

I'm reassured to hear that it sounds like there's been hours of playtesting which wasn't just in-house. I'm sure the old editions were playtested too but clearly they're bothering to think about how all of the rules will affect all of the armies and their individual units. That's got to be a good thing even if they don't get it quite right straight away. I'm a little insulted that it sounds like most of the playtesters were American. I know the tournament scene is bigger in terms of volume of players there but still. I like Reece and Frankie from Frontline though. Their ITC system has really helped standardise things over there. I don't agree with all of it but still, it's a step in the right direction.

I actually enjoyed blogging about this stuff. I'd like to return to my codex review style posts when the new stuff comes out. Make it easier for everyone to get to grips with things (including myself).

In summary, I'm cautiously optimistic. The idea of regularly updated rules with full community involvement is what we've all been asking for. BB has definitely benefited from a "living" rulebook and I think 40K will too. Let's just try to take 8th as a clean slate and not spend too much time making negative comparisons to the current game. 40K is far from perfect in it's current guise!

New factions!! I hope they really mean that. Not just a new chapter of Space Marines. Would be cool to rediscover some of the lost legions though....

Tournament Report - Doubles at Warhammer World - Ynnari

It's been a long time since we've managed to attend a doubles event at Warhammer World. In fact, looking back through the blog posts it was July 2014!! That sounds far too long ago but thinking about it, it's probably true. With the refurb of WHW there were no events for a while and then all the subsequent doubles fell on weekends that weren't suitable for us. The doubles events were the ones that really got Matt and I hooked on tournament play so we've been to quite a few now. The game is just better with four people I think. Having someone to discuss tactics with and watching your opponents do the same is really interesting. **SHAMELESS PLUG WARNING** If you'd like to try out doubles gaming for yourself, why not buy a ticket for Double Trouble 2 on June 10th. Details can be found by clicking on the DT2 logo on the right!

Anyway, this time around we toyed with various different lists. We needed two 900pt armies to make a combined 1,800pt force. I think that's the highest points limit we've ever had. We toyed with various horrendous combinations of Imperial Knights, wraithknights, dreadknights, Ta'unar, etc but decided to give the recently released Ynnari a spin. We only managed to a get a couple of test games in but it's a good job we did as using the Soulburst effectively is key to success with them. The list we settled on was:

899pts of Ynnari
Maugan Ra
2x 5 Kabalites Warriors in a Venom
Venom (for Maugan Ra)
3 Reavers
6 Swooping Hawks (incl. Exarch)
Yncarne

899pts of Ynnari
Farseer Skyrunner (Spirit Stone of Anath'lan)
5 Kabalites Warriors in a Venom
3 Windriders
3 Reavers (incl. cluster caltrops)
2x 5 Scourges (4 Haywire in each)
Wraithknight (wraithcannons, scatter laser)

Nothing too filthy I don't think. Obviously Ynnari are powerful but there's no scatter windriders, no wraithguard in raiders, etc. A fairly mixed list that should be fun to play with and against we hoped. I'll try to keep the battle reports brief for a change. Here goes!

Game One - Ynnari vs. CSM/Daemons
Our first game was Cloak and Shadows against Fateweaver, some heralds with screamers (2++ re-rollable saves), some blue horrors, some CSM, a terminator sorcerer, firestorm redoubt with lascannons and a land raider.


Fateweaver headed straight down the middle of the board and was frankly pretty lucky to survive two turns of shooting from pretty much all of the Dark Eldar. He passed a ton of 3+ saves and all his grounding tests to cling on with a single wound remaining to fly off the board to return in turn 4. Elsewhere their Wraithknight used a Soulburst to kill the land raider in their first turn with a D shot when some nearby Reavers perished. The land raider turned into the Yncarne and between them they slowly worked his way through everything else in the army whilst the Dark Eldar were mostly out of range thanks to the deployment.


Ultimately, the Yncarne ended up in combat with the 2++ re-rollable screamers for the rest of the game whilst we tried to rack up the VPs. It wasn't until later that we realised we'd brought the Swooping Hawks in on T2 only to forget about them for the rest of the game. They could've been attacking Fateweaver and claiming objectives but they were lost in their dead pile which they kept to the edge of the table. The game ended in a narrow victory of 14-12 helped in no small part by me rolling 3 for all three of the D3 point objectives we scored!

Unfortunately, one of our two opponents was pretty miserable throughout the game because he took an instant dislike to us for running Ynnari. It's a shame as this was our closest game so could've been a lot more fun.

Game Two - Ynnari vs. DA/Tyranids
Not your most likely of combinations and something you'd be more likely to find at Double Trouble with its random pairings (hint hint). Anyway, basically it was 60 hormagaunts, 30 termagants, three zoanthropes and an exocrine. The DA portion wasw two rhinos with tactical squads, two predators, DW knights in a pod and Ezekiel. The mission was Spoils of War. They won the roll-off but we Seized!

The Venoms lay waste to the Tyranids early on with the Exocrine and two of the Zoanthropes gone in the first turn. The Wraighknight struggled to kill the predators and the Scourges didn't give much help leaving both on a single hull point. That spelled doom for the Wraightknight who ended up dying to overwatch having lost all but one wound in their shooting phase. Meanwhile, the Yncarne got tied up fighting some Hormagaunts until the other Zoanthrope died to remove their Fearless. The DE continued to chew through the Tyranids and the Yncarne eventually turned her attention to the DA with the Scourges helping by finishing off the predators. Other than killing the Wraithknight the only highlight for our opponents came from the Deathwing Knights who soaked up a lot of fire and killed Maugan Ra in combat before eventually being whittled down to end the game.


By the time the dust settled we'd managed to find 21 VPs from the objectives and our opponents hadn't scored at all. A pretty one-sided affair throughout and I felt for the Tyranid player who was a spectator from quite an early stage.

Game Three - Ynnari vs. Cult Mech./Wolves
The last game of Saturday would be Tactical Escalation. Our opponents had two units of four breachers, a unit of four destroyers and a dominus. The wolves had WG in a drop pod, WG terminators, a lord on thunderwolf and a squad of TWC. They won the roll off but, to our surprise, gave us the first turn.


The venoms and concentrated on the destroyers early on to try to protect the wraithknight. The dominus went down and in came the Yncarne who somehow find herself in a charge from the TWC as we'd not thought about them when we brought her in (despite carefully placing everything else in our list out of charge range during turn one). The rest of our army was able to focus on everything else though including the drop pod of WG and terminators who arrived on successive turns. The breachers were eventually whittled down by the rest of the firepower and the wraithknight waded into the combat hoping to save the Yncarne and end the game. We'd also thrown in some sacrificial Reavers to die to try to get some wounds back for her.


The squad leader for the TWC had other ideas though. The wolf lord had long since died to the Yncarne but he decided to avenge his brother by smashing down the Yncarne. He also put some wounds on the Wraithknight who'd stomped the rest of the squad away. That put the Wraithknight on initiative 1 thanks to Concussive (which I don't think I've ever actually managed to use!) meaning they'd strike simultaneously. In an epic end to an otherwise pretty one-sided game, the heroic Space Wolf took out the Wraithknight but died in the process. He'll certainly make it into the sagas!!


Whilst all that was going on we managed to take a 17-3 win on VPs to give us a healthy 52-15 scoreline for the day.

Game Four - Ynnari vs. Astra Militarum
We knew our list would struggle with heavily mechanised lists and that's exactly what we found ourselves against on Sunday morning for the Deadlock mission. Five Taurox, two Wyverns, a Vanquisher, some rough riders, two lots of armoured sentinels and two Vendettas. Our opponents won the roll off for first turn (I don't think we won one all day!).


Their first turn was unbelievable, pretty much everything they tried to do worked. Three of the venoms went down, two of which to single autocannons on the Taurox which hit, pen'd and rolled 6s to explode after I failed the cover saves! That did give the Wraithknight a free shooting phase but he missed with one gun and the other pinged off the trees hiding the Wyvern. That would be the story of the game. We'd really need the D shots to be hot but Matt fired 11 shots (i.e. 6 lots of shooting) before we managed to kill the Wyverns who'd been the targets every time! That's just insanely unlikely to happen! The Wyverns took full advantage and their barrages lay waste to big chunks of our army. We did at least manage to take out a Taurox to bring in the Yncarne....


Well, that didn't go great either. They drew the Kingslayer card so unloaded a pile of guardsmen to fire at her. Matt failed an ungodly number of 3+ saves and she perished without moving an inch! Granted we'd missed an opportunity to get her into combat with a Soulburst but still, gutted. Eventually the Wraithknight started to wade through their army in combat but by that point their VP total was well out of reach.


I don't think we've ever had a game where our luck was quite so abysmal. Our opponents must've felt invincible because pretty much everything they tried to do worked out. Part of the problem was that a big chunk of our army (i.e. the Venoms) was either dead early on or impotent because there were no non-vehicles on the table for most of the game. We were perhaps foolish to bring the Yncarne in on our turn but it felt like the right place and time. It basically came down to all those failed D shots. If even a couple of the early ones had worked it would've changed the face of the game. The final result was a 10-18 loss.

Game Five - Ynnari vs. Orks/Unbound
We were grateful not to have to play another Vanguard Strike game and instead we got Contact Lost. The opposing army consisted of grot tanks, killa kans, a Shadowsword, leman russ, Chaos Terminators, grots and a mek gun.


Another mismatch that proves that random pairings often don't make for fun games for everyone. The opposing army was certainly nice to look at though and eventually scooped three of the painting awards (I was a little suspicious about the number of people from their gaming group who might've voted for them though). They went first and killed off one of the Venoms with the Shadowsword. It proved costly though as the Wraithknight found his form again and stripped 8 hull points from him in response before finishing the job in our turn and charging the Leman Russ to kill that too. It was then The Scourges chewed through the killa kans and with help from Maugan Ra the Grot Megatank went down to give the Yncarne her entrance.


Nothing particularly dramatic happened in the game from this point on. We slowly chewed through their army and, despite losing some Scourges for a lone Killa Kan charge, they had a pretty miserable time of it. We managed to pick up a 13-4 win and probably could've dragged it out for more if the Scourges had stayed in combat with the kan rather than running off the board! It was a shame to end the day with such a one-sided affair that I don't think either of us really enjoyed.


Conclusion
You might be thinking that 4:1 win/loss ratio would place us pretty high in the standings but, since we didn't pick up a single favourite game vote, it was only good enough for 67th out of 89 teams! Had it been scored purely on VPs we'd have been 16th mind you. We knew going in that they were scoring it on fave games though so we weren't too worried. Incidentally, our vote went to our third game for the epic antics of that TWC squad leader. They were also really nice guys who we'd have loved to play again some time. Shame they're from Kent so that's perhaps unlikely!

Looking around there didn't seem to be that many insanely broken lists. It seemed from talking to people like there was a lot of Ynnari but probably the daftest thing we saw was this:


The main thing was that the event delivered on what we hoped. It was a great atmosphere (if a little warm) and we had a great time in most of our games. They stopped proceedings to play the 8th edition announcement video which didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know. It'll be interesting to see how tournament play changes though. I'm cautiously optimistic about it but I hope I'll be able to get a post up with some of my wishlisting for the new version of the game.

I think our list delivered on being fun to play, if perhaps not to play against. It's interesting to try to figure out the best way to get the most from Soulburst. Clearly a nonsense though really. The sort of thing I hope gets fixed with the new rules.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari?) for the Doubles - Part 4 - Finished (sort of)

Just packed up my army for the doubles at Warhammer World this weekend. I should probably be getting some sleep in preparation for a long day's gaming tomorrow but I wanted to show you how I've got on with my Dark Eldar painting project for the event. I'd got the following in various states of painted that I hoped to have ready in time:

  • Archon
  • 15 Kabalite Warriors
  • 4 Venoms
  • 10 Scourges
  • 7 Reavers
Well, after a bit of a test session on Wednesday (which I had hoped to blog about before now), we decided to ditch the Archon and one of the Reavers (along with his cluster caltrops) in order to squeeze Maugan Ra in as my HQ choice. I wasn't too bothered by this as my Archon was the only thing I'd managed to get "finished" for Double Trouble. I'd have been annoyed if I'd put hours into him in this project only to write him out of the list. I can cope with one Reaver not being involved! 

Anyway, apologies for the crappy pictures but it's late and I couldn't be bothered to set things up properly. Maybe I'll get round to some better pictures at some point. Here's a summary of what I've been doing since the last post. 



I've rolled out the orange and red wings to the rest of the Scourges. Painting the black bits back in on the orange took far more time than it should've last night but I'm happy with how the wings have turned out. It did mean that I didn't get time to do the vials/pipes properly or paint their armour properly but hopefully the bright wings will distract people from that! I never got round to getting the airbrush out for them so opted for a bit of a Jokaero Orange basecoat then 3 thin coats of Troll Slayer. Probably would've been quicker with the airbrush but that would've meant painting in the garage rather than on my knee in the lounge and "spending time" with my missus.

I updated the paint job on my fourth venom (it had previously been painted with Liche Purple which didn't match the rest). Once they were all done I added a couple of transfers to the flags and glued in the gunners. Out of interest, did anyone else find the gunners were leaning back quite a way or is this just because I've used the ones from the Raider sets instead of the wyches? I ended up filing their feet down so they stood up straighter.

I've tidied up all of the Kabalites with purple shoulders and knees to match the gunners and Reavers. I unfortunately haven't had time to do ANY of the line highlighting on them, the Scourges or most of the Reavers. It's a shame but hopefully I'll find the motivation to come back to it later.

Well I'll be taking plenty more shots of them at the tournament tomorrow so hopefully you'll get a better look at their paintjobs then. For now it's midnight and I should really turn in. I'll try to get battle reports for the tournament up early next week. I should have more time for blogging over the next few weeks as I won't be frantically painting. I do want to get the Blood Bowl teams ready for the next session mind you...

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

MASK Blood Bowl League - Day One

We've been meaning to get a four player Blood Bowl league started for years. We'd tried to run a league in the past but whilst Matt and I were interested, the other two just weren't feeling the love. The new boxed set at the end of last year was a great excuse to kick start the search for a couple more players. We found them in the form of Steve (from my work) and Kern (a friend of Matt's). Neither of them own any BB stuff themselves so Steve would take my Humans and Kern would use my Orcs. Hopefully if they stay interested they'll fancy picking up one of the new teams that will have hopefully been released by then.

Anyway, that left us with our four teams (3 re-rolls each):

  1. Alex - Dwarves (2 troll slayers, 2 blitzers, 2 runners and 5 linemen)
  2. Matt - Skaven (rat ogre, 2 blitzers, 3 gutter runners, 5 linerats)
  3. Steve - Humans (ogre, 4 blitzers, 1 thrower, 5 linemen)
  4. Kern - Orcs (4 black orcs, 4 blitzers, 1 thrower, 2 linemen)
My warmup game against a wall of orcs

No prizes for guessing where the league name comes from! Anyway, Steve and Kern have barely played a turn of BB between them so we started out with a half game as a warmup. I played Kern's orcs and got to feel what it's like facing four black orcs! One of my runners did have a pop at one of them though and managed to injure him!

Game One - Dwarves vs. Humans
We then kicked into the league proper. We randomly determined the pairings for the first game and I was up against Steve and his Humans. After the warmup game we'd had some debate about whether the ogre was a better option than a couple of catchers but Steve decided to stick with what he'd got and maybe pick up some catchers later on.


Steve won the coin flip and decided to receive first (after I explained it probably wasn't a good idea to kick to Dwarves). The early play involved a lot of smashing at the line of scrimmage but Steve left the ball in his own endzone where it had ended up after the kick. I tried my best to get a runner through to it but he spotted the threat and stopped him in his tracks. When he eventually did go for the ball he smashed through the middle of the field with his ogre at the front of the cage and came within a turn of a touchdown. Fortunately I was able to get a runner through to him and stop him in his tracks. A few turns later and this was the scene:


I'd managed to drag the ball out to my right wing and set up a partial cage to give Skag (one of my runners) a pretty much unmolested run down the wing and into the endzone for a touchdown. That pretty much wrapped up the first half but I'd be receiving to start the second half. By this point Steve had a handful of guys knocked out (though frustratingly none injured) and only two of them woke up for the start of the second half. This gave me a slight numbers advantage which I managed to exploit to give Skag another touchdown that pretty much sealed up the game.

A standard skill upgrade meant Skag would have the Block skill for the next game. I also added an apothecary to try to prevent any brutal early player losses.

On the other end of the table, the Orcs had taken a brutal defeat to the Skaven. When I'd looked over in the first half it was 1-1 but by the end the Skaven romped to a 4-1 victory with an orc thrower dying in the process. Needless to say, the Orcs didn't take too kindly to the embarrassment...


Sadly, all of the rats survived with just one who'd miss the next game...

Game Two - Dwarves vs. Skaven
We randomised it again which meant I would face Matt for my second game. There's no love lost between us so we decided to use Illegal Procedure for this game (although agreed not to bother for the rest of the league). Apologies in advance for not taking any pictures but I wanted to concentrate on the game as much as possible.

Matt won the flip and obviously elected to receive. With pretty much the opening block of the game he broke Yadri's (one of my troll slayers) leg and put him out for the rest of this game and all of the next. That evened the numbers up briefly but it wasn't long before he failed a block with his rat ogre who was promptly knocked out. He did, however, manage to get within spitting distance of my endzone with the ball in the hands of one of his gutter runners. Fortunately I managed to stop him just short and was able to get the ball to good old Skag who legged it over to his favoured right flank and headed for the endzone. I decided not to rush and make sure I smashed up the rats as much as possible before scoring. I even took the gamble of handing off the ball to Kragg (my other runner) so he'd get the SPP for the touchdown. Probably silly given that this was turn 7 but hopefully worth it down the line. I felt pretty good with a 1-0 lead going to the half.

The second half didn't start well for Matt either. He rolled throw a rock on the kick off table and I won the roll off (neither of us had FAME modifiers). The rock must've been a big 'un because it hit one of his blitzers in the skull and put him down permanently. I wasn't complaining but it's a shame it didn't happen at the hands of one of my dwarves! In fact, the game had been pretty frustrating on that front. I seemed to be getting through the rats' armour with no difficulty but I think I only caused a single injury (another fractured leg). Of course stunning and the odd knock out helped but long term it wouldn't hamper Matt as much as I'd like to.

The turning point of the game was another instance of Matt having a gutter runner near my endzone with the ball. My runners were playing some deep defence and managed to snatch the ball away. I was pretty sure he'd be able to recover it again next turn as I had no back up from the other much slower dwarves on the line of scrimmage. I therefore decided to try to pass down the left wing to one of my blitzers. If nothing else I thought I'd get the ball out of my half and give myself a bit of breathing room. That was until Kragg fumbled the pass and Matt's gutter runner gleefully scooped up the ball for an equalising touchdown.

Unbelievably Matt rolled another rock to be thrown and I again won the roll off but with just a stun this time. That coupled with a couple of knock outs meant the numbers were in my favour. Unfortunately the dice weren't. Matt managed to get his gutter runners through into my backfield fairly easily and when he managed to get the ball away from Skag I knew things weren't going to end well. With only a few turns to go he got the winning touchdown which didn't leave me enough time to equalise. I did my best to smash up the few rats he had to put on the line but despite having a big numbers advantage for most of the game his gutter runners had won the day.

Meanwhile, Steve's Humans had managed to hang onto a nail-biting victory against Kern's Orcs. At one point one of his blitzers managed to make a 5+ dodge followed by a 4+ and then a 3+ dodge to get to a lone orc blitzer who was making a break for the endzone. He could only manage a both down result though leaving the orc standing. Fortunately, he failed his dodge roll and Steve narrowly avoided an equaliser to win 1-0.

Conclusion
We'd hoped to get a third game in but it was now after midnight and we decided to call it a night. There's no doubt the stars of my team were my runners, Skag and Kragg, who not only got all three of my touchdowns but did some sterling work on defence. Gutter runners are so frustrating to play against. Starting with AG4 and Dodge is insane! Obviously they're pretty flimsy but pinning them down long enough to hammer them is nearly impossible. I didn't help myself much though as I underused my blockers' Tackle skill to try and keep them in check.

I also concentrated far too much on smashing things on the line of scrimmage. I tended to have a numbers advantage but this left my runners needing to do all the work in the backfield. This was partly caused by the loss of my troll slayer but having my blitzers or maybe a couple of blockers back to help would've been sensible. Trouble is, with my piddling MA the rats can run circles around me.

Matt tops the table then with two wins from two. That leaves me in second thanks to my touchdown margin over Steve who also has one win. Kern is currently winless at the bottom of the table but I'm playing him next and I'm not feeling good about playing all those black orcs with just one of my troll slayers! He's back to full strength too as he was able to afford a new thrower to replace the one he lost.

Not sure when the next session will be but it's looking like June/July so I'll hopefully have both the Orc and Human teams painted up and we can have some much more photogenic games! Looking forward to painting something other than DE to be honest. Shame the Humans are purple too!!

Monday, April 10, 2017

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari?) for the Doubles - Part 3

Well it's been three weeks since I last posted anything!! I've been pretty busy getting my Dark Eldar ready for the doubles but I'm still worried I won't get them finished with just under two weeks to go. Hopefully I can get a lot done on the bank holiday weekend but there's still a lot to do. Anyway, let's see what I have managed to achieve.

Reavers
These guys have probably had the most love since they're easily my favourite Dark Eldar models. The scourges are probably a close second but there's just something awesome about these jetbikes that made them the first thing I wanted to paint:



There hasn't been a ton of progress on them since the last post but they've all now got gold helmets and I've added some 'ard coat to their facemasks. I'm pleased with the results and with the exception of perhaps doing the engines in gold too (like you can see on the one in the middle in the top picture), I'm happy to field them like this. They're not finished but they're good enough for the event at least. If I get some time (unlikely) I'll come back to them for the finishing touches but with time running out I really need to get on with the rest.

Venoms
This has been most of my work for the last couple of weeks. I had one of the four venoms up to a reasonable standard so I set about working on the other three.


This is pretty much where I left off when I was trying to paint them this time last year for Double Trouble. I didn't get much further than doing the cockpits in an attempt at green OSL and then in Lothern Blue stripes down the middle. 


And here they are now. There's quite a bit of change I hope you'll agree. I've continued the random purple panels from the Reavers. I'm not convinced it really works on the Venoms though and I'm wondering if I should've just painted the same panel purple on all of them. Too late to worry about that now. Anyway, they've all had highlights of Xereus Purple followed by Genestealer Purple. I've added gold round the cockpits to tie in with the Reavers and painted all the skulls in. The final bit of work was to paint the flags Mephiston Red. If I get time before the event they'll get a transfer on the flag and a few transfers elsewhere. It'll probably be a night before the event kind of thing if at all. Still I'm happy with the progress. Again I might do the engines in gold to match the reavers (assuming I get time to do them even) but the only other thing I want to do is paint in the skulls properly. The gunners also all need doing but I'll do them along side the Kabalites. Speaking of which...

Kabalite Warriors 
There's three squads of five to paint here. There's a single test model in amongst them that needs some tweaking too. I've decided to do their helmets, shoulder pads and chest plates in purple to tie into the vehicles better and just lift them up from being just line highlighted. Thankfully a lot of the basecoating was already done from a good while ago so they just need the purple painting in and line highlights across the board. That's easier said than done of course but I'd have no chance if they weren't even painted at all.


You can see I've also started on the gunners for the venoms too. I'm hoping to get the bulk of the warriors done by the weekend so I've got all of next week to work on the scourges.

Scourges
Again, there's some paint on these guys from my token efforts before Double Trouble but little else. However, my wife suggested orange wings for the "bat wing" ones and red for the feathered ones. I decided to try out a test model of the orange to see how I liked it. 


The lighting isn't great but you get the idea. First off, painting orange is a fucking ballache without an airbrush (like I had for my Knights). For subsequent models I'll try and mask and airbrush them to get a much smoother finish on the wings. What do you think of the orange though?

Conclusion
I think there's actually a reasonable chance of me pulling this off but it'll still be a slog for the next couple of weeks. I did manage to fit in an evening of Blood Bowl the other night to start our league of though so I'll try to post up about that. Matt's coming over soon too to actually get in a couple of test games with our list so we at least have some idea what we're doing. 

Thinking I should bring these guys to Double Trouble 2 as I had fun using them last time and at least I won't be so ashamed of them this time!


Right, best get back to painting. Will hopefully have another update for you soon.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...