RocketShip Games

This is a re-post of a long note on a DakkaDakka thread about gaming stores that spawned some discussion about gaming clubs.  It talks about some things I’ve been meaning to write about regarding PAGE:

Chiming in on the clubs sub-thread: I help run a club (PAGE CC) in Philadelphia (east coast US). For those sort of clued in about the area but not quite, it’s about 40 minutes from Mikhaila’s store. Just close enough that a couple guys go there from time to time, but probably just far enough to be slightly different “markets,” particularly when you figure many in our club are true downtowners who rely on public transit, walking, etc.

The club meets once a week (Sunday evenings) in a building downtown owned by a long standing philosophy/activism organization (Philadelphia Ethical Society). The traditional club focus is on boardgaming, but miniatures and particularly 40k are a large and increasing aspect, and definitely currently the most energized.

Although small by many standards, I think the club’s actually fairly successful. The big thing is that almost everyone can find people to game with. On any given week, you will find a variety of boardgames to hop into. On the monthly 40k convergence, you’ll find a bunch of different armies and a good number of players (generally 12–17 players), and the club members work together to provide and transport terrain and so on, which many people don’t have or can’t get there.

In many ways it fills many of the roles of a good gaming store, which I see as including at least:

- Providing space to play. I think most people will happily play games with a larger set of people than those they would like to have traipsing all over their house. On top of that, public space can often run a lot more games. Especially in a dense urban area like ours, space at home to run more than a table or two is rare, let alone space to run the 12 or so we routinely run at the club (e.g., our recent pattern of 7–8 40k, 1 or 2 Warmachine, and 2–4 boardgames). Having that kind of space to all get together is great because it helps you meet new people, catch up with guys you may not be playing on a given night, suck in new players (”Wow, what are you guys playing?!?!”), and build an event atmosphere.

- Expose people to new games, systems, armies. Despite loving and following the fluff, I might never have gotten into actually playing 40k if I hadn’t kept seeing a couple guys playing it at the club. Having a large pool of people bringing in games, armies, etc., really increases your level of exposure to the hobby, letting you find that next great thing you really love.

- Teaching and recruiting new players. A lot of our guys are happy to lend out armies for people to try playing, and a lot are super supportive of new players. Part of the reason I started playing 40k a lot is basically a couple of the guys gave me a lot of their unused models once they saw the gleam in my eye… Having that large group also keeps new perspectives coming in, so people learn a lot more about rules and tactics then they would playing the same couple people all the time. Ditto on painting and modeling skills and ideas.

- Providing terrain and other support. Myself and a couple other guys love building terrain, have space to store it, and can transport it to the meetings. Other people don’t. Playing at the club provides a lot of our guys much better options in this regard then they would have on their own.

- Giving a community in which to geek out. Even though the club only meets once a week and 40k basically once a month plus the odd game here and there, there’s a lot of chatter about games and specifically 40k on our listserve. A lot of people get that from great forums like Dakka as well, but it’s cool to then actually see those people and get in a game with those people.

- Run special events. Especially for 40k, we have a pretty reasonable stream of stuff going on, whether it’s the club outing to ‘Ard Boyz or other external tournaments, our own relaxed tournaments, themed narrative nights, Apocalypse games, or whatever, people really get into that and having the club provides a larger pool of players and, critically, potential organizers.

In any event, such clubs definitely exist in America and I think have an important position in the gaming community.

Another point is that people are totally willing to pay for all of those features I list above (we basically charge $4/night to cover rent), so it makes no sense for anyone to argue that people playing at a store shouldn’t be supporting that store in some way. Whether it’s memberships to use store features or buying merchandise, I think that’s a completely reasonable expectation. Even within our club, which runs a pretty decent periodic bulk discount purchase, all of the core 40k guys definitely put out and evangelize the perspective that if you’re playing in a store, you should buy something. I admit that I hesitate to buy big stuff at full price, but myself and a bunch of the guys are all too happy to buy codexes, small boxes like Command Squads, etc., at local stores.

On that note, I think clubs and stores can definitely exist together. We’ve been unfortunate that there haven’t been gaming stores right in downtown Philly in a while, but recently we’ve been slowly building up a relationship with a new store on the western edge of Center City (Redcap’s). For an example of how they complement each other, one thing I think we’re finding is that it’s obviously easier for them to host small groups at weird times. They’re a store, they’re open basically all the time, and they have pretty good gaming space. You can reliably count on popping in with a friend to play a match and finding a table. Our kind of gaming would have to get a whole lot more popular for the club to justify paying that kind of rent (it’s worth noting though that Philadelphia and most cities have many bridge, poker, and other full time gaming clubs). On the other hand, in some ways it’s easier for the club to host less regular big events. We don’t have to worry about things like crowding out all the cash-money Magic players with a large crowd of comparatively space-required-per-$$$ inefficient 40k players. So, I’m hoping we can work together with symbiotic events and efforts to continue growing 40k in Center City.

A number of people in the local area have come across Matt L’s polar board by this point, given that I borrow it frequently for special events.  Some of the larger glacial pieces and ice caves make it really quite striking.  We played a short game last Friday playtesting one of the missions for the Combat Patrol tournament, and I thought I would post up a few pics to show the board in its true glory, with his matching IG Valhallan army.  One of the many awesome things about Matt’s work is the consistency and how everything really ties together.  For example, check out in the background of some of the pics: He’s got ice blue dice to go with this army (and board), just like he has a block of orange dice to go with his rusted orange Legio Apex Nurgle-oriented Chaos Marine army.  A small detail, but a serious focus on overall aesthetics!

Our Friday board. We left out a lot of the bigger pieces so I could transport it to the tournament more easily, but it worked well and had a really neat ampitheatre looking piece that fit the mission well.

A mortar team lobs fire on the Kingbreakers from their rear position.

Another angle on the mortar team.

Kingbreakers' Landspeeder slips through the ice spires.

The Valhallan's Sentinel, which paid dearly for his early gambit to take out the Kingbreakers' lead transport.

Sternguard and Tactical 1's Combat Squad stake out a firing position.

Sgt Titus leads the charge through the Valhallan's rear quarters!

The Valhallans' lead charge on the central objective.

Another angle on the Valhallans.

A few more photos are available in the Flickr gallery.

I just posted the 4th mission scenario for our Combat Patrol tournament.  As always, I’m not completely sure on how this one will work out, but I’m pretty happy with it so I thought I’d talk about it a little.

Structure

I think one neat aspect of the tournament is that it is indeed a tournament, but it also has a fairly strong campaign element, in a loose, fixed narrative sort of way.  It’s structured somewhat like Space Hulk, where players aren’t making real campaign choices and the outcomes only affect the story in limited ways, but there is indeed a distinct narrative in play.  From the start I’ve had a pretty clear conception of an abstract story I wanted the tournament to follow, and I hope that’s done a lot to tie the missions together, give them a more compelling background context, and make them more interesting via unique objectives and parameters.

How this works out is that each of the 5 rounds/6 scenarios is set within a generic campaign setting.  There are no names or anything concrete, but there is an unmistakeable notion of an Attacker invading a settlement, city, or colony in the quest to obtain something, and a Defender hard pressed to stop their onslaught.  A little flavor is injected into it by just a little bit of fluff in each writeup.  To highlight the generic, inclusive nature of the campaign though, this is always done from the Defender’s perspective, but with different factions involved.  So far we’ve had Guardsmen attacked by (Dark) Eldar, Orks escaping Tau, Marines swarmed by Tyranids, Imperials sieging Chaos Marines, and Dark Angels assaulting Imperials.  Each mission also has a brief summary of the current plot point, and the Attacker and Defender roles.  Most of the missions are asymmetric, with players swapping those two roles, further accentuating the narrative.  On the other end, Jason has also been writing up little story blurbs to go with the results on the web, providing little vignettes of the campaign from the perspective of his Blood Angels.

Real campaign choices have or will show up in two places: The 3rd round had two missions that had similar goals (Annihilation), but very different setups.  Which one we played was determined by how many games the Attackers and Defenders had respectively won in the first two rounds.  Similarly, some parameters of the final mission, and of course the result of the campaign as a whole, will be determined by how the abstract Attackers and Defenders are doing.

Background

It doesn’t affect anything, but we do actually have a campaign map we’re following along, providing some imagery and geometric anchoring to the story:

The campaign map for the tournament.

First the Attacker smashed the outer defenses (Mission 1: Listening Post).  Then the Defender tried to escape back to warn the others of the attack (Mission 2: Flight).  In our case, they were not successful and the invasion swarmed the inner defenses (Mission 3a: Blood Melee), while in other universes the Defender was warned and the Attacker forced to attempt opening a new breach (Mission 3b: Gunline).  Right now (Mission 4: Population), the Attacker has been largely halted, but a small raiding party has slipped into the settlement to pillage for some sort of artifact, knowledge, or person required for the next mission.

Mission 4: Population

In the current round, the Attacker is searching the area for a key required for the next mission and the ultimate conclusion of the campaign.  Whether the key is a code, possessed psyker, ancient relic, or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.  The Defender, of course, has to stop this.  Although the terrain isn’t really specified and doesn’t matter too much, the mission is envisioned to be a battle in a city, village, base, or other developed area, representing the two brawling it out throughout the settlement.  Both sides setup on opposite sides and then charge in to claim the objectives:

Mission 4: Population

One note here is that the mission is symmetric.  The primary reason for this is that we’re running the last two tournament rounds in one evening and there won’t be enough time to run two games for each one. I do really like the asymmetric missions so I almost kept that going into the last round, but I also really want people to play more than one person that night.  Given that the club’s venue time is limited, I setup the mission so that it could work well with the match played as one game or two, the latter for us or other groups using it in the future.

Goals

The objectives are where Mission 4 starts to get interesting; at least, I think so.  Each objective represents property or people that the Attacker is searching through, and the Defender trying to keep away from them.  How this plays out in game terms is two-fold:

• Either player may shoot or assault the objective, treated as a very weak model, in order to destroy it.  This yields 1 Ransack Point.
• Either player may hold an objective for an entire turn to claim it. This yields 2 Protection Points.

This represents the Attacker hacking computers, rifling files, stealing artifacts, torturing people, whatever.  It also represents the Defender doing basically the same.
At the end of the game, victory is determined by the higher of a player’s Ransack or Protection Points.  In other words, if you have 2 Ransack Points and 4 Protection Points, you would score 4 points to be compared to the other player.

Morality

The beauty of this is that it both fits within the symmetric setup, giving both players the same rules, and enables them to conceptually fill different roles.  Further, it brings in an element of role playing.  Are you going to kill and destroy all the objectives, or are you going to try and protect or claim them?  This is accentuated a bit by one of the Bonus Points being for having Ransack or Protection Points, but not both.

I like this because it plays within the amorality of the 40k universe. Sure, the Attackers are probably bad guys.  But maybe not.  Maybe they’re just trying to stop something you’re too low down on the chain to know about.  Similarly, the Defenders may not be good guys, even if they might have the more traditionally sympathetic role.  There are a lot of factions in 40k that could easily decide it’s not worth risking people or material falling into enemy hands, and start preemptively slaughtering and destroying them.  With these mission goals, each player has that choice as well, and needs to fit that into their strategic picture.

On top of that, the Bonus Point highlights just a little the harsh, dualistic push of much of 40k—you might not be purely good, or purely bad, but it’ll cost you just a little to compromise.

Tournament Stuff

Another reason for the symmetric setup is that I wanted to keep things very balanced and straightforward in the last rounds to ensure fairness across the board.  It’s very easy for slight biases to creep in without notice, and while I think I’ve been vigilant about that in writing these missions, there have definitely been rounds that favored armies with lots of anti-vehicle for bunker busting, others that favored cheap transports for quick mobility, and so on.  The previous missions certainly didn’t go over the top, but I wanted to take extra care to keep in-game effects simple in the last rounds.  For example, I had originally been planning a set of stratagems for this mission in keeping with the City Fight theme, but in the end decided to keep it simpler.  We’ll see how it works out this Sunday!

Leading the invading thrust on the shadow world of Thruun, the Big Mek watched the figures moving amid the ruins, setting up sheltered fire lanes.  In his rising excitement he punted a Snotling off his Trukk, then pointed at another one, fixating it with his mad gaze before turning back to the ruins and exclaiming with a trill of anticipation, “Demz da Emperor’s boyz, and dat means a right propa’ fight for once!”

Jacob and I got down to our Round 3 match for the Combat Patrol tournament the other night.  Orks vs Space Marines in a showdown of brutality—the night was a killing fest, with fast, ferocious, and decisive fighting.  In each of the two games the losing player was whittled down to basically one model by Turn 3.

Apologies on the weird lighting and flash use in some of the photos; for some inexplicable reason the loft at Redcap’s was particularly dark this evening.

Mission

In Round 3, the Attackers have breached the Defender’s outer perimeter.  The Defender is playing out a desperate last stand to hold the line against the Attacker forces swarming all around.  Defender deployment is along a 6″ strip in the center of the table.  The Attacker can deploy along the opposing 6″ strips on either side of the table.  Victory conditions are a basic Annihilation setup, determined by Kill Points or elimination.  In addition, two objectives are placed, each worth a Bonus Point for holding.  Finally, each side has a Heroic Action their Patrol Leader can enact once per game by taking a Leadership Test.  For the Defender it grants Feel No Pain, and for the Attacker their choice of Furious Charge or Relentless.  The Defender also counts as Fearless in their deployment zone, since they have nowhere to retreat.

We set up a fairly open but pretty cool board.  The rectangular ruin piece made a nice, thematic terrain piece for the center line.  I particularly like that piece because it’s done up in much brighter colors than most GW gothic ruins, and has a lot of nice touches.  The barricades also helped give this central post a nice last-ditch feel.

The board shortly after the start of Turn 1.

Armies

I think Jacob brought roughly the following; I’m still not very good at differentiating and remembering Ork units:

• 3 Deff Koptas
• 3 squads of 10 boyz, 2 in Trukks
• 1 Big Mek with a squad of Nobs in a Trukk

As a side note, Jacob’s Big Mek was custom kitbashed to be his Patrol Leader specifically for the tournament, and he came out really nicely.

"Waaaagghhhh!"

In my army, I dropped my usual Razorbacks to load up on Sternguard:

• 9 Sternguard with 1 Power Sword
• 1 Tactical Squad with Flamer and Missile Launcher
• 1 Tactical Squad with Plasma Gun, Missile Launcher, and Razorback
• 2 Landspeeders with 2x Heavy Flamers each

While I’m pretty happy with Razorbacks, I figured this mission would be a lot about standing and shooting, and a gunline of Sternguard seemed a reasonable way to do that.  I also dropped a lot of special amenities, like the Powerfist I usually roll on Tactical 1, in order to squeeze out more models.  I assumed I’d be assaulted and losing Marines super early, so I really wanted as many bodies on the table as possible and not a lot of flash.  I kept one Razorback to provide some mobility for taking one of the objectives.  I also kept the slightly expensive Plasmagun in order to Combat Squad it with a Missile Launcher and pop Trukks.  One note about that which I considered a lot in list planning is that the deployment zone setup meant that basically everybody would be in shooting range of everyone else from the start, and would be rapidly in Rapid Fire range.  The Landspeeders of course came loaded for crunching hordes in cover.

Game 1

Jacob won the rolloff and chose to deploy and go first.  He deployed somewhat cautiously, though I did not in the end successfully Seize Initiative.  I deployed all my infantry in a concentrated fire base around the central objective.  The vehicles I placed away behind the ruin in hopes of not losing the Landspeeders to Turn 1 Rokkit Launchas.

Now, I haven’t played against Orks a ton, and it was very clear from the get-go that I should have studied the Codex harder.  In particular, I forgot about the Deff Koptas’ Scout move, and watched in horror as Jacob promptly moved one into place to blast away at my Landspeeders in Turn 1.  Then, in Turn 1, I watched again in horror as one of them flew over my fairly closely packed firebase and dropped a Large Blast bomb satchel all over it…  Fortunately neither came to much, but they were definite “Oh snap!” moments for me.

"Sarge... Somebody's here to see us."

My firebase was able to quickly take out two of the Deff Koptas though, which was a large mental relief, while the Landspeeders immediately dispatched the closest group of Boyz, flaming away at them in their crater foxhole.  The infantry then started taking apart Trukks, but the Orks were still able to advance very quickly on my position.  The firebase quickly found itself wrapped up in a single huge pileup assault entangling no less than all three of my infantry squads and two of Jacob’s.  This was an awesome mess to work out, with Marines and Boyz all over the place mixed and mingled together.

The horde begins to arrive for the party.

Fortunately, I lucked out huge in this scrum.  Taking advantage of their position in cover to strike first, all of the Marines landed excellent hits.  The Sternguard in particular devastated a whole squad of Boyz, easily shrugging off the paltry counter attack.  Taking heavy losses, both squads failed their morale and retreated, being immediately swept away to cement the quick victory.

That combat mostly decided the tide of the battle.  The firebase then picked off the remaining Kopta and Trukks while the Landspeeders torched a squad of Gretchins.  The Big Mek lurked through the ruins to enact a sneak attack on the Kingbreakers that claimed many a valiant battle brother, but the hobgoblin mechanic was quickly brought down by a thunderclap of combined fire.

Big Mek jumps into the scene.

Mano a greenskin as the two Patrol Leaders finally clash!

Result: Kingbreakers’ Major Victory!  Only one Bonus Point though.  I should have tried playing out the turns to try and reach the other objective, but I didn’t think of it and it’s questionable whether I would have made it in time.  The writeup also should have noted that total annihilation implied taking all objectives as I intended, but I did not remember to include that.

Game 2

Jacob again won the rolloff and chose to deploy and go first.  As irony would have it of course, after the first game he decided to ignore Seize Initiative and deploy more aggressively only to have me promptly proceed to do so and steal the first turn.

I set up a firebase of almost all my units in the ruins cattycorner to the Defender ruins.  I was hoping it would be just far enough away that I’d be able to shoot away at the Orks without being assaulted too early.  I also put a squad on the opposing table edge.  There were two reasons for this:

• There wasn’t enough space to put them in cover in the firebase.
• I was hoping to press a choice for Jacob between going after the firebase with all his army and leaving this squad free to take his objective; or splitting his forces and not attacking the firebase as aggressively.

Squad Goliant readies themselves for war. They're going to need it..

Gretchin huddle up to wave the colors around the home objective!

This time, however, the Landspeeders did not fare as well.  Although they took out some number of models, they were quickly eliminated by the Deff Koptas.  Their early loss was devastating to the ability of my army to put out enough firepower to stop the green tide.

Sad, lonely, abandoned Long Patrol Landspeeder.

After that, the pinwheeling fireballs of exploding Trukks managed to deliver Orks into my firebase and outpost all too early.  Things were particularly bad in the firebase, where a group of Boyz proceeded to begin steadily munching through the units there, eventually forming a pincer with another inbound mob and wiping out the Kingbreakers contingent.

Sgt Titus does his best to hold the flanking horde at bay!

In contrast, on the other edge of the world Sgt Goliant and his men put up a stalwart defense of their position.  All was for naught as they were eventually overrun, but their honor shall live on in perpetuity!  Sgt Goliant’s name in particular shall forever be whispered among the halls of the greatest warriors for his single-handed, multi-turn stand against the enemy, his faith in the Emperor repeatedly holding firm against no lesser foe than the combined might of a squad of Nobs, three Deff Koptas, and the Big Mek himself!

Sgt Goliant gives the Orks the proper fight they've been looking for.

Result: Major Victory for Jacob, and both Bonus Point objectives held.  This one point difference puts him just two points behind me in the tournament, meaning I really need to recoup some points against my next two opponents.

Lessons

One is that I should have been thinking more clearly in the first game about working the end conditions so that I could have stalled to take the second objective.

I also need to pack a set of craters to replace exploded vehicles. That would have put Sgt Titus’ Combat Squad in the Razorback into difficult terrain when it was destroyed, and probably prevented them from being assaulted that turn, and thereby stalled the Ork advance into the firebase for a whole extra round.

I’m not really sure what to make of that second game.  My Landspeeders should have been better protected, but there really wasn’t enough terrain on the board to have them trying to stay in cover while other units tried to take out the Deff Koptas.  What I really should have done though is stuck to my usual Multi-Melta/Heavy Flamer loadout rather than double flamers, used the Speeders and their Multi-Meltas to take out the Deff Koptas in the early going, and then concentrated on flaming the Ork Troops.

It’s not super clear to me that it was a terrible decision to put the one squad on the other side of the table.  It is clear however that a large portion of my thinking was faulty—I’m so used to worrying about big strong templates coming down that I was really over worried about finding cover.  Against the weapons Jacob had, their armor was stronger than any cover and they could have just as effectively stood out in the open near the firebase.  However, it did split his units nicely and I’m not sure how much they would have helped the firebase given that Jacob’s whole concentration would have then just been directed there.

Orks seem to be a definite force at Combat Patrol.  They have so few selections outlawed by the rules that they’re basically choosing from almost their whole army list, including a couple reasonable Troop selections.  The small tables and tendency to drift into assault is also suited to them, both in terms of slugging it out in close combat, but also that many of their weapons are Range 18″ Assault 2, meaning they can start putting out a lot of shots early on, particularly in this scenario.

That said, I continue to be impressed at how Marines can hold up in combat, despite the general trend to denigrate Tactical Squads’ assault potential.  A good group of Marines, particularly more than one squad supporting each other, can do a pretty reasonable job.  Interestingly though, it feels almost non-linear.  A 5-man Combat Squad can easily get blown away in one shot, while a 10-man full squad can generally stick combat for a long time against even solid assault units.

One last and interesting point is that I believe I’ve been playing multiple assaults under too many constraints.  I had been reading the movement procedures as being based around enemy models in the unit you’re assaulting, but upon looking at it more it seems really to be based around any models.  That makes it significantly easier to engage and tie down multiple units.  Though, that said, we also saw the risks of that in Game 1 when Jacob’s units assumed huge aggregate penalties due to the combination of multiple assault results.

More photos from this match are in the Flickr gallery.

Some time ago, my buddy Matt gave me a half-complete conversion project.  He’d taken a Landspeeder, cut up the cab, and added some bedrolls, smoke launchers, and a Storm Bolter type thing on an extra wing frame.  His aim was to build some sort of IG recon vehicle, but he decided it wasn’t going anywhere and handed it over.

With all the bedrolls and such I started thinking of it as a Long Patrol Landspeeder.  The fluff notion became that the Kingbreakers employed a number of these on extended solitary patrols around Forestway, their home planet, and later in other systems as well.  ‘Speeders intended for this purpose were grafted with extra sensors, lights, small weapons, comms gear, and provisions stores in order to sustain themselves for long periods, detect anomalies and enemies, and report back.  Given the small size of the chapter and the reconnaissance oriented mission, these were manned with semi-automated guns so that a single Marine could take up the duty and potentially be unavailable for a good period of time.  That practice only became even more important when the chapter was decimated in the tragic undoing of Forestway, a tale for another time.  After that, many such recon units were further converted to have an armored cab so that a Scout could undertake those long range patrols and recce flights with relatively assured survival, helping to free all full battle brothers for deployment in front line combat.

Back in reality, at the time I finished putting the model together I didn’t have a ton of extra Marines to convert into pilots, and Matt’s were largely missing.  I also liked the idea of a lonely Marine out on patrol; it fit in with the somewhat outdoorsy, quiet, solitary background mood of the Kingbreakers.  Given that Matt had already added some packs, searchlights, and so on, it also only made sense to add some more doo-dads and really push it in that direction.  In the end, I built up a little cab out of clay, a gun turret out of a Devastator squad Multi-Melta and the cone of a dead laser pointer, a nose mounted Heavy Flamer from a bits bag Jason traded me for some magnets, and a bunch of gribblies from random bits.

Last week I finally got around to painting that Long Patrol Landspeeder:

Kingbreakers' Long Patrol Landspeeder

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out.  For some reason it’s a little shinier than I expected, even after dull coating, but not too bad in real life.  Most importantly, the cab fits in with the body and with the narrow vision slit is even vaguely reminiscent of the official Tempest model, so that worked out reasonably well.

On that note, sometime earlier this winter I also painted up a standard Landspeeder model:

Kingbreakers' Standard Combat Landspeeder

On the construction side of things, I like the Landspeeder models a lot as they’re fairly straightforward to assemble, and quick to paint.  Between these two I didn’t find a huge difference in painting before versus after assembly, but would probably do the former in the future.  Really the slowest parts are the two Marine pilots, but they’re not too bad if done before assembly.  The Kingbreakers icons are done with custom decals I made up.  Like all my vehicles, these were base coated with cheap black spray paint.  The main paint components in the Kingbreakers’ scheme are Privateer Press Paints’ Hammerfall Khaki, Ordic Olive, and Exile Blue, respectively washed with GW Gryphon Sepia, Thraka Green, and Asurmen Blue.  The washes highlight the shapes of the components and provide a little bit of a weathered look I like, with basically no effort.  I’ve found so far that really edging the lines on vehicles takes a ton of time and doesn’t really stand out on the gaming table, so for both these models I skipped that step in favor of getting them done.

I’m also pretty happy with how the bases on both came out.  Given the large size and relatively visible nature of these on Landspeeders, they’re definitely worth spending a minute or two on:

Standard Combat 'Speeder Base

Long Patrol 'Speeder Base Front

Long Patrol 'Speeder Base Rear

Both bases were done quickly and easily.  I built up the Standard Combat base with some greystuff blobs to give it a little bit of a smoothed rock texture.  The Long Patrol base is textured with some hacked up balsa wood and bits from a toy race car.  Both were sprayed black with the rest of their model, then painted Scorched Brown.  They were then drybrushed to a greater or lesser extent with Snakebite Leather.  The Standard Combat base was then also drybrushed with Bronzed Flesh, and the metal bits on the Long Patrol picked out in Boltgun Metal.  The Standard base was then washed in Devlan Mud and the Long base in Gryphon Sepia.  On both bases I then glued on some green flock, fake wheat grass, and fake lichen.  Those elements were then randomly brushed again with the same wash as the base to darken them, tie them into the base, and add some color variation.

Finally, both have been constructed to disassemble, enabling easier storage, representation of battle damage and destruction, and swappable nose weapons:

Disassembled Standard Combat 'Speeder

On the Standard Combat model I cut off the tip of the flight base and simply glued on a 1/8″ magnet, with a corresponding partner sunk into the hole the base usually inserts into, after it had been slightly enlarged.  The standard ‘Speeder model is light enough that this basically works if set level—it swings around easily, but is super stable when picked up or set down on the table.  The Heavy Flamer similarly has a 1/8″ magnet sunk into it, and a matching one in the nose gun mount.

I had no base for the Long Patrol speeder, so I used a wood dowel rod supported by a balsa chunk on a cutout piece of plasticard.  With the extra weight of the cab, the model was too heavy to sit readily at the somewhat more dynamic angle I cut the support rod at with just the magnet holding it together.  To counter that, I added a sheath around the magnet on the ‘Speeder body that the base dowel fits into.  Between that and the magnets it’s rock solid, even when set to pretty crazy angles.  The Heavy Flamer was done similarly as the Standard model, just offset to the side a bit on the body.

One note about magnetizing like this is that it’s really hard to bind magnets to most surfaces with glue, so I usually wind up using greystuff or greenstuff to set them in place.

In game terms I play both of these simply as standard Landspeeders, usually outfitted with a Multi-Melta and Heavy Flamer in an all-comers list.  All in all, I’ve come to view Landspeeders as one of the bright stars in the Marines’ lineup, and one of their definite advantages on the battlefield.  More thoughts on their tactics will have to await another day, but suffice to say it’s become pretty rare for me to leave home without these, even for very small games, and I expect to build more for this summer’s ‘Ard Boyz.

More and higher res pictures of both models are available in the Flickr gallery.

Recently, Pangloss and Equinox have been having a pretty good discussion about Combat Patrol in 5th Edition:

• Realms of Equinox: Tournament Tuesdays: Overhauling the Combat Patrol Rules
• Pangloss’ 40k: Thinking About Combat Patrol
• Pangloss’ 40k: More Thinking About Combat Patrol

In an earlier post I talked a bit about some of the reasons I like Combat Patrol, namely accessibility, faster games, and reduced rock-paper-scissors effects, which can be dramatic in low points games.  I’ve also talked a bit in the past about general issues in small 40k games.  I thought I’d add on to my earlier points with some more thoughts on revising the rules to better accommodate the current codexes and rules.

The Zoanthrope says: "You best get good at rolling Leadership Tests!"

As a case in point for why revisions are necessary, consider the new Tyranid codex.  Due to the restrictions to 2 Wounds and 4+ Invulnerable saves, there are no Synapse Creatures permitted in Combat Patrol under the new book.  For those unaware, without coverage from Synapse, almost every Tyranid unit has to pass a Leadership check.  Otherwise it either storms toward the enemy or hides.  That severely hampers playing the new book in Combat Patrol, unless you field purely hordes of Genestealers, who are not subject to Synapse, but have no ranged weapons.  That also gets a little boring after a while.  This essentially eliminates a very popular army from playing, a substantial problem.

Points Limits

I agree that 750pts is pushing the upper bound for Combat Patrol; beyond that it’s too constricting and should generally be played as a standard game.  But I think a good set of rules could work well over ~250–750 pts, and create a game atmosphere that feels different from standard 40k but is similar enough to just sit down and go.  Like Equinox said, that’s an important goal.

A major determinant in what points levels work depends on what armies are used.  A friend and I regularly play 250pts.  That’s probably the lower bound without true skirmish rules, but we have fun though pushing models around at lunchtime. It works because he’s running Chaos Marines and I run Space Marines, and that’s just enough points to both have some choices and field some variety.  Other armies really struggle at even 400pts; Necrons are the classic example, Grey Knights are another.  Viable points levels depends a lot on who’s playing.

I think the set points clearly depends on what people what to get out of it, and there isn’t a need to be too strict about what is “Combat Patrol” and what’s not.  For example, one reason we’re running 750pts in our tournament is because it allows a good number of units, which in turn enables more varied mission scenarios.  At 400pts a lot of armies basically field only two units, so it’d be hard to have objectives and other special scenario goals.  Asymmetric scenarios, played with alternating roles, were also something we liked the sound of.  But, we also wanted people to be able to play after work.  The 750pt limit supports those competing goals, while also being a slightly longer match than 400pts.  We have, however, applied the Combat Patrol rules rather than just limiting the points, largely in order to prevent rock-paper-scissors list making issues.  Similarly, 400pts is very fast to play, very accessible, and a lot of fun in its own right.  There’s clearly a place for both.

HQs

A great number of HQ units definitely seem potentially unbalanced at these point levels, or not in the spirit of the missions if you care about that sort of thing.  I think you can keep out “crazy” HQs by keeping some sort of restriction against uniques, but let in the “regular” HQs by drifting the allowable wounds up to 3.  That enables IG Company Commanders, Tyranid Warriors, Space Marine Captains, etc., all of which are reasonable to me, but cuts out Abaddon, Marneus, etc., whom I think present problems.  More on “Uniques” later.

"Outflanked again, Sgt Jericho? This never would have happened if Captain Angholan had been permitted to join the patrol!"

In any case though, I don’t think HQs should be required.  Too many are glass jaws to force them at this point level.  For example, a Space Marine Captain is actually a tough sell.  I wouldn’t say that they really bring in their 100+ pts on average; ditto Librarians—sometimes they come up huge, but a lot of times they don’t.  Chaplains also essentially force a unit to lose Combat Tactics, which is unfortunate.  All are solid selections in a full list with other units to synergize with and many other models on the table, but I wouldn’t want to be forced to take one with so few points available.  Conversely, I wouldn’t want them disallowed either.  For this week’s tournament mission, I would have strongly considered a Captain and Command Squad—the first time I’ve ever seriously thought of the latter—but the Captain is out due to the traditional 2 wounds restriction.

Heavy Supports

In my opinion, Armor Value restrictions keep out sufficient HS.  I wouldn’t ban HS completely and eliminate Devastators or Havocs, they don’t seem out of line for the feel of the game.

I also don’t see the traditional restriction against Ordnance as being necessary.  If someone wants to field a Basilisk, Predator, Whirlwind, or something, I’d be ok with it, and think it’s reasonably fluffy—a lone vehicle making its way to a new position with its escort or some such.  Especially on a smaller table, they’ll be prone to assault or concentrated attack, and the armor value on this units is not particularly higher than the transports; I don’t think they’d be dominating choices.

At 750pts I’d actually lift the armor restriction a bit, maybe to 34 total points rather than 33.  In that size army you can field enough options to have some reasonable anti-vehicle plan, and could work to take down more heavily armored vehicles.  I would probably not say this at 400pts though; the environment is just very different.  In particular, my experience has been that Dreadnoughts are devastating and frequently unstoppable at that point level.

Either way, even at 750pts I’d hesitate to let in a Land Raider, Monolith, or similar vehicle.  It’s true that they would be a huge points risk that might be taken out relatively easily—I’ve had Sternguard take out even an entire Baneblade by themselves in the first round of shooting, and Landspeeders can regularly do the same for Land Raiders.  But I think these are just too much of a rock-paper-scissors risk at these point levels for my taste.  Those also have accessibility issues for newer players trying to compete.

One idea that came up in our group is to have a total limit for the army.  Something like you can field any vehicles, but the combined armor across all of them must be less than 100 (or something).  That would let you use one or two big vehicles, or a couple smaller vehicles, or a mix.  It might be just as easy though to say “One vehicle with armor up to 34 (or 35, etc) and any number with armor up to 33.”

Elites and Fast Attack

Tight limits on FA and Elites are also problematic.  I think a squad of Sternguard and a couple Landspeeders is fairly fluffy for combat patrol.  Landspeeders, Rough Riders, and Sentinels all also provide for all-FA lists very much in keeping with the spirit of Combat Patrol.  Appropriate mission rules probably counter any problems here.  In our tournament, you could bring a ton of Elites, FA, etc., but many of the missions have objectives, so it behooves you to bring Troops, just like standard 40k.

General Unit Restrictions

Like Pangloss said, I also think Equinox’s proposed 200pt maximum per unit restriction is too tough, although the intent is good.  As noted, a squad of Marines is 170pts.  Add a Rhino or a Powerfist and a Plasmagun and they’re over that limit.  The problem with saying they can just take five man squads is then they don’t have access to heavy and special weapons.  Cheap weapons are one of the primary advantages for Space Marines compared to many races, and their main anti-horde and anti-vehicle counter abilities, so robbing them of that would really hinder them unfairly.

These Termagants haven't realized yet that they're supposed to be Lurking...

Lifting the permitted wounds to 3 is essentially required, if only to enable Tyranids a few viable Synapse Creatures.  It also permits the generic Space Marine Captains and Chapter Masters (and consequently Command Squads), IG Company Commanders, and many other units that don’t seem unreasonable.

Not discussed so far is if the traditional Combat Patrol restriction to no better than 3+/4+ saves should be relaxed.  I am torn on this.  One argument I see for relaxing it are Zoanthropes, an important Synapse Creature option for Tyranids.  However, if permitted wounds are bumped up—basically a requirement, I think—Tyranid players can cover Synapse via at least Warriors.  I also don’t see a reason to cut out Techmarines.  However, I have mixed feelings about Terminators.  They’re admittedly super hard to take down and could cleave through another army, but even at 750pts they would be a significant fraction of a list to invest in just a few models.  They also don’t generally score, so the mission scenarios will enforce some sort of natural balance.  Including them would also enable Dark Angels players to use their preferred codex and existing units.  One plausible option might be to allow 2+ armor saves, or 3+ invulnerables, but not both.  This would permit Zoanthropes, Captains in Artificier Armor, Honor Guards, Techmarines, etc., but not Terminators.

Similar to Equinox, I also don’t have issues with upgrade characters like Telion or Harker.  They just don’t seem that unbalancing; they’re useful, but they’re a bunch of points as well.  The key here is the wording, enabling these guys but keeping out crazy HQs.  Toward that end, I think the wording should be “No Unique Independent Characters, Unique Monstrous Creatures, or Special Characters.”  The rationale behind this specific wording is based on:

• Space Marines: Telion does not technically say Unique (he has a special rule limiting him to 1 squad), but Chronus does; neither are Independent Characters.  The fancy HQ characters are of course all Unique Independent Characters.
• Chaos Marines: All named characters are Unique Independent Characters.
• Orks: Snikrot and Zagstruk are not Independent Character, nor technically Unique, and hence would be allowed.  The few named HQs are Unique Independent Characters.
• Tau: Aun’va, Farsight, and Shadowsun use the old terminology and are listed as Special Characters, not as Uniques.
• IG: Yarrick is a Unique Independent Character; all the company commander characters and other upgrades are Unique, but not Independent Characters.  Marbo is also Unique Infantry and would be allowed.
• Chaos Demons: All the named demons are Unique Monstrous Creatures, not Independent Characters.  Interestingly, Fateweaver is a Unique Monstrous Creature with only 3 wounds so it would not otherwise be covered by the rules without this wording.
• Tyranid: Most of the named characters are Unique Monstrous Creatures, though Parasite of Mortex is Unique Jump Infantry and Deathleaper is Unique Infantry and would be allowed.

I think that wording strikes a reasonable balance, permitting these manageable, colorful upgrade characters and a few solos, but disallowing the real heavies.

Rules Suggestions

That makes my current thinking on revised Combat Patrol rules something like:

• Missions should set army lists at no more than 250–750 points.
• Armies must include 1 Troop unit and may have up to 2 HQ, 6 Troop, 2 Elite, 2 Fast Attack, and 2 Heavy Support units.
• No Unique Independent Characters, Unique Monstrous Creatures, or Special Characters are permitted.
• No model may have more than 3 wounds.
• Any model with a 2+ Armor Save may not have an Invulnerable save.
• Any model with a 3+ Armor Save may not have better than a 4+ Invulnerable Save.
• In a 500pt or below game, no vehicle may have total armor value (Front+Side+Rear) greater than 33.
• In a 501–750pt game, no vehicle may have total armor value (Front+Side+Rear) greater than 34.
• Units which don’t occupy Force Organization slots, such as Dedicated Transports and Retinues, are permitted caveat the other rules.
• Before deployment, each player must declare one model in their army to be their Patrol Leader. There must not be a model in the army with a higher Leadership value. Note that this implies the Patrol Leader is not a vehicle.
• Missions should be played on 4′x4′ tables.

The Patrol Leader isn’t important for standard mission setups, but I think it’s a handy designation to have in writing custom scenarios given that there’s not necessarily an HQ in each list.  For example, in our tournament preserving or killing Patrol Leaders has been worth Bonus Points on several occasions.

Glancing through the codexes I have and the main rulebook, these rules seem to disallow the following for 750pt games; in general, no named characters are permitted except as discussed above regarding “Uniques”:

• Orks: No Battlewagons.
• Chaos Marines: No Terminators, Oblits, Daemon Princes, Greater Demons, or Land Raider variants.
• Chaos Demons: No Bloodthirsters, or Soul Grinders.
• Daemonhunters: No Grand Masters, Brother Captains, Terminators, or Land Raider variants.
• Tau: Broadsides, Crisis Shas’O Commander, Hammerheads, or Sky Rays.
• Black Templars: No Emperor’s Champions, Terminators, Land Raider variants.
• Space Marines: No Drop Pods, Terminators, or Land Raider variants.
• Necrons: No Wraiths, or Monoliths.
• Imperial Guard: No Leman Russ variants.
• Tyranids: No Swarmlord, Hive Tyrants, Tervigons, Zoanthropes (3+ Inv), Doom of Malantai, Carnifexes, Old One Eye, Trygons, Mawlocs, or Tyrannofexes

Dropping the permitted vehicle armor values to 33 at 500pts further eliminates:

• Orks: No Deff Dreads.
• Chaos Marines: No Predators, Vindicators, Defilers, or Dreadnoughts.
• Space Marines and other Imperials: No Dreadnoughts, Predators, Vindicators, or Dreadnoughts.
• Imperial Guard: No Hellhound variants, Death Strikes, Valkyries or Vendettas,

Those rules also eliminate some wargear and combinations, such as Storm Shields combined with Artificer Armor.  Interestingly, Mycetic Spores have only 3 wounds and a 4+ save, so Tyranids would always have their Drop Pod.  For Synapse they would be able to choose from Tyranid Primes, the Parasite of Mortex, and Zoanthropes.

Conclusion

I had sort of thought the forthcoming 40k Missions Book from GW would have material along these lines, including revised Kill Team or Combat Patrol rules and missions.  The part of me that refuses to accept that they don’t playtest or think about a lot of their design products nearly as much as the community does was actually hoping for that.  However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Of the suggested rules above, I feel pretty comfortable with the vehicle restrictions.  The armor and invulnerable save restrictions however might be too permissive however.  I’ll have to think about them more.  As always, comments are welcome!

Recently there’s been a lot of hoopla about software used to construct army lists.  I’ll (mostly) ignore for now the obvious irony in Lone Wolf attacking people for IP violations.  As a case in point though, check out this graphic from their store page:

All that aside, I’ve never really seen the appeal.  Admittedly, Lone Wolf’s Army Builder produces spiffy reports that would otherwise take a fair bit of time to do up—I know, I’ve spent a good bit of time LaTeXing fancy looking roster sheets myself.  But for $40?  A simple spreadsheet using software you already have or can get for free (e.g., OpenOffice), would seem to fill the bill nearly as well, as compared to shelling out basically the price of a whole squad or vehicle model.

I thought I’d note a couple tips on how I set up my spreadsheets.  No rocket science, but maybe useful for people not as familiar with Excel or similar programs.  I use OpenOffice Calc mostly, but everything should carry over directly to Excel, and I’ve noted differences of which I’m aware.

This is my basic format; note that I’ve sized the columns appropriately so it all fits in a portrait printout and I get as many units as possible onto one page:

First, note that I’ve got a ton of tabs.  When I create a list for a “serious” game, I copy a previous similar list into a new worksheet tab in the file and work from there.  That way I have one organized place with all the different lists I’ve used.  There are two reasons for this: 1) It’s sometimes nice to go back and look up what list I used for a particular match.  2) It makes it easier to copy and paste different setups.  For example, the next time I run Terminators in a list I can just tab over and copy their entry from one of my ‘Ard Boyz lists.

Another note is that I’ve set the header row to be in view no matter how I scroll down.  This makes everything much easier to read.  You can do this by selecting the row just below the one(s) you want visible, then hitting Window->Freeze Panes in the menu bar.

Somewhat unfortunately, frozen rows (or columns) aren’t put on each page of a print out.  To do that you need to establish a repeating print range.  In OpenOffice you can do that by going to Format->Print Ranges->Edit Print Range and entering the rows you want to repeat on each page.  There are some notes on that here.  In Excel you do that via File->Page Setup->Sheet->Print Titles and entering the rows you want.  These let you tell the software to include the frozen header row on every page of your print out as well, not just the on-screen display.

Next, I have a bunch of different columns:

• Type: The standard unit types—HQ, Troop, Transport (for non-FOC Dedicated Transports), Elite, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support.  I abbreviate the latter as Attack and Heavy so the column can be smaller and have less whitespace in the other types.
• Unit: The unit, with a designator when appropriate, e.g., “Tactical 3.”
• Wargear: I use this column to itemize upgrades purchased for the unit.  I could do this in the Unit column, but splitting it out makes for nice indentation and easier visual management.
• Qty: How many of that item I am buying.  This mostly applies to Wargear or Squadrons.  A blank is assumed to be ‘1′.
• Cost: How many points one item of that type costs, e.g., 90 for the initial 5 Marines in a Tactical Squad, or 5 for a Sternguard Combi-Melta.
• Use: Whether or not I’m using the item in this list; an “X” mark here means yes.  I’ll return to this in a second.
• Total: How many points this item costs in total, i.e., quantity times cost.
• Role: A place to put notes for myself on what I’m planning to do with that unit.

The Role column is obviously not critical, but can really help in working on and planning a list over time, e.g., for a big tournament.  This is a simple addition that I’ve found has really helped focus my thinking about my units: What I want them to achieve, whether or not they’re worth it, and sticking to the plan in-game.

Somewhat similarly to the Role column, in working on a big list over time I frequently also add a column to track a unit’s status, i.e., purchased, assembled, painted, etc.

Now on to the slightly more interesting stuff…

I like making lists, and spend a decent amount of time before big games working out what I want to use.  The Use column lets me experiment with that and quickly try out different combos.  Basically, the Total column is only calculated if the item is marked as being used.  This is done by filling the Total column with a formula like this:

=IF(F3="x";IF(D3=0;1;D3)*E3;0)

In that formula, F is the Use column, D the Qty column, and E the Cost.  This is from the third row, hence F3, D3, E3.  You can enter the equivalent formula into the first entry in your Total column, and then copy it down the page by selecting all the rows you want it in and then hitting Edit->Fill Down.  The row numbers will be automatically appropriately increased for each one.

What that formula says is that if the Use column does not have an “X” then the item is not in use and the Total for it is set to 0 so that it’s not included in my army sum.  If the item is in use, then the Total is set to be Qty times Cost.  The inner IF in the formula says that if Qty is blank, then it should be assumed to be a 1.  This makes the whole sheet much more visually appealing and easier to read than if it had a 1 in the Qty column for the vast majority of entries.

That may all sound like overkill, but what it lets me do is very quickly pop units and wargear in and out of my list to try out different combinations and see if I can come in under the points total for the match.  Not sure you want that Assault Cannon?  Uncheck it, and see what your new total is.  Think you might actually need it?  Mark it again and change the quantity on extra Devastator Marines to cover the points.  Checking or deleting the Use column for the items makes that much, much easier to do than messing around with deleting rows, copying and pasting, etc.  Once the whole list is set I’ll delete the rows for unused items, but while it’s in development this little trick makes it much easier to play around with and think about.

Note that to help this work better and make the list more appealing, I’ve also set zeros to not be displayed.  In OpenOffice you can do this by selecting the cells, right clicking, and entering a ‘#’ (without quotes) in Format Cells…->Numbers->Format Code.  In Excel you can do this over the whole spreadsheet by unchecking Tools->Options->View->Zero Values.  You can also set it for groups of cells by selecting them and then selecting Format->Cells->Number->Category->Custom and entering “0;-0;;@” (without quotes) in the Type of that same dialog tab.

Of course, then I also have the sum total points for every unit and item in use in the list.  This is just a simple sum over the Total column:

=SUM(G2:G65)

In this formula, column G is the Total column.  Remember that the range entries will be adjusted appropriately as you insert or delete rows in the list.

Finally, as a sanity check to make sure I don’t break some basic rules—I’ve several times nearly included too many Elites!—my sheet also counts and displays the number of units I have of each type.  You can do this with a formula like:

=COUNTIF(A2:A66;"HQ")

Where column A is Type.  This sums up all the items that have “HQ” as their Type.  I have similar entries for Troop, Transport, Elite, Attack, and Heavy, as shown in the screen above.  This is just a nice quick check to make sure everything’s kosher.

And that about sums it up.  You could do fancier things, like enforcing that Type be one of the four classes, or myriad other tasks, but this works pretty well for me.  The only thing I would like that it doesn’t do, and which would be a little tricky to implement well, would be to sum up and present the total for each individual unit with its wargear.  Obviously you could insert sums for each one to do so, but that’s a bit of a hassle.  This feature isn’t critical, but it is something I’d be interested in figuring out if someone with more Excel/OpenOffice experience (I have very little) has an idea.  All in all though this basic setup has worked well for me.  Feel free to leave comments if there are any questions or suggestions.

I track my games played on BoardGameGeek, so I am happy to report that tonight I played my 50th game of 40k, ever.  I started playing in the spring of ‘08, so that seems reasonable when you figure in a majority of them are small games—250pt Lunchhammer, 400pt and 750pt Combat Patrol, etc., with multiple games played in one normal length session.  At this landmark I have to say I’m pretty happy about it.  My few months playing 4th Edition yielded many many frustrations with a poorly written rulebook.  I’m glad to say most of those issues have been resolved in the new core rulebook, so hopefully the ongoing problems with rules writing and so on in the codexes will be resolved in the next edition!  I’ll also say that as I’ve learned to play better I’ve found the game increasingly tactical and strategic, particularly with the increased mobility and other improvements in the 5th Edition rules.

As for tonight, Alex has unfortunately had to unexpectedly drop out of the PAGE/Redcap’s Combat Patrol Tournament due to a commitment with the reserves, so Buford, Lorenzo O, and I got together so I could proxy his match with Buford.  In summary, we’re handling byes/defaults in the following way: The odd player out is guaranteed two Minor Victories.  However, if a proxy match can be set up, they can earn more points.  This seems to strike a reasonable balance between not giving away too many points for the bye while also not penalizing that player either.

Match Setup

Rules were the same as my report last week, and are up on the mission page: The campaign defender is trying to break through and alert primary defenses on the incoming invasion.  The campaign attacker, of course, wants to stop this.

Buford brought out his Space Wolves in a matchup with my Kingbreakers.  This chance to replay this mission was particularly interesting to me as in my last 7 or so 40k games I’ve played all Imperial Guard or Tyranid.  I definitely had to get back into an anti-power armor mindset.  Toward that end, I loaded up on plasma cannons, meltaguns, and heavy bolters:

• 6xSternguard w/ Power Sword, 2xCombi-Melta, Razorback
• 10xTactical w/ Powerfist, Plasmagun, Plasma Cannon, Rhino
• 10xTactical w/ Meltagun, Plasma Cannon, Razorback
• Landspeeder w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Bolter

Buford brought the Space Wolves equivalents of roughly:

• 5xScouts
• 6xTactical w/ Powerfist, Razorback w/ Lascannon, Plasmaguns
• 6xTactical w/ Powerfist, Razorback w/ Lascannon, Plasmaguns
• 4xBike Squad w/ 1 Attack Bike, Heavy Bolters, Melta Bombs
• Chaplain on Bike

Game 1

For the first game I took the campaign attacker role, defending against the rush.  I rolled to choose and selected to deploy and go first.  Again I was hoping to push forward and stop Buford down on his end of the table, making it harder for any units to make last minute rushes for the table edge.  However, this did force me to spread out across the table to try and block all approaches.  I also had to keep in mind that his Space Wolves Scouts would quite likely enter via my table edge and then immediately run off, so I needed to be prepared to hit them if possible.  Unusually for my recent games, I also broke up both Tactical Squads, with the two Plasma Cannon squads sitting in cover ready to fire away.

Buford basically split his forces between the bikes and the Razorbacks.  The bikes repeatedly turboboosted their way along the one, rushing for the edge, while the Razorbacks advanced more slowly.  I was very happy to see this turboboost attack as in writing the mission scenario that had seemed like a clear, dangerous strategy people would try.

Mid-game, the turboboosting bikes are ready to rush off the board, while the Scouts have entered in the Kingbreakers rear area to cause havoc...

I harried the bikes a bit with Plasma Cannon and Landspeeder fire, but neither accomplished much.  In the end the gambit was stopped by driving Tactical 1’s Razorback across from the middle of the table in its swing position blocking that lane, then assaulting the bikes.  I figured this would result in the death of Tactical 1, which it did, but it held the bikes up for a few turns and killed a few models.  After that they were weakened, held up, and bunched together, ripe to be finished off by the remaining Plasma Cannon and Landspeeder.

Sgt Scolirus fights to stall the escaping bikes as long as possible...

Meanwhile, the Plasma Cannons traded shots with one Buford’s Razorbacks, crippling it early in the game.  Definitely the most useful shooting I’ve had with the Plasma Cannons against vehicles.  In a heroic move, however, the Scouts Outflanked directly behind one of the Plasma Combat Squads and obliterated four its Marines in a single impressive round of Bolt Pistol shooting.  The scouts then assaulted the Plasma Cannoneer and then ran off the board, the hit and run attack ensuring I could not get a Major Victory.

The Space Wolves' Razorback is worse for wear after several rounds of Plasma Cannon pummeling.

On the other side of the board, the two pairs of Razorbacks traded fire with the Kingbreakers’ machines immobilized fairly early.  This left Sgt Titus to carry out one of his typical actions, running directly into the oncoming enemy to successfully destroy the inbound enemy transport.  This resulting in several waves of melee, with his squad eventually wiped out by the Space Wolves, only for they in turn to be caught up in the Sternguard’s counter attack.  Although costly, these assaults ensured there was no time for the Space Wolves to slog through on foot to exit the table.

Game 2

The second game had to be called due to time after the third round, but I was quite comfortable according Buford the victory.  Buford won the deployment roll and opted to go first.  Between that and his strong anti-vehicle components in the Lascannon Razorbacks, he was able to set up a solid pincer scheme with his units.  Most of my army made it pretty far across the table, and some would have escaped, but the vehicles were all stopped just short of where they needed to get to.  The Meltaguns and Combi-Meltas all failed to take out the opposing Razorbacks in time, leaving the Kingbreakers exposed to heavy shooting as well as the predations of the very mobile bike squadron.  My Landspeeder also died early, assaulted and brought down after rushing headlong into the enemy.

The Kingbreaker advance grinds to a halt.

Lessons Learned

I was pretty happy with my army in the first game, defending against the rush.  Some mistakes were definitely made for the second game though, attacking.  My heavy reliance on transports was simply shut down by Buford’s Lascannons.  A group of Assault Marines jumping across the table definitely would have been better in many respects.

I also should not have rushed my Landspeeder forward as quickly.  I simply discounted how many attacks he’d be able to bring to bear on it.  Although its Flat Out cover save protected it against all shooting, and nearly every close combat attack failed, one got through, and it only took one.  That was a big loss because it gave me little long reach capability to take out the Lascannons.

More to the point, it was probably a mistake to take only one Landspeeder.  I dropped one because they start getting hard to fit in the list when kitted out with Multi-Meltas and another weapon—70 points for an MM and Heavy Bolter.  Although useful against the bikes, it probably would have been better to drop the Heavy Bolter and a Sternguard or whatnot to put two Landspeeders out there with Multi-Meltas for vehicle hunting.

Even more generally, I probably shouldn’t have advanced so quickly.  I was hoping to quickly book for the table edge and exit, but it probably would have worked better to advance more slowly.  The Lascannons are simply too lethal to Rhinos and Razorbacks when exposed for mulitple turns.  Buford’s bike squad was also a significant problem as its high speed enabled it to quickly move around hitting any critical problem areas.  A single Landspeeder just can’t do much against a good sized bike squadron, particularly after it’s quickly dispatched by them, so I really could have used more units with mobility to counter act them.

All in all though, a couple goods games, and a great time finally meeting Lorenzo O and Buford!

More photos are available in the Flickr set.

Lots of miniatures gaming at PAGE tonight.  First up, Colin and Anthony played out their match for the second round of the 40k Combat Patrol Tournament:

Colin and Anthony prep the field of war!

The forces of the Hive Mind are ever-present!

Boo!

We also had seven people playing Battlefleet Gothic!  This was by far the largest showing for BFG so far at PAGE, and especially noteworthy as none of the Harmons, our regular fleet commanders, were involved.  Steve Smith and Matt Lechtenberg provided the models, but I think they made several converts for future fleet admirals!

Steve Smith's converted Space Marine Battle Barge.

It's minor compared to the paintjobs, but note the precision hatches cut into Steve's bases to mark fire arcs. Very neatly done, and helps playability a great deal.

The fleets begin to mix it up! Note the Thunderhawks delivering all manner of lethal assaults unto the renegades!

Part of Matt Lechtenberg's Chaos fleet, and crazy awesome space board.

I really could have sworn I took more photos of Matt’s fleet and amazing space board, but I guess somehow I whiffed on that.  Probably too focused on getting hammered in my own game.  Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!  Literally… Some of the first damage in our 3-player game came when a torpedo shot made its way around the sun, my Infidel escort narrowly escaping early game disaster, but my Hades cruiser boosting full speed ahead, directly into the torpedos!  Blindsided by the shot across the sun, the ship was wracked with explosions, but they only served to auger its wrath further!

Although I’d read the rules some time previously, this was my first game of BFG.  Initial impressions were very favorable.  It’s pretty streamlined and seemed to have a good amount of tactics.  I could believe it will also become even more strategic with a larger fleet—we kept things very simple for a first time out, merely a cruiser and an escort each in my game.  My biggest concern game-wise is that it’s fairly fiddly with models.  As facing is important, and straightline trajectories critical for many aspects, precise movement and measuring is important.  Measuring stem to stem is also frequently a bit more difficult to spot than simply base to base.  But, among friends, those are minor qualms, and the speed slowdowns are recouped by the relatively low numbers of models.  Although backlogged on models and going into a typically busy period of the year with little gaming, I’m looking forward to playing this again and perhaps building up a small fleet.

Finally, in closing, boardgaming also happened!  Perhaps most interestingly, Kurt and Jeff continued knocking out round after round of playtesting for their new WWII commandos game.

More photos from the evening are available in the Flickr set.

Robin and I played our match for Round 2 of the PAGE/Redcap’s Combat Patrol tournament.  He elected to continue using the 4th Edition Tyranid book for the moment.  The new book changes a lot of things, making many units unavailable in Combat Patrol, so several of our players are for the moment sticking with the old book until they can figure out some new 5e Tyranid small-games lists.

Match Rules

The second scenario is a simple breakout mission.  The campaign defender is trying to escape the encirclement and alert primary defenses, while the campaign attacker is trying to prevent that.  The writeup is available on the tournament page, but the key point is that the defender is trying to exit half his units off the attacker’s table edge.  The campaign attacker absolutely needs to prevent that; their units are more or less expendable toward that goal…

Armies

I believe Robin brought:

• 28 Gaunts, split into 3 squads, all with Flesh Hooks and Without Number.
• 6 Warriors with a variety of weapons, split into 2 squads
• 2 Lictors

For my Kingbreakers I brought:

• 5xSternguard w/ 2 Combi-Flamers with Razorback
• 10xMarines w/ Powerfist, Flamer, Missile Launcher with Rhino
• 10xMarines w/ Chainsword, Flamer, Missile Launcher, with Razorback
• 2xLandspeeders with 2xHeavy Flamers each

Game 1

Sergeant Scolirus hung slightly out of the exit hatch of his Rhino, holding on by the tips of his Powerfist.  He gazed into the distance, watching the tops of the trees sway and crash to the ground as the horde of massive beasts made their way toward his position.  After a long moment he looked down at Captain Angholan and stretched out his hand.  The captain’s exquisitely crafted armor glittered in the sun as he reached out and clasped his arm to Scolirus’ forearm.  “No matter what, get the warning through,” Angholan said quietly, then paused and in a deeper voice closer to his battle speech added “Till tomorrow or the Emperor.”  Scolirus shook his friend’s arm tighly, then swung back into his vehicle.  The captain pivoted on his heels and leaped into the hatchway of his own Rhino, his dark blue robes fluttering in the breeze.  Scolirus could hear his battle brother already issuing orders at rapid pace.  A flight of Landspeeders thundered by just meters overhead as the captain’s Razorback throttled into high gear and jumped after them, the battle begun before the captain had even secured himself in his transport.  Scolirus’ Rhino roared to life and dove into place in the column behind Angholan and the Landspeeders, ready to follow the linebreakers through to whatever may come beyond…

We placed a fair amount of terrain, a mix of craters, forests, rocks, and a large ruin that really choked up the board.  I rolled to choose and opted to deploy and go second.  Robin spread his forces out to cover both basic approaches, and I tried to stay in the center to not reveal too much about what direction I would take.  Sternguard, Tac 1, and Tac 2 all climbed into their transports.  Tac 2’s Combat Squad with the Missile Launcher deployed just to the left to give some cover fire.  The Landspeeders nestled in behind the transports, hoping for some coer if anything should manage to get a shot off at them in Turn 1.

To recap the game quickly by major thrusts: Landspeeders dispatched left and right to try and tie up both opposing forces.  All of the transports shifted left and drove pretty hard to try and concentrate force on a single point of the enemy line.  The Landspeeders devastated the Gaunt squads, and tore up the Warriors as well.  Sgt Harbinger’s Razorback got hung up on difficult terrain, as did a Landspeeder, but his Sternguard simply piled out and provided cover fire to finish taking down the Warriors on the left side and the Lictors that arrived alongside the exit route.  Scolirus and Titus revved their transports, flying them over the debri and escaping to sound the alarm, driving at full tilt amidst groups of fleeing Gaunts scattering into the forests.

Result: Major victory for me by getting half my units (round down) off the board, and both bonus points (enemy Patrol Leader dead, my Patrol Reader ok).

Game 2

I rolled to choose and opted to go first.  I wanted to go second so I could deploy in response to Robin’s positioning, but chose first so I could move aggressively and try to push the conflict as far forward on the table as I could.  I hoped that even if I couldn’t stop everything, hopefully I could slow it down far enough back on the board that they wouldn’t make it off the table in time.  Tac 1 went to the far left to cover the paths along the edge.  The Stenguard’s Razorback also went left, but they settled down among some rubble on the right to better cover the more open approach.  Titus’ Razorback and Tac 2’s Missile Launcher Combat Squad also settled down on that side.

Robin responded by puting two thirds of his Gaunts in a cluster around his Warriors in the center of the board, obscured by the ruins.  The other Gaunts and Warriors deployed left somewhat, as a combo diversionary and flanking maneuver.

Recapping: My vehicles advanced quickly, hoping to push the line forward.  The Landspeeders, emboldened by their survivability in the first game, moved aggressively into enemy territory.  The Sternguard and Tac 2’s Combat Squad, meanwhile, sniped away at the bigger monsters on the left.

Unfortunately, the Landspeeders did not hold up nearly as well this game.  Both were effectively mission killed early in the game by massed Gaunt fire rolling just enough hits to take out weapons and shake or stun the crew.  This enabled the Tyranid clusters to move up safely without being harrassed and with relatively little regard for bunching up.  The flanking Marines eventually whittled these down, but not quickly enough.  The central Warriors jumped onto the ruins and put some heavy casualties on Tac 2’s Combat Squad.  Literally every Kingbreaker unit on the board fired at them, hoping to take them down while in that exposed position.  It was not to be, however, as one Warrior made it through the hail of fire with one wound intact, and slipped down into the rubble.

Meanwhile, the Lictors popped up deep in my backfield and quickly simply ran off the table to alert the Hivemind and meet the mission objectives.  On the left side, the Warriors there also survived just enough to make it through and tie down Harbinger’s Sternguard in close combat.  Between that, the Landspeeders being out, and spending too much time slaughtering gaunts with the other units, that left no unit in position to stop the central Warrior, which burst from the rubble a turn later and quickly left the board in pursuit of the Lictors.

Result: By getting three units off the board, Robin took a Major Victory.  We both got a bonus point for keeping our Patrol Leaders alive—Robin’s was the sneaky Warrior that slipped through the rubble and snuck through to freedom.

Lessons

These were actually a couple pretty good games.  I was very happy with the first one, less because of the result, and more because I came in with a plan—take second, concentrate force on one point and drive through to break the line—that worked pretty well.  The second game I made a few mistakes and it came down to a couple different die rolls that really could have changed the outcome, so it was a good time.

• Flamer List: This list seemed to do pretty well against the ‘Nids, and I assume will hold up well to the 5e upgrade.  There’s no real way to take Vulkan at these point levels even if special characters were allowed in Combat Patrol, but otherwise he’d be a clear choice.  Faced with a mostly power armor based target environment I don’t use flamers much, but here I pretty obviously had to go with it, and it largely paid off.
• ‘Speeders: These guys did awesome in the first game.  In the second they really took too much firepower and became too crippled too fast to really do a ton.  Normally I’d be all about units soaking up firepower like that, but in this case my other units were expendable—the mission objectives put very little priority on campaign attacker units surviving—and I really needed the super mobile flamers on the Landspeeders to chase down any escaping bugs.  All in all I’ve been pretty happy with my Landspeeders, and tonight was no exception.
• Sternguard: These guys have always been one of my MVPs, and they continued to carry that line tonight.  One interesting point is that I used the special ammo a lot more than I have previously.  In almost all previous games I’ve mostly only had occassion to use Hellfire rounds; maybe occassionally a Kraken or Dragonfire shot, but the Hellfire has been far and away the most useful.  Here I used all three of those alot—to snipe from a distance, to work around the large amounts of cover, and to pummel units caught exposed in the open.  This was really neat, although it almost felt like cheating—of course, of course they’ve got an ammo type that just happens to be perfect for this situation!  No, that’s not written in my book in pencil!  Good stuff though.  I liked them abandoning the Razorback that blew tracks on the rocks, running alongside the remainder of the convoy and sniping away at the Warriors on the roof above them and in the rocks ahead, helping the Landspeeders to clear a path.
• Luck: Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.  In the second game once the Warriors jumped up on top of the ruins, I poured in literally all my firepower.  If something’s worth shooting, it’s worth shooting a lot.  I was really hoping to basically end the game there by taking away the only Synapse creatures in position, crippling the movement of the remaining Gaunts, and stopping the fastest units on the board (they had wings).  It wasn’t to be, however,  That one last guy just shook it off, dancing through the cover.  There was a very thematic moment of him roaring in rage on the rooftop, shots pouring in from all over, and then diving into the ruins for cover, the escape basically complete at that point.
• Position: That said, I should have been able to cover for that.  I waited too long to bring back my forward Rhino and Razorback.  They were hanging out devastating the Gaunts, but really they should have moved back earlier once the aggressive line broke a little, and been in place to cover the Warrior escaping through the central ruins.
• Position II: Similarly, not protecting the rear crater was a huge mistake.  I didn’t put a unit into it originally because it had no line of sight so it would have been basically wasting a unit.  When I deployed I also wasn’t thinking about the Lictors coming down and just running off the board.  I was much more concerned about them coming down immediately on the sides of my lines and taking them on.  Sadly, I had spent some time on the way over to the game thinking about exactly this kind of move.  However, I had been thinking about it only in terms of whether or not I should have written the mission scenario to eliminate it (I decided not).  I never really thought about it in player terms, and that game back to cost me a good number of points.
• Deployment: I probably should have also taken second turn again in the second game.  I didn’t because I really wanted to push the line forward before the bugs got to move, but those extra inches weren’t worth it.  Much better would have been to go second and see where Robin deployed, just like in the first game.  In this case it would have let me see he really wasn’t going to go down the left side, and I could have pulled at least the far flanking Rhino and Tac Squad and put them somewhere more useful, buffing up the right flank or covering the rear crater and center path.
• Vehicle killing: Without their big units, old Tyranids really struggle at combating vehicles under Combat Patrol rules.  Not having really seen it, the new book nonetheless sounds a lot more balanced between assault, shooting, and psychic abilities.  I could believe there are many more options for managing vehicles; hopefully some are available in Combat Patrol.
• Tarpitting: In the second game I was stuck in the usual Tyranid mindset of hanging out in vehicles and avoiding close combat.  That was silly; survival of my units had very little to do with meeting the mission objectives.  Everybody should have move forward then dumped and spread out, doing a better job at physically impeding the bugs’ progress.  Even if a few units got chewed up, it really wouldn’t have mattered as long as they’d been slowed down enough.  Vehicles just can’t bog down units and impede there progress like infantry can, even if the latter are going to die…  I let my fear and standard tactics get the best of me, and didn’t think well enough about the particular mission objectives in play.
• Dozer blades: On the way over I was seriously considering dropping the combi-flamers or something in order to buy dozer blades for the Razorbacks and Rhino.  Given the directions to place more terrain than usual, and the mission requirement to basically hustle across as fast as possible, this seemed like a good chance to actually use them.  In the end I didn’t because I don’t have any modeled on and wasn’t convinced it’d be worth it.  That decision was more or less reasonable, though it could go either way.  I did hang up the Razorbacks on terrain a couple times, but mobility of my tanks seemed mostly ok.  My Landspeeders on the other hand were repeatedly immobilized landing on difficult or impassible terrain.  Robin’s winged warriers also took a lot of wounds from jumping into cover.  If only there were some upgrade to help the speeders with that; it would probably be more worthwhile than dozer blades for tanks…

So, two interesting games.  Early feedback from Jason and Steve was that the campaign defender’s objective of crashing through the line and exiting the board was crazy hard and couldn’t be done.  If nothing else, I think tonight’s action showed the mission is reasonably balanced, all else being equal, and whether or not it’s doable in each match will depend on what all else is not equal—other armies, play styles, etc.  They also left me looking forward to seeing what’s different in the new Tyranid codex; should be a challenge!

Herding bugs---what a lot of us are going to be spending a fair bit of time doing for some while to come... Pic from Sunday's game with Robin and Charles. More here.