Wednesday 25 September 2013

Gunslingin'

I had a bit of an epiphany today when I was reading through the Space Marine codex.

I happened to notice that in the vanguard vet entry in the army list you have the option to replace your chainsword and/or bolt pistol with a plasma pistol and for some reason, and I'm not sure why, it prompted me to check the pistol weapon entry in the main rulebook.
Now, and here comes the interesting bit, if a model is armed with 2 pistols, the model gains the gunslinger rule and can fire both weapons in the shooting phase and still benefit from the +1 attack for having 2 CCW's. Wicked!

So, check this out:

Vanguard Plasma Bomb = 5 vets with dual plasma pistols and jump packs = 295pts

10 S7 AP2 shooting attacks and 20 melee attacks on the charge.
 
Bit expensive but could be a giggle.

Any thoughts? Hit me up in the comments.

Monday 23 September 2013

Tournament Analysis: Summer Tides of War @ The Giant's Lair, Plymouth

On Saturday 21/9/13, I took part in the quarterly 40k tournament at my FLGS, "The Giant's Lair" down in Plymouth. It was an 1850pt event with the results going towards our ongoing 40k league. It was a one day event with 3 games played and 12 participants in total. A random draw selected first round opponents then Swiss rankings were used to determine subsequent opponents. A 20-0 system was used for scoring with 8 possible points available for primary objectives, 4 for secondary objectives and then the remaining 8 points for difference in VP's for whole units destroyed.

I used the following list:

HQ
Farseer w. Singing Spear - 105
Spiritseer - 70

TROOPS
x8 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent w. Holofields - 234
x8 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent w. Holofields - 234
x7 Jetbikes w. x2 Shuriken Cannon - 139
x5 Wraithguard in Wave Serpent w. EML & Holofields - 305

ELITES
x7 Striking Scorpions - 119

FAST
x2 Hornets w. x2 Pulse Lasers each - 160
x9 Warp Spiders - 171

HEAVY
x5 Dark Reapers w. Exarch upgrade, Tempest Launcher, Fast Shot & Starshot Missiles - 222
x3 Support Weapons w. Shadow Weavers - 90

Total - 1849

As you can see, the list is offensively highly mobile but with a solid backline of area denying barrage units.

My possible opponents:

Player 1 - Tau - Dual Riptides
Player 2 - Tau - Hammerheads & Crisis heavy
Player 3 - Daemons - Fateweaver led flying circus
Player 4 - Grey Knights - Terminators & Dreadknight
Player 5 - Grey Knights - PA GK with Storm Ravens
Player 6 - CSM - Mixed list of various cult troops
Player 7 - Marines w. Eldar allies - Cantor Sternguard spam with jetbike and Wraithknight
Player 8 - Marines w. Guard allies - Iron Hands with Leman Russes & Mech Vets
Player 9 - Marines - IF 5 man tactical spam with dual vindi's and drop-pod dreads
Player 10 - Marines - Dual Land Raiders w. terminators and devastator centurions led by Tigurius
Player 11 - Marines - Tactical Rhino spam with vindicator and dreadnought support

Game 1 - vs. Player 9

I won the roll off and my opponent failed to seize. I took out a tactical squad in the open with the reapers and EML serpent to score first blood. remainder of the mounted troops moved forward while the support platform pinned another of the tactical squads. His first turn, 2 pods arrive with dreads. Ironclad kills 1 reaper, normal dread opts for support platforms with no wounds. vindicators kills 1 platform.

My turn 2, spiders arrive and kill the ironclad, hornets outflank and kill one of the vindicators, wave serpent with shuriken cannons kill the other dread. jetbikes move to claim home objective. His turn 2, last dread pods in, fluffs all shooting and is now a sitting duck. His warlord charges my scorpions who can't fight due to being affected by the "Errm" effect of the hallucination power cast by his libby. Scorpions are run down but his consolidation was only 1" so his warlord stays put.

My turn 3, reapers kill the last dread & the spiders nuke his warlord. Libby is finished off by the wave serpent. His turn 3 he maneuvers to attempt to castle his objective with minimal casualties to my force.

He concedes by turn 5 due to only having his drop-pods left.

I win 18-2.

Game 2 - vs. Player 11

I won the roll off again and went first. This was an annihilation game and therefore wasn't particularly tactical or exciting to be honest. We had vanguard deployment and my opponent decided to castle up on the deployment line. I kept my bikes, spiders, hornets and reapers in reserve. First turn I cracked a dreadnought and rhino to get first blood, he scored some hull points on one of my wave serpents. Turn 2, most of my my reserves came on, the hornets nuked some more of the tanks, the spiders mishapped and were placed miles from the action. He killed one of the hornets. Turn 3, reapers come on and nuke a tac squad. A second tac squad is pinned by the shadow weavers. The remaining hornet kills a vindicator. The spiders start moving towards the fight. I lost my wraithguard in a turn 3 assault by some hammernators. Turn 4, I killed a 2nd vindicator with his own dread using "puppet master". My spiritseer is killed. Turns 5 & 6 was a war of attrition.

I emerge as the eventual winner 16-4

Game 3 - vs. Player 7

Final game, lose roll off but seize. Night fighting this game. Manage to kill a tac squad with the shadow weavers, first blood again. shadow weavers get pounded back and fail leadership. wraithknight goes to charge but fails. Turn 2, my wraithguard get out and one-shot the wraithknight with their d-cannons. Cue one pissed off opponent. At this point my opponent begins to retreat back into his corner to castle his home objective. I was on the offensive but then it all fell apart on his turn 4. I started failing saves and my troops got wiped. In the last turn he moved onto the central objective to claim and then contested my only remaining claimed objective with turbo-boosting jetbikes.

After a solid start, I lose 7-13

Overall tournament placing:


Overall thoughts

Against the opponents I faced, the list I fielded served me extremely well. It was well balanced with plenty of equally threatening targets for my opponents to try and deal with. The area denial units served me particularly well, especially in game 3. I'm glad that I didn't have to face the flying circus or dual Land Raider list though as I think I would have struggled quite badly against those lists. Overall though, I'm happy to have placed.

What do you guys think of the list? Anything you would have changed? Hit me up in the comments.







Welcome!

Welcome to "Crucible of Fate", my attempt to chart my trials and tribulations in the wide and varied world of table-top wargaming.

Now for a little background. I'm primarily a 40k player, starting off with a brief foray into 2nd edition followed by a long hiatus until just before 5th edition dropped in 2008. I'm sure most of you have dipped in and out of the hobby over time and the way I got hooked back into it probably mirrors many others. A chance conversation with a friend in Uni resulted in the discovery of a shared past interest in the hobby which then lead to me popping into my local GW. I ended up buying one of the fairly new plastic Eldar war walkers and some paints and glue etc and then got busy with the building. After completing this little project, I ended up getting some more bits and bobs then before I knew it, I had about 750pts worth of stuff! At the same time, my buddy managed to dig out all of his old stuff and by the time July rolled around we were ready to start re-learning how to play with the new edition. 

Fast forward to 2013 and you'll find me wielding about 4000pts of Yme-Loc Eldar and about 2000pts of Salamanders Space Marines for 40k. On top of that I've got Imperial Navy and Salamanders fleets for Battlefleet Gothic and a small Skaven army for Fantasy.

Moving away from GW systems, I also play Malifaux. For those who've never heard of it, Malifaux is an awesome skirmish game produced by Wyrd Miniatures whose setting is a mash-up of the Wild West and Victorian Steampunk. I know, it sounds crazy but I urge everyone to give it a go just to try out the playing card based game mechanics. I found it to be a really refreshing change to chucking buckets of dice around and the start-up costs are pretty reasonable. 

I post regularly on Heresy under the forum handle "Jams" and some of you may have seen some of my painting work in the modelling and painting forums. If you haven't, don't worry. Part of the reason I've set up this blog is to try and motivate myself into posting my stuff more regularly to get more critiques and comments so I can improve and learn new and exciting techniques. I also aim to post up some tutorials for some of my paint schemes as I've received numerous requests over the years from people wondering how I achieved a particular look but I've never gotten around to getting them written down. Eventually I want to attempt to go for a Golden Daemon but I've got a way to go before then.

I'm also going to share my experiences as a gamer, not just the victories, but also the defeats, with the aim of analyzing my games and seeing what I could have done better, regardless of the outcome. The reason for this is my local meta has become increasingly more competitive since 6th edition was released and I've been trying to hone that killer edge so that I can start attending GT's in the near future. I'll detail the lists I've used and how they worked out and then see where we go from there.

Hopefully, those of you that read my blog will find it interesting and hopefully helpful, but I also want you guys to chip in with stuff you think might be useful in helping both myself and others in our journey through the hobby.

So, without further ado, lets crack on!