Monday, 13 February 2017
A Wolfie Update
Thursday, 5 January 2017
2017, 2017pts and 2 Tournaments
Hello friends!
I'm back! It's been a long time since the last post and much has happened in the time including buying and moving into our first house (a week before Christmas no less).
Hobby wise I haven't achieved much since the last post. I have yet to play test lists for Angel's Blade so expect that in the next couple of months.
I have picked up on my local GW's (actually Warhammer now) 'March to War' event they are running. Basically the premise is to build and paint 2017 points of a new army by March 2017. For this I am picking up the Space Wolves, taking the Start Collecting: Space Wolves box I won in the raffle at Double Trouble last year and adding to it. To begin with I have picked up the great value Ironclaw Strike Force box. Knowing my track record with getting things painted, this is going to be a mammoth task for me but definitely worth the effort. It is made all the more challenging by my next point.
Tournaments! I said to myself last year that I would like to hit a couple more tournaments this year if I could and my competitive (ish) season will kick off with Dave Weston's (Confessions of a 40K Addict) Birthday Bash event in February. I want to take my new Fenris boys to this and, weighing in at 1500 points, this means I am going to have to get most of my Wolves boxes built and painted, not by March, but by the middle of February! Nothing like an uphill struggle eh?
Following on from that we have the second installment of Alex's (From the Fang) Double Trouble tournament. Last years event was great fun so I can't wait to take it on again this year. Great format and a great way to meet other gamers. I may take Wolves to that as well but I'll see how I get on.
So that's it for now. I'll be posting again soon about my progress with the Space Wolves and also my blog goals for 2017 so please come back and check soon!
Tuesday, 20 September 2016
Angel's Blade Review Part 3: More Formations and Detachments!
Monday, 19 September 2016
Angel's Blade Review Part 2: Formations and Detachments
Formations
There are 12 formations in Angel's Blade, 9 of them new. As you've no doubt come to expect, these are categorised into Command, Core and Auxiliary formations for the larger detachments (more on that later). The bias seems to be slightly towards assault, which pleases me fluffwise, but it remains to be seen whether they work out well in games. There are also one or two formations that make use of the changes to the vehicles that Blood Angels can take. Here's the list:
Command
Golden Host
This one has certainly piqued my interest and I will definitely be trying it. It consists of Dante or The Sanguinor plus between 2 and 5 squads of Sanguinary Guard. Firstly, you can choose which turn they arrive from turn 2 onwards with no rolling and you can re-roll the scatter for their Deep Strike arrival and they must arrive together. Secondly, and this could be a biggy, they can make a disordered charge after arriving. The latter is certainly going to make them a threat when combined with the former and there are actually benefits to taking The Sanguinor (at last) as well as Dante.
- If you take Dante, you can put him in a squad with the banner and negate the lost charge attack bonus. You also can use his warlord trait to reduce that re-rollable scatter to just D6" which is rather nice. Plus Dante is just an excellent character in general. Precision pain train!
- If you take The Sanguinor, you partly negate the disordered charge for the rest of the Sanguinary Guard squads in the formation, as long as you keep them fairly tight to him as he confers the +1 Attack regardless of the charge being disordered. Sadly, he still can't join squads, but he can at least help out his golden buddies.
Saturday, 17 September 2016
Angel's Blade Review Part 1: Unit Updates
Read on to see what's changed!
Vehicles
So one of the big changes to units in Angel's Blade is the changes to vehicles. Firstly is the addition of the ability to take Predators, Vindicators and Whirlwinds in squadrons as in Codex Adeptus Astartes: Space Marines (C:SM from here on out because that's a lot to type each time), and like C:SM, the vehicle squadrons gain special rules like Linebreaker Bombardment for Vindicators, Killshot for Predators etc. Along with this Baal Predators can also be taken in squadrons and get to re-roll 1s to wound which is pretty nice and Land Speeder squadrons with 3 or more Land Speeders can move an extra 6" when moving flat out.
Dreadnoughts can't be taken in squads per se, but they can be taken in a formation which means they don't have to maintain coherence and they gain a nice once per battle special rule. More on that in the formations review though.
Interesting thought about these squadrons is that they all have access to Overcharged Engines as well which potentially makes them more powerful than their C:SM counterparts. Manoeuvrability is always good to have.
Characters
There are two main changes to characters in the book. First is addition of the Terminator Captain as opposed to the Codex: Blood Angels (C:BA) Captain who can take Terminator Armour as an option. The Terminator Captain is 135pts base and comes with Storm Bolter, Thunder hammer and Iron Halo as standard which means it works out exactly the same cost as a similarly equipped Captain from the Codex. There seems to be two reasons for doing this. Firstly, there are one or two formations that call specifically for a Terminator Captain so this makes it slightly easier (maybe) to know what to drop into the formation and secondly because it gives the Terminator Captain the option to swap out the Thunder hammer for Captain Karlaen's Hammer of Baal Relic which has been added as an extra piece of wargear. Oddly, Karlaen is referenced throughout the book but at no point is there an option to take him in formations and the like which is a shame because Counter Attack can be handy from time to time.
The second change is the addition of a proper Death Company Chaplain. This is basically a jump pack Chaplain with an Inferno Pistol that costs 125pts. It's 5 pts more expensive than the C:BA equivalent but you get the Rites of Blood special rule. Guess what. Re-roll to wound is back. Him and his unit on the turn he charged. That's re-roll to hit and to wound at charge time back in the fray. You have been missed. He also gets access to new Death Company wargear if taken in certain formations but more on that in another post. Overall this guy will probably be making it into plenty of my lists and GW were helpful in releasing a lovely model a while back which was perfectly equipped to be the new DC Chaplain. Funny eh?
Other Units
Assault squads got a mildly annoying update. On the one hand they now have access to the Eviscerator for vehicle rip n' tear but they also removed the jump packs (you have to add them like C:SM), dropped the price to 70pts but took away the free transports. I'm not sure many BA players wanted this. Yes, you can now take those melta squads for 15 base points cheaper but you are paying for transports! A free Rhino/Razorback/Drop Pod was well worth the 15 point tax. Sad times in my opinion.
Devastator squads also got updated and as far as I can tell the changes were the addition of the Grav Cannon and Grav Amp and the Armorium Cherub. The Cherub is the same 5 point deal from C:SM and probably worth it for that crucial one-model twin linked at a vital point. The Grav Cannon and Amp is a big deal and moves the BAs closer to being able to deal with the pesky Monstrous and Gargantuan Creatures. Previously there was only access to Grav via the Grav Gun and Grav Pistol or the Space Marine Command Tanks if you are lucky enough to get to Warhammer World. Now we can drop pod those Grav Devastators in and do what the other Chapters do. Wreck face. It's fair to say that opinion is polarised on Grav at the moment; if you have it and use it, you love it, if you come up against it, you generally hate it; but BAs needed something to make Wraithknights and Tau suits sweat a bit more.
What Blood Angels Didn't Get
So if you were expecting Centurions, Stormtalons, Stormhawks, Thunderfire Cannons, Ironclad or Venerable Dreadnoughts, Land Speeder Storm or Typhoon, Hunters or Stalkers, then you will be disappointed. Did Blood Angels need them? Competitively, yes. In the tournament scene access to some of these things would see Blood Angels on a more even footing with other Space Marine Chapters. I have lamented the lack of some of these units many times in the past, but I realised it would also lose the character of the Chapter. If you want to win tournaments then you will probably gravitate to the armies that are very good at taking all comers. I like fluff and more and more I am moving towards playing what is 'cool' rather than what is optimised. Blood Angels may not be consistently performing well in tournaments after this update but they certainly are still awesome and I look forward to testing out all the new formations and rules!
Seamless link!
Next up I will go through the new formations and detachments. Check back tomorrow to see what we got!
Thursday, 15 September 2016
The Angels Are Coming!
It has been a long hiatus since my last post. I haven't had a great deal to post about hobby wise. Until now.
That's right. Blood Angels are getting an update! The second part of the new Black Crusade supplement, Angel's Blade, is released on Saturday and to say I am excited is an understatement. Caveat right here. I realise the rumours about the contents are already circulating and it looks as if the Sons of Sanguinius have been slightly left out in the cold again, but I couldn't care less because it's still an improvement.
There are various things rumoured (probably true) to be coming but we know for a fact is this:
- 9 new formations
- 2 new detachments
- updates to Devastator and Assault Squads
- vehicle squadrons
- new Death Company relics
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| Lemartes, Astorath, Dante and...other Chaplain standing at the head of the neatly arranged and unpainted Sanguinary Guard and Death Company |
Thursday, 16 June 2016
Double Trouble - The List and The Review
Hello dwellers of the internet!
The weekend just gone saw the first Double Trouble event as organised and run by Alex of From The Fang. This was also my first ever doubles tournament so I was looking forward to that but doubly so (see what I did there?) because it was an unusual (but excellent - more on that in a minute) format of random pairings.
Those of you who follow the blog know I have been preparing for this by writing roughly a billion lists for different armies but ultimately I settled on Tau.
Here is the list:-
Tau CAD - 750pts
HQ
Ethereal - 65pts
Hover Drone, Recon Armour, Honour Blade
Elites
XV8 Crisis Battlesuits - 139pts
Shas'vre - Twin-linked Fusion Blaster
2xShas'ui - Twin-linked Fusion Blaster
Bonding Knife Ritual
XV95 Ghostkeel Battlesuit - 196pts
Cyclic Ion Raker, Twin-linked Fusion Blaster, Stimulant Injector, Velocity Tracker, Bonding Knife Ritual, 2x Stealth Drone
Troops
Breacher Team - 140pts
5x Fire Warrior with Pulse Blasters
TY7 Devilfish with Disruption Pod
Breacher Team - 140pts
5x Fire Warrior with Pulse Blasters
TY7 Devilfish with Disruption Pod
Fast Attack
Pathfinder Team - 70pts
Shas'ui
4x Pathfinder with Pulse Carbine/Markerlight
Bonding Knife Ritual
This is quite a soft list for Tau but I figured it has good mobility, transports to keep my nasty blasters alive beyond a turn and some deep striking for precision (ha, chance would be a fine thing!) striking, not to mention the hard-to-kill Ghostkeel.
All in all though it didn't fare too badly in the face of lots of much stronger armies and even caught a few marine squads off guard (love those Pulse Blasters).
I'll hopefully try and do some sort of battle reports for my 3 games but they will be more narrative than anything as I didn't record a single detail.
The reason for this was because I was having too much fun! I was looking forward to this format anyway and it turned out to be everything I hoped. I got to play with or against 9 guys I had never had a game with before and every one of them a thoroughly good chap. We had some laughs at some ridiculous outcomes and that and nobody seemed to care when they lost everything (including me!). I've only been to 3 tournaments so far (all of them Alex's) but this was the most relaxed of them all. Just a fun day of gaming all round.
The painting competition was great again with the usual fantastic work on display (I didn't get a vote for mine but, in fairness, it wasn't finished and there was far better work on display so I don't mind) and the raffle was fantastic again. 5 Start Collecting sets and Deathwatch: Overkill were on offer. I managed to scoop myself a Start Collecting Space Wolves box which is excellent because I always fancied painting some Thunderwolf Cavalry. Now I have some!
Shout out to Luke, Tess and Dan who had to put up with being partnered with me and to Rob, Matt, Kai-Uwe, Owen, Peter and Tobias who had the pleasure of pummelling my little fish men throughout the day!
More to follow soon!

