Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and will have some fresh articles up in the coming week.

Blog News

Posts forthcoming. Been crazy busy the last week. Gonna try and get some up before the weekend is in full swing.

List Preview/Review

That's right. It's dual Land Raider time.

I have a local tournament coming up this weekend that a friend of mine insists I play in. Because I've not played a singles tournament before and because he is adamant about me trying, I caved and had him assist me in designing a more competitive list. Having, himself, seen much success in the last event by bringing a rock list, that's what we designed. A list with 2 Land Raiders in a game that's 1500 points. Hopefully they'll be a tough enough nut to crack that I can sneak some wins through. :)

Killzone Beta Contest

All aboard!

For those interested in participating, Brian, over at A Gentleman's Ones is holding a contest for players who would like to assist in play testing of Killzone. All you need to do is download the Killzone rule set and codex errata here, play a match (or as many as you'd like) and submit your results using the report page. Each battle report that you submit is good for one entry in the weekly giveaway. Who knows, play enough and you could be the lucky one drawn for this weeks prize, just like yours truly. I'd highly encourage you to check it out. The game is a blast to play and Brian has been super approachable about rules questions and ideas.

Did I mention I won the first drawing? How crazy is that? I have a Stormraven now. It's pretty friggin' awesome. :) Might be looking a little more a Grey Knights now that I have some proper motivation. Next week's prize is a super sweet textured gaming map. Again, check it out here for your chance to win!


Seeing the increased traffic from the linkage by Brian (thank you ^_^), I'm going to try and get a few fresh articles up so that there's something worth reading. There's a small tournament at my LFGS this weekend, so I'll post up my list for public review. :)

Battle Report!

Killzone

After finals, I managed to squeeze in a game of Killzone this week. For those who've never heard of it, Killzone is a fan-made rule system based on the old Kill Teams rule set from long ago. And after getting in a nice game of it, I gotta say that it's pretty damn fun.


So, upon meeting at our LFGS, my friends and I discovered we had an uneven number of players; just the 3 of us. Having experienced this before, we turned to the 3-way battle rules on page 272 of the BRB. After a lot of hemming and hawing (mostly on my part) we got our game underway.


Because it was our first time with the rules, we decided to stick with a simple Primary mission. As the dice roll would have it, we wound up with kill points for our objective. Since deployment was complicated by having 3 players, we decided that the simplest means would be to roll of with the scatter die and deploy from whatever table edge it pointed at (unless it was already taken). This had me across the table from Space Wolves and to the left of Guard.


Seeing the Guard as the weakest target, both myself and my friend Thomas (playing Space Wolves) went toward them. Two turns of pushing through with minimal resistance saw them slaughtered between our forces. The game ended in a great finale of 5 Sternguard Veterans, an Assault Terminator, and an Apothecary locked in combat with a very stubborn Lone Wolf.


Tom and I tied for the win with kill points, and had a pretty good time playing. Now that the revised beta rules are out, we'll probably run through another match or two using those. Before that however, I have a tournament to prepare for.

Battle Report!

The Enemy

So, having discovered that I'd be unavailable to play at the tournament, I thought I'd help out my former teammate, Thomas. We built a suitable replacement list for his younger brother to fill in the gap I'd left and they had a very formidable army. Tom was running a slightly tuned version of his same tournament list whilst his brother, Donovan, ran a very much broken list.

Update

Had a great battle today. It was very bloody and very fun. Battle report forthcoming.

Fatal Error!

I came to a very important realization the other day. After weeks of planning and my teammate's purchase of over $100 worth of models/bits, I looked at my calendar and noticed that I'd be out of town on the day of the tournament. Words cannot describe my disappointment. Team events are normally an annual event in my area, and this was the first time I'm aware of that a second one was held within the same year. So, I'll have to postpone my tournament fun until February when the next event is held.


In the meantime, it does give me an opportunity to test different lists against the players and help them hone their armies. In the next week, I'll try to post up my list for aid in practice, as well as the different players' lists. After the tournament, I plan on running them through the 40k Metrics system to see how their performance stacked up with established benchmarks. And so you can understand what the hell that means, I'll be getting the 40k Metrics introduction article up this week. I'm going to hold myself to it.

Official Release date?



A memo from a GW marketing meeting.

So, as of this writing, it would appear that there are 115 days until the release of 6th edition. I hope the time goes by quickly. A new game and new meta-game sounds very fun and exciting. Have to see what the new year brings.


For those interested, I picked up the photo here.

The Death of 5th Edition 40k.

Your days are numbered 5th ed.

With the large volume of 6th edition rumors frothing and spewing into the Internet, I thought I'd share why I feel 5th edition is fundamentally flawed as well as the reasons I'm so excited for 6th edition. Before delving into the new and excited things that are purportedly coming around the bend, I feel we should examine what are, in my arrogant and blathering opinion, the flaws of the current system so as to build a better appreciation for what's to come. :)

Battle Summary

Team Battle: Imperial Fists and Space Wolves vs. Imperial Guard and Eldar

Eldar Trickery

Got a chance to run a second test of our slightly altered team doubles list with similar results. We made the Scouts into CC Scouts with a power weapon, and took out a Thunder Wolf and some Grey Hunters in favor of having a Rune Priest to help block psychic abilities. While we won the game, I think it was more because of some very lucky dice rolls than anything else.For example, rolling double sixes to blow up a Falcon grav tank with holo fields, and blowing up a Leman Russ on our second turn of shooting (the first having been night fighting).

But through all of our good fortune, our limitations remain the same. We have some very powerful 'Deathstar' units, but they lack the mobility to be as effective as we need them. For instance, the Thunder Wolf Cavalry have yet to engage in close combat. And while that can be effective as a means of herding your enemy around the board, I'd like to see them make at least some of their points back.

So, what do we do about it? We've built a couple alternate lists that feature a third Land Raider. Yes, we'll be those guys who have 3 Land Raiders in a tournament with a restrictive force organization chart. It's very necessary though because we need to drop the TWC in favor of getting our other units into the action. I'll try and get a new copy of both lists up once I'm furnished with copies of the materials as well as a full length battle report with photos for our next test. :)

It's over 9000!!!

IT'S OVER 9000!!!

I now have the coolest problem ever. Due to an extremely generous donation from a magnanamous benefactor, I now have over 9000 points of space marines. Allow me to now say, HOLY CRAP! About 3000 points of it are still unassembled and it's quite intimidating to look at it all and know I have to assemble it.

I can now have an Apocalpyse game... against myself. This is awesome. So, I'll be plugging away at assembly for all of the new stuff and trying to get some model reviews up for what I'm working on as I go. I'll also try to provide some information on storage methods because as my army grows it's becoming a larger and larger consideration for upkeep.

OT: Movie Review

Movie Review: The Thing

Since this is off topic, I'll spare you a long winded introduction. Suffice it to say that John Carpenter's The Thing is one of my favorite movies. It was a suspense/thriller/mystery/action film starring Kurt Russell. With a perfect blend of mood, special effects, and writing, it was a fantastic movie that had you on the edge of your seat and guessing until the very end.

The Thing (2011) is the perfect prequel. It contains and totally nails all of the elements that made the first film great. I'll say that it's not better than the original, but that's what makes it great. Neither of them over shadow the other which makes them great to watch together, as intended. I'd very much recommend seeing it, regardless of whether you saw the old one or not.

List Building and Battle Report!

Darnath Lysander. The Great Eater of guard blobs. Om nom nom.

I had a chance to get a game in this weekend for practice in an upcoming team doubles tournament at my local friendly game store. My usual team mate Thomas, and I were really excited to hear about it because we've been working on and continually refining the team tournament list we used for the first event we went to. Our list has undergone several sweeping changes and thanks to the help of 40k Metrics, we had it down to a well balanced and versatile art. The only problem is that it has yet to be tested in a tournament in it's current form.

Product Preview

INSTANT MOLD

Finally got a chance to pick up some Instant Mold, as seen here on Cool Mini or Not. Haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I intend to create some molds to build up some combi-weapons for my squads. More details to follow as I get myself in trouble with it.

Starting Up

Getting the blog set up. New posts will soon be up, beginning with a nice article on 40k Metrics.

Standby

I've officially claimed this page for personal use due to neglect. It will remain on standby until I get my new computer in a month. After that, expect 40k battle reports, product reviews and video game reviews by me, for anyone willing to read them.