Happy New
Year
A break from
blogging over the festive period but back now.
When last we
spoke (!) I was wondering whether to take podding marines or Tau to Cally.
Well, I decided to take the marines.
The big issue
was Lysander. While he’s a beat stick, and synergizes well with the Sternguard,
he is 200pts. I was also wondering about the 3 “big” tournament builds in the
UK at the moment – Wraith Wing Necrons, Demons and Biomancy Nids. Could I get
more value from those 200 pts?
The obvious answer
was to take a Librarian. Null Zone would make a difference against Nids and
Demons. And that is what I thought, but I came up against an unexpected problem
– I thought Vulcan was a captain and could therefore take a command squad….but
he isn’t and he can’t. So if I drop Lysander I can’t take the command
squad. In turn that means I don’t have anything scary to put in the 7th
pod, meaning my “alpha strike” isn’t nearly as powerful i.e. of the 4 pods that
come down first turn I have one with Vulcan and the Sternguard, 2 with
Ironclads and one with ….. what?
Lots of head
scratching ensued.
And then I
thought “Space Wolves”! Now, I’ve never really been attracted to the codex – you
know how it is, some codices appeal, other don’t, and Space Wolves has never
appealed. But as allies…!
So after a
long chat with my 2space wolf playing buddies I came up with a plan.
Librarian in
TDA, Null Zone, Avenger
2 Tactical
Squads with Plasma Guns and Multi Meltas in Pods
2x Ironclad
Dreads, Twin Heavy Flamers, Assault Launchers, in Lucius Pattern Drop Pods
10
Sternguard, 6 combi Meltas
Rune Priest,
Jaws, Living Lightening, Combi Plasma in TDA (goes in the Wolf Guard Pod),
5 TDA Wolf
Guard with Combi Plasmas, in a pod (one of them goes with the Grey Hunters)
8 Grey
Hunters with Mark of the Wolven, Plasma Gun and a Banner
So …. 4 pods
come down first turn. Libby with the Sternguard, tanking wounds from anything
with Interceptor and casting Null Zone to make Wraiths and Demons sweat. Two
Iron Clads flaming infantry and/or charging stuff straight out the Lucius Pods,
and a Rune Priest and 4 TDA wolf guard laying the plasma pain on the drop, with
the Rune Priest sniping Tervigons with Jaws. The second wave includes the Grey
Hunters to take forward objectives and support the first wave (Grey Hunters are
soooo much better than Tac Squads!), with the Tac Squads coming in to snatch
mid field objectives.
I really
liked this list, and the great thing was that I could borrow all the space wolf
stuff from my buddy, meaning that the only things I had to paint were 2 Lucius
Pattern pods, and finish off 5 normal pods. So I sat back to enjoy the holidays
and ordered the Lucius pattern pods. However, forge world let me down! One of the
pods came with a bit missing. I called them and they said that it would take
them 10 days to get the bit cast and out to me. This was about 2 weeks to go
until the tournament. With list submission date looming I decided not to take
the risk and submitted a very similar list to the one I played at the Games of
War tourney i.e. Vulcan, Lysander, Command Squad, 2 Iron clads in normal pods,
sternguard and 3 tac squads.
Unfortunately
the models I used for that army were a mix and match from 2 different armies
(i.e. 2 very different colour schemes). With painting scores at Cally I wanted
to make sure the army was cohesive. So with 2 weeks to go before the tourney I
had 4 pods to finish off, 3 to build and paint from scratch, a tac squad to
paint, a command squad to paint and a Vulcan conversion to complete and paint.
After a marathon weekend of building and painting (which almost involved a
divorce!) I realised it was just not going to happen (line highlighting drop
pods takes for ever!).
But the TO
threw me a life line. He offered a “list amnesty”. He offered anybody who had
submitted a list from the three most popular codices a chance to swap for an
army less well represented. Codex Marines were one of the three, so I swapped
to Tau.
So, after all
that, I’m back playing a variation of the list that got stomped at the GT…
sigh!
EYIG
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