Hobby Update: Space Marines and Darth Vader

The blog may have sat idle for a month but hobby things have actually been good overall during September and into October.

Whilst it's been nearly 2 months since my last game of 40k I made the decision mid-September to get as much purple paint on my Dark Templar Primaris marines as I could. Inevitably this has faltered a little since the arrival of Imperial Assault, but I did manage to get my 7-man Intercessor unit complete but for detailing (above). I'm very pleased with the way I stuck at it through the tedious process of painting space marine armour.

The belle of the ball, however, has been Imperial Assault. It became something of an addiction over the last month, finding new purchases arriving almost every day. We had a demo day at the end of September as part of my annual birthday gaming day, playing the Skirmish version exclusively. I had done my research, mostly watching YouTube videos of others playing the game, but it gave me a good idea of how the game played and even useful tactics and team construction.

With something so Star Wars orientated, containing such great character models, I had to start painting them. Of course it was the Imperials who found their way to the front of the paint queue first and I've had some fun painting models from the core box.

Gaming-wise I've had a total of 4 games now, against 2 different opponents, and the honours are even. My opening game saw a close match against Mr Awdry's Rebels – it came down to the wire and ended when Luke shot Darth Vader in the back (several times) in a very cowardly fashion. Game two saw a tweaked Imperial list face off against Mr Awdy's Scum bounty hunters. Another close game with Vader managing to carry the victory home. My third game on birthday game day saw a first game for Fugs who dropped by to see what the fuss was about. Vader again managed to dominate (and hang on to his last few wounds) for a solid victory.

Fugs bounced back this week however with a keenly fought game. My non-Vader Imperial list had fought back from a poor start and the game went down to the wire. Kayn Somos and an Imperial Guard trying to finish off Luke and Gideon Argus. With Argus hiding well away from the fight Fugs pulled off a genius move, playing the Son of Skywalker card at the perfect time, giving Luke 3 consecutive activations without the chance of a response. My Imperial boys couldn't weather that volume of shooting and Fugs got his revenge.

It's a brutal game, and it didn't take long for us to get into a flow. There are a lot of special rules, but a fraction of those in 40k or Malifaux, so a couple of games in and we're flying. Next we want to look at the Campaign version of the game, though that looks a might more complicated.

I've had a week's break from hobby things now, so looking to jump back in. Looking forward in particular to painting more of my Dark Templar Primaris marines, and maybe even some of my Nurgle!!

Stay tuned.

The Trouble With Big Mechs…

Last night saw the latest game in our 40k 8th Edition education.

Once more, the might of the Dark Templar marines faced up to the hordes or Bull's Orks. I was expecting Bull to mix things up this week and had prepared a tasty surprise for him. However, to my own surprise he had almost the same list as last week, but with a few tweaks.

Gone was the Morkanaut (yeah!!!) but it was replace by a Gorkanaut (boooo!) – this turned out to be a problem for me, which I will go into a little later. The big unit of Stormboyz had been broken down into 3 smaller units, and his Wierdboy now had the Jump spell. This would mean that not only would I have 3 units of Stormboyz and a unit of Kommandos sneaking into my front porch, Bull could in effect teleport any unit of infantry he pleased to join them!

Things were going to get close and personal very quickly!!

I had taken some advice from Daniel Grundy after my last battle and employed my two close combat Scout units as buffers to make sure these Orky infiltrators couldn't get close to my main force – and it worked a treat. I held my Reivers and Inceptors in reserve, just like the last game, so that they could have a glorious entrance in a few turn's time. I had left the flame-wielding Aggressors at home – didn't want to become too reliant on them. However, expecting some mech I had brought the Hellblasters, an Assault Cannon Dred, a Plasma Cannon Dred and the king of them all… a Primaris Redemptor Dred.

Yes, that's right, I had spent three consecutive evenings trying to built this bad boy in time – it's one hell of a kit (a little over complicated and over articulated is you ask me… it was only missing some Action Man Eagle Eyes!).

He had a blistering array of weaponry, but weighing in at over 200 points I was paying a premium. Would he live up to the hype, or turn out to be another passenger from the space marine stable?

I had brought two Librarians – the cheapest HQs I could get hold of to ensure 7 Strategy Points. I camped them and a 6-man unit of Intercessors on my own Objective. I had the Hellblasters sitting is a crater with a full view of Bull's Gorkanaut and my Dred holy trinity sitting behind some woods in the centre. I had positioned my Razorback on the far right to zoom up the flank and take Bull's Objective from the Grots. This was going to be an exciting fight with plenty more lessons for sure!

Without going into tonnes of detail, it was one of our best fights yet. I opened proceedings by dropping an Orbital Bombardment into Bull's deployment zone – a sneaky manoeuvre, that hit 6 units. Alas it killed one of the Boyz and took a Wound off the Warboss. Gave Bull a scare though!

I got a good round of shooting into the nearest unit of 30 Boyz (sorry, 29 – one got obliterated from orbit!). Despite losing over half their number they were undeterred. The Orks marched on, and before I knew it I had 2 units of Stormboyz in my face and a unit of 25 Boyz had Jumped behind me. I brought on my reserves a little earlier than intended, but with a concentrated round of Shooting all the Boyz and one unit of Stormboyz were gone – I had lost 4 Scouts.

The Reivers were on fire, charging 11" twice during the gaming, taking out the Banner Boy and the Wierdboy before being mashed completely in a single melee attack from the Gorkanaut. The Hellblasters on the other hand had failed to wound the big Orky mech in multiple rounds of shooting and were down a man going into the final stages. The last of the Ork reserves appeared, making a final push for my Objective, but they faltered and were wiped out for the loss of 5 Scouts and 2 more Hellblasters.

By now I was beginning to complain about the imperious nature and abilities of the Gorkanaut for a comparative bargain basement price. I couldn't touch the thing, in shooting or melee. I decided to use my next turn as an experiment and had every available unit, regardless of weapon, shoot at the Ork giant.

I rolled a total of over 90 dice to hit this thing and took 5 wounds off it… 5!!… out of the 18 it started with!!

I then charged my Plasma Dred into it, survived the sick amount of Overwatch fire that came at me, and with Strength of 12 vs Toughness of 8 failed to wound it with 3 Hits. My Dred was killed twice over in the return attack.

However, Bull was on the ropes by now and even a gallant charge at my Warlord Librarian by his Warboss (taking 4 Wounds off my leader) wasn't enough to save the day. He had his Gorkanaut left on half wounds and his Grots untouched (and pretty much ignored all game). I had lost 9 Scouts, a Dred, 3 Hellblasters, 5 Reivers (their heroic charge into the Gorkanaut will remain a legend… just not what happened next!)



Thoughts?

After my complaining I was still struggling to devise a suitable way to take down the Gorkanaut. Some reading up revealed that (potentially) 3 shots from a Lascannon would do the trick – however, with close to 100 Orks running around I don't want to be spending points on Lascannons! Dilema indeed.

My Reivers and Inceptors are cool (though the latter got bogged down in combat, they're definitely a shooty unit). The Librarians didn't do much aside from kill the Warboss, wasting a hideous number of Psychic rolls by failing a basic target of 6.

The rest of the army was pretty solid. I'm learning that choosing the right unit to fight with in melee (after the chargers have been) can be quite key to turning the game. Choose badly and you can lose units before they've had a chance to strike back.

The big, bad Redemptor Dred was awesome. I swear he killed half of Bull's Boyz by himself. He didn't get to have a go in combat as I wasn't going toe to toe with the Mork after the other Dred dropped so easily.

Where do we go from here?

The Orks Keep Coming!

Having fought off a veritable legion of Orks in our last game of 8th Edition 40k, I turned up at Bull's this week to discover even more… and a Morkanaut!

After a two-week break we jumped back into 40k, ably supported by Bull's fantastic new gaming mat. Our game of Congo with Mr Awdry has really spoilt us and we're looking to recreate the battlefield at Awdry Towers, though we've some way to go yet. Having said that the new mat makes a world of difference and is a pleasure to roll dice upon – even if there are still a lot of 1s in there!

Despite upgrading our game to 1500 points, my army looked very much the same as last time. I had introduced some units of Scouts to try and get some extra Strategy Points and to finally try out the Snipers I've had for years. We deployed in quarters and I found myself (as usual) back in the corner babysitting an Objective. The truth is I had nothing to seriously hurt the Morkanaut, and given there was a Big Mek in there healing it of the few wounds I could inflict, I was struggling to see where a win might come from.

Again, Bull had brought his legions, with a gang of Grots to hold the Objective in his own quarter. I had also brought my 3 Inceptors to see how they might possibly pay back their expensive points cost. There would be lessons learned today!

I had taken the Raven Guard tactics, meaning Bull was 6's to hit me with shooting attacks if more that 12" away. This turned out to be crucial as the Morkanaut would hit almost nothing during the game.

As has been the form thus far, Bull dropped his Stormboyz into my front porch – although this time he waited a couple of turns to give the rest of the Orks time to catch up. He decided to charge into my frontline, which included the Aggressors, and he got to see the firepower they wield. The Stormboyz took a withering hail of fire, then failed their charge. I got to burn them again in my next turn as the initial Ork strike faltered badly.

I dropped scouts in to take the Ork Objective but knew a unit of Kommandos would likely turn up to counter… but I went ahead anyway. I shot and hacked down the Grots (despite taking a casualty to Grot shooting) but hit a wall with the Runt Herder. Then the Kommandos arrived and I was in a bit of trouble there.

Back on the front line the Orks were getting closer (or rather the Morkanaut was getting perilously close) and I decided to ignore it and throw everything I had at the 2 big units of Boyz. My scout snipers had done nothing all game (clearly not capable of hitting the 20ft metal barn door stomping towards them), so I supported them with the arrival of Reivers and Inceptors. Both made an immediate impact – the Inceptors pumped out a hideous number of shots, killing 5 Boyz in their first round of shooting despite them having 4+ invulnerable saves.

On the other side the Aggressors and Razorback leaped forward, firing into the other big unit of Boyz, before charging into combat. The Orks had endured a horrible couple of rounds of casualties from the shooting and melee of the marines. Bull was in danger of only having his Morkanaut and a few Characters left, so we called it a day and talked through the game.

Conclusions

Bull came away from this week with a book full of lessons learned. His Morkanaut was not worth the points spent – a Gorkanaut (without all the guns) would be a much better solution especially if it was full of troops and running up the board. His Boyz failed some crucial Advance and Charge rolls (some of which he could have re-rolled with hindsight) and this caused his offensive to falter.

I need to keep faith in the marines, their guns and my dice rolling. Whilst not always blistering, my dice did a decent job this game (clearly no white or green dice present!), and eventually the numbers told. I even forgot to shoot my Aggressors twice for standing still – that could have racked up in the region of 40 dice that hit automatically (nasty, nasty, nasty) and the whole reason I took them in the first place.

The scouts were quite a waste across the board, although a cheap way to get extra Strategy points that came in handy. The Reivers continue to contribute just enough at crucial times and hang around long enough to be a pain. I need to consider the prospect of mech appearing across the board from me, so there will be a change needed in this week's game!

Till next time.

Post 700: Dark Templar vs Orks Battle Report

I'm just going to warn you this is a long one—sit back an enjoy!

Bull and I had our second game of 8th Edition 40k last night. We decided on a 'quick' 1000pt game as we continue to get our heads around the new rules.

After assessing the models available to me, I decided to go for a Primaris heavy line up. An evolution of my list from our first game, containing only 23 models, this had a very elite feel to it. In contrast, Bull went for an infantry heavy Ork force, with 100 models hitting the board. That's odd of more than 4:1 in favour of the green skins. This was going to be brutal.

To help mitigate the situation I had the Burning Blade relic and the Salamander's Chapter trait, plus I upgraded my Captain to a Chapter Master and gave him Iron Resolve. I would need all the help I could get.

We rolled for mission and deployment, ending up with a "No Mercy" last man standing scenario deploying in an arrow shape only 9" away from each other. The one advantage of having few models is that you finish deploying first, so I got to choose who went first. I chose the Orks to go first!

As expected, Bull dropped his Stormboyz right up in my grill, and they charged into my Sternguard. A mistake on his charge meant that his character, Boss Zagstruk, could only charge the Razorback and had to survive Twin Assault Cannon overwatch. He did, but only by a single wound! The Sternguard were decimated, twice over, and even a Heroic Intervention by my captain did little to slow the onslaught.

The positioning of my units meant that Bull was able to consolidate his Stormboyz in such a way that he locked my Aggressors and Hellblasters (my two remaining shooty units) in melee. I was devastated as this meant his big unit of 30 Boyz would be on me in the next turn unhindered. It seemed pretty much game over at that stage, I just could not see how my marines could survive the numbers being thrown at me.

I dropped my Reivers behind enemy lines and they went after the Pain Doc. He eventually ran off the table on his final wound after failing a morale check.

The combat rumbled on and I managed to thin out the Stormboyz, and even Boss Zagstruk died to a cheeky Razorback attack. The re-rolling of hits, thanks to the Chapter Master, was becoming really helpful—plus I kept forgetting the Chapter Trait re-rolls! Eventually though the unit of 30 poured in, though strangely had to daisy-chain around the back of the warpgate to stay in coherency. The main issue though was the Wierdboy's spell that gave everyone an extra attack, and the banner giving them +1 to hit. The Aggressors were epic, dishing out damage with their fists and somehow keeping to wounds taken to a minimum. The volume of attacks were starting to tell.

I had to do something to slow the advance of the third big unit of Boyz, and if I could take out the Wierdboy and Banner Boy then all the better. The Reivers jogged up and shot at the Wierdboy, taking off a wound. The Dread and Hellblasters stepped and poured fire into the big unit of Boyz, killing quite a few. The Razorback swung around the warpgate and also fired into the big unit, killing 5 more. The Hellblasters than charged back into the main combat by the warpgate, the Dred smashed into the big unit, whilst the Reivers and Razorback attempted to pin down the two characters.

A few hits later the Wierdboy, on his last wound, failed a morale check and ran off the table. The Dred killed more Boyz but was wounded just enough to be removed from play. The Orks in the main melee were dying but they were taking Primaris marines with them. The Aggressors finally died and the Hellblasters were reduced to two in number. Things felt like they were swinging back in favour of the Orks.

The last of the Ork units ran up and managed to get into combat with the Reivers, and the combined hits from this unit and the remaining Boyz from unit 3 took the Primaris down and turned their attention to the Razorback. The vehicle had been unable to make an impact of the Banner Boy, and his bonus to Ork attacks had been key throughout. My inability to identify him as a target was costing me badly. Eventually the combined attacks from both Ork units took down the vehicle, but as a final sting in the tail it exploded, killing a handful of Boyz from each unit and badly hurting the Banner Boy.

On the other side of the warpgate, the Hellblasters were gone but the Chapter Master and Librarian had cleared out the rest of the Boyz. We were approaching the end of the game and things were still in the balance—two mighty characters versus around 13 Boyz (including 2 Power Klawz) and the Banner Boy.

The Librarian swung round the left and hit the Banner Boy with Smite, killing him. He then charged into the 3 Boyz remaining from Ork unit three killing 2. The Chapter Master lumbered round the other side of the warpgate, charging into the larger Ork unit four. He survived overwatch unscathed and smashed the unit, killing 6.

The remaining Ork Boyz all failed their morale checks badly and ran off the table—Victory to the Space Marines.

I'm still battered and bruised the morning after. Lots to contemplate and discuss, but I'll save that for another time…

40k: Primaris Captain

Today is codex day, so I was off out early to get my copy. Despite arriving 20 minutes after they opened, the new Primaris Dreadnought was already sold out of the local GW store. I've had the entire morning to do "hobby stuff", which is quite a luxury these days, so I decided to do more work on my Primaris Captain.

You may recall seeing him in a photo last week with my Librarian (above), and not long after this photo was taken I stuck him to his base. However, it's been playing on my mind that it was all a bit underwhelming for the Warlord of my new army, so resolved to fix things.

I found some terrain bits on an Assault marine sprue and stuck these to a 40mm base. I then filled all the gaps with GW Astrogranite Debris – a textured paint a lot like the Red Oxide that I have but much thicker. Once dry, I added the obligatory skulls and filled the gaps some more. Happy with the result, I hacked the Captain of his basic base and positioned him onto his new one.

Unlike the Librarian, who I think looks better with the helmet rather than bare head, I wasn't happy with the Captain's head. I couldn't find anything that excited me until I glimpsed the new Aggressors. That kit has several Bane-like heads which would be perfect—a purchase was inevitable let's be honest.

The end result is fantastic and I seriously cannot wait to get this guy painted—I just need to sculpt a chapter icon on his shoulder pad!

40k: Dark Templar Go All Primaris

When I bought the Dark Imperium box set last month I sold off the Primaris marines virtually same day. I had no interest in them as I was going to build up my Plague Marine army that was started 5+ years ago and have proved very enjoyable to play.

Unfortunately, when I discovered the discrepancy in size between old and new Death Guard models, and the fact I couldn't take my Heldrake or Forgefiend (that I had spent days converting for Nurgle's delight), I was quite de-motivated. I switched my attention to my Dark Templar marines with the intention of simply repainting my old models so avoid any new purchases. Fool that I am, this was never going to be likely as GW released more and more rather spiffy new Primaris marine kits.

I rather liked the look of the Reivers so picked up the easy-build pack when it was released to see what it was all about. Alas the bigger dimensions and sleeker armour design of the Primaris marines started playing on my mind and it wasn't long before I'd gone back onto Ebay and bought the Dark Imperium Primaris marines, just like the ones I'd sold a month earlier (albeit with a profitable outcome)!

I had already started to paint the Reivers and this spurred on my enthusiasm for a new Primaris space marine army—and so the build began.

But I'm jumping ahead…

In a style that typifies my lack of discipline under certain circumstances, I purchased the (rather expensive) Primaris Librarian kit before I had received the Primaris marines from Ebay. This is so me, when the bit is between my teeth and I'm losing all sense of control or being frugal about a project. Ah well, no point dwelling on it—after 40 years you learn to recognise what's going on and roll with it, lol.

I have managed to hold my nerve when it comes to the plethora of new Primaris models that are to be released this weekend. I could easily have dropped another £100 on this project, but for some reason that seems a bridge too far. Maybe it's the idea that my painting queue is already congested and that adding another boat load of models would swamp me to the point of no return (not that this has stopped me in the past—maybe I'm finally growing up, lol).

Each evening this past week I have spent some time in the garage, at my new work bench, building Primaris marines. It has been a lot of fun, though I have noticed that there are more repeat poses within the Dark Imperium box set than I realised. It feels god though, just like in the old days before a tournament. I'm getting a real nostalgic vibe with this project, despite the models all being brand new releases. It was good to get another game of 40k in with Bull the other week. Next one is book in for next week and I'm looking forward to it.

I was outnumbered last time when I faced Bull's Orks, but with a Primaris marine army I will have even fewer models on the table. I've always liked extreme armies, but this feels a little uncomfortable. I will have a new codex to use though!

All that's left to do is clean these models up, drill the gun barrels, and we can get some spraying done.

40k 8th Edition: Intro Game

After a month of patient waiting and reading, last night I managed to get in a game of the new 8th Edition of 40k.

The night before I had been up late, feverishly getting some colour onto models. I managed to get some black and purple painted (or rather slapped on base colours) onto most of the models I intended to take. It didn't look great but made me feel better. The main focus was the new Reiver models. Painting an undercoat over the blue plastic turned out to be a challenge – I should have sprayed them perhaps, but I didn't want to obscure the 'soft' details any further. I have to say I am very much looking forward to painting them properly at some point. They will look very cool.

Bull and I put together lists of 50 power points. I took an ad hoc collection of Dark Templar marines and I was facing a massed horde of Orks, with a Battlewagon. I tried to take a range of models to cover various facets of the new rules, including Rhinos/Razorbacks, a Dreadnought, some Tactical marines with Missile Launchers and Plasma guns, and a Librarian.

Up to this point I have struggled to visualise how the game would play, something I'm not used to. The one overriding conclusion Bull and I have come to is that we've got to unlearn a lot more than we have to learn. We found a lot of the rules didn't make sense, or just felt downright illogical. Other times there seemed to be glaring gaps in the rules and there were quizzical glances shared across the table.

For example: It felt wrong that a vehicle speeding into a massive group of Orks can only score a melee hit on 6+, whilst the return hits were 3+ (I'm guessing it's a size vs size thing). Terrain seems to have been virtually ignored in the rules other than a reference to cover. Is there such a thing as difficult terrain anymore? When a unit arrives from Reserves is it considered to have moved for Shooting purposes? The idea that a group of 30 Orks shooting pistols can take down a Rhino feels silly.

Like I said, we have a lot to unlearn. This edition of 40k is an entirely new game and cannot be compared to previous editions. Something as straightforward as not thinking of vehicles as vehicles, but rather a large marine with heavy weapons and lots of wounds – vehicles as we knew them don't exist. It was easy to slip into old procedures or rule interpretations and that was more problematic than the new rules themselves.

Having said all that, I think there is a lot of potential here. The current 'Index' armies feel quite bland, though we are trying to keep things as simple as possible to grasp the core mechanics. I came away from tonight's game with the feeling I used to have back in the days of 4th edition game nights – eager to pour over stats and trial new combinations and units. We definitely had an interesting opening game, that probably produced more questions than answers.

But who were the heroes and villains this evening for the new look Dark Templar?

My Assault Cannon Razorback has a lot of potential, and Bull killed it off as soon as he could. The Librarian dropped a couple of awesome boosting powers that helped swing melee combats my way. The tactical marines were quite weak, and pretty poor in combat (I had been pre-warned, thank you Nick). The dread was untouchable in combat but didn't do much damage in return. And finally my Reivers – all they managed to do was throw a handful of Shock grenades before being mugged by 30 Ork Boyz (3 is definitely not enough in a unit). They nearly survived the charge too, but fell without getting to inflict any damage.

Lots to read up, especially FAQs and errata. Then it's back to the painting table!