Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Defense of Drask Phase one: Planetstrike

Hello again all. It's been a busy week. This Saturday marks the start of my Defense of Drask campaign with a planetstrike game to get everyone settled into a beachhead and start landing forces to either defend or destroy Drask 4.

I plan on doing 6 turns with a group game at the end to represent to final "Apocalyptic" battle. I haven't decided on rules, but likely a lot like the winter mayhem game I ran a few weeks ago. I think I want to mix things up a bit and run a demo of Battlefleet gothic as either a side or fun game to tie in the story events. Either way Im looking forward to getting in a few games this weekend.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

A Thousand Sons...or is it?

A few weeks back I posed the question about what am I going to do for the first half of 2011. I have decided to slowly start working on a Heresy era Thousand Sons army. Now I am the kind of gamer that I build the army list first, and then buy models to fill it. When that is complete, I go back and get more models to fill in gaps, or improve the list. This has the dual function of building to a moderate goal, and then allowing play-testing to refine a concept. The side benefit is that whatever units do not end up in the final list are left as extras to be added around the refined core. It's about here that I realize that I have NO idea what codex to use to represent them as depicted in Graham McNeil's A Thousand Sons Novel.

After making and discarding about 50 lists from the CSM, vanilla marines, BA, DA, and (of all armies) wolves, I settled with the biggest Heresy I could think of and went with the runepriest heavy Wolves as a basis. I know this is serious Heresy using the mortal enemies of the T-sons to represent them, but for an army that claims to hate psykers they certainly have a lot of them.....

Now Ahriman himself will be represented by the rules for Njal Stormcaller, and I have ordered the FW Sevrin Loth for a mini. Ahriman will be accompanied by 2 more runepriests to represent Khalophis and Hathor Maat. I have to say I love the idea of living lightening or fury of the world wolf guided by a chooser of the slain....

Of course each captain will have a portion of his coven with him on the field. The Corvidae, Pavoni and Athaeneans will be represented by 8 man grey hunter packs led by wolf guard. Each will be transported in a rhino. The Pyrae, mages without compare will be represented by a trio of longfang packs. In the novel Khalophis directed a group of combat robaots from a stormbird. While I can't replicate the stormbird, I am using thunderwolf cavalry to fill their assault/counter assault role. For coversions...well there are a TON. I said this would be a slow build, and I meant it. EVERY unit and most models will be conversions both due to the historical nature of the army, and the magical nature of it. So far I have a few really nice ideas.

I already mentioned using the Red Scorpion FW librarian for Ahriman, but there are conversions to do. I need to add the distinctive nasal crest to his helmet, and get his khopesh staff converted from an old metal grey night force halberd and some bits from MaxMini. Khalophis and Hathor Maat will follow suit. I will be using bits of the command squad that came with Loth to make them.

All of the line infantry will of course be a mix of mark 3, 4 and 5 marine armor, and Max mini steamnight heads. I plan on mixing in some red scorpion heads as well. The rhino transports will be hover variants held aloft by magic. A flight stand and some platicard to cover the gaps from removing the tracks will fix those.

The Robot assault unit will be modeled using sisters of battle penitent engines and green-stuff to match the look I am after. The weapons will be modeled individually to make them all unique.

The Pyrae were supposed to be mages without compare, so I think squads of librarians conjuring spell effects will work well for the longfangs. Since I am using only lascannon and missiles I can just do two different effects and then make sure my opponent know which is which before the game.

Lots of ideas, just need to collect the bits to get it all going. I have been slowly collecting bits for months in an attempt to mitigate the cost per squad from FW, so we'll see how it goes. I am starting with Ahriman/Loth and I'll post a WIP as soon as I can.

Upcoming Spring Mayhem Apocalypse

Coming on March 26th I will be hosting an Apocalypse game. The game will be a free for all competitive battle to the last man standing....or store hours, which ever runs out first. If time runs out we will determine a winner by point tally on the surviving models. The specifics are as follows:

5000 points per player. This is important as this is a free for all, try to get as close to this total with out exceeding it.

No single units costing more than 1500pts.

Super heavies, Flyers, and Gargantuan creatures are allowed. Where there are two profiles available, ie one Imperial Armour and a second from a more recent Codex, please contact me or Drew at the store with what you have chosen before game day.

No formations or stratagems from the Apocalypse/Imperial Armour books. This means the only squadrons will be as allowed by 40k codex. These are intended to be used by allied armies....there are none of those here, it is all PvP. This is also to allow a fair win if we run out of time. Formations cost points to run, so this balances things a bit more evenly.

Imperial Armour army lists ARE allowed. Please send a PM or email (shadowvast@live.com) and clear these before the day of the game.

Allies ARE allowed per the chart in the first Apocalypse rule book. (I will make exceptions in extreme cases)

Please come ready to play. This means you need printed copies of the rules, your codex, and any Imperial Armour pieces you are using. No exceptions unless one can be had by photo copy. You will of course need dice, templates and a tape measure as well.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Winter Mayhem results

Awesome time all!! We had 6 players for a total of 30k points on the table at a time. Some highlights include:

My warhound going supernova and killing almost 3000 points as it died.....mostly mine :? ... ... to a single infernus pistol hit.... :roll:

ZOMGWTFBBQ 2 defense lasers in one force!?!

Plaguetowers FTW

Baneblades are either incredibly annoying or incredibly cool depending on how you look at it!!


Seriously, a good time had by all, and a follow up will be scheduled soon. Congrats to Peter O'Meara for his win with an incredible 3k+ surviving at the end of the game!!