My first Astral Claws Tactical Squad is complete!

o/

Curiously (or is it sadly?), these are the most marines of a single color scheme that I've had since my 30k Alpha Legionnaires (who in the end only clocked in at a whopping 13 minis total) and the most of any single squad going all the way back to my......Storm Wardens (circa 2013-14). 

The closest thing I could find to a whole Storm Wardens army shot on this blog...

Yeah, wow. Consistency, it's not my thing apparently. 

Anyways, back to the present.

The chapter icons went on well enough, though a few of the tactical arrows required considerable profanity to achieve proper adhesion... 

In the end, this squad was kinda fun to paint despite how much I normally dislike batch painting (even small batches of 3-4). At least at this point I'm not loathing the prospect of painting more of 'em. 

The squad's 'big guns'.

The squad's leg greaves are rather muddy meaning the squad at some point had to wade across a flooded trench, gully or the like which lead to the curiously dirty state of one battle brother in particular: 

Genetically enhanced or not
everybody falls in the mud!

We're not quite sure what exactly it was that caused brother Lucius to fall bodily into the muddy water.

Was it a hole unseen beneath the murk? Perhaps the shock wave of a nearby explosion? Or was it just an opportune shove delivered at just the right moment by one of his malicious brethren?

Its hard to say, but squad comms have been unusually quiet ever since the trench crossing...'incident'.

The battlefield debris on their bases is a bit inconsistent, but in the end won't really be noticeable. The first few had Eldar bits added to their bases as those were readily available without any effort required to sift through my pile o' spare bitz. That said, the Astral Claws were previously tasked with containing the Maelstrom's renegade and Xenos scourges meaning Eldar debris isn't too far off of the mark. Perhaps the Eldar were simply raiders or traders who mistakenly wandered into yet another Space Marine conflict

The Executioners' chapter Rhino door, partial hatch and helm are in line with the Badab war background. Whether or not they were friend or foe at this point is unknown. Executioners aside, the squad sergeant has a half buried helm of one of his fellow sergeants on his base and in true 40k form, human skulls are  sprinkled throughout.

Overall I'm quite happy with these guys (shitty photos aside), so keep an eye out for more Astral Claws in the future. 

This week on ebay...

o/

Notta whole lot of movement on the hobby front aside from a lot of ebaying stuff off. The long awaited and much maligned (by me) 7th ed Ork codex and data cards sold quite well, as did my forgeworld 30k marines. However not everything is going out of the door, I made some purchases as well.

First up, I bought a pair of X-Wing proximity mines after I realized in our last game that I was using the incorrect tokens when Rob handed my an actual proximity mine token. The S&V 'Genius' astromech has suddenly become a favorite of mine and with these tokens, my opponents will no doubt be wary of any low PS Y-Wing I field from now on!

It seems I'm out of 60mm bases, so I'll have to order another via ebay.

2nd, is actually a purchase from a few weeks back, but it arrived this week from its journey from France. This doubles my Grymn army's armored might, in the form of a 2nd Stug Walker (counts as: an Armored Sentinel). Despite coming from overseas, this one was $6 cheaper than the 1st one bought from an ebay seller here in the US!

Before...

Third up and rounding out this post, I removed the former Captain I killed Draigo (the above pic) from ebay after a few weeks with no bids and only a few watchers. He'll once again hold the rank of captain, when he takes command of the shattered remnants of my remaining SM forces (including a survivor or two from his last command). I'm sure that statement will raise a few eyebrows, but I'll just leave it at that for the time being...

...after (and obviously still a work-in-progress)

;-)

The latest survivors of the simple green...

o/

Invariably, when some paint jobs have reached the end of their useful lifespan, the model wearing that paint often hasn't. Some go onto to ebay, and others go into the Simple Green. Here are the latest wrecks (post scrubbing and rinsing) to emerge from the green (which had turned black after a few weeks of soaking):

Ya know you like those Necron Gauss hatch hinges!

This poor rhino came to me via ebay. It served with me as an Inquisition Rhino for most of its career, plus the Dark Angels (briefly), and going by the colors layers discovered, it apparently came to me as a Space Wolf vehicle. Its next stop: 30k.

I'm pretty sure there's hull damage under the pasticard on the front hull, so I'll leave it be. A lot of the little gribbly bitz on the tank were lost during the paint scrubbing, but a recent sift thru my bitz box found replacements for all those lost, and some more fun options as well.

He will have a Forgeworld backpack at least...

 Sticking with 30k, here's the former Storm Wardens' Captain I killed Draigo. Yes, it hurts to erase such a glorious history but as he's one of the few survivors of an army that went the way of ebay, this guy too will join my 30k Blackshields. 

Then there's this little bastard!

Still not thinking the new paint will include a red coat...

Its rare that a simple scrubbing with a toothbrush doesn't remove all of the paint aside from a few little bits in the nooks and crannies. However this fucker required an exacto to scrape a hellova lot of it off! Plus, his mace (always easily bendable) snapped off, revealing an air bubble in the cast which explained that issue. So he got a simple choppa instead.

He also got a shield (luckily that's a vaible piece of wargear in GorkaMorka) as when I removed the old shield, it was a really bad hackjob underneath! Either I had just gotten my dremel, or was still using a rasp and files. Either way, that had to be covered! he also got the only Ork slugga I found in my bitz box!

Also, just an FYI, this coming holiday weekend will be spent with family in the mountains of North Carolina, so don't look for a Monday update. Instead you'll have to wait till Thursday.

Have a good weekend folks!

For the 1st time in my 20 years of gaming, I DON'T have a Space Marine army!

How did that happen?

Oh that's right: ebay.

Yes, this pic came from their ebay auction.

The most recent marines sold (the Storm Wardens) were ironically made up of almost all of the exact same models as I got 20 years ago in the 2nd ed 40k starter box. At my height (somewhere between 4th & 5th ed) I topped out at 19 40k armies! Don't ask where the hell I stored them all, because even now I can't figure that madness out. Currently, I have 3 (Orks & Eldar, both of which struggle to reach the 1500 point mark and my Grymn Militarum and friends who can't even reach 1k). Wolfy still has her Fem Fa'Tau though, which is easily the largest 40k army in the house.

What can I say, the twin travesties of 7th ed 40k and more recently the Age of Sigmeh have really strained my love of all things GW. However their redemption may possibly be in the near future. Ya see, unlike so many miniatures that have gone the way of ebay over the past year or so to keep the lights on, food on the table, credit cards at bay, etc., the Storm Wardens have a higher purpose. Their funds are going into a savings account, to await the day that plastic 30k arrives.

We've all seen the sprue pics, so we know its going to happen, the question is when. Luckily GW's marketing division likes to keep their customers completely in the dark, so who the hell knows. Right before Christmas is my guess. Regardless, I'm generally not in the position to make a triple-digit impulse buy (which often seems like GW's overall marketing scheme). Thus the Storm Wardens' funds will await that release. I may add to it in the intervening days/months/years as well...we'll see.

I do still have marines though. My current inventory of them is as follows:

Dark Hands/Subjugators: I have the periodically retired predator that I got an honorable mention with at Gamesday Atlanta some years ago, along with my Subjugators Librarian. Not sure why I kept him, I just like the mini I guess.

Exorcists: Yes, the accursed Matt Fucking Ward still exists, in my game room...I forgot about that model until just recently actually.

ANGRY MAHREENS!!!: Floyd Uberson is the only one I actually painted, and the only one I have left...and he's really fucking pissed off about it!!!

Aurora Chapter:  How in the FUCK can there still be a damned Aurora scout sniper left in this house?!?!?! I've sold them to Sweden (literally), given them away, repainted them and then given them away, and yet there's another half painted, headless one in the fucking mini case! Its like a god damned conspiracy or something...

Techmarine: He's a 'non-denominational' techmarine, meaning he's bereft of chapter iconography as I got tired of switching/repainting his shoulder pads (you can see him in Floyd Uberson's link above). He has 2 heavy bolter servitors that have been primed green for years now.

Blackshields: My former Emperor's Children, 30k contingent. Currently I have the recently painted Centurion and 5 recon marines (a.k.a. Scouts), a Techmarine with a conversion beamer along with a pair of Servo-Automata flunkies to serve as ablative wounds for him. I also have the now former Captain I killed Draigo (11th pic down, fighting some losers...), swimming in simple green who will be demoted to a mere grunt, an original rhino that's swimming with him, and my original predator which is the very first 40k model that I ever bought (in another year, that tank will of legal drinking age in this country!).

Storm Wardens: (3) bikers, of which only one is assembled and painted. These are the first minis my beloved Wolfy bought me, and thus they have sentimental value, yes even on the sprue.

Red Corsairs: with the demise of my Chaos marines, Centurion Niro has found himself retired to my Hall of Heros awaiting the day he can scratch the cowardly name of Tigurious off of his Murder Sword...

*****

I was going to further list the chapters I've fielded in the past as the number far exceeds the total number of marines listed above, but...I'm kinda tired and its getting late,  so screw it.

Maybe some other time.

GorkaMorka called...

...it wants it's Red Gobbo back.

I hope you didn't want to buy one on ebay. Holy crap! Look at those prices! For a stinkin' GROT!?!?!? I don't care if its a long out-of-production special character, that's just stupid! Now, whilst I don't think I'll be fielding a rebel grot force, I would like that model for my mob, and it just so happens that I have him already...

Dis, iz (or rather wuz) Da Redd Barrun! A minor chieftain in my 2nd O&G army, and Da Warlord of my 3rd and final, purely goblin Warhammer army. Ironically, of all of my green skinned fantasy armies, the all goblin vesrion was the most effective (and I only had 6 fanatics!). As you can see, his slugga was removed and replaced with a shield taken from the old Dogs of War general Lorenzo Lupo (and now you know why that guy disappeared from existence, the gobbo's ate him!).

These photos were taken shortly after Da Barun was taken out of retirement in my Hall of Heroes and just before he went into the Simple green for a much needed bath. He joined the (now former) Captain I killed Draigo of Storm Wardens' fame, and an old, original rhino with waaay too many layers of paint on it. The latter two will go to my 30k Blackshields, whereas the barun will go to GorkaMorka (though the color of his coat remains to be determined...

Scouts, why does it always have to be Scouts?

o/

With Space Marines on my mind after the rant in my last post, I decided to paint a scout/recon sergeant, and partially repainted two grunts with bolters. Then I went on use them alongside my Storm Wardens in a game this past Saturday night. (on a side note, I found another stupid Aurora Scout with a sniper rifle this weekend! Most worthless unit ever!!! I sold that infernal squad years ago to somebody in Stockholm Sweden which has plenty of icy waters to drown them in, yet they still keep coming out of the wood work around here, what the hell?!?!)

...and with that outta the way, here's this week's painting:

The two with bolters were repaints of the Recon Marines I was going to use for the Emperor's Children in 30k (which is such a laughable notion considering our finances right now). Honestly, despite purple being my favorite color, I didn't like em as they were. Painting them black gives me some options on what to use them as, although the Imperial Fists are my preference. I really like the Breacher Marine minis (and their Legion specific rules requires Breachers as compulsory troops choices). Also, recon marines probably wouldn't work too well if they're wearing bright fucking yellow armor. So the black works for that legion as well.

2nd ed 40k starter box marines, vs. old Warzone starter box Imperial infantry converted into Astra Militarum (Cadian arms fit them perfectly) and fighting over The Imperial Forestry Service who were acting as objectives. Miniature-wise it was a battle of the ancients! Indeed, virtually all of the infantry in this game were as old as, if not older than my opponent!

In my game this weekend, they served as regular 'old codex' scouts.  Fielding a squad of 5, the three newly painted ones not only survived their first game, they took out a basilisk that was deep in cover as well! Easily paying for themselves (which made up for them not showing up till turn 4...). In the end the game was a close one and ended in a tie, though had it gone one more turn I probably would've been tabled.

Battle Demi-Company Formation: a rant and some questions…

Okay first off I'll get my rant out of the way:

Personally, I think formations are investor driven cash grabs and nothing more. GW is well aware that a lot of gamers apparently want an 'I WIN' button and many are all to happy to buy into the new winning bandwagon if it is presented to them. Why field a C.A.D. list when you can have a formation (or two) which will blow the other player off of the table due to the *free* rules incentives?

A complete lack of even acknowledging game balance is why GW insist that 40k is a narrative game. The forged narrative being spend more = win more (with the ultimate winners being their investors). Its like the Ferengi are now writing the rules.

Floyd Uberson of the Angry Marines HATES the fucking Ferengi!!!

Moving on…

The other day I was perusing my new Spess Mahreen PDF which was made available to me via our Russian friends on the internet. The hacked iPad interactive PDF was free-to-me BUT, in order to make that possible, the process turns the hyperlinks and drop downs into nothing more than blue type, limiting the PDF's usefulness considerably. Unfortunately I'm poor so beggars can't be choosers (and anything useful for Noble-Knight Trade-in credit has already been used as such).  At least I can build army lists with it which brings me to the following questions…

Starting off in an act of COMPLETE hypocrisy (when considered with the above rant and why not? GW retcons their code of conduct all the time, so why shouldn't their customers?) I was looking at the Battle Demi-Company Formation and realized that I can actually field that with the remnants of my Storm Wardens army. Well, I think so anyways. As such, I'll be looking at the formation based on what I have left of my army and without adding in any future purchases.

First up, I don't see anything that says I can't use the minimum squad sizes. If that's the case them my half-company is more like a quarter company, but it's still legal, right?

Also what if I want to use a Techmarine? Can I do that, and if so as what? An ally to his own army? (lame) Putting him in the list by himself (as he's not in the formation) feels like the army would instantly go unbound (and unbound armies are about as frequently played around here as WHFB is).

Techmarine aside, the same question stands for my Predator tank. Can I just tack that onto the formation too? Or do I have to buy a bunch of crap to make a legal CAD (or other formation) for allies in which to be able to use either of the two? If that's the case, then I'll just sell 'em (well, not the Techmarine, he'll stick around as I love the mini) as I can't afford to buy more stuff in order to use it, and as mentioned above, formations are apparently what 40k is all about these days.

Lastly the formation lists 0-1 unit of Dreadnoughts. Are the dreadnoughts in a squadron then? Or do they deploy as one and then wander off to do their own thing after that (which, considering their wildly different weapons fits, would be appropriate).

All told, using what I have left of the Storm Wardens, and using this formation my army would clock in at approximately 750 points (techmarine and predator excluded). Given that the average game is played at the 1500 point minimum most of the time (but often more), I wonder if I should even worry about any of this at all, or rather just sell off the whole lot (again, minus the techmarine).

That or fuck it, I'll just run a standard CAD as usual and just be behind the 8-ball since the CAD gives no free rules (because I didn't spend any $$$).

6th ed redeux?

o/

As I said last week, this weekend I took my Spess Mahreenz to the FLGS for a game of 40k. Mac was there with the Red Corsair army I'd given him, along with some reinforcements he added, all of which looked amazing! Indeed, so much so that I tried to convince him it was a loan, and I wanted them back but as compensation he could 'borrow' my Storm Wardens and Angry Marines to paint for awhile.

...sigh...

No, he didn't buy that line of bullshit but did offer to play against me at least. I did take several pics of the army but alas, I had shaky hands syndrome (can I blame my bronchitis for that?). As such quite a few photos were of no use. Thus I'm no sure how coherent the following bat rep will be (not that mine are ever the most coherent to begin with...).

1500 points, one of the old missions w/o the stupid cards...the one with 1 objective each. No psykers either, so really it was a rather enjoyable 6th ed game with a few minor tweaks to the vehicle damage chart, charging into terrain, and apparently rending is only AP2 now (making my Eldar snipers even worse than they were last week). Sorry, no pics of the deployments either, to be honest I think I just flat forgot to take any...

This was the only showcase pic that wasn't blurred all to hell. Here, the Cultists prepare to unleash the hounds (Spawn).

Unleashed they were, only to be charged by my Dreadnought on turn 1. The Spawn couldn't hurt the dread, and it settled into an oh-so-rare and happy state of winning in HTH...

Turn 2 and an already damaged Hellbrute Charged in, to try and save the hounds for some even rarer dread on dread combat!

1 Hull point lost and the hellbrute goes down, leaving my dread to return to his original targets!

My Captain lost his tactical combat squad to these Raptors with a mark of Slaanesh, though he did kill their champion in the challenge.

A turn or two later, the techmarine and another chewed up combat squad tried to save him, but his Relic blade succeeded in finishing off the Raptors, who finished him off in return. The rest of the I4 schleps could only watch in horror...

Having disembarked from their rhino, and wading thru all sorts of fire, the Angry Marines slaughter their way thru the cultist horde.

The Chaos Lord with the Axe of Blind Fury tries repeatedly to climb the wall and take my objective (in the tower one level above my tac squad), but to no avail. He would fall to overwatch fire before succeeding. That said, he did wipe out a Dark Hands' Sternguard Squad earlier, so he probably paid for himself at least.

Having wiped out the cultists, and run down the Obliterator, the few surviving Angry Marines spot what looks to be a beer cooler on the top level and advance to take it...

Here we have Mac, painter extraordinaire and heinous Chaos warlord who informed the triumphant Angry Marines that the objective only contained diet coke! Enraged they hurled endless obscenities in his direction!

I do believe my dread had found his happy place, as he never left this combat till the bottom of turn 7 when he finished off the last Spawn.

Bereft of its storm bolter, the Angry Marines rhino, after multiple turns of going flat out tank shocks a havoc squad out of its cover (pancaking one in a death or glory attempt)!

Unable to contain himself from the diet coke treachery, my Angry Marines leader: The Fist Fucker, calls out the Havocs and kills them all in glorious combat!

 End result: I had both objectives and had tabled Mac's beautiful army. Huzzah!

However as a parting note: before anyone comments that I only like 40k if I'm winning, after my game I dropped right back into my usual rant mode along with Bob, who was suffering under stupid psychic phase and it's near-impossible to deny-the-witch BS.

Ward-Master Lorgath Maclir

Master of the Storm Wardens

Imperial Commander of Sacris

Lord Protector of the Northern Halo Marches

Marshal Designate Imperialis of the Ninth Convocation

Bearer of the Hideous Mold-Lines

 lol--wait what?

Yeah, this guy has some bad ones. I really didn't see them till I hit him with a wash and yeah...about that. Washes can really pretty up a mini, or they can scream: BAD! BAD! BAD!!! It seems as though this mini was telling me: 'Hey you lazy fucker, why didn't you do this the right way?' Yes I was being lazy, just painting over what was already there, didn't simple green and strip it. The banner pole was snapped off, so I cut off the stub and tried to smooth it out. The paint job looked pretty good till I hit it with the wash. It all kinda fell apart after that.

...sigh...

Oh well, good enough for now I suppose. I may have to go ahead and Simple Green the other termies before painting them though. I would have liked to have said, that when Maclir met his first foe in glorious single combat, he was victorious and damned the aforementioned flaws! but...

SQUIGGOTH! SQUIGGOTH! BLAAAAARRG!!!

Sadly he was defeated before he even made it out of the light box, lol.

Termies!

o/

Taking a step away from the Tyrant's Legion this time. Instead my next installment of Black Consuls-turned-something-else features these:

Their bases are decorated with Ork bitz, because we all know they're easy to kill...

These older, metal and static posed Termies will work just fine with all of the 2nd ed minis in my Storm Wardens' army. I don't think I've fielded a full terminator unit (referred to as: Inheritors in the Storm Wardens Chapter) since I had my old SIlver Skulls army, so its been quite awhile. The captain model will be used as Chapter Master Lorgath Maclir. He's already ben primed as you can see, and with luck I'll have him painted before the week is out. As for the squad, they have the options of an assault cannon, or a heavy flamer along with a chainfst or two.

The demise of the Black Consuls...

o/

Some ways back, Necron Bob (who no longer has Necrons nor, at this point anything 40k) sent me a message asking if I wanted an old 40k tank that needed some TLC.

Sure, why not?

After some scheduling issues, keeping us from meeting up, he was in town last weekend and stopped by the FLGS whilst we were all gaming. He didn't have just 'a tank' rather he had his old Black Consuls army in its entirety! Holy crap, really? 'Keep it, trade it, sell it, do whatever you want with it its yours.' Damn, that was a surprise!

I haven't seen this army in many years, not since before Bob moved out of state. Prior to that time I fought against it quite regularly. Bob was ever the good opponent, fun to play against and yet always making for a hard fought game (skills that serve him well in his current preference for winning WHFB tournies with alarming frequency). 

All of the green Predator's missing parts were included too!

Indeed, whilst the army is in need of some serious TLC, its nothing insurmountable. For a short moment, I pondered using them as a separate marine army, but figured that I would grow bored with one of the (at that point) three marine armies and dump one on ebay. So instead I decided to fold the majority of them into my two existing armies: The Tyrant's Legion (Astral Claws) and the Storm Wardens.

I ordered a bunch of combat shield arms off of ebay to change the assault marines w/o jump packs into a Tyrant's Legion Retaliator Squad.

The first bunch of (literally) rearmed marines.

The 1st repainted Astral Claw!

 The Tyrant's Legion allows me to field 20 man blobs of marines with ATSKNF, this looks like the quickest and easiest way to be able to field that! The Storm Wardens and their old static poses will fit nicely with the old school termies, giving that army a much needed boost. Whatever is left will probably be folded into the ANGRY MARINES!!! (though that will leave me with a tyrannic war veteran that I don't quite know what to do with).

Additionally, there was a considerable pile o' bitz. In separating out the 40k and WHFB bitz to be dumped into their respective bitz boxes, I found an old Inquisitor in terminator armor with psycannon and null rod, along with enough Necron Scarab swarms to make 3-4 bases of the little buggers for my GF's small but apparently growing Necron force.

Alpha Legion Recon Legionaires

o/

Just a quick post. As I've said previously, I repurposed some of my Storm Warden Scouts to be used as an Alpha Legion Recon squad in scout armor for Warhammer 30k.

Not a bad change for what was originally a heavy bolter toting scout eh?

Not wanting them to look just like my other Storm Warden scouts (yes, I'm using my favorite color-Hawk Turquoise for these guys too) I did a head swap using instead an IG gunner's head (Aquila removed). Scraping off the Aquila on his chest, I added all sorts of pouches, grenades, the Scout demo charge on their backs (looks like a rucksack). Also, if you may have noticed, the new Scions' command arms fit just fine on the scout bodies!

No, I doubt that he'll ever hit/wound anything, in 30k either...

I suppose I can still use them for the Storm Wardens, but most likely I won't. This squad tends to just fail miserably anyways, only the shotgun scout squad ever accomplishes anything useful (some of the time anyways).

My first encounter vs a Riptide...

o/

This weekend I got to play with Patrick. He's an old friend of mine, and largely responsible for painting all of that wonderful terrain I posted a few posts back! Not having played in a few years (somehow) we remedied that this past Saturday.

Storm wardens with Subjugators and an Ordo Xenos inquisitor vs. Tau. 1750 points, Big Guns never tire (three objectives, one in each deployment zone and one in the middle of the table), standard deployment. He won the roll and decided to let me deploy first. Failing to steal the initiative I went first into night fight conditions...

The mostly painted Storm Wardens prepare to walk into hell on my right flank.

My full battle line, with Captain I Killed Draigo, the Obsolete Assassin (inquisitor) and a 10-man tac squad in the Landraider.

The predator's performance in this game would not move it up any higher on the painting list, the landraider...maybe.

The Subjugators, many of whom were assembled mere days before battle.

Ugh, I dread what that thing will do...

The Tau center with the Special character tank commander inside the Hammerhead.

2 Broadsides (one is a proxy) with a pair of funny looking shield drones faced me on my left.

Turn one, the dreadnought drop podded in, scattered badly, but took out a quarter of the fire warriors. The Landraider did nothing useful aside from illuminate the hammerhead with its searchlight. The bare plastic pred failed to put a dent in it, whereas the Subjugators pred put all three hull points on it, killing it with the final blow coming from a hunter-killer missile (quite the rarity for that to actually work), giving me 1st blood!

The Subjugators heavy bolters took out the 'shield drone proxies' but the Broadsides held firm.

The Cadre Fireblade, firewarriors and riptide hammer the advancing tac squad. The brute firepower proving too much for the Librarian's 'Invisibility'.

THIS folks is what you call the proper use of cover! This pic was taken from my bare plastic predator's point of view...

One broadside down and the scouts arrive in the backfield to cause problems...

Somehow still untouched (the Tau's opening turns went badly dice roll wise) the Venerable dread wipes out the center Fire Warrior squad.

Invisibility indeed. Overwhelming firepower annihilates my left flank!

Oh yay, Faresight and friends land in my backfield and the Subjugators pred goes BOOM!

PHOTO BOMB!!! lol, compliments of Patrick's brother Matt.

With Tau appearing in the Subjugators' backfield, their Librarian with Iron Arm moves to intercept. You can tell by his absence from this pic just how well THAT worked...

Having gone a few rounds in HTH losing once and fleeing form the broadsides. The scouts are reduced to just their Sgt., who succeeds in wiping out the Broadsides, and saving the Dread from anymore railgun shots to the back (especially as it was already down 2 hull points at this point...).

Oh great, MORE of them...

The last few Subjugators fight bravely, but are wiped out by overwhelming firepower (this seems to be a theme with the Tau...).

Thus my left flank, like the right before it (and my other predator) cease to exist.

The landraider disgorges its cargo into HTH with the monster, to no avail...

The Storm Wardens use their White Scars' chapter trait to leave HTH (and the inquisitor) behind via hit-n-run. Their intent was to avenge their dreadnought which had just fallen to the Cadre Fireblades' EMP grenades (at the expense of his accompanying fire warriors), but the game ended.

4" from the objective, idiot.

Tallying up the final scores, we came up with not a whole lot. Nobody had any objectives, I had 1st blood and line breaker with the lone scout (and only just barely). Whereas Patrick only had line breaker giving me a 2-1 victory. Had he kept his squad on the objective rather than try and kill the dread, he would have had me, but vengeance took over it seems...likewise had I not moved the landraider too far away from it's objective...

In the end a good close game it turned out to be, so we were both happy with it.

The Riptide didn't do too much, as it was his 1st game with it and as my GF doesn't have one, I couldn't help him much with the rules for it (he's new to the new codex and so hadn't heard of 'supporting fire' till I explained it to him, lol!). That said, a dozen shots per turn via nova charged burst cannon was murderous! Beware of that folks...