Game Changers

Game changers are something you bring to a battle that fundamentally changes the way your opponent planned on playing. A game changer may be an offensive unit that your opponent has no way to deal with, or a way to move across the battlefield that a normal opponent could never react to. Either way they somehow make your army list more effective and your opponent less effective giving you an advantage (see the tie in to last post). Here are some advantages that I have seen various armies use:

Space Marines

Storm Shields - 3+ invulnerable saves pretty much invalidate anything your opponent can throw at it, storm shield units are great at tying up your opponents unit he thought was going to win with. Add some CC punch back and you have a nasty survivable unit.

Land Raiders - There is so little out their that can deal with armor 14. I am toying with an army that uses multiple land raiders. Basically the thought is no matter what your opponent brings you can comfortably turn it into a long range shooting match if you don't get out of your transports.

Chaos

Lash Princes - I know everyone hates them, but it changes a fundamental rule of gaming: moving your opponents army. Most people use them to group squads for blast markers or getting into assault quickly.

Inferno Bolts - I found out the hard way inferno bolts suck. "I'm sorry you thought you came to the table with an army of armored supermen.....instead they have the armor save of a gaunt...oh wait worse than a gaunt. I rapid fire for 18 shots."

Demons

The entire army changes the way you play, messes with your deployment tactics, hits you with AP 3 templates, strength 8 super gods. I think they made the army specifically to through opponents off their game.

Nids

Carnifexes - The nid version of a tank, but with 4-5 structure points. And you better have brought AP 2 weapons or its like they have void shields too. Most people handle these with meltas or small arms fire, but if they get to close the fex can lock you in close combat unlike a tank.

Well that's enough for now. Rem member you can't account for these but they may highlight overall weaknesses in your army. Try and come up with alternative strategies on how your army would deal with game changers. How would it be different if you went for the tie instead of the win?

Rix

Fighting Your Fight

Every battle ends up with one side having had the advantage in the fight. That does not mean that the winner is predetermined, it just means that a series of inputs allowed one player to have the upper hand. How they exploited that advantage or how they maintained it is another mater entirely. Today I want to go over a number of reasons that a player can gain an advantage.

So lets get some simple ones out of the way. The following advantages you have no control over (or at least shouldn't):

• Mission/deployment selection
• Terrain
• Luck
• Opponents army list
• Opponents tactics

Next are pretty obvious ones:

• Your tactics - I'm sure that the netz are ablaze with info on the best tactics. Obviously more than I can fit into a bullet point. Me I just try not to fuck myself with stoopid tactics cause me not so smart sometimez.
  
• Your army list - This is what I love most about the game. You have to have a good army list if you plan on winning. This means you have to follow the fundamentals: lots of troops, use units that compliment your weaknesses, have a solution to compete in every type of mission, etc. This is an area that is very personal to the army, but again is more detail than I can go into in a bullet point.

So the final two are what I would like to discuss most and what I think are the most important in a battle:

• Your tactics vs. your opponents tactics
• Your army list vs. your opponents army list

These are really the fundamentals of the actual game play, and goes beyond just the simple planning. Its not just how you plan on winning the game, its how you plan on winning the game after you see what your opponent is gonna do. Its not just how good of a list it is but how well it stacks up to your opponents list. A good example is no matter how great your list is, if it is fundamentally weak against marines every time you fight marines you are gonna be at a disadvantage (and you may see more than one marine army in a tournament....)

The good news is the way to get an advantage in these match ups is to always, always "fight your fight." What this means is that your army list and your tactics are always designed to play a game the way you want to play it and that is how it wins. So following along that track here is some advice for achieving that.

Be balanced, or be REALLY good at something - A balanced list is key if you want to take all comers. A more flexible and balanced list will enable you to modify your tactics after you see what your opponent is going to do. The flip side to this is be the best at what you are gonna do. Usually this means a very shooty or a very assaulty army, but it may be a huge hoard army that is gonna swallow an opponent. What ever it is make sure you are the best, or intrinsically have a good fallback plan (OK maybe my Space Wolf assault force is not gonna beat 100 genestealers..... OK boys its back to bolters). This is really how you define "your fight" and sets you up for the advantage you expect to see.

Balance your list by bringing everyone to your level - Minimize your weaknesses using your army list. If you are a very shooty army, take units that murder transports that give you more time to shoot at them. If you are assaulty, take lots of strong transports that make sure your not legging it. If you are a balanced force, maximize your unit count so you have a lot left over after an attrition war. This is when you start to see your advantage take place during game play (e.g. you just unloaded your assaulty army in front of your opponent, your opponent is on the other side of the table and you have superior firepower, you have the numerical advantage after an attrition fight).

Bring a game changer - This is one of the more overlooked aspects of the game. Bring something that is gonna fundamentally change the way your opponent has to play. Put it out front and make sure he has to deal with it. What you are doing is putting you opponent on the back foot as they try to deal with this unstoppable Juggernaut, and all the while you are letting the rest of your army do what it does best (whatever that may be). This is where you are gonna maximise your advantages, either you break your opponents back with these or they have spent so much time dealing with these (or running away from them) that you are in a position to win the game. I will go into some ideas for these in a later post.

Find your tactical groove and stick to it (Unless you are gonna lose) - I played an assaulty space wolf force for a long time that deployed, moved, and assaulted the same way every game. It was a very feared, and was a great example of being REALLY good at something. It took awhile to get the list and the tactics in line but once they were, I wasn't afraid to use it over and over again. Remember that if you don't have a plan that has a good probability of winning when you show up than you are doing something wrong (even if your plan is to formulate your plan after you see your opponents, i.e. a balanced list). The only time you should change is when you see you are obviously outmatched (see 100 genestealers above), but if you find yourself doing that to much than you need to rethink your army list. This is how you make your advantages repeatable.

Rix

Trickonometry

Well, my Thousand Sons list is underway and I thought I'd take a moment to go over the army list and concept. Based heavily on an infantry gun-line, this is my second one-dimensional army and a major reason I started it was to really contrast with my mechanized-assault Nurgle army.

First, as a fluff purist I always try to adhere to the background first and optimize the killyness of an army second. Now the reason I chose the Thousand Sons for the army was that the two most interesting aspects of the 40k universe to me are the spirituality and the psychic themes. With my Dark Angel army satisfying the spirituality theme, I was left with trying to find an army that embodied the psychic theme. I was originally leaning towards creating a craftworld Ulthwe army, but after much consideration I decided that I really couldn't get behind an army of girly men (don't read into that). The exclusion of the eldar plus the fact that I just love Space Marines led me to humanity's greatest psykers, the Thousand Sons.

With that in mind, I wanted an all-Thousands Sons list that I based on Ahriman's exiled sorceror cabal. Based on the background the Thousand Sons are composed of only two types of marines, sorcerers and rubric marines. So with a whole two options open to me for army creation, I had to start getting creative or risk a creating a force that would be dead on arrival for competitive games. So I started browsing the intrawebz for some inspiration and found what everyone does on the internet, lots and lots of bad ideas and paint jobs. But there existed a gem among them, the usage of Terminator Sorcerer Lord models in a counts-as Obliterators fashion. This idea was the spark that chained into allowing me a a good chunk of the Chaos codex while still adhering to the fluff.

The magic counts-as weapons angle would allow me to take pretty much any infantry unit I wanted in the codex. So with that I started to build my army in earnest and ended up with the following list:

1500 point Chaos List
1 - Ahriman
1 - Pyromancer Coven (Chosen x5 w/ 3 Meltagun/3 Meltabomb)
2 - Rubric Squads x9 (Sorcerors w/ Gift of Chaos)
1 - Sorcerer Lord Coven (Obliterator x3)
2 - Warmage Coven (Havocs x5 w/ 4 Autocannons)

Now the modeling of this army was gonna be fun with making a lot of sorcerer conversions. Instead of painting up a lot of weaponry, I'd have to get creative in making dynamic poses for sorcerers mid-cast. Seeing as how I'm not yet half-way through the army I'll wait until I'm finished to go into further detail on the modeling and painting aspect (with plenty of pictures). However, the ability to easily change army composition by simply switching the counts-as components makes this a very fluid army design.

Having played only one game against Rix, I can't really speak a whole lot about the effectiveness of the army. But I can say that based on it's composition alone, I foresee this army being really good in some circumstances and sucking bad in others. For instance, I loaded up on autocannons to pop rhinos so I could in turn give the AP3 bolters plenty of marines to kill. The inclusion of up to 7 Gift of Chaos attempts per turn also provides a lot assault countering ability. However, I imagine the army will fall victim easily to Walker Assaults (DS-ing Dreads) and Mass Firepower (hello IG!). I've tried to mitigate these factors as best I can but due to the expensive point costs of the units I really can't counter all army types. So I'm just embracing the inherent strength this army provides (coincidentally against all Rix's armies) and ignoring its weaknesses (I mean really, who plays IG? :P).

Hopefully, I will finish this army up in the next two months in time for the blood feud wars I will surely have with Rix's Space Wolves on their codex release. Until then, I guess the only thing to post is the many victories I will claim over Rix's Imperial Fists. :P

I'm Back Baby

After playing 40k over the last two weekends, its official I'm back. 40k has starting infecting my mind. I start mentally trading off adding storm bolters to my command squad instead of that extra rhino my devastators never lose. I have multiple bids on ebay. I can feel my avarice toward social situations rising. Like a bad 80's werewolf movie, the nerd in me is breaking through.

The focus of so much of my attention.....my Imperial Fists. Not only is it a challenge to paint, but building a viable force inside of codex company is very challenging to say the least. I am an assault player, my mind always wanders toward rhino assaults and frag grenades. Trying to keep my wolves in check with tactical combat squads......grrrr. My army goal is a half codex company, with no armory or specialist attachments. That means no terminators, librarians, land raiders, land speeders....nothing.

My planned army force will consist of:

Commander and Command Squad
3 x Tactical squads
1 x Assault Squad
1 x Devastator Squad
1 x Dreadnought

Fun, right?

Rix

Hurumph

I am writing this post in protest. As my co-writer informed me I have not posted for an exceedingly long time. Mostly because I have been trying desperately to avoid all things 40k for a while. Not because I am done with 40k but I am trying to keep myself interested.

As I finished my last squad, a group of Alpha Legion cultist conversions, I felt my interest in 40k waning. I just couldn't bring myself to pick up a paint brush. At the same time I received my last bits necessary to assemble my 2nd Emperor's Fist Tac squad. On one hand I was excited on the other I had no energy. I decided the best thing possible was a long vacation.

Enter Bioshock....

Never being an early adopter I decided to play Bioshock, mostly because it was only 20 dollars on steam. What a great game!!!! It was the first game in a long time that I found myself completely immersed. I find myself looking over my shoulder because of the great audio effects (lots and lots of creepy voices). I find myslef rushing in rooms mouselooking wildly becasue I am so nervous about being snuck up on. In addition to the immersion factor, the weapons and abilities have enough customization to have some RPG aspect to it. It has all the elements that I have never felt like it was a grind when I play, but am not running back home in the afternoons that I HAVE to play it (i.e. WOW, WAR, Portal).

As I come close in on beating the game I have felt the familiar siren song back to 40k, so hopefully my vacation mission was accomplished. I will let you know after this weekend after I tear some pathetic Nurgle army a new arsehole.

Rix

Join Us...

Well, my Nurgle army is pretty much done and as you can see it features a metric crap-tonne of zombies (70 models). I originally did not intend for this army to become a huge zombie host but Nurgle must've guided my thoughts and that's where I ended up.

It all started when Rix and I were driving back from a tourney a little over a month ago. I was starting to yearn for a more H2H army that I couldn't really get with my Dark Angel Battle Company. So Rix and I starting having a discussion about me starting my Nurgle Black Legion Army back up (it had been on hiatus for many years). We came up with a preliminary list and I got to work pulling my old models out and modeling new ones. At that time, the list featured a squad or two of lesser daemons but they were almost an afterthought.

As my modeling and painting went along, I finally got to the point where I needed to stand up those lesser daemon squads. I needed 21 daemons total and I only had 10 plague bearers in my bits-rumaging box. Now I'm not a big fan of metal models and I did not want to have to drop a bunch of money for 2 more boxes of plague bearers so I decided to use some zombies in a counts-as fashion from a left over zombie regiment box and old cadian squad box.

Now, I've never been much of a speed painter and I was always perplexed by how people stood up horde armies under any sort of timetable but these zombies sure enlightened me. In fact, I daresay I went a little overboard and was borderline addicted. You see, I gave myself a whole weekend to model and paint the 3 squads I needed for my army. After the first half of the first day I worked on them they were done. The sense of productivity I felt was intoxicating, so like any sort of drugged-up junkie I went and bought another box of zombies. Rix also supplied the habit with his leftovers from another zombie regiment box he had. At the end of this frenzy and 1 full days work I had another 7 squads of zombies bringing my total to 10 7-man squads.

Here's the results of my 1 month bender:

Full Army


Zombies


Plague Marines and Transports


HQ's and Wound Counters

At some point along the way, I did the maths and figured out that I'd have to run a 2000 point list just to fit in all the zombies I wanted. So, that's exactly what I played against Rix when he next came over to my house. It was an objective based game and the details of the game may or may not be covered in a different post because I don't have the time to post them here. However, I will say Rix got donkey punched by the zombie horde. After playing and list-tailoring against my Dark Angels for so long, he simply didn't bring enough guns or bullets to deal with the endless tide of dead.

All-in-all, this army was a blast to paint and I'm sure I will have a lot of fun playing it more in the future. I learned a lot more about the usage and effects of washes but most importantly I learned how to turn out a horde quickly.

Next Project: Thousand Sons Strike Force or Finish the Cathedral Board

More Ramblings on Dual Use

I had another idea that I had to put up here. A friend of mine was investigating putting together a Thousand Son army. In conversation about how to create the army we came up with idea of painting up alot of sorcerers and using them as special and heavy weapon troopers. I just think that's a great idea from a fluff perspective, but from a modeling perspective it would make all your troopers a kind of internal dual use. You wouldn't need to worry about modeling missile launchers, lascannons, and meltaguns and swapping them out if you want to change out weapons. Just give them different sets of posses so that you can distinguish them on the battlefield and you can write as many different lists with them as you want.