I'm not dead, just busy

As the tittle suggests I have not abandoned my blogging, but academia is a cruel mistress. So is professional life for that matter. John should have some material up in the next few days and so should I. John has been playing a Path to Glory Campaign down at Games Workshop: City Walk in Atlanta and I have thankfully been able to get over to my local Hobby Town to get some good games in.  I have two battles to talk about where I have gotten to take the new Dark Angels out for a spin so I will be bringing you my thoughts on how the army performs in combat. Also I have a few new projects I am working on and several drafts for new articles that I will hopefully be getting written in the next few weeks.

Thanks folks and happy gaming!

Army Transport

Hey folks,

Can someone out there recommend a good army transport system? I want something that can hold a lot of infantry plus a land raider and a rhino sized vehicle or two. I would also like something to haul my paints around as well. If you could I would like the exacts size of foam trays that would work best for 40k models. Thanks!

P.S. I haven't forgotten about giving you my thoughts on my first battle with the new Dark Angels. Academia has been a cruel mistress lately so I will be getting to it soon. I will give you a short preview of how it went though. I won with one model left on the board in a 3k game against two 1500 point nidzilla armies.

Gaming in Atlanta!

So yes the rumors are true I did some gaming down in Atlanta yesterday. It was a tournament based on the Path to Glory Campaign, this was however just an introductory thing, and kink worker outer, which was great for me for doing both War band battles and Warriors of Chaos. So in warband/Path to Glory you have favor points to get units and deck out your Champion, you earn favor points  by participating in battles, killing the enemies big guys, winning challenges and other stuff the chaos gods look favorably upon. One nice thing is that you get to pick a god, and every unit in your warband gets that mark if they can. So me and Tzeentch most of my army had a 6+ ward save, and if they have shields 5+, the parry save is upgraded, booyah. So my warband was 4 marauders with shields, 2 normal chaos warriors, 1 chaos warrior with great weapon, 1 chosen with throwing axe, a spawn and my champion with shield and throwing axe. So without going into all the rules warband plays exactly like a normal game just with Favor Points not Victory Points, the major difference is you roll and spend favor points on the models you get, and that is what you are set with, then when you accrue more favor points you can take more rolls and add to your warband. Also there is set gear for your units then additional stuff you get to roll on, biggest difference for me was that Warriors dont have Chaos Armor just heavy armor. So onto the games, it was three games of 2v2 on 3' x 4' table lots of terrain, too much if you ask me. And Joshua if you read this I know I am now at -1 LD for the rest of the tournament. Then for the fourth battle it was a battle royal, with some heavy twists.

Game 1: Played a warband with 10 marauders, 3 forsaken, champion, and dragon ogre. To start out i could do no wrong my spawn crushed half his marauders, my warriors chomped up the other marauders and my chosen wounded the Dragon Ogre with his throwing axe. Then around turn 3 i started dying. Spawn went down my marauders got routed dragon ogre crushed chosen and warriors. I lost, everymodel dead, with about half his dead.

Game 2: Enemy Warband was two Chaos Trolls, champion, chosen and some marauders and warhounds. My spawn was MVP, killed champion chosen and marauders. My marauders killed his hounds and his trolls killed my Champion causing my marauders to flee. Then after his trolls over ran they got stupid and wandered to the edge of the map too far for me to catch in time. Victory for me.

Game 3: enemy warband was 5 warhounds, 3 warriors, 8-9 marauders and champion. This time the dice gods held me down. Crushed his warhounds then chosen was crushed my champion fled, my marauders lost combat by one fled and was caught, warriors lost by one also fled and were caught, spawn rolled a 1 for random attacks and did nothing, was killed in second round and we called it, major victory for him. I failed 3 LD tests which I should have passed causing my army to run and be easy targets.

So i won best Sport, probably bc I had lowest score of the non tournament runners, i did not actually place last thank you very much. So for that i got to take a mutalith or slaughterbrute for d6 games, for free. Well i choose Mutalith and of course only managed a 1 on the roll. But at least i will get to curb stomp somebody one game.

Sorry this is soo long but....

My comments, when playing warband the big guys/monsters are really important and dangerous while your champion and chosen are not as strong as you would think they would be.  Even with ward saves my guys died real fast. Even though i did badly i thought the tourney was fun and am looking forward to the real campaign. This has been great for forcing me to buy units and get them painted in a hurry, as well as trying out models i normally wouldnt take. In the future i will have my champion and chosen in units because alone they are squishy. Also from this tourney i learned warhounds are a bad choice as they always die real fast and have trouble doing damage. And that LD is big big big in these small games as one unit fleeing or dying takes away for me a 3rd or 4th of my army.

Gaming today

Hey folks, Bob here. Today both John and I will be doing some gaming. John is going to be playing down at Games Workshop: City Walk in Hotlanta, Georgia and I will be playing over at Hobby Town USA in good ole Johnson City. City Walk has a cool campaign starting up to get players into a new Warriors of Chaos army called Path to Glory. Warbands of Chaos will be going at each other. Hopefully John will put up some thoughts on the days events and maybe some thoughts on playing Warriors of Chaos. Meanwhile I will be taking my Dark Angels over to Hobby Town for my first time trying out the army since the new book came out. I will do an article on my thoughts on the army and what list(s) I try out. Hope you guys and gals can get some gaming in today too!!

Fury of the Lion

By the blood of old Caliban (not Caladan for you Dune readers out there) the sons of the Lion are finally given a proper book, and it even has things that the regular Codex chapters can't steal (I am not bitter, no not at all)! The Dark Angels were my first 40k army way back in 3rd edition and they remain near and dear to me to this day. I will be breaking down my thoughts on the new book into three sections, Background, Units, and Rules. At the very end I will show some of my recent purchases of new models and leave you with my final thoughts on the new book and models.So without further adieu here is the first part.

Background: Okay so as usual the codex has a nice history section detailing the actions of the Dark Angels Legion during the heresy and of course the fall. The majority of the background sections (not the unit entries) remains largely unchanged lore wise except for a few changes, with one being very drastic, and the addition of some materials from the Black Library books. The old Lion and Russ rivalry is still here but with no mention of a possible mending of fences between the two in subsequent years. Luther is still imprisoned in the Rock, but he no longer is in the deepest part. In perhaps one of the biggest changes to current 40k cannon in a while it is confirmed in no uncertain terms that the Primarch Lion El Johnson is indeed alive and well inside the Rock. Gone is the speculation that he disappeared into the warp/ the Eye of Terror. Johnson is now asleep in the deepest part of the Rock, and with this revelation he is the first confirmed living loyalist Primarch to be in the 41st millennium (no Guilliman does not count as being alive). To move into the more modern realm the question of why the Dark Angels are often passed over for new chapter founding is explored a bit more. Accusations of "legion building" towards the Dark Angels and their subsequent foundings is an interesting point. Yet another level of mistrust the hunt for the fallen has caused.   


Units: So moving on from the new background section I turn now to the unit section of the book. Like the Chaos Marines before them and like the last books of 5th edition the unit entries have much more fleshed out background information. The stand outs are of course the newest editions to the codex (ie the Deathwing Knights, Ravenwing Black Knights, the new speeders and flyers). I will just say that I find the addition of the two knight units a very cool new entry to the army.

It seems to be the trend with the different Marine codices that they each have some sort of specialist infantry unit like the Knights (Sanguinary Guard, Wolf Guard, Paladins). I like this concept of adding unique formations to each chapter. I believe that the Black Knights come from the Ravenwing novel (which is on my reading list) so I am also glad to see elements from the novels making its way into the armies (or vice versa . While I am enthusiastic about most of the additions I have to say that the new flyers, while looking much better than the flying fist that is the Stormraven and whatever the hell the Space Marine attack helicopter analog is, I still have the same feeling of ambivalence towards them as I do to all flyers. Out of the two I decided to purchase the kit and build it as the Dark Talon as synergies with the way I am expanding my army to include more Deathwing and Ravenwing.

Rules: Well I will start off by saying that I will not be delving all that deeply into this section. Other sites have provided much more intricate breakdowns of all the new rules so I will not belabor the point that much. That being said I will highlight the new rules that I find to be the best changes.

Deathwing Assault and Vengeful Strike- thank god this got a bit of a boost. I love the addition of Vengeful Strike to the Deathwing terminators.

Inner Circle- A good rule addition that complements the lore

Deathwing Knights- sweet merciful crap are these guys nice. One use strength boost, Fortress of Shields, and You Cannot Hide make for a damn hard unit. Expect them to draw all teh agro on the table.

Some other things I will mention rules wise are the addition of Flakk missiles to Tac and Dev squads as an upgrade. I love the addition of the plasma cannon to terminators. I also can't do a rules section without mentioning the big screw the whirlwind got by not adding an option to make it a dedicated anti air platform.

Wrapping Up: Alright I am very pleased with the new Codex. I have not been able to get my army onto the table yet but when I do I will come back with my thoughts on the new units I have purchased. So here is what I have bought (so far): two boxes of the new Deathwing (one built as a command squad and another built as knights), one box of the Ravenwing (built as knights), and the Dark Talon. I love these new models and I plan on fleshing out my Ravenwing and getting a few more Deathwing boxes. I am on the fence about the new Land Speeders. The one model I have no love for is the Belial model. Whoever sculpted this model needs to be sat down and taught about sculpting action poses. The new Belial looks like he is yelling at the damn neighbor kids to get off his lawn, no bueno. I will put some pictures up of my painting efforts when I get the chance. In the meantime happy gaming folks!

Warriors of Chaos! or Warriors of Chaos!!

So as you may have guessed I have turned to the dark side. When the new Warriors of Chaos book came out I got the book and started building an army.

and 5 ws, 4s&t, 2a, and a basic armor save of 4+

So as far as history goes this book doesnt really have much. Chaos came into the world, screwed up what was here in the most epic battles ever, didnt finish the job the first time so keep coming back to finish the job. This book brings you up to date on all things in the evil world, no changes that i saw I have never had the book before. Getting into the rules of this book is where things start to get fishy. Some good changes and some bad and some head scratchers. Basically get this book if there has ever been something you wanted to do in other armies but couldnt. Want a BA wizard who is also good at combat, chaos, want the best core choice in the game for cheaper, chaos, want a monster so unbelievably broke, chaos, want really great shooting, choas well not really but still Hellcannon is scary. Basically this army seems set up to ignore at least one phase, shooting, while possibly ignoring another magic, and absolutely dominating in combat. If this army gets to the other army in one piece it will be a blood bath fast. Chaos seems like a great army to start with, becuase like i said it lets you focus on making your army great at one thing, combat, so you get to learn that. Also units can be expensive so even a 2000pt army will have only a few models, if you want, while it can also range into the realm of huge at 2000pts

There are so many broke things in this army that I will take several posts to describe them all. I will list them all here just to get them out there. Magic, Marks of Chaos(all of them), Eye of the Gods, Chaos Armor, Chaos Lord, Sorcerrer Lord, Exalted Hero, Sorcerrer, Chaos Dragon, daemonic mount, manticore, chaos warriors, chaos marauders, chaos chariot, chosen chaos knights, dragon ogres, chimera, gorebeast chariot, chaos warshrine, hellcannon, dragon ogre shaggoth, skullcrusher, slaughterbrute, mutalith vortex beast, pretty much every special character, daemon prince, and once again because it is so broke Eye of the Gods. yes i pretty much listed everything in the book

Glory to the First

Hey folks Bob here. I know I had said that I would do the Horus Heresy: Betrayal as my first "book review" but I have changed my mind. My first "book review" will be a release that I have been waiting on for a good while. So without further adieu I present to you (in case you haven't already guessed what it is) the subject of that post:

For the Lion! Holy crap I love the cover art!

Sorry I haven't been on in a goodly while here folks. Academia has once again gotten her evil claws into me again. Now that I am getting in the swing of things I should be posting on here somewhat more often. Some things in the pipes include the above mentioned Dark Angels book review and some commentary on the new models (with pictures!) that I have purchased and are working on. Also my old man recently gave me a good idea for a linked 40k, Battle Fleet Gothic campaign that would involve the retaking of a system and would involve several of the 40k expansions so I will likely be expanding on that idea a bit. Also I have been revisiting my Imperial Guard and this has got me thinking about narrative in army building so I would like to explore the subject and share some of the fiction I have concocted for my Cadian army as well as the crusade force of which they are part. Till then folks, happy gaming as always!!