Captain Failure and the Boat of Tomorrow

So, I played against DE last night using a modified version of my standard IG list (Penal legions still suck). He got +1S for his combat drugs, which, in my opinion is one of the most devastating things on the list second only to the +1 pain token. I’m sitting down, martini in hand, going over the codex now. It was a pretty bad beating I suffered the other night. There are quite a few new surprises.

I think if I had to oversimplify what I plan to do about it to the point of just a few sentences, most of it would probably be about picking up more stuff that ignores cover. That goes for about all point levels. Maybe switching out a lascannon HWS for a hellhound. Also, I think that the Leman Russ Eradicator has found it’s purpose now. I’m also planning on going back to autocannons, as hard as it is for me to admit. I think the best chance I’m going to have is the “stop them before they get close” theory, and then have my power blobs ready to cope with the rest that does get through.

I plan to post an all-corners list shortly that encompasses the changes I’d make to more acknowledge the changes coming to the “meta”, as all the cool kids call it.

Filed under:
Dark Eldar, IG by brad

No, I’m not talking about the 4th ed rule.  I’m talking about tactical target priority.  What needs to die first, and what can wait a turn or two.  I’ve been considering priority overload as a means of using deployment and list-building to psychologically defeat the opponent before we’ve even started playing.

Consider this Al’rahem outflank list.  Here we have a plasma CCS in Chimera, two separate Vendettas (with melta-vets), a Hellhound squad, a Demolisher, AND an Executioner with plasma sponsons all on the table starting out.  The opponent sees all this hard hitting armor opening up and craps his pants when he realizes that, on top of this, there is a quarter of the army still yet to come on that will from a table edge of (almost always) my choice AND if he tries to hide armor from all the antitank, a squad of deep striking melta stormtroopers will take care of it for me.  I ran this against a friend (CSM) who’s been playing almost as long as I have and he was almost ready to concede when I showed him the list.  By turn three he was calling it, citing that I was going to table him by turn five.

One of the reasons why the list did so well is because he was too distracted by the large number of targets on the board he needed dead to concentrate all his fire on specifically one target or the another.  Since he spread his fire thin, he was not able to cause severe damage to any one specific unit.

One obvious deficiency with this tactic is that a truly hardened player with be unfazed by raw attempts at shock and awe.  For those players, it would be necessary to simply hit with as much as you can, as hard as you can.  The goal at this point is to try to intimidate them into making a mistake.

Filed under:
Tactics by brad

What makes warhammer 40k a strategy game is that each player must come up with a plan for victory to defeat his opponent.  The armies are made using the same number of points, but the game hinges on how each player spends those points and uses those units.  So each army has the same number of points, and each player uses those points using the same core rules (or paying for their special exceptions).  Therefore: Skill is the difference, and 2000 pts in one players hands does not equal the same 2000 pts in another player’s hands.

Some warhammer veterans out there could probably win games using a large handicap because their ability to use points effectively is what makes their army more effective than a more expensive one.

The assumption the whole system makes is that all points are created equal, and with a few exceptions (out of date codices and some arguable underpricings) any collection of 2000 pts should be in some way shape or form capable of dealing with another 2000 pts with an even trading of casualties.  The line this comparison makes blurs with list building, which is the player’s first insertion of skill into the game.  This is when the player makes his first important decision, and I mention that in my Shooty/Assaulty/Mobility discussion.

Then, during play each players makes their moves and does their best to reduce the enemy’s points faster than losing their own.  this is done through a combination of target prioritization, taking cover, out-manuevering, etc.  All tricks of the trade in dealing death.

Finally, there’s the big targets: the objectives.  This is where the point comparisons start to become seperated from the win/loss decision.  A handful of points in the right position can still win versus a full list.  This is another way that a skillful player can make his few points worth more than his opponent’s large number of points.  This applies even during annihilation games, where the objectives are slightly different but still requires the same attention to detail that an objective game would.

So don’t always worry about your point totals, or trying to find the units that behave as if they are worth more than they cost because how you use the units on the table makes a large part of your battle success.  That is the skill multiplier.

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Uncategorized by Brit

Battlemissions are amazing.  They may be unfair, as I found out at a local tournament that decide the missions would mix things up (here’s a hint.  If you’re the army its themed for you will have an advantage).  However, I find them invaluable to keep my strategies evolving and breaking away from the three missions.

For example, I played against an Imperial Guard player in his Attrition battlemission.  We both immediately analyzed the mission and its oddities and began playing to our strengths with that given mission.  Things that usually don’t happen, happened and priorities changes and it wasn’t just they typical dodge and slaughter that the typical games contain.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to develop strategies and do more than compete or for competitive players who want to keep their minds fresh.

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Uncategorized by Brit

Rule arguments happen all the time.  They are to be expected in a game with a rulebook of over a hundred pages long.  But why do people argue so hard and what fuels the bizarre interpretation and shenanigans that happens?

The problem is expectations.  When formulating a plan that could be an entire turn or several turns into the making, finding out the rules are different than what you expected can cost you a game.  So how do you react to finding out something works incredibly differant than you expected?

Really, you can’t.  All you can do is try to accept it and continue the game.  Its very helpful if you can find an impartial FAQ that both players can agree to abide by such as the INAT faq.  Then accept the result and finish the game.  Find the answer later or remember it for future use.

The second best thing is to check any questionable rules while making your plan.  Its hard to do this without giving up your plan ahead of time, but if you can great.   Always think if the risk of your plan backfiring is worth it.

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Uncategorized by Brit

Another one of the posters here has an on-going complaint of how much the game feels like rockpaperscissors sometimes.  It certainly can feel that way, with most armies being so focused along certain themes that they cannot defend themselves against a particular style of attack, and with other armies specializing in that attack it is all but a guaranteed victory.

But I do not believe the game has to be completely that way.  There are a large number of things, and I’ve only seen a couple of codices that were so slanted toward a particular combat style that they could not deal with a particular issue.  The extremes in my mind being Orks vs AV 14 and Tyranids vs any good shooty army (IG).  Even these Codices were given the tools they need to overcome these problems, albeit less than ideal tools.

I find myself fielding generic lists, with a good mental picture of where I fall in the Mobility/Shooty/Assaulty trifecta.  The closer to the middle you aim, the more likely you are to counter any enemy list.  In the above two examples, I’d say a Mobile Assaulty Ork army could probably overcome the IG swiftly (probably through a combination of tankBustas and Nobz with Power Claws with Trukks).  The Tyranids can probably survive a shooty army’s barrages if it would pack a little bit more Shooty into it.  I personally find myself gravitating toward the tyrannofex in this roll, because one of them is a monster to kill (ridiculous wounds) and with regenerations and its S10 gun it could pummel enemy vehicles throughout the whole game.  It may die to a round of dedicated fire, but that would be a round of free movement unhindered for the rest of the assaulty based army.

I personally play Tau and Eldar often.  Eldar are Ok Because their mobility is always good to great, and the decision to go assaulty or shooty with them is the biggest decision I make during making their lists.  Once I do that, I know most of the units I will be using.  Tau are a little harder because of the lack of good assault units, but recently I’ve had success using small teams of suits to win the melees I need.  I’d say my Tau lists have been ranking with a Good mobility, Great Shooty, and Fair Assaulty (just a couple points above Terrible I’d say)  And this is only due to their high strength and Space Marine Durability.

So where does your list land in the Mobility/Shooty/Assaulty trifecta and how can you make your lists less specialized toward killing a particular opponent and losing to the rest?  Well, the trifecta is a good tool to look at your list but also remember that skill and a good eye on the objectives of your game are big multipliers too.  I’ll talk about that next time.

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Uncategorized by Brit

I wonder if its possible to do a Hogan’s Heroes or Classic kill point team match using the club-ordo-fraternitas character rules.

Here’s what I’m proposing. A 1000 pts game. One side is the antagonists, who is allowed a single hero (using the character rules) and many other guards.

The protagonists can make several heroes, but each hero is an independant character that cannot join units. This is because they are notable people, who can be singled out.

All heroes receive an additional wound for free, to make up for their ability to be singled out.

If a hero goes to ground, he recieves an additional +1 to his cover save.

I would also use the roll-off rules from 4th edition to move all the non-hero antagonistic units. I’d even include the klaxon rules, and special equipment rules.

What do people think? This needs some playtesting, and I think there should be a minimum cost to being a hero

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Uncategorized by Brit

Tau for moderate victory!

I took my recently collected Tau list and met some good results.  I will add my List and my opponents lists later (if i remember to grab them.  I kept all my opponent’s lists except one).

Round one:

Space marine opponent with two Ironclads deep striking upon me.  A crusader landraider with terminators with lightning claws inside.  Some highlights were how swiftly I tore through the terminators after they assault a sacraficial 6 man fire warrior squad.  He went from having around 8 terminators to 2.  My opponent immediately blanches and spends next turn moving that squad back into the land raider for protection and unloading into my broadsides.  The bullets pink off them, losing only a gun drone and they returned fire to not only pop the land raider, but my second unit of broadsides insta-death the chaplain.  Nothing was safe from my superior firepower.

Crisis suits deep strike to harras enemy troops from a distance, annoyingly jumping over a ruins and back into it (dangerous terrain eat your heart out) and only remained within range of a missle launcher which their shield drone was quite capable of shaking off.  The Draw hilariously goes to a crisis suit team that couldn’t roll a 2 to arrive before turn 5.  They finally showed up, right on top of one of my opponent’s objectives and contested for the draw.  As an added bonus they almost finished off the unit holding it.

Round 2:

Footslogging orks with one maxed out nob squad with biker warboss.  My Broadsides show my opponent how much I don’t care about exhaust cover saves when dealing out 6 insta-death shots.  Half that squad later my opponent is worried he’ll lose the rest soon.  A sacraficial devilfish claims over half a full ork squad with nob before finally being imobilized and then exploded.  The combat took two rounds of melee and my opponent refused me a leadership test for the casualties caused by the flechette rounds that dropped him below 11.  I insist it was not a combat thus moral check #3 doesn’t apply and morale check #1 does.

The big highlights are that a sacraficial 6 man fire warrior squad, devilfish, and pathfinder squad bought my broadsides enough time to reduce almost all the enemy squads below half, and claim the warboss.  My opponent is shocked that by the time he had be corned the game ended with him only claiming about 400 pts more than me.  I would have claimed another 200 if I had gotten the 30 minutes left warning and focused fire on the single Nob biker remaining which was worth 330 pts!  Instead I had split fire getting only the warboss which only netted me an extra 120~  so if I had known the round was ending I could have probably gotten the extra 200.  The difference was a minor loss and a draw so I was annoyed.

Round 3:

fighting a witch hunters armies, full of rhinos and exorcists with a single land raider.  I hilariously set up my broadsides and you can imagine what happened.  HARDLY ANYTHING!  he goes first, moves those rhinos forward at full speed and pops smoke.  Aparently my broadsides couldn’t track through most of them because only 2 rhinoes exploded despite markerlight help.  Needless to say though, I was able to destroy enough vehicles it was easily a massacre.

As a note, this was the only opponent I had that managed to finish off both my crisis battlesuit units

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Uncategorized by Brit

Well, other than my whine about how ‘Ard Boyz had enforced comp through Scenario 3′s silly KP rule (‘Oft Boyz is more like it), it went pretty well.  Everyone I played was friendly and there was surprisingly little asshattery going on for a no-sportsmanship tourny.

My list:  (all chimeras are assumed to have heavy flamers)

HQ:
CCS with 4 plasma, Carapace armor, Astropath, Officer of the fleet, Chimera
Elite:
5 x Stormtroopers with 2 melta, power weapon, Chimera
Inquisitor with 2 Mystics, Bolter
Troop:
Meltavets with shotguns
Meltavets with shotguns
Veterans with grenade launchers, shotguns, chimera
Veterans with grenade launchers, shotguns, chimera
Fast:
Vendetta
Vendetta
3 x Hellhounds
Heavy:
2 x Leman Russ Battle Tanks
2 x Leman Russ Demolishers
2 x Basilisks

Scenario 1:
I fought a Space Marine player here.  He went very “in your face, shock and awe” assault marine heavy for this game but had very little anti-tank.  A devastator squad and a Razorback with TL lascannons were the biggest of my concerns.  The rest appeared to be mostly in the form of assault marines with powerfists.  I took out the Razorback early on with a vendetta and let my battle tanks make fast work out of his assault marines and walked away with a Major Victory and only about 3 tanks lost.

Scenario 2:
Chaos Space Marines this time.  His big threats were Nurgle Bikers (I found out just today that those were an artifact from an earlier edition that you apparently can’t field anymore), Abbadon, a Vindicator, Defilier, Land Raider full of Berserkers, and a squad with a lascannon.  First round, Blew up the Vindicator and defiler.  After that, it was pretty much just me wiping out his units as much as I could get at a time.  The storm trooper squad outflanked to harass the squad with the lascannon, keeping them from blowing anything important up.  The Berserkers left the Land Raider to wipe out a squad of my meltavets, but I finished them off with a couple shots from the tanks.  Abbadon deep struck by himself (still scratching my head over that one) and tore up a squad of tanks before I could completely finish him off in the 4th, leaving him with about 6 marines and myself with a Massacre.

At this point I’m in 1st with 42 points.

Scenario 3:
This was the turning point in my game.  I’m playing one of the two Eldar players at our local shop who happens to also be one of the best players we have.  I also had over twice the KP he had with the modified rules.  I still had many more KP than him without them, which is already my disadvantage.  Really, I probably could have pulled that one off if either: It wasn’t three killpoints per vehicle, or, Scenario 3 came as the first one, where no one was paired up by score yet.  Either way, I didn’t need such a handicap with someone equally skilled.  Anyway, done with the whine.  He had 2 Wave Serpents (two with fire dragons, one with dire avengers), another dire avenger squad, a Falcon, two Fire prisms, the Avatar, Eldrad and two guardian squads.  Now, I let this one get into my head far worse than I should have, and made some really stupid calls.  For example, I got first turn, but given how accustomed I am to the other Eldar player always running everything in from reserves when I get first turn, I figured that’d be what I see this time again, so I passed first turn.  Also, I left all my chimeras coming on from table edge and outflanked my vendettas.  This left me in a bad way when the game started and he ended up luckier than I anticipated brightlancing my tanks into oblivion.  Also got the lucky shot and blew up my basilisks even from in their cover.  It pretty much all went downhill from there.  Ultimately, his first round of rolling was so lucky, there was not really much I could have done except for the mistakes cited above.  It was enough to push me into 5th and out of the semi-finals.

Filed under:
Army Lists, IG, Tactics by brad

I’m woring on a brainstorm that I had earlier.  I was trying to find out what exactly is in a Space Marine Battleforce, and was annoyed to find that pictures of the sprues are quite hard to find.  I decided that maybe what the community needs is a web-based sprue catalog, searchable and capable of being updated with user submitted pictures.  There’s nothing there to speak of yet, but check back at http://www.theboatoftomorrow.org/sprues/ soon and help add to the database!

Filed under:
Uncategorized by brad