Tossing the Tau Zerg swarm into the meat grinder once more...

 o/

My Hogzilaries valiantly taking the objective!

We got in a sorta game last weekend. The usual four player free-for-all, though we ought to have played a 2v2 game given the late start. But whatever, here's a few pics in lieu of a proper battle report as we only managed 2 turns and I only took a handful. 

See, Zerg swarm. Just like I said. Not pictured is my newly purchased, fully painted Forgeworld Remora drone. Turn 1 it strafed Rob's Thousand Sons, surprisingly killing two due to atrocious rolls on his part. I had hoped to wing over and do the same to Mike's Deathwing who would no doubt blow it out of the sky, BUT...Rob had psykers. So instead it died to psychic mortal wound Spam, because that's apparently all his psykers do.

For whatever reason, the first two turns of every game, the Swine invariably advance 10-12" per turn.

Cameron, a Necromunda veteran who crossed the Rubicon divide. Not only he was fielding a fully painted Smurf army, but a slightly off color one that perfectly matched his hoodie (totally not planned, or so he insisted...). Cameron, Neverness and I ought to team up for a Smurfs vs everybody game!

Not only were my Swine the first to reach the central objective in turn two, but they even wounded a Thousand Son with a shotgun blast to the back! The T-Sons had been teleported across the board by one of Rob's psykers, which is what brought them (barely) into range.

The only glimpse I have of Mike's Deathwing in my pics. 

That shotgun wound was not appreciated, and the Hogzilaries were incinerated into bacon in short order. Here we see the Muppets who are about to suffer the same fate.  

Perhaps it was a good thing that we only played 2 turns, as I had already taken 30-40 casualties! That's not a sustainable number of losses if one intends to reach the end of turn 5! 

That said, the highlight of the game for me was when my Breachers vaporized a unit of Smurf Aggressors in one volley, though not before the fuckers had already wiped out 2 units of my own!

Doubt I'll make it to game night this week though, so will have to entertain you with painted minis next week I guess.

The Silver Drakes make their battlefield debut!

And it was, in a word: mediocre.

We decided to postpone the start of the league this week as our organizer was unavailable, instead opting for a 4-player carnage/free-for-all. Rather than even read or actually follow that scenario, we just went for kill points, of which we only sorta kept track. 

The following are just some photo highlights of the game:

Here they are, spreading out from my initial deployment. All of my shooting was ineffective, which would become a theme throughout the game.

Two of my adversaries: to the left is Screech in his 'not an Ultramarine fanboi' attire, and Noah who was fielding the store army Smurfs. In front are Screech's Cadians, who are practising their WHFB-esque formation maneuvers...

Chyanne and Jim were playing peanut gallery, Bob's Dark Angels are in the foreground.

Noah's cowardly smurfs (a collective accusation). You see that Sgt. in front? Yeah, that's as far forward as they would move all game! He attempted to persuade us he was using 'cover' to hide his intentions, even going so far as to compare his tactics to be akin to the Raptors fluff but we weren't buying it. Instead it seemed to everyone he was simply hiding in the corner. 

Pretty sure this guy killed a Cadian, but not sure exactly. I know one of my guys bounced a bolt round off of that Cadian Sgt.'s bald head!

Another Silver drake, engaging in an fruitless firefight with the
Dark Angels...

That was one hellova bike to hide behind! The bonus it conferred to my armor saved him at least twice! 

In an effort to avoid getting shot off of the table, Screech's Cadians bum-rushed the lone Primaris marine who had charged one of his minis the turn previously. The close combat FAIL in this corner would continue for several turns...

At this point, Bob suggested a gentlemen's agreement between us, with the intent to just kill Screech and Noah. I agreed and the foot race to get into range began in earnest!

Lagging far behind and still bitter about his demotion to gunner (and in all honesty, he really just qualifies as a regular grunt), this guy failed to kill anything all game!

Unable to beat the Cadian horde in close combat, the remaining Smurfs charge into the fray to continue with their totally ineffective assault. Speaking of close combat, we have a house rule that so long as your models aren't involved in a HTH combat, you are free to shoot into it. 

However apparently a force field of FAIL was erected around the close combat in back meaning I couldn't roll higher than a 2 to hit any of them! However Bob was unaffected, and Screech's Cadians started to thin out quickly.

This is where the game ended, with my guys bringing up the rear and firing a multitude of bolt rounds into the air (rather than their targets). 

In the end I think Bob won but whatever, we all had fun which is all that matters in a throw-away game. Additionally, I learned that I'm still doing a bunch of stuff wrong. Meaning I ought to read

the friggin rules again...

So after a few games into 8th ed 40k, thoughts?

Yes, I have a few.

Well first of all, I've noticed that game night attendance has been up and more games have been played which is really good for our group (which was on life support just a few weeks ago). Is 8th the best edition ever? Opinions vary, but in mine: no, not at all. So do I like everything about it? Obviously not. Can I still have fun playing it? Yup! Quite a bit actually (just waiting on Bob to eventually come around and reach that same conclusion as I have).

Let's face it, there has never been an edition of 40k where I thought every rule made sense or was okay with me, tis' the nature of the beast. But its still a pretty good game I guess. There are two things in particular though that are starting to really annoy me. 

First up: Mortal Wounds.

In a nutshell, Mortal Wounds are a stupid fucking mechanic created for AoS, and they should of stayed there. Seriously, what the actual fuck is the point of an invulnerable save, if the model with one is...ya know, vulnerable to mortal wounds?

Shadow Sun's escorting squad of six stealth suits was wiped out before ever getting to do anything on turn 1. That said, they died only due to the apparent requirement of ENTIRE Dark Angel army shooting at them exclusively.  

Example: Commander Shadow Sun, badly bloodied and falling back but still protected by -1 to hit, 3+ save and a 5++ invulnerable save, plus command points to help keep her in the fight. Sounds like a tough cookie right? Wrong! Psychic power, mortal wound, dead...get her off the table. The point to all of her fancy rules are what? Naught apparently due to an all to easy to cast psychic power. 

Very quickly our local beer and pretzels crowd group is devolving into how many mortal wounds can be SPAMMED per turn. For how many editions now have 'remove model from play/completely unsavable attacks' existed? 2-3 editions? Whilst few, they've all been the most maligned of rules, so clearly we needed to not only keep that BS around with Mortal Wounds, but make 'em omnipresent. 

A hellacious Custodes v. Nids slugfest on a table nearby...

The only two weapons in our particular Tau arsenal that can inflict mortal wounds are the Hammerheads' railguns, and even then only on a to-wound roll of a 6. That said, we found out that with good rolling a Hammerhead's railgun can still insta-pop a space marine dreadnought with one shot! Just like days of old...also like the olden days: Saturday a Dark Angels' captain has joined Tyberos the Red Wake in changing his last name to the Red Mist due to those same railguns!

My second gripe: Command Points.

My oh-so-beautifully painted adversaries.

Okay, you can spend a CP to make a reroll here and there, attack out of turn (by the way, can your opponent also use a command point negate that? It came up and we couldn't figure it out), or use a funky little strategem here and again. Cool. However GW gave the DA a warlord trait in which, on a 5+ roll a used CP is given back. So with good rolling (it happens to some people Neverness) its like having an infinite supply of CPs. So just about any failed armor save on someone/thing of better than average value is rerollable,  and almost every failed psychic test or perils is negated...yeah that shit gets real tiresome really fucking quick!

Also the 'wait, maybe I have a stratagem I can use to help/negate that' (followed by shuffling thru  2 dozen cards and the reading of too much fine print) slows the game down considerably. I can think of 2 rolls I should have used CPs to reroll in hindsight, but I think the never ending supply of them from across the board (till the railgun/red mist incident cut off that almost infinite supply) was annoying me so much that I just ignored mine altogether. I get what GW was going for, and they do have their uses, but they're easily open to abuse I think, especially in this particular situation thanks to that DA warlord trait. Dark Angel opponents should expect to encounter this frequently.

This is what a 22 model, $350 (WTF?) army looks like....from what I overheard however, I'm in no rush to fight 'em.

So...yeah, its still not the best game, and I'm having fun for the most part, buuuut those two complaints (the 2nd only came to the fore this past weekend) are starting to gnaw away the fun. 

My 2nd 8th ed 40k game

o/

As I mentioned in my prior post, I gave 8th ed another try this past Saturday. With four players, of which three of us (myself included) only had a cursory knowledge of the new rules, and one actual 8th ed veteran player, we opted for a 2 v. 2 team game. With 750ish points per side our opponents were the Tyranids and the Death Korps of Krieg-turned-Genestealer Cult (poor Courtland, his DKK usually gets lumped in with Chaos, but never loyalist marines it seems).

Against this veritable tide of little gribblies and Guardsmen were the Glorious Dark Angels featured in my previous post, and my Rainbow Warriors which, true to form, was the only not-fully painted army on the table. Yay.

We opted for kill points, and no command points to keep things simple, though even then it was a seemingly endless marathon game that we called at the bottom of turn 4 (11:30 pm). We all had fun and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! In the end the Nids won out with 3 Kps plus first blood, whereas we only earned 3 KPs  despite having so, sooooo many models to grind thru.... 

What follows is my usual photo dump, captioned with random highlights. My thanks to Neverness who volunteered to be combat camerman for a goodly portion of the game.

Can ya guess what deployment we used? 

Turn 1 and the Dark Talon swoops in and starts strafing the hordes!

Massed autocannon fire along with my Primaris marines,
all shooting at and failing to kill the Flyrant...

Said Flyrant mocking us with its majesty!

Unfortunately the Dark Talon only has so many guns....

The Gribbly tide lurches forward...

With the demise of my Rhino (1st blood), my Captain and accompanying Combat Squad steel themselves for their approaching demise...

Accursed Zoe's, they can take an inordinate amount of punishment and yet they just keep on floating forward.

Instead of receiving one, the Rainbow warriors charge themselves and my Captain slaughters the cavalry! The few survivors would soon thereafter rout giving us one of our few kill points of the game. 

The thin primered line follows up into more gribblies and guardsmen.

I hate it when a beastie like that pops up out of the ground! Unfortunately, my Predator's autocannon did little more to draw its attention than anything else...

The Flyrant & Dark Talon 'dogfight' for several rounds, badly damaging each though both remained airborne thru to the end.

Unlike my dreadfully performing Aurora Chapter scouts, the Rainbow Warrior scouts proved to be shockingly resilient (though per standard procedure they were wiped out). Here is my remaining Sgt., tying up some DKK for a turn or three.

Ugh, more Gribblies! So many gribblies...

The Primaris marines were slogging thru the other end of the hoard.

The dogfight continues overhead to little effect.

My other combat squad gets stuck in as well. It must be said that the DKK's ability to fire their lasguns as pistols in HTH has frightening potential!!

With his accompanying combat squad dead, my captain continues to hack away with his Prismatic Blade (Teeth of Terra), remaining unwounded by game's end. 

So the' new guy' says: I have a Golden Daemon painted army...

Okay, so nothing new here right? Usually the standard operating procedure of many gamers coming into a new group is to show off their paint jobs. If they're better than the local's minis then the'll get the obligatory they'll oohs and ahhs. If not they'll generally be nice and act impressed anyways. I've found this to be kinda the norm.

So the new guy in question, Micheal,  the same guy I mentioned in my adapt to 8th ed or die post, well we finally got to meet up at the FLGS this past Saturday night. However prior to that, he said (quote) Have a golden daemon painted army, all of it. 

That...is a pretty strong statement, and I'm not going to lie, I had a side convo with Rob about ebay's infamous pro-painted armies and the like, figuring it would be like that. I was sure it was a nice looking army though, and he was just embellishing a bit as we all do (though perhaps not quite that much). Well, I got to the FLGS an then...

OH.

MY.

GOD.

Okay, now I've seen some amazing armies in my time, but...but this is...well enough of my rambling, here see for yourself:

The free handing on that banner...

The passengers are magnetized to show when  they've disembarked. 

 

I hate this model, but those windows...

Some would say that an army/collection like this is an inspiration. Not to me, this is so far outta my league that I've never aspired to such heights! Seriously, its just unbelievable, and my cell phone pics do it no justice!! I teamed up with these minis for another 8th ed game, which I'll detail in my next post.