Monday, April 26, 2010

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.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

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.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

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.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

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.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

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.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

April 24th- brothers Grim Tournament

Man i havent posted in a long time. This blog thing takes a lot more dedication then I thought.

Anyway. I managed to steal(borrow) my little brother's camera for good for a while. So maybe I can get about making some better, and hopefully more consistent posts.

Right now Im working on painting up the new venerable Dreadnought Kit, and working on a list incorporating 2 of the suckers. Ill try to get some work in progress picks on the newest member of my Dreadnought horde... I have around 12 or 13 in various states of completion/collection of dust.

Ussually when it comes to Dreadnoughts I stick to regular ones, or Ironclads, and consider the Venerables far too expensive to be competative. However in honor of the model and in a decision to give them a whirl, Im taking my venerable(oldest dreadnougt), as well as the new venerable kit out for a spin. Along with several of their friends.

So here follows a list Im seriously considering for a tournament(that you can gather from the title) at the end of this month. Its gone through several steps in my head before finnally hitting print in this form. Hopefully it has enough of everything to deal with anything. I think it is pretty balanced but leans more towards dealing with light mech spam and marines.

The last time I went to the Brother's Grim(great store by the way if youre on long island) I played 2 marine players and an eldar player, mainly mechanized, and the winner was mech IG. So I like the archer dreads to deal with transports. And the plasma cannons, which I have not used in ages, I like to knock out clumps of power armored or termiator armored marines. Plus the ap 2 will help with any feel no pain shenanigans from the new Blood angels, as well as the tyranids and orks.


1850- Marines

Lysander – 200

Master of the forge – conversion beam – 120


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

Venerable Dreadnought – heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod – 225


Ironclad Dreadnought – heavy flamer, drop pod – 180


Tactical Squad – flamer, power weapon, drop pod – 220


Tactical Squad – melta gun, plasma cannon, powerfist, rhino – 240


Dreadnought – twin linked lascannon, missile launcher – 145

Dreadnought – twin linked lascannon, missile launcher - 145


Dreadnought – plasma cannon, drop pod - 150


Obviously the list also hopes that people will have a hard time dealing with 6 dreadnoughts. The three at the bottom will deploy and walk most likely. The pod was simply included to buff the total to 5. Along with the master of the forge and the combat squad toting the plasma cannon. The other half of that squad will mount its rhino and advance along with the dreads.

The other 3 dreads, the vens and the ironclad, will likely be the first turn drop. As the tactical marines will want to be off board as much as possible to preserve their scorng ability. This however does limit Lysanders ability to affect the battle, so perhaps his points would be best used elsewhere. However when they do land he gives the squad the ability to torch an infantry unit more effectively with mass bolter fire, and a huge boost to their close combat ability in a countercharge scenario. Also his stubborn rule is a nice touch for a light troops army.

Hopefully the sneaky ammount of effective shooting, with the archer dreads and the BS5 venerables, I can cut down on the enemy's mobility and push toward victory. Heavy melta armies will be a problem, as will massive horde based armies as the dreads can easily get bogged down in combat. So either of those opponents will require some more decisions at deployment and may lead to Lysander and his retinue landing earlier in the match.

I will update this army if any last minute changes arise, and am at this moment commited to trying to take as many pictures as possible at this next event for a good set of battle reports.

As always any comments, criticisms, and questions are welcome and encouraged.