Stormtalons

OK – lets get it out there right from the start – I love the new model. It’s wonderfully ugly – just like any good Space Marine vehicle should be. If you want sleek and elegant, play Eldar! Space Marine vehicles should be blocky, utilitarian and down right ugly.

Having said that, I’m not a huge fan of the rules, or more particularly the points cost. One hundred and thirty points base, with 20 points to replace the heavy bolter with a laz cannon, or 25 for the missile launchers is, IMO too expensive. It’s not that much better than a landspeeder.

The additional rules are interesting – supersonic and aerial assault make for a very fast gunship. But I’m not really that impressed with the escort rule. If I could bring it in to support the first wave of a drop pod assault, that would be good. If I could use it with my Blood Angles to escort Stormravens, that would be awesome. However, as it is the ability to bring 2 units in on one reserve dice role is kinda underwhelming.

The long and the short of it is that I would rather have 2 HF MM Land Speeders for the same cost as one Stormtalon, or 3 Typhoons for less than the cost of 2 Talons.

And that brings me to a conclusion – I suspect 6^th ed is going to give Flyers a big boost. The Stormtalon, at this points cost, just doesn’t make sense without it.

I hope I’m right, because I really want to make a marine biker army with 3 Stormtalons! It would look pretty cool (and maybe that’s as good a reason as any!).

What am I missing – is there a way to use the Stormtalon that makes is awesome? In what sort of list might Stormtalons shine over Land Speeders?

EYIG

Last Weekends Tourney, and list for the Club Challenge

As I mentioned in the last post I was at a tourney at the weekend. It was a local one organised by my FLGS, Worlds at War. It was in fact 3 tourneys in one – a 40k tourney, a flames of war tourney and a warmachine tourney. My son and I entered the 40k tourney. Little Geek just turned 12, the minimum age for this tourney.

The tourney was not particular hard core! There were 12 people, three of them kids (Little Geek and 2 of his buddies from school), and I knew and have played most of the others on numerous occasions. A tourni for fun and laughs.

I eventually decided on Version 3 of the twin Raven list – the one with the Honour Guard and the Vanguard Vets. First game was against a friend who was playing his Chaos Marines. They were a Khorne themed army and absolutely stunning. The man’s an artist! Unfortunately he didn’t have enough shooting to down my Ravens before I hit his lines. After the dust settled he had a Greater Demon left, locked in combat with one of my Furiosos, and nothing else. A win for me.

Game 2 was seize ground, three objectives, against a fairly typical mech elder list. I was a little worried about this one as if he played the “last turn objective grab” game I might struggle. But my dice were on fire and I downed his Grav Tanks pretty quickly and the rest was mopping up. Another win.

Game 3 was annihilation, Dawn of War against an ultra marines army. He was running 15 (foot slogging) Tac terminators and assorted bits and bob (attack bikes, trip lascannon predator, thunderfire cannon, some foot slogging tactical squads and a speeder). Nothing much to say really. After I killed the bikes and the predator, the Furiosos got in among his units and even the Terminators couldn’t do much. The funniest thing was my assault squad running as hard as possible to get out of range of his Thunder Fire Cannon! The bloody thing killed the whole squad down to the sergeant!

Game 4 was a blast – annihilation again, against the guy who taught me to play 40k (Little Geek and I attended the local GW “beginners academy” a couple of years ago and this guy was the staffer who ran it – it’s all his fault!). He plays space wolves, and usually runs long fang spam with lots and lots of foot slogging grey hunters (surprisingly effective!), but recently he’s been moving to a mech based list with Hunters in rhinos and razorbacks, a land raider and a couple of dreads.

I got first turn and set up to rush him – thankfully he didn’t seize, and first turn I moved flat out into his face killing the Land Raider, and one of the razorbacks using power of the machine spirit. In reply he downed one of my ravens (I think with living lightening). At this point I though it was in the bag, but he played a very clever game and pulled it right back – in the end I thing I won by 2 kill points. Highlight of the game was one of my Furiosos being locked in combat with Ragnar Blackmain for 4 rounds of combat (after having butchered the squad he was with) and then, just as the Furioso got out of that combat, he was charged by a rifleman dread, and locked in combat with that dread until the end of the game….!

Little Geek did pretty well. He plays Demons, and (of course) struggles against the grey knight spam you see at tourneys (he’s been coming to tourneys with me since he was 10 – at least to the ones without age restrictions, so for his age he’s an “old hand”). This time he played 2 grey knight players and beat them both. I suspect the most satisfying was against one of his schoolmates who had been explaining how his Knights would stomp Little Geek’s Demons. I think LG killed everything bar his Land Raider!

So fun for all the family and a cool trophy for me for pulling out the win!

So anyway – final decision on the list for this coming weekend? Well last night I was agonising over which version of the twin Raven list to take. I had all my models out on the table to see what I had available (sadly it has to be a pretty big table!). In a moment of weakness I was distracted by the shininess of my Sanguinary Guard – a year ago I painted a bunch of the models thinking I might run a Dante Wing. But they’re tricky models to paint, and I got a bit bogged down. The project went on the shelf after I finished about 15 models….but last night they looked so shinny!

So I’ve gone with Version one of the twin Raven list, but with a slight change – rather than taking an assault squad whose only job is to camp objectives, I swapped it for a 3^rd Sanguinary Guard squad! So a total of 15 scoring bodies in 3 separate squads… and 4 of the missions involve objectives, 2 of them 5 objectives….oh dear! Yes, that’s right I’ve actually made the list worse – what can I say – I’m a victim of shinny model syndrome!

I suspect I’ll get stuffed…..! But I’ll win the Saturday night poker game we’ve got planned….(well actually no, I’m rubbish at poker so I’ll probably lose my shirt!)

I’ll let you know how it goes.

EYIG

More Tournaments - BA Lists

I have 2 tournaments lined up, one this weekend and one next. This weekend is a local one – one day 4 games at 1750pts. Next weekend is the Club Challenge at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield, 2 days, 5 games, again at 1750.

After the fun I had at TofS with my Blood Angels I’m going to run them again – but what to take?

I want to run the same list in both tournis for practice. I don’t have nearly as much experience with BA as I do with Tau. The reason I mention this is that there are comp restrictions at the Club Challenge, which will effect my list for Sunday. Broadly the comp restrictions are that you can’t take more than 2 of the same unit, other than troops – so my triple ‘raven list is out!

I’m debating with myself over two basic lists, with a degree of variety in both.

The first is a BA Razorspam list, and the second is a twin Stormraven list.

Running a Tau Gunline

As I mentioned in an earlier post I’ve been reviewing my Tau posts and I’ve noticed that it’s very much focused on list building. I’ve talked about tactics in passing but there is no one post that gatherers together my thoughts on how I play my army in general.  So I thought I would do that.

First off I think Tau have a very steep learning curve, and one that goes on (and on). I’m still crawling up that curve. So read this post with that in mind. I’m no expert – think of this as how I play my Tau, not as the way to play Tau!

Tau are a shooting army (no shit…!). They have no assault units (Kroot don’t count). The way of the Fire Warrior is to shoot stuff till it’s dead. If anything gets into assault you’re toast. I once had most of my army killed by 6 Dark Eldar Witches! Tactical Marines kick my butt in assault (as an aside it’s always amusing when an opponent tells me how awesome their death star is in assault – I really don’t care, anything beyond basic troops is simply a waste of points when facing Tau down in assault!). Tau are however very good at shooting – Railguns, Plasma Rifles and Missile Pods can put out a truly horrible volume of high strength low AP shots. And, with Drones and Disruption Pods the killer units are pretty resilient to shooting. Very few armies can compete with Tau in a long range fire fight (missile and razor spam Space Wolves, and some guard armies can). So most armies need to close with you and take you out in assault.

So the key to success is keeping the enemy at range and blasting them off the table.

GoW Doubles

Bede and I are teaming up for a doubles tournament at Games of War.

It's three missions over 1 day, 750pts each.

The lists we're taking are:

Grey Knights

Coteaz
Ven psyflemen
2x4 acolytes with bolsters in passbacks
1x5 acolytes with bolsters in a passback

Blood Angels

Libby w/shield and fear
Furioso dread w/blood talons
5 assault marines w/meltagun in las/plas razor
5 assault marines w/flamer in las/plas razor
Stormraven w/twin linked multi melta & twin linked plasma cannon.

We haven't had a single practice game so today's going to be interesting!

Wandering the streets of Malifaux

Hello, Sir#67 here to tell you all about my latest obsession....Malifaux

Before I start ranting about how awesome this game is a little bit of background:

Malifaux is a skirmish game by a company called Wryd miniatures. Each player controls a small war band or crew each led by a master. The game is very scenario driven. Each player has their own individual objectives and can then select up to two "schemes". The schemes are additional minor objectives to achieve. Schemes are generally secret but can be announced and therefore give double victory points on completion. Players perform everything they want to do with one of their models before their opponent responds. You each continue to alternate using one model at a time until every model has been activated.

Airbrush

I am now the proud owner of an Aztec airbrush. Does anybody know a good on line guide?

EYIG

Throne of Skulls Battle Reports

Last weekend at Throne of Skulls I had a blast. Attending with my brother and my son was fun and I had 5 great games with fun opponents – and I won best Blood Angels player, which always helps! I’m not going to do blow by blow battle reports, but here’s a quick summary of how things went.

First of all my list was as posted last week – a Librarian with Shield and Rage, 3 Stormravens with extra armour, 2 Furioso Dreads, 8 Death Company with a Thunder Hammer, a Death Company Dread and one unit of assault marines with no upgrades. I posted last week that this was a silly list, and it is. Frankly I was really lucky with my match ups as you’ll see.

Game 1

Against a really cool guard army. Lots (and lots) of guardsman with lots (and lots) of stuff (lots of heavy weapons  teams!), all foot slogging and 3 Hydra’s. All the guardsmen were Ratling miniatures and had a very strong WW I theme. The centre piece of the army was a sentinel converted into a bi-plane, who my opponent called “Bigglesworth”! In fact all the minis had names (Baldrick and Captain Darling made an appearance). Anihiliation pitched battle. He had first turn.