Conflict 2011

So just sent in my payment for Conflict happening in New York in mid January. http://www.theconflictgt.com/

Why Sweeping Statements Shouldn't be made

So reading on the internet is something we all do. I surf from blog to blog reading about things I like from basketball to of course Warhammer... to my new hobby Warmachine. And sometimes we run across articles that we disagree with. On BOLS about a week ago, Fritz from WAY of Saim Hann or whatever his blog is called now, posted an article about a dreadnought list, and as Dreadnoughts are my chief interest and speciality I dove right in to reading his article. http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/12/40k-space-marine-dreadwall-list.html

Now he talks about walking Ironclad walls backed up by razorbacks, and it all seems pretty cool and kosher. I have an open mind to people using what they like and while I would not often just walk my dreadnoughts as I enjoy the pods, I do support that walking dreadnoughts are viable, and perhaps if two of his Ironclads were swapped for shooty dreads I think his list would be more solid.

But what really caught me was near the very end of the article where he says flat out that podding Dreadnought lists will fail. This is a pretty bold statement that I tend to think I refute every time I bring my army out. Now maybe he means that his exact list structure would fail if points were spent on drop pods, but the statement does seem quite sweeping. Especially coming from a player who goes on and on about how necrons and demon hunters can be viable it seems silly for Drop pods to be dismissed so handily. Well I wish I had been able to read all the comments on that article to see what the reaction was, but sadly... or perhaps not I dont see diquss comments or whatever system BOLS uses these days.

Now I enjoy Fritz's articles and many of his views on the game as a whole. Including his devotion to the eldar, who were my first army and though I feel they have gotten the shaft in 5th edition and miss the old 3rd edition days of running around with my Alaitoc codex. This certainly is not a call out against Fritz in anyway... just against the idea that drop pods are irrelevant and not worth it. I mean sure they have their inadequacies and their weaknesses, but thats just like anything else. Drop pods themselves work best in my opinion in dreadnought lists like mine and Fritz's because their main weakness... being killpoints is mitigated by the fact that they are still AV 12 vehicles and I find that many people are not going to waste the guns they have shooting drop pods... when they need those same guns to kill dreadnoughts. And all if your dreadnoughts have been swiftly dealt with leaving your opponent the luxury of killing your pods then you in all likelihood werent winning anyway.

Anyway for those of you looking for battle reports I have a few to post up from an event a few weeks ago. Been a little slack in 40k work since my friend and I started playing Warmachine 2 weeks ago. Even went to our first tournament this past weekend and fought each other for 2nd and 3rd in the last round which was fun. I bet the faction I chose can be guessed pretty easily, its the one based on fire.

Brothers Grim Game 3: Eldar

So game 3 of the event was dawn of war set up. The game started with a single objective in the center of the board. On the start of turn 4 whoever controlled the objective would earn 1 point, and then the objective would split into 2 and scatter. The winner would be the person with the most objective points total at the end of the game. Secondary objectives included table quarters and killing one of the opposing hq's.

Brothers Grim Game 2: Nurgle Chaos Marines

So after game 1 I found myself on the top table against Kevin and his mono-nurgle space marines.

Brothers Grim Game 1: Battle Wagon Orks

Was at the Brother's Grim store on Long Island recently for a tournament. 1850pts 3 games of fun. If youre in the area of Ct, lower New York, or upper New Jersey I highly recommend the store and especially their well run tournaments that they host every other month.

Here are some pictures

So I dont have a great camera... or a very steady hand.

Battle Report 1850: Salamanders vs. Ultra Marines

This battle report features another 1850 tourney test list from myself and Rod with his Ultramarines.

1850 Marines vs. Chaos

So finally got my camera back a few weeks ago. But took a lot of time to find the cord to plug it in. Anyway this report involves my Salamanders as usual against Matt's Chaos Space Marines.

Game versus Brian's Tyranids.

I know I promised pictures in my next report. But I was 3 minutes from the game store the other night... which is 40 minutes from home before I realized I hadnt brought the camera. Oh well these powerpoint slides seem to get the job done reasonably well. Plus Brian needs to get more of his army painted before it will look good in pictures, lol.

Warstore Weekend Game 5: Jorge's Blood Angels

So after my tumble from the top of the rankings I thought, no more mephiston and his Blood Angel pack for me. Alas it was not to be, Jorge a friend of my first opponent Dan was also using the ultimate space vampire with a another shifted blood angel list.

Warstore Weekend Game 4: The Champ's Angels

Game 4 turned out to be my title bout. Against Blood Angels again, this time commanded by Dimitry from Russia. HIs list was a nice mixed bag of effective unit choices. Mephiston once again highlighted the list. Along side a regular Librarian with the shield power, an elite Chaplain leading the Death Company in a Land Raider, a Sanguinary Priest leading an Assault Squad with dual meltas and a second such Assault Squad. He also had 2 Baal Predators and 2 Auto cannon/Las cannon Predators.

Warstore Weekend Game 3: Mike's Blood Angels

So the next three battle reports are all similar in a few ways. One, they all involve Blood Angels opponents and 2, they all involve Mephiston. Now let me say that while the lord of death may not be broken, there are some fairly common things that counter him easily, be they plasma kitted IG squads, or TH/SS Terminators. However Mephiston isa very capable counter to some of my lists strengths(the Dreadnoughts), and I dont have a very effective counter measure for the beast.

Well Game 3 had me paired up against one of the 7 or so Blood Angelplayers in the field... considering the field was 20 thats a pretty high percentage. In fact going into the round the score sheet read Me at the top, followed by 5 of those BA players, and tops of them so far was Mike.

Learning about this whole Blogging thing!

I just figured out how a simple line of html code can let me really clean up my main page, by embedding the majority of my post after a read more click.

Im really excited about how this makes the blog a lot more navigable!

Sorry that has nothing to do with warhammer in the slightest... but it sure pumped me up.

At least 1 more battle report should be coming up later tonight, this time embedded from the get go.

Warstore Weekend Game 2: Another Dan? Black Templars

So look up at the standings and find myself in first place after round 1, Woohoo. And matched up one point behind me is a Black Templar player. Felt really good to see two "older" marine books up top in a field filled with 7 Blood angels and a few Space Wolves as well.

Warstore Weekend Game 1:Dan's IG

Ok so round 1 of my bootleg battle reports. Thought they came out pretty decent with powerpoint slides. Not as technically perfect as the vassal ones I could do on the old computer, but alas I dont have it on my mac.

Game 1 was against Dan, from ten inch template the blog you can find to the right on my list. He is an amazing painter and great guy. He tells me he isnt the most competitive of players but is far from bad and using the Ig codex means he starts with a strong versatile base for each of his games.

The Warstore Weekend!

So this past weekend (oct. 22-24) was the Warstore's first annual convention with accompanying tournaments in a few game systems. My friend Bob and I entered the 5 game Warhammer 40k event, he with his Dark Eldar, and I with my Salamanders.

My list was as follows:

Vulkan - 190 Master of the Forge - combi flamer - 110 Tactical Squad - flamer, multimelta, power weapon, drop pod - 220 Scout Squad - 2x combi melta, shotguns, cammo cloaks - 110 Scout Squad - 2x combi melta, shot guns, cammo cloaks - 110 Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, heavy flamer, 2 hunter killer missiles, drop pod - 205 Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, heavy flamer, 2 hunter killer missiles, drop pod - 205 Ironclad Dreadnought - melta gun, heavy flamer, 2 hunter killer missiles, drop pod - 200 Ironclad Dreadnought - melta gun, heavy flamer, 2 hunter killer missiles, drop pod - 200 Dreadnought - twin linked auto cannon, assault cannon, drop pod - 160 Dreadnought - twin linked auto cannon, assault cannon, drop pod - 160 Land Speeder Storm - multimelta - 65 Land Speeder Storm - multimelta - 65 Ran hot for the first 2 games, drew the third, and lost the fourth before finishing up with a nice victory. So 3-1-1 and edged out some good players for 3rd place overall. Also took home Best Sportsman which was an awesome accolade as I played a bunch of great guys over the two days. So while I didnt have a camera at the event I'm going to try and draw up some battle reports to show how things went. Hopefully Ill have those up soon, as well as some pictures of my army.

Hard Boyz Semi-Finals: Round 1

This is my army pre-semifinals at Hard Boyz. Went down to long Island and played in it at the Brothers Grim. The list is the same I used in the preliminary rounds. 2 stacked up sternguard squads, 2 venerable dreadnoughts, and 2 Ironclads, 3 Tactical Squads, and of course Vulkan. Not presented in the picture is the 9 pods that the whole army would ride down in.

In round 1 I ended up playing someone who travelled even farther than myself to get to the tournament. Though I cant recall his name, it was easily one of my favorite games of 40k all time. He was using 2 landraiders loaded with terminators, Lysander and a librarian heading up each of these combat nightmares. 3 tactical squads, and a unit of scouts made up his scoring units.

Hard Boyz testing again

Well the preliminaries of hard boyz went fine, with a major win for the final revision of the list. So getting ready for the second round it was back to Alex and his awesome guardsmen list to see if the last minute changes would pay off against a much better player then the prelim opponents.

Renewed Vigor

Im trying to renew my intent to bring content and especially battle reports with shiny pictures or at least maps of games to the blog sphere. With additionally some opinion articles as well.

But battle reports are the big thing because sometimes I feel that there arent enough ones to read out there. And lack either good pictures to show the action or some easy to follow top down drawings to show the flow of the match.

Now heres to hoping that this doesnt last a few weeks and then find me not posting for months again.

I still have the hard boyz semi finals to post about, and also went to another 1850 40k tournament at the Brothers Grim store again this past weekend. Bunch of pics from the former and less from the latter, but will do my best with both.

Hard Boyz Testing Origional LIst

This was months ago in May. I was testing for the hard boyz preliminary rounds with my friend Alex. My list included 5 dreadnoughts in pods, 2 tactical squads in pods, an assault squad in pod and a 7 man vanguard unit with jet packs. Against Alex's straken led all infantry guard regiment.

In this first picture you can see his deployment with hundreds of boots on the ground. Mystics set centrally for protection, and he also has one unit outflanking with Al Raheim.
My initial drops included a very risky and ultimately futile rear drop in the corner. I made the mistake of dropping vulkan and the MOF with the small assault squad instead of my 5th dreadnought as well. My shooting was limited in effect and then vulkan was scared off the board by the psyker battle squad.
Turn 2 saw the horde move up, including i believe the outflanking squad coming in far left off of the screen in this image. My two dreads that are shown here dual assaulted the large squad to the center and split it in half due to charge reactions. Eventually they succumbed to counter charges by straken. The dreadnought far in the top corner was immobilized.
Turn three I landed two tactical Squads and a dreadnought to try and crush the outflanking unit and restore some balance to the objective based game we were playing. The vanguard in my first foray with the unit charged the edge of a blob squad and though they killed a few for a turn or two were eventually cut down to a man by the 40 man unit with its hidden power weapons.

This game went very badly. Eventually I was ground under the boots of imperial guardsmen. And we reset the board for a second practice game. The second game went much better, we tried the victory points mission this time and ended up drawing the game. But I was still far from satisfied with the list and how it was performing. The vanguard were simply too expensive and inefficient at what I was trying to use them for, and also didnt fit my playstyle at all. I eventually switched my list at the 11th hour before the actual event and brought 1 less dreadnought and 2 full sternguard units that I enjoy so much for their shooting power out of their pods, I also ended up with another tactical squad instead of the assault marines.

More Hard boyz testing

This was also a hard boyz test game in may. Against eric aka Lord Victor and his candy apple eldar. The game was capture and control with an objective near the giant fuel tanks at the top left and near the building where my tactical squad deploys at the bottom right.









This game was almost a major draw fest. However yriel wiffed with 5 attacks against my lone sergeant at the end of the game. Eldar are difficult for a drop pod list with all their speed. And even though I didnt do a verbal run down you can see the movement of the game through the pictures I hope.

Hard Boyz: Round 1 - Game 2

Well this is much belated but here is a quick run down of my second game at the first round of Hard Boyz. With round 2 coming up this weekend and a few hours finally free from work I thought Id post up these pics of one of the least expected tournament armies: Horde Marines.



Man that is a lot of marines. 101 to be exact. 1 Librarian. 10 Assault terminators all with thunderhammers. 10 regular Terminators 2 with missile launchers. 60 Tactical Marines only 1 squad had a powerfist. And 20 devastator marines. As you can see his deployment picture above it was a spearhead game. And he filled out most of his quarter. He combat squaded everything other then the 2 terminator squads. The assault terminators were in the right of the picture behind a thin screen of regular marines. The devastators were on the upper floors of the building with the ranged terminators on the bottom floor.In what was probably a poor decision I decided to fight infantry with infantry. In hindsight he didnt have an overwhelming amount of quality anti-tank fire, I was more scared of his volume of missile fire and it may have cost me some points.

Well I landed both units of sternguard on the right facing off against his assault terminators. A tactical squad landed to their left and above that landed Vulkan and another tactical squad. And in perhaps a bit of beautiful foresight... but more than anything some lucky mistake I landed the master of the forge and the last tactical squad high up in his deployment area.

The sternguard unloaded everything including the kitchen sink on the assault terminators and killed 7 of them. Shooting from everyone else killed maybe 7-10 other scattered marines. He ended up having to take 5 morale checks and wouldnt you know it the only squad to fail was the terminators. And here is where the fortuitous placement of that last pod came into play, because the terminators fled directly toward it and therefore were not able to regroup their next turn and so eventually fled their way off of the board.

Nothing really moved from this point in the game. It just became a few rolling assaults with marines unable to kill each other. Eventually his other terminator squad made it out of the building and assaulted my sternguard and were also cut down.

On turn 3 my two venerable dreadnoughts came in and helped finish off the terminators giving me the bulk of my victory points 860 between those 2 squads. And between a few half points earned from several killed combat squads I was able to eek out a minor victory... and was a measly 30 points shy of the major victory.

Now if you have been paying attention you may have noticed that I only described up until the 3rd turn. Thats not a misprint, we only played 3 turns, I didnt even get all my reserves in. Now this is where my decision to drop the sternguard in on turn 1 may have been a mistake. Not only are they worth more victory points for my opponent to earn, but they also have more ability on the drop to shoot units down, while the dreadnoughts could have earned me more points in assault.

The decision didnt cost me too badly, I ended round 2 in second place and was only a few points out of first. And when I tabled a chaos marine player in round 3 the day was mine.

I have a few shots of some practice games with my friend that I will try to post up soon as well, and my friend eric is coming with me to round 2 this weekend and hopefully with his help I will have a lot more pictures of those games then I did in round 1.

Hard Boyz: Round 1

So I already posted my list... now lets get to the much belated battle reports.

In game 1 I was matched up against the Imperial Guard. He had 2 20 man combined units with commissars. A few heavy weapons teams. A few groups of veterans in chimeras. 2 Demolishers with plasma sponsons and an an Executioner with extra plamsa as well. He also had Creed and a unit of deepstriking stormtroopers, and a hell hound.

Game was 5 loot counters and a modified diagonal deployment. Here in this first picture you can see his set up. He had first turn. I deployed nothing as everything was in drop pods. He chose to simply sit pat and wait for my arrival, and sadly for him forgot to pop smoke on his vehicles.


Here you can see my turn 1 drops. With 9 pods total I get 5 of them on turn 1. I placed both units of sternguard in the upper right middle, with an Ironclad Dreadnought in between them. My two Venerable Dreadnoughts dropped in on the left to deal with the two Demolisher tanks on that side.
Here is a side shot showing my turn 1 carnage. I blew up a chimera and my heavy flamers said goodbye to the veterans inside. I also vaporized an auto cannon heavy weapons team and the executioner. My Ironclad only managed to stun the hell hound and the venerables only immobilized one of the demolishers. With one of the Dreadnoughts failing to hit with a re-rollable 2+.
As is the theme with many of my games... and especially with the truncated time table of playing 2500 pt games in 2 and a half hours it was about here that I forgot about my camera.

During his turn 2 he killed off several sternguard. Shook my Ironclad, and shook one of the venerables.

On my turn 2 I got all of my tactical marines in from reserve as well as Vulkan and the master of the forge who were accompanying two of the squads. With a little help from nearby stormbolters Vulkan and his boys flamed down a 20 man squad of guard in the center of the board. The master of the forge and his dual flamer squad did in another heavy weapons team as well as a platoon command squad. The venerable dreadnoughts split up in the hopes of nabbing both demolisher tanks... however one got hung up on some terrain while the other finished the job. The melta tactical squad came roaring in, in front of the hell hound and chimera in the upper left of the table, and failed to finish off their target. However assaulting sternguard vets with fists and krak grenades removed both tanks and had the embarked veterans spilling out onto the battle field. The Ironclad rumbled into combat with a melta packing command squad and ran the poor fools down. It was about this time that my opponent started telling me that he was in trouble.

On his turn 3 his lone demolisher failed to chase off the dreadnoughts but did pull away to try and save itself from assault. His veteran squad shot down my Ironclad, putting another crater into the already littered field. His stormtroopers arrived and thankfully did not crash to their deaths because of their re-roll to scatter, and then dropped a venerable dreadnought.

On my half of the turn my remaining Ironclad landed next to the nice tight pile of stormtroopers and with a twin linked heavy flamer made quick work of the offending drop troops. Vulkan and his company burned away some more guardsmen, and the master of the forge worked his way into assault with Creed. My other tactical combat squads began fanning out closer to the objectives to ensure I had at least 4 before the game ended, by either wipeout or the end of turn 6. My remaining venerable dreadnought stunned the poor demolisher. The jaws of the assault were closing on the guard and they did not have very many units left.

On turn 4 the guard player had a lone squad hiding in the top of the building and his chimera with vets to the left of that same building. The vets got out to shoot down the master of the forge and his retinue. And the squad up above tried to drum up some victory points for the overall day bonus, by shooting down some expensive sternguard.

The master of the forge split off on his lonesome to flame the veterans. Vulkan also jumped off on his own to finish the men in the building. The venerable dreadnought dropped the demolisher at last.

Turn 5 saw his remaining chimera take the last wound from the master of the forge, which would cost me a bonus point in the end as we tied for number of Hq's killed due to my reckless endangerment of the poor chap.

In what would be the last phase of the game my venerable dreadnought assaulted and finished off the chimera sealing the wipeout and 2500 victory points. A full massacre as I held all of the objectives and all but one of the bonus points.

Looking around at the other tables before lunch there was only one army that I truly did not want to play at all that day, an all foot space marine horde, but as irony would have it that would be my next opponent. Oh well better to grab him in the victory points scenario then in the kill points one.

Ill try to get that report up tomorrow. Maybe Ill do up some box drawings to at least fill in the spaces where I have no pictures, If I make some for this battle Ill update this post as well.

Hard Boyz Tournament

In preparing for the Hard Boyz Tournament I had settled on using an upgraded version of Dreadnought Spam list and drop pod spam list that I had used at 1850pts a month or so ago.

Vulkan - 190

Master of the forge - powerweapon, - 115

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, meltagun, combi-melta, powerfist, drop pod - 245

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, meltagun, combi-melta, powerfist, drop pod - 245

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combiflamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod, locator beacon - 190

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod, locator beacon - 190

Assault Squad - (7) flamer, thunder hammer, drop pod - 176

Vanguard Squad - (7) jump packs, relic blade w/ storm shield, thunder hammer, melta bomb, storm shield, 3 regular - 315

I tested the list against Lord Victor's Eldar list and it performed well enough. But then against my friend Alex's foot Imperial Guard list. In a few games using the newly released missions for the actual Hard Boyz event the list did not fare well. My infantry were overrun and though the Dreadnoughts proved hard for his guardsmen to deal with in combat the list was not particularly effective and I felt that it was also not necessarily meshing with my play style.

The vanguard had proven in tests that they were every bit as worthless as they had always looked to me. I thought about changing them to terminators. However this would only reinforce the idea that I was trying to play a drop pod assault army... which is precisely opposite the way I think of Marines, especially the
Drop pod variety.

So at midnight before the Hard Boys event I swapped my list.

Vulkan - 190

Master of the forge - 100

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, meltagun, combi-melta, powerfist, drop pod - 245

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combiflamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combiflamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod - 180

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod - 180

Sternguard - 4 combimelta, 2 heavy flamer, powerfist, drop pod - 350

Sternguard - 1 combimelta, 2 melta guns, powerfist, drop pod - 325

The sternguard are far more effective as drop pod units than anything else in the marine codex, due to the sheer volume and power of their short range firepower. Which means they are effective on the turn they arrive and due to their veteran status still durable in the counter assault scenarios that will likely occur. This change also gave me more boots on the ground and a much more flexible core that would be able to deal with large hordes that bog down the dreadnoughts in combat.

In the three games the next day the change did wonders. I took the top spot out of the 10-12 players that were at the event. Ill try to post some of the few pictures I got and do up some battle reports for the three games soon.

Brothers Grim Tournament April 24th: List I Actually took

So the list I posted a few weeks ago wasn't the list I ended up using in the tournament that I posted the second game from already. I ended up using an expanded version of the list from the Battle Standard Tournament.

Vulkan - 190

Master of the Forge - 100

Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, drop pod - 150

Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, drop pod - 150

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combi-flamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combi-flamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Tactical squad - Multimelta, melta, combi-melta, drop pod - 220


The list really blew a lot of people's minds. They were mind boggled by just how many drop pods it really is. The 9 pods make a real mess of the board and restrict movement in the areas where you drop them. Even if there is space to move between them it restricts enemy movement because they cant come within 1 inch of them during the movement phase.

Also in objective missions they can contest objectives like in the battle report I already posted. And strangely enough in the kill point mission that I will post later they weren't that much of a liability because my opponent was too busy trying to kill all of the dreadnoughts that he didn't even kill a single one of the pods... now I'm not sure that in particular will always happen but it was a very surprising thing.

Brothers Grim Tournament April 24th: Game 2

The second game at Brother's Grim was against a nice guy named Steve I believe. He was using the new blood angels codex, and in a differing style versus the last report was more mechanized Blood Angels. He had 2 Speeders, a squad of 3 Attack bikes with multimeltas, 1 Furioso Dreadnought with the new blood talons, and a regular Dreadnought with an assault cannon. He had a vindicator and a rhino, along with a Baal Predator with a flamestorm cannon. He had 2 priest one of whom was Corbulo, and 2 10 man squads. He also had the beast that is Mephiston.

The game was capture and control with the secondary objective as having more units in the enemy deployment zone then they have in yours. Deployment was a type of modified spearhead that cut the table in half like apocalypse and each player received a table corner with an 18" middle ground between the zones. Also the objectives had to be placed in one specific spot that was 18" from each edge and still in the deployment zone. That why they look so symmetrical in the renderings(They're the green flags in case you were wondering).

I forgot to take pictures, but did this up on vassal to be visual.

Steve deployed a 10 man squad with Corbulo back in the building up on the second floor. The other squad he split, and walked one half and put the other half in the rhino with his other priest. His attack bikes and Furioso are up at the top middle, while his vindicator and regular dreadnought are towards the lower middle of the board. Mephiston is also hiding out in the ruin with the large squad. His Baal Pred chose to outflank and his Land Speeders were deep-striking.

On turn one he turbo boosted the bikes toward my objective and rushed the vindicator forward as well. His dreads and small foot troops also moved forward. Only the vindicator popped smoke.
My Turn one the table starts to get really messy. 4 Dreadnoughts as well as my dual melta tactical squad land, with Vulkan and the master of the forge in tow. Between rear flamer shots and two meltas the vindicator is both immobilized and its main weapon is blown off. Three of the regular dreads line shots at the assault cannon dread in his army and immobilize it as well as blow off both its weapon arms. In hindsight I should have gone after the furioso. My 4th dread managed to meekly drop the storm bolter off of the rhino. The other half of my combat squaded tactical marines manages to surprisingly inflict some wounds on his walking unit and cause them to flee.
Turn 2 for the Blood Angels saw the arrival of his melta Land Speeders. His furioso crashed into my tactical marines and began to shred them with bloodtalons. It was about now I regretted dropping in the one squad that didnt have its own powerfist, the master of the forge luckily was ignored at first but managed nothing with his servo harness fists. The meltas in the rhino and building managed to blow up the dreadnought closest to them, and Mephiston began what can only be summed up as a killing spree by summarily decapitating another dreadnought. Luckily the Land Speeders missed fantastically with double 1's on their to hit rolls.
1 of my remaining dreadnoughts came in from reserve and along with the 5 free tactical marines made the small squad run away again to incoming fire. Instead of helping get my men out of combat I moved my dreadnought through the space between the drop pods to threaten the middle of the board... for what reason I do not know. My other dread focused its rage on the land speeders and felled one with its multimelta and the other in combat. I lost a few more marines in combat with the Furioso but Vulkan and the Master of the forge held.
On turn 3 Steve's bikes came turbo boosting back because he felt he was quickly running out of ways to kill the rain of dreadnoughts. Cover saves kept my dreads safe from shooting, and in a luck turn of events Mephiston failed to destroy his newest dreadnought target in combat. Vulkan however fled from the furioso after it ripped the master of the forge limb from limb.
All the reserves came crashing down in my half of turn 3. One tactical squad landed to secure the home objective, while the other dropped midfield, I would have dropped it closer, but I didnt want to go near Mephiston and the board had already become quite crowded. The last Dread landed near the rhino again. Here I think I messed up the pics(and am too lazy to change them.) Because the men were outside of their Rhino and both the Dread and small tactical squad shot at them killing nothing, and all the storm bolters shot at them killing nothing, 3+ saves and feel no pain are tough, actually to be fair the two melta shots did kill 1 each but thats to be expected. Vulkan rallied and foolishly assaulted Mephiston, should have waited and let him assault me next turn, and died, but it did let the dreadnought live another turn. I charged into the Furioso with my dreadnought and into the bikes with another. Killed all the bikes, did nothing to the Furioso.
The Baal Predator moved flat out at the start of turn 4 to get near my marines. Mephiston finished off the pesky dreadnought and moved towards the one that could not do much of anything to the Furioso. The one surviving member of his squad that had ran twice assaulted my dreadnought, and didnt die. His rhino also tank shocked my 5 man squad and they fled ( there were a lot of fleeing marines in this game). And his melta squad shot my dread near his troops blowing off its combat arm and then assaulted it.
Turn 4 for me saw the fleeing marines flee some more, though not much I rolled pretty low at this point. My other nearby marines immobilized the rhino with a multimelta shot and then the other combat squad dual assaulted it and the man tying up the dreadnought. My other two dreadnoughts were continuing their futility in combat.
Turn 5 the Baal pred fried all but one of the fleeing marines who then fled some more. THe boys in the building finally began to move down and toward the objective. Mephiston freed up the Furioso by once again besting my dreadnought in combat. While the powerfist in his 5 man squad had trouble touching the dreadnought it was locked with.
Turn 5 surprise my marines ran some more. The one free roaming dreadnought immobilized the Baal with its multimelta and then destroying it easily in assault, while the tactical marines followed in its wake. My multimelta squad managed to knock an arm of his Furioso, something the master of the forge and 2 rounds of combat with my dreadnought had not accomplished.
On turn six, with the threat of the game ending looming Steve found the time and the necessity of actually clearing some of the darn drop pods that were neatly contesting his objective. Mephiston added one to his trophy rack but the large tactical squad failed to do so.
My lone marine stopped fleeing and with a great run roll came roaring back towards the action. With a totally different and disappointing roar my dreadnought immobilized itself on the wreckage of the baal predator. My tacitcal marines moved their way though the tight spaces trying to make sure and threaten the objective should the game go to 7 turns. My other remaing dreadnought succumbed to the powerfist of his Blood Angels sergeant, dying the old fashioned way, weapon destroyed, weapon destroyed, immobilized, immobilized.
The game did go to turn 7. His Furioso halted the advance of my combat squad. Mephiston racked up the last threatening drop pod and his marines closed on the objective.
However one small problem remained. And on my 7th turn the forgotten, cowardly marine managed to run and contest the objective.
This left me with a 1 objective to 0 victory on the main mission. Also with nearly all of my army in his deployment zone, and none of his in mine I got the secondary objective as well. I didnt get the 3rd objective which was to select a unit and kill it. I choose Mephiston because he had chosen Vulkan and I thought it would be epic. Also I thought I would have to kill Mephiston to have a shot at winning. However after the game started and the prospect of actually killing him didnt seem possible I decided to try and handle as many threats as possible while completely ignoring mephiston, aside from the crazy stupid move of charging him with Vulkan. My goal became to feed him units and try and lead him away. Also the fact that 3 drop pods contested his objective meant that in the closing turns he had to really turn his attention on these and allowed my final marine to do the job.

The game was really fun, and things looked really good for me at the beginning, however the survivability of the blood angels combined with my stupid move to ignore the Furioso turn 1 caused it to get really tight... well that and the bat shit crazy Librarian from hell running around killing all my dreadnoughts.

Battle Standard Tournament 1500pts: Game 3

My third opponent was a Blood Angels player, and the for the first time I would be fighting this new codex. He had Dante, along with 2 dreadnoughts in pods, an assault squad in a pod, an assault squad with jump packs, and a squad of sanguinary guard, with a priest giving them feel no pain. In the pregame he managed to roll blood rage for almost his entire army.

Game 3 was very interesting. It had 3 variable missions as the main objective, and each player had to secretly choose one, and then reveal it to their opponent before deployment. Also each mission had a different deployment associated with it. That meant that each player could be running the same mission and deployment, but they could also be running different deployments and totally different mission objectives.

Out of the 3 mission types I choose the one that had 3 objectives, and pitched battle deployment. I got to place all of the objectives with the only restrictions being that they had to be outside of my 12" deployment zone and no closer than 12" to each other. I was counting on my opponent choosing the mission that would lead him trying to infiltrate my deployment zone, so I set up my objectives just outside the 12" no fly zone, and close to central position on the board.

I lucked out and my opponent did choose that mission, and not the assassination mission. Things were interesting in deployment as both of us were playing all deepstriking armies. He won the roll to go first and passed it to me.

I landed 3 dreadnoughts and a tactical squad near my objectives, along with the master of the forge. In his turn 1 he landed a furioso dreadnought which scattered off to the left of the frame, and an assault squad in a drop pod. Nothing really occurred in turn 1 so we move to turn 2 with these edited photos.

I edited out his turn 2 additions. But anyway the master of the forge along with the flamer marine and combiflamer sergeant moved forward and torched the assault marines standing in front of their drop pod. Killed all but 4 of them including the sergeant with the powerfist so was pretty excited and still in assault range. However they failed their leadership check and fled robbing me of an assault. In retrospect this squad had blood rage and should have been fearless, its something to remember when facing Blood Angels, because the rule isnt standard, its random its harder to keep track of the penalties and advantages of blood rage.


Here in his turn 2 I highlighted where my objectives were for ease. Also in the now unblotched out sections you can see that all of his reserves came down on turn 2, when I hadn't gotten any of mine yet. Dante and the sanguinary guard used his ability to not scatter and blow up a dreadnought. The assault squad, landspeeders and dreadnought drop pod used the locator beacon on the forward pod to land close to my marines. They put a lot of fire into my combat squad and killed the sergeant and all but one marine, and wounded the master of the forge once. Then the previously fleeing assault marines used their furious charge and attacked the lonesome commander. Fighting was a wash, with artificier armor keeping the MOF alive and him whiffing with his powerfist attacks.
Here is another angle of that turn,so you can see the master of the forge fighting for his life.
Turn 3 I got another Dread, and Vulkan and his tactical squad in. They flamed the nicely bunched assault squad dealing 27 wounds, but only causing 6 deaths. The dreadnought also dropped one of the speeders. My two other dreadnoughts that were on the field attempted to get into grips with the sanguinary guard, to keep them from running through my troops. One managed to reach combat, while the other got hung up making bad difficult terrain rolls while trying to cross his dead friend wedged between the two drop pods. With only one powerfist my dreadnought was relatively safe, but didnt manage to kill off any of the guard wither.

During his turn 3 his dreadnoughts continued to plod forward doing nothing, they were really placed far too conservatively and never managed to get well into the fight. His remaining speeder jumped behind my freshly arrived dread at the top of the screen and missed its melta shot. His remaining assault marines used their meltas on the dread as well, and also missed, so they assaulted it. Again their lone powerfist proved insufficient and they were locked in combat. The sanguinary guard were likewise ineffective losing a member, and the master of the forge and his tactical squad companion dealt the final blows to the assault squad remnants they had been locked with.

During turn 4 I separated Vulkan from his tactical squad so the forgefather could help free the locked dreadnought. My last dreadnought landed and wiped off one of the Furiosos that was finally getting close to my tactical marine hiding in the building. The tactical marines along with the master of the forge and slow moving dreadnought all piled into the sanguinary guard and dante fight. Now it was probably foolish to rush all these fleshy bodies into a fight that the dreadnoughts could probably win by themselves and leave the marines to consolidate onto the objectives, but I tend to get impatient with the dreadnoughts and their limited attacks and sent a good number of marines to their deaths at Dante's hands.

The middle of his turn 4 is where this pic was taken. His black speeder has just blown up a drop pod that previously marked the middle gray area of the pic, likely in frustration of everything else being in combat. His off screen dreadnought killed my dreadnought with a melta shot. In the ensuing assault phase Vulkan and the dreadnought finally dealt with the assault marines and consolidated. The large mess of an assault continued to grind.


In the ensuing 5th turn Vulkan moved to join the combat. The dreadnought killed off the last speeder. And when Dante finally failed his invul save and came crashing down I consolidated nicely onto the objectives. We called the game then, as all he had left was a lone dreadnought and couldnt get through all my scoring units at that point, and also lacked the scoring unit necessary to win his own objective.

Battle Standard Tournament 1500pts: Game 2

Game 2 saw me matched up against Bob and his Imperial Guard, note not my good friend Bob from the ork battle report.

The mission was spearhead deployment, with 4 objectives. You can see 3 of them in this picture. The small black beacon on the left below the tape measure, the small grey one next to the dreadnought in the direct middle and the small imperial guard commander alone on the bottom right. The fourth was off screen to the left.

I won the roll and chose to go second. Bob set up his Basalisk, demolisher, and a banewolf, as well as the leman russ varient with the auto cannon, towards the top of the screen all clustered together. Then upon the hill he placed his command squad and 3 veteran teams with a lascannon each. He also had a plasma veteran team in reserve and a melta veteran squad in a chimera in reserve. During his first turn he made the mistake of forgetting to pop smoke.

On my turn one I landed 4 Dreadnoughts just like last game. First shot wrecked the demolisher. Second blew up the banewolf. Stunned the sentinel, and flamed the company command squad killing a few.

This picture is was taken during his turn 2. His sentinel moved up and popped smoke. His veterans came on in their chimera navigating the difficult terrain that was the crater where the banewolf had been. His lascannons took downone of the dreadnoughts. The one at the top of the screen took the melta shots from the veterans as well as the autocannonleman russ, and managed to only be stunned and down its multimelta.
During my second turn the master of the forge and his tactical squad landed in the bottom right after a bad scater, and simply spread out in the cover of the trees there. One of my reamaing dreadnoughts assaulted the sentinel, while another assaulted one of his veteran squads in the mountains. I forgot to pop smoke with the stunned dreadnought that was still staring down the barrel of the chimera mounted vets with melta guns. While the sentinel was summarily destroyed, the veteran squad held in combat keeping my dread safe from shooting for the next turn.

Bob's walking veteran team moved on in the middle of the board from reserves. The rest of his army stayed mainly stationary to bring all the guns to bear. I lost another dread, this time the one that had slain the sentinel. However the dread at the top of the screen continued to shrug off hits left and right and though it lost its other arm it stayed alive. In his combat phase my dreadnought forced the veterans to flee off the board and consolidated towards the chimera.

During my half od turn 3 my last dreadnought made it in from reserves. It landed off screen to the left(a wide angle shot in a later pic shows its location during bob's 4th turn) and flamed the walking veterans. Half of a tactical squad moved into the hills and wiped out a veteran squad, the 3 remaining marines are shown below after their consolidation moves. The only mobile dreadnought shot andstunned the chimera, and then assaulted it causing no further damage.
Bob's 4th turn saw the end to the everlasting dreadnought, that without smoke had still taken most of his heavy shots for 3 turns now. The melta vets had to get out of their ride to fire now, and managed to immobilize the dread swining at their ride. Since it was still in base to base at the end of the assault phase however it killed the chimera.
The late arrival dreadnought popped smoke and then assaulted the remaing veterans in the left of this shot. The immobilized dread melta'd the basalisk away and the ensuing explosion took a few of the melta veterans with it.

During Bob's 5th turn he stunned the dread on the left with his leman russ, and killed the immobilized dread on the right with his last lascannon team.
My turn 5 Vulkan finnally arrived(because at that point its automatic). He and his boys flamed away the remaining melta vets and the command squad. The other 2 tactical squad halves moved to make sure they were on objectives.

Turn 6(the last turn) Bob killed the last of my dreadnoughts. And my fresh tactical marines killed off the last of his guardsmen at the top of the hill. Vulkan fell just short of getting me another of the mission's bonus points, but I still ended up with 28 out of the 30 available. I was in fourth place 1 point behind 3rd heading into round 3.

Battle Standard Tournament 1500pts: Game 1

I was running 5 Multimelta Dreadnoughts, 3 upgraded with heavy flamers, all in drop pods. 2 Tactical Squads with flamers, and combiflamers, a powerfist and a Multimelta in Drop pods as well, one accompionied by Vulkan and the other by the Master of the Forge.

Game 1 was against a Tyranid player named Steve. He was using the Swarmlord, as well as a Flying Hive Tyrant. A Tervigon and the obligatory termagaunt squad, and 2 Carnifexs in pods and the Doom of Malantai in a pod as well.

The tournament was run using the Combat Patrol missions from Adepticon. They were fun and worked pretty well. There were a few of the bonus points that might have been worth changing for the higher points level(combat patrol is 400pts).

But Mission 1 was a pitched battle deployment. The Primary Objective was to have a scoring unit in the opponents deployment zone, and the Secondary Objetive was kill-points.

Steve had first turn. He deployed the swarmlord and his small unit of termagaunts on my left, and the Flyrant on my right. His Tervigon outflanked, and the rest of his army was in its pods. During his first turn they all moved up near the middle of the table.

In this picture of the start of turn 2 you can also see my turn 1 drop. I plopped 4 Dreadnoughts down around the Swarmlord, and even with twinlinked shots I only managed 2 wounds.

During his turn 2, thanks to the hive tyrant powers he got all of his reserves in a 2+. His Carnifexes landed in the rear arcs of 2 of my Dreadnoughts. The Doom landed far to the right off the screen. And out the screen to the left the Tervigon walked in. His Carnifexes each took down a dreadnought, and the Swarmlord tackled one in close combat.

During my second turn only Vulkan and his tactical squad came in from reserves. They toasted the termagaunt squad hiding in the trees, leaving only 1 alive, and made sure to hide behind their drop pod to keep themselves safe from the Swarmlord.

Turn 3 Steve spawned some termagaunts with his tervigon. The swarmlord used leech essence against my marines, but cover saves kept me safe. The lone termagaunt suicided into Vulkan. And his combat squad consolidated towards the Tervigon.

On my turn 3 Vulkan and his boys moved towards the tervigon, and the other half fled to where you can see them at the top of this picture. While my one remaining dread moved to threaten the swarmlord. Once again my other reserveshad failed to come in. The dreadnought failed his shooting rolls again, but Vulkan and the powerfist did 6 wounds to the Tervigon slaying it in one round of combat. They tried to consolidate out of the carnifex's range, but they would prove to not move far enough. This picture below shows the close of turn 3 after the consolidation moves.
This picture also taken at the end of turn 3 shows just how far out of the battle the other hive tyrant as well as the doom of malantai and carnifex were after the beginning of the game.
Turn 4 saw Vulkan assaulted and killed by the carnifex, along with all of his remaining marines, but they managed to put 3 wounds on the carnifex. The swarmlord once again proved too much for my dreadnoughts.

The master of the forge finally came in on my half of turn 4. I dropped him and his squad in my lower left corner to remove his scoring termagaunt squad. The Masters plasma cutter also finished of the wounded carnifex. My scoring squad moved further into his deployment zone, trying to hide in the furthest corner.

Turn 5 was largely unimportant. Steve killed 2 drop pods with his frustrated monstrous creatures who had been missing out on the fight for much of the game. My guys moved around a bit. I hoped for the game to end, and when Steve's dice came up with a 1 it did. Another turn would have been fine, but if it had been unlucky enough to go to 7 I might have been in a little trouble with the flyrant and the Swarmlord coming to corner me.

So I won the primary objective, but Steve by slaying my dreadnoughts and drop pods was way ahead in kill points, so he took the secondary objective. A few bonus points later I had 17 points
and Steve had 11. This put me in the high middle of scores for the first round. Stay tuned for rounds 2 and 3. Im still working on trying to take more frequent pictures.... hopefully next weekend I'll be better.

1850pts: Brothers Grim List vs Lord Victor's IG

So I wanted to get a test run in with the list I have been considering for the Brother's Grim Tournament in a few weeks. And no better opponent is there to hash out a list with than our club President Lord Victor(aka Eric). Eric was kind enough to runhis Imperial Guard army, and tried to simulate as best as he could remember the top army that he in fact lost to at the last Brothers Grim event we went to.

I used the list that I posted recently, and he had an Ig list with 2 all plansma executioner leman russes, Creed and Kell, several chimeras, one with veterans and 2 with command squads. A couple infantry platoon squads, and heavy weapons teams, as well as a psyker battle squad.

We played capture and control, spearhead deployment. Most people don't like the mission as it is prone to ties. With my drop pod armies however I rather enjoy playing it. I won the roll to go first and took it. I deployed a half squad with plasma cannon in the building at the bottom of the screen with the master of the forge, the objective was placed righ in front of the building. Also deployed the other half of that tactical squad in their rhino in the center, and placed my two archer dreadnoughts as well as the plasma cannon dreadnought behind the rhino.

This picture shows the battle after my pods have come down on turn one. And my rhino has moved up and popped smoke.

Here you can see a closer view of Eric's deployment zone. His objective is up in the building at the right of the screen.
Turn one saw me land both an Ironclad Dreadnought and a Venerable one, as well as Lysander and his tactical Squad back up. Eric's mystics failed to have much effect other than letting him destroy one of the drop pods. My shooting removed all but one member of his lascannon team, as well as an autocannon heavy weapons team. Also managed to blow a weaponoff of the psyker battle squads chimera in the back center, and on the far right wrech a command squads chimera and pin that squad.
Eric's Turn 1 was far less fruitfull. He rolled very well with his scatter dice, but not much else. A marine or two died in Lysander's squad. But other than that the luck was with my cover save rolls and the marine vehicles were tough to stop.
Turn 2 for the Salamanders saw both my empty drop pod and my other venerable Dreadnought come in from reserves even with the blocking powers by the master of the fleet. The rhino moved up some more, and the Ironclad and Lysander moved up to assault the infantry platoon and command squads simultaneously. The Venerablle dreadnought was left hangning high and dry from assaulting Creed's squad when eric pulled a key casualty. And the newly arrived Venerable rolled a 4 for armor penetration... on 2 dice combined. The other shooting from the midfield dreadnoughts was largely ineffective. Lysander and company mopped the floor with the squads they assaulted and consolidated into and below the objective building... but didnt quite sapce out enough.
Ig turn 2 saw the arrival of both his outflanking veteran squad as well as Harker. Now my poor and lazy consolidation move by Lysander would bite me. While the veterans outflanked on the edge near my objective, Harker moved against my thoughts and landed right next to the tightly packed marines who were just out of cover in Eric's deployment zone. One carefully placed demo charge later... and boom there go 6 marines. Psychic battle squad weakens my resovle and suddenly Lysander and crew are fleeing away, and do so for much of the rest of the game due to being out of coherency. eric also manages to imobilize and shake my venerable dreadnought in the top of the board, and immobilize the rhino.
My stormbolters make work of that pest harker, while the Ironclad moves forward to clear more of Eric's troops away so that they cant reclaim his objective, now that I lost my main threat to claim it myself. Most of the rest of my army shoots at his veterans chimera, and does absolutely nothing. My still mobile Venerable assaults his exterminator and destroys it.
The end of turn 3 and start of four saw Eric's chimera move forward only to be blasted away by the defending dreadnoughts. And Lysander and company finally managed to regroup near the edge of the table. The venerable enacted sweet carnage upon Creed and Kell, while the Ironclad brought sweet revenge to the offending psyker battle squad. That unit is very very nasty in the guard army, and I will have to be much more careful in my future dealings with it.

All in all the list worked pretty well. I dont see it being likely that I will get another test in with it before the tournament, but I will try.

A friend surprised me by telling me about a very close local tournament at a newer store up in Connecticut and so I will be attending that this weekend. Its at the refreshingly low 1500pt total which I havent been playing very much of lately, but sadly that means that I wont get to use the event as a way to test this list out more. But hopefully I will have a few battle reports up from that event this weekend. Shamefully I have plans to use several fully unpainted models in the list I'll be using so they wont be quite as pretty pictures... but maybe Ill find ways to get those models killed off between frames.