So I went to LVO

In some previous posts (ages ago) I mentioned that I was going to go to LVO.  Well, I did it, and it was amazing.  Here is a little write up with random pics of my army and how they did.

Great times- Vegas is an amazing place.  Let's just say that there was a point in time where I was laying in my bed in the hotel room, surrounded by buddies, eating a giant deep dish pizza and chicken wings, while watching the super bowl, and drinking beer.  This was the day that we decided to take it easy.  Wow, Vegas (slow clap).


Great experience- I had never been to a giant event like this one and I was pleasantly surprised.  There is a really funny feeling that you get when you walk into a giant convention like this one and have the realization that every single person in that room can tell you the stat line for a basic space marine.  I remember thinking "all these people geek like me, I love it!".  The venue was massive, armies were mostly painted pretty well, and people were having FUN!  The vendors were great too, which made it really cool.

Great games- This is really where the event shined.  I played in the narrative event, which was amazingly fun.  I thought for sure that one of two things would happen, either I was going to be stuck with games where the other person was no fun, or I was going to encounter missions that put one side at an irreconcilable disadvantage.  Neither of those things happened.  In fact, I think that I played some of the most fun games that I have ever had.  The organizers of the event were super laid back but kept a little story line going for it all, I kind of grouped up with the other Dark Eldar player there and we celebrated our wins (and losses) together.  It was amazing fun.

"Imperial guardsmen, do they blend?" Yes they do.  

This solitaire was a blast every game.  

With terrain like this, how do you not have a great time?

Icy wizard wolf guy

A while back I mentioned that I was working on three librarians for my white scars army.  I never really pulled them over the line.  I did, however, finish one of them as a gift for a friend of mine.  Check it out.

This was a pretty basic conversion where sculpted the hands, hair, and beard.  The beauty of sculpting the hands in this case is that they are all glowy and blue, so it is ok if they are a little misshapen.  

I am pretty proud of that sword.  This is a bit from the old chaos warriors kit from back in 97 or 98.  It just seemed so cool and I imagine this crotchety old rune priest keeping its (obviously chaotic) origins a secret to everyone around him.  

I meant to take some time on the paint job here but it only ended up taking about two hours to knock this guy out.  The real challenge for me was the fact that I do not own a pot of this weird space wolf blue/grey color.  So every drop of grey paint on this guy is hand mixed with at least three colors (two greys and a blue).  

Also gave him my normal base treatment for space marines.  I really like the whole cork thing with a muddy texture around it.  It kind of makes me think about how the roads are being shattered by teh constant war of the 41st millennium.  

Hope you like it! 

Back in the saddle

So now I'm back, from outer space...

I have been away from blogging, though not from gaming, for a while now.  Why am I back?  Because I am getting amped up for 8th edition of course.

What's my take on eighth edition?  I'm all in and here is why.

Casual gaming is back!- If you are like me then you find 7th ed a little hard to swallow.  There are enough rules that are very complicated and not obvious that it makes it difficult to keep it all straight.  My prime examples here are gargantuan monstrous creatures, of course.  They shoot differently, take wounds differently, hit in close combat differently, mostly have other special rules, and probably some formation stuff thrown in there.  The new edition seems to have promise for keeping these rules to a reasonable state, or at least keeping them all in the same book.

Balance is restored- By borrowing the AOS approach to publishing points, GW is taking a big step in acknowledging that publishing points values is hard and sometimes you need to reconcile things.  My understanding is that they will have a section in each codex (maybe a generals handbook, just like AOS?  I doubt that) that contains all points values for all units.  My centralizing things they can update all points values for all armies in one fell swoop!  Also, they will have points values for everything fresh when the new edition drops so things should be roughly in balance at that point.  Imagine this, an Ork army beating an Eldar army that contains 9 jetbikes and a wraithknight.  It can happen!

New flavor- This is where it gets a little contentious.  A lot of people are pretty upset about some of the major changes that are in the works, from everything wounding everything, to vehicles having toughness and wounds.  I look at it like this, I have been playing the (basically) same game since the first day of third edition, that was 19 years ago.  It is time for something new and exciting.  Will I miss shooting dark lances and blowing up land raiders?  Yes, yes I will.  I think that I am going to enjoy the rest of it too.  Let's learn a new game, get some of the rules wrong, roll dice to resolve rule conflicts, and drink beer.  This is what the game is really all about!

What do I not like that I am hearing so far?  I am have never liked the idea of terrain with special rules.  Just drop it with that stuff already.  Honestly, I don't even play with mysterious objectives.  It seems like they are going to try to push this again (you might remember that there is a whole section of datacards related to terrain in the back of the 7th ed rule book).  What a waste, give me some good fluff!  That's it though, I am totally on board with everything else.

That's it for now.  More to come, I promise!

The rise of Daxos

With 8th Edition coming out soon, my plan is to use that opportunity to build out my Necrons and run them as my primary army.  I picked these guys up a while ago from a friend of mine and they have been on the shelf for too long.

Here is the story that I have put together so far.  My force will be a shard of the Maynarkh Dynasty led by Daxos, the Immeasurable.  They are just waking up beneath Charlestown Hive, the main hive world that my group plays around, and they are pissed.

As part of it I will be hyping a little narrative story line with my gaming group.  Here is first post on our Facebook page.

"Far beneath the toxic lower habs of Charlestown Hive there lies a force that has slept for untold millennia. 

Now, with a shadow war raging in the deepest parts of the hive city, ancient wheels have begun to stir. #DaxosLives"

Librarian Project

So I keep reading about the librarian conclave and how amazing it is.  Honestly, I have never been much of a librarian guy, I have always gone basic chaplain with my Salamanders.  Anyway, I decided that I needed to find out what all the fuss was about and decided to build a couple of librarians.  Since I had just bought the Betrayal at Calth box I figured this could be a great chance to save a few dollars.

My plan is to use these guys both with my Salamanders as well as my White Scars.  I love the open hand casting thing and I like the idea of a librarian being kind of a seer or tribal shaman rather than just a boring disciplined dude who has some psychic ability.

I'm not sure that I have really talked about my White Scars on this page yet so here are a couple of them.

So what do you think?

List Building Time!

I have a game coming up this weekend with a buddy of mine.  As we are both kind of getting back into the game we are going for a 1,000 points.  He generally plays Eldar or Harlequins but I don't really tailor lists so that isn't really a factor.

At this point I am zeroing in on two lists using my two primary armies.  The first is Dark Eldar.

Dark Eldar 1k

Archon [145] shadow field, agonizer, haywire grenades

Trueborn [150] x2 splinter cannon, venom with x2 splinter cannons

Kabalite Warriors (5) [120] venom x2 splinter cannon, blaster

Wyches (8) [210] x2 which weapons, raider, agonizer

Razorwing [145]

Reavers (3) [48]

Reavers (3) [48]

Ravager [125] Disintegrator Cannons

Total 991 points

With this list I am basically looking for a kind of ultra fast striking force that can quickly grab tactical objectives anywhere with the reavers on the table but still packs a little bit of a punch with the Archon riding along with the wyches.  There are some pretty unconventional choices in this list but I think it could be fun.  Personally I love the idea of having a venom that is pumping out four splinter cannons worth of shots!

Salamanders 1k

Librarian [90] ML2

Tac Squad (10) [195] Meltagun, Multimelta, Rhino

Tac Squad (10) [245] Flamer, Multimelta, Powerfist, Rhino

Land speeder [60] Heavy Flamer, Multimelta

Drop Pod [35]

Grav Centurions [250] omniscope

Vindicator [120]

This list is way smaller and the grave centurions are my new toy.  Having never used them I have no idea how they will do but they should be able to handle most of the toughest stuff out there.  I suppose they have a reputation for a reason.  Librarian cruises in with the centurions and maybe I get lucky with invisibility which would basically end a 1,000 point game.  I guess I am looking to hit hard and see what happens.

What do you think?  Dark Eldar or Salamanders?

Game Night Report

So I played a game last week.  I made it out to a friends house on a Tuesday night and threw down.  The group of guys that I was playing with have been away from the hobby for quite a while so the points level was a meager 500 points but it was still great fun.  I took my White Scars list and had a blast.

Here was my list.

Librarian- bike, ML1
Bikes- x8, attack bike with MM, two grav guns, and a lightning claw.
Bikes- x5, flamer, plasmagun, power fist

The idea behind this list of course was to cruise into some cover then get up there, dump on some bolter fire and get into assault.  I used a mix of special weapons to handle a couple of different threats and figured the librarian could get off psychic shriek to kill any big bad lords that might need killing.

How did it go?

I only got one game in and it was against Harlequins.  The opponents list was something like this:

Solitaire
Death Jester
Shadowseer
Troupe- x6 or 7 with a couple special weapons
Voidweaver

He deployed everything in cover and infiltrated where possible, I pretty much lined up in cover as well, keeping my whole force to one side, using a hill to split the board up.

Turn one I moved forward and completely wiped out the troupe with bolters as they were the closest, I also got a few shots off at the solitaire and took off a wound.  He came charging in during his turn and got his solitaire into combat only to see him killed to overwatch (5 rapid firing, twin linked bolters against a guy in a spandex suit is bad news). The Voidweaver also shot a couple of bikes down  but the solitaire's charge was really what we were paying attention to.

Turn two was pretty much mop up, I'm not sure whether the Voidweaver actually survived that turn but we decided to shake hands and end it after that.

Overall, was it a good game?  Not really... but the company was good and it was pretty fun to watch some buddys play a few games afterward.

Thoughts on the models?  Any good stories of disappointing games?  Comment below!