Bitching my way to victory AGAIN! (but mostly just bitching...)

It's been awhile since I posted a good rant, so get ready as I'm about to remedy that...

I finished off 2012 with a narrow win over Screech, and started off 2013 with what would appear to be a strong 4-0 record. The devil is in the details though...

On the left is the guy who started it all...

This weekend I thought I'd give the Red Corsairs a go, along with trying out some Daemon allies now that Harold is painted. As I'm generally too lazy to make multiple lists for one weekend, and Morristown (now back up and running) was using a 1500 point tournament format, I made up a 1500 point Corsairs list with a small Daemon allied contingent. The Daemons came at cost of my vehicle contingent (that being a dirt cheap dakka pred, an all las pred, and a rhino).

My first game was Saturday night, vs. RTVoril's Craft World Eldar with a small contingent of DE allies. That came as a surprise as I was expecting the opposite. Hammer and Avnvil, Purge the alien (fittingly), and in general I pasted him. Granted, by the end I didn't have a whole lot let, but things pretty much went my way the whole game, that and the burning brand of Skalathrax has since become my new favorite toy. (SPOILER ALERT) He was to get his revenge less than 24 hours later. 

Move forward to Sunday, and Round one was vs. a most hated of enemies....yes that's right, it was an almost fully PAINTED army of Red Corsairs vs. my virtually UNPAINTED army of Red Corsairs! Crusade (5 objectives), Hammer and Anvil again (as usual). This was a close one that went back and forth till the very end when I squeaked out a win by holding one objective while contesting two others (with the rest in no-man's land). I got first blood and Line breaker, he killed my warlord.

This was also my first encounter with dinobots. The big shooty one isn't to terribly impressive vs. marines, while the dragon on the other hand is cheese on a stick. Four schmucks with flak missiles had exactly one turn to kill it before being incinerated (and as they were incinerated, you know how well that went). The best I was able to do was take a hull point off of it with an oblit. which also locked its velocity, which was meaningless for all intents and purposes... VPs made it look like a solid win, while in truth it was a squeaker that down to the last turn. All and all though, it was a really good game.

Round two was whatever the 'new auto-tie' mission is called, Dawn of War deployment and worst of all, vs. the most hated of my foes, and the gloves were off as soon as it was announced. Having long since burned through the excuses of 'he's young, he's a new player, he's just learning' etc. He's a known cheater who's IG (while less than the norm) was still loaded with proxies (either Creed was on the adkins diet, or that was really just a regular IG officer being called Creed...).

I don't like him (most of us don't), he knows this, he's also been 'spoken to' by the T.O., and still he tries to pulls BS with the IG while claiming ignorance despite having been repeatedly corrected  multiple times by multiple people. He's basically every bad 'WAAC player' stereotype rolled into one. Lets face it he starts turn one, forgetting orders then wanting to go back and issue them (in friendly games that's fine, against him, no). Forgetting the orders  was preceded by (quote):

'I'm going to exploit a loophole I found in the rules. Any weapon fired after an ordinance round must be snap fired, so I'm going to fire the ordinance round last.'

Well yes. I guess that is a loophole, thanks for announcing your intent, now why are you looking surprised that I just told you that the gloves are off and no, you can't go back and issue orders?

The following is a selection of quotes from the game:

Orders are always at the beginning of the shooting phase, its the first thing you do. No Creed doesn't wound a CSM with a power sword on a 4+. No a chimera cannot cross a 3" deep trench like its open terrain just because there's water at the bottom of it. No an astropath doesn't have 2 wounds. No 'lumbering behemoth' doesn't mean you can ignore shaken. No Ratlings aren't toughness 3, firing the chimera's heavy flamer only to find it not in range is not 'pre-measuring' that's what a tape measure is for. No there are no defensive weapons anymore so your heavy stubber does not ignore snap firing. 

And yes there were more, but I can only recall so much BS in one game...

Turn two, my Raptors pulled off an impressive 11" charge through difficult terrain, and wiped out his command squad including Creed! The conversation following that was as follows:

Cool, I got your Warlord!
No you didn't, my warlord is in that Chimera over there.
What? Who the hell does Creed take orders from?
Yarrick.
You have Creed, Yarrick, AND Pask in a 1500point list?!?
And Marbo, he hasn't come in yet.
Overcompensate much?

(He just looked away at that...) RTVoril was later to dub it the 'Who's who of the Imperial Guard' army.

He couldn't understand how I had so many troops in a 1500 point list whereas I can't understand why he'd dump so many points into special characters. I can only imagine that Harker and Bastonne (or is he a Storm trooper character?) will be running the 2 vet squads (only troops he had, unsurprisingly) in the next tourney. At game's end, I had his objective, nobody had mine, he got my warlord, I had First Blood, and both line breaker, so another win for me. (I heard he got all but tabled in round three....) Oh, and a dozen flakk missiles fired resulting exactly NO damage to his friggin Valkyrie!

Round three, another multiple objective game (forget which one), Dawn of War deployment, vs. RTVorils' DE. I think bribery was used to get me as an opponent as this army was tailor made to wipe me out and did so in spectacular fashion! Knowing what I'd have ahead of time he brought his standard tourney list. Its all but the same as what pasted my exodites, except the ravagers were swapped out for two fighters. Anyone who thinks Rhinos are dead needs to play against this army, as between splinter cannons, and the rapid firing rifle schmucks in the back of each, virtually every one of my squads was getting hammered by 20-40 shots per round, with predictable results.

This 'glass cannon' army wasn't as he was still rolling box cars like a mad man like he was the night before. The only difference being this time he was rolling for flicker fields and to hit, rather than for leadership and how far to run away! The two fighters showed up and Calliopied into the havocs wiping them out. Because 4 weapons firing at normal BS, per flyer makes sense. Tanks can do that if they sit still, and have enough weapons, but then again you don't need 6s just to hit those...

Over the course of the game I was able to glance one jet to death, and popped 2 venoms (one taking all passengers with it), but in general my army was outmaneuvered, out gunned, and evicerated in short order. The simple inclusion of rhinos would have negated half of the 20-odd shots per venom (collectively) as poisoned weapons can't do crap to them. Of course bolters needing 6s just to glance his vehicles (before saves), plus the needing 6s to hit the fighters, and then again to glance (with most of my shooting and again before saves), meant despite being a very good friend, this army sucked to play against and I summarily bitched my way thru it.

However, (and I'm making assumptions here as this was the case vs. my Exodites) he was stuck in the '5th ed mindset' of just wiping me out instead of playing for objectives, as his guys never exited the venoms unless they were destroyed. So despite getting my ass handed to me, I had one squad on an objective and line breaker. While he had first blood (my daemonettes committed suicide rather than deep strike nicely), and slay the warlord, but no objectives  (despite having venoms practically sitting on 3 of them).

So it was a 'technical win' that saw me as undefeated, and I won a $15 gift card toward future purchases. I hate technical wins, as like I said above, I got my ass handed to me and it was obvious.

Still ranting just in case you didn't get enough above...

Having now faced flyers in several games, rather than just going by the general sense of 'teh inerwebz' I still don't think they have a place in 40k. They're not broken per se (though why the fuck most xenos [those not being Matt Ward's pet projects] only have AV10, while Imperials & Chaos dragons are armored like tanks is beyond me), however the lack of air defense DOES make them broken!

Do I seriously have to SPAM flakk missiles, or spend $75 on a dragon that I don't want (and is better at killing ground targets anyways)? Nor do I want an Aegis line or bastion with AA guns in my non-Imperial armies. True my Orks are getting an aegis & quad gun, but I also had an orky substitute for the aegis, and da' gunz weren't to difficult to konvert. That said, it doesn't fit with my speed freaks at all! Yet I apparently 'have to have' them now because armies are starting to be built around the obvious power of flyers which is the obvious lack of realistic AA defense that most armies are faced with (the *new* CSM codex included).

I've commented previously that I don't want my 40k games to turn into reenactments of Pearl Harbor, and I think that statement still stands. However it's obviously GW's intent, to sell flyers rather than provide armies with a decent AA defense to balance things out. Matt Ward shows us all what GW thinks of 'balance'... For those who wish to argue that point on flyers, explain to me why the two latest flyer releases (the dragon and whatever the DA one is called) are priced at $75 a pop, when the earlier kits were a 'mere' $50 each.

Having to pay10 points a piece for flakk missiles is hardly an equalizer, nor is not releasing a non-Forgeworld hydra that was promised ages ago...