RocketShip Games

Eric and I got in two games last night out at Redcap’s.  It was definitely interesting; two reasonably close games, and he brought out a lot of stuff I haven’t faced before; his Eldar list was fairly different than what has showed up at PAGE, though it’s probably more like popular online builds.

Lists

Eric fielded something like:

• 6x Seer Council w/ Farseer
• Squadron of 2 War Walkers
• Squadron of 2 War Walkers
• Wave Serpent with 10x Dire Avengers
• Wave Serpent with 10x Dire Avengers
• 6x Warp Spiders

I brought my current typical Kingbreakers setup:

• Captain Angholan (as Vulkan)
• Sternguard x5 in Drop Pod w/ Combi-Meltas
• Dreadnought in Drop Pod w/ Assault Cannon, Heavy Flamer, CCW
• Dreadnought in Drop Pod w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer, CCW
• Tactical Squad in Razorback w/ PF, Flamer, Lascannon
• Tactical Squad in Rhino w/ Meltagun, Missile Launcher
• Tactical Squad in Rhino w/ Flamer, Lascannon
• Landspeeder w/ Multi-Melta and Heavy Flamer
• Landspeeder w/ Multi-Melta and Heavy Flamer

As you can see, Eric sunk a lot of his points into that one Seer Council unit, I believe something like 600–700 of his 1500 points.  Going in I wasn’t too worried, particularly as he just didn’t have that many models with all those points spent on the Council, but wasn’t sure what to expect having never faced an Eldar army like that.

Game 1

We rolled for Seize Ground with 5 objectives and Pitched Battle, while I took first turn.

Unsure what exactly it could do but appropriately fearful, I dropped both Dreadnoughts as best I could on top of the Seer Council and flamed away.  Without Fortune to protect them, almost the entire squad was vaporized.  Eric then assaulted the Dreadnoughts; probably a mistake, but I believe this was his first time using the Council.  That combat would proceed to drag on interminably until the end of the match when the Dreads finally eliminated the Farseer and remaining friends.

After that there was a lot of wheeling and dealing trying to pin down the Wave Serpents and their Dire Avengers.  The Wave Serpents outfitted with Holos are very resilient!  It took a good bit of work to take them down, relatively invulnerable as they are to Melta and Lascannon fire.  War Walkers also put out impressive amounts of firepower, trying to knock squads off their objectives.  In the end though flamers did their thing on a good number of Eldar and the Kingbreakers had enough troops around to hold onto more objectives than the sneaky Eldar.

Game 2

This time we rolled for Annihilation and Spearhead.  Eric took first turn and deployed the Council and very carefully placed Wave Serpent.  I deployed most of my guys and castled up, forming an impromptu Kingbreakers garrison around one of the ruins on the board.

Going first enabled Eric to start casting Fortune on the Seer Council and turn them into a veritable engine of unstoppable death before I could inflict any damage.  For those unfamiliar, Fortune makes the Council’s 3+/4+ armor and invulnerable saves re-rollable.  I poured fire into them throughout the game, to very limited effect, only managing to cripple the squad by the very end of the game.  Meanwhile they flew about on their jetbikes flaming troops and spearing vehicles as the other Eldar skulked about and the War Walkers picked off stragglers.  It almost came back together in the last two turns as the War Walkers were dispatched, but by then it was too late.  Too many transports and Landspeeders had been lost to make up the Kill Points difference.

Results

Game 1: Minor Victory for the Kingbreakers, bonus points for Kill Points and surviving HQs.

Game 2: Minor Victory for the Eldar, bonus point for controlling table quarters.

Notes

I was impressed at these Eldar units.  Seer Councils I’d been wary of as Internet wisdom is definitely rightly fearful.  Mathematically speaking, they’re about on par or even harder to kill than Terminators with Storm Shields, but they’re much more mobile and arguably more useful weapons.  Remember that jetbikes get to move 6″ every assault phase, whether they assault or not.  They also have a Str 9 spear attack that’s pretty good at taking down vehicles.  I was just lucky in Game 1 that I was able to cripple the Council in the first turn.  In the second game I probably shouldn’t have concentrated so much shooting into it, but it was moving too fast to lock down into assault, and I was hoping I’d eventually kill some part of it and whittle it down.  No such luck.

War Walkers I thought were also pretty respectable.  Fairly fragile, but while they’re alive they put out a ton of shots—8 each, Str 6.  Combined with Outflanking and 36″ range, and it seems like a reasonable unit to come on later in the game and try to knock weakened troop squads off objectives, while the enemy’s shooting is already committed elsewhere.

On a related note to both, I’ve been keeping my Marines largely boxed up in their Rhinos.  I think I need to again start more frequently considering having them hang out in the open so they can all shoot.  Having them inside the Rhinos is protecting them, but it’s also costing them a lot of shooting opportunities.

This game I broke with my recent practice and split the Landspeeders into two distinct flyers rather than a squadron.  I don’t think this really did anything very good or bad.  It cost me an extra Kill Point in the second game, didn’t really affect their survivability, and gave me just a bit more freedom in the first game to split targets.  All in all a wash.

Long story short though, I think this changes the Redcap’s meta-game a fair bit.  Up to now I’ve been comfortably not bringing a Librarian as people have not been using many psychic abilities.  Fortune has to be stopped though.  I think it’d be cheesy at this point and slightly unsporting to bring out an Inquisitor ally for just his Psychic Hood, so a Librarian it is.  The only question is: Where to get the 100 points?  That’s a lot to knock off my list without giving up something useful.  On the other hand, maybe I can play the super strategic card and figure that I don’t have to face Eric again in this round, and hope nobody else whips out some crazy psycher…  Sounds risky though.

A few more photos are the Flickr gallery.

Kiril and I got in a 1500pt game of 40k on Sunday, his Imperial Guard versus my Kingbreakers Space Marines.  The game was pretty taut, well balanced until the very end.  As Colin noted, this matchup between us is definitely becoming on ongoing grudge match.

Lists & Mission

I believe Kiril brought something like:

• Company command squad w/ Astropath
• Platoon w/ 20 man blob, 10 man squads?, Flamer squad, two Lascannon squads
• Platoon w/ 20 man squad, 10 man squads?, Melta squad, Al’rahem
• Veterans
• Two Leman Russes w/ Battle Cannon, Lascannons
• Primaris Psyker
• Marbo

I brought:

• Captain Angholan (as Vulkan)
• Sternguard x5 in Drop Pod w/ Combi-Meltas
• Dreadnought in Drop Pod w/ Assault Cannon, Heavy Flamer, CCW
• Dreadnought in Drop Pod w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer, CCW
• Tactical Squad in Razorback w/ PF, Flamer, Lascannon
• Tactical Squad in Rhino w/ Meltagun, Missile Launcher
• Tactical Squad in Rhino w/ Flamer, Lascannon
• Squadron of two Landspeeders w/ Multi-Meltas and Heavy Flamers

We rolled for Seize Ground with five objectives (!), and Dawn of War.

Battle!

Four of the objectives wound up being deployed in a fairly tight quadrilateral on a half of the board splitting the long edge.  The other was fairly removed, off on the other side of the board along the main axis.  Kiril took first and deployed simply a Lascannon squad, in cover on top of the abandoned bunker overlooking the objectives.  I deployed a Tactical Squad in their Rhino, hugged tightly behind a wall near one of the objectives.  They wouldn’t be well placed for much shooting, but neither would they be able to get shot at much.

In the first turn, about half of Kiril’s Guardsmen came on, with most near the objectives quadrilateral and a small detachment moving toward the remote one.  Kingbreakers’ Dreadnought Drop Pods came down right on top of the abandoned bunker and one of the objectives while Landspeeders and the Razorback came forward in the cover provided by that wall of Pods.  Between the Heavy Flamers on the Dreadnoughts, Assault Cannon, and Razorback Heavy Bolter, the Guard’s initial Lascannon team was eliminated, probably an important result for keeping my vehicles moving.

In the following turn, Al’rahem’s squads come on along the short edge near the objectives quadrilateral.  This was risky for both sides—it exposed the bulk of the Kingbreakers’ vehicles to Melta fire, but also put those squads very close to an awful lot of firepower and assault capability.  One of the Leman Russes entered on the remote edge, supporting the detachment heading for the far objective.  Sternguard attempted to drop on top of the Russ and take it out, but a system glitch scattered them far toward the interior of the battle, well out of Melta bonus range.

The Kingbreakers weathered Al’rahem’s arrival reasonably well, losing a Landspeeder, a mission killed Dreadnought (immobilized with basically no line of sight possible), and Captain Angholan’s Razorback transport.  While the remaining Landspeeder’s shaken crew ran for cover, Dreadnought Slayer wheeled from his protected place amid the Drop Pods and righteously flamed the Guardsmen before barreling into them for the assault.  Angholan and Squad Scolirus ignored Marbo and charged the small squad protecting the Primaris Psyker, flaming heavily in the process and obliterating it.

Meanwhile the Guard advanced into the lightly defended table center.  Kingbreakers’ Sternguard were wiped out under heavy fire from the Leman Russes, both having now entered, and much small arms fire from the nearby infantry squads.  Angholan and his men charged into combat alongside Dreadnought Slayer, with the two of them together now carving wholesale through the ranks of the Guard.  The remaining Landspeeder, crew now recovered, moved valiantly to stem the tide of Guardsmen encroaching on the center objective, making good use of its Heavy Flamer.

With the end of the battle nearing, Squad Titus broke from cover in its Rhino and started moving toward the center objective.  This began one of the more dynamic portions of an already fairly active match.  The Rhino moved just short of the objective, while a large blob of Guardsmen sat on it on the other side, a heathen monument and crashed Landspeeder between them.  On Turn 5, the “safe” move was maybe to move the Rhino onto the objective with Titus inside, contest it, and hope that the game would end that turn with the Kingbreakers holding two other objectives and the Guard just out of place, only holding one.  Instead, Titus disembarked and ran around the monument to shoot and assault the Guard while the Rhino nosed onto the objective to contest.  With supporting fire from the Drop Pods and Dreadnought Slayer, the entire Guard blob was eliminated—the Kingbreakers actually had to hold of shooting a bit to ensure it remained in assault range.

Titus’s whole squad still intact, it consolidated on top of the objective.  Unable to get into cover from the assured return Russ Battle Cannon bombardments, the squad clustered tightly around the objective and prayed to their power armor to keep at least some alive and on the marker.  The game did in fact go on for another turn, and only two Marines survived the heavy shelling they received.  Both tried to clamber over the wrecked Landspeeder, but one got snagged and injured in the burning wreckage—a 1/6 fail on the difficult terrain check!—so only the meltagunner made it over, diving into the waiting Rhino for some much needed cover while holding the objective.

Potentially devastatingly, the game then went on to Turn 7!  The meltagunner’s Rhino was promptly smashed by sniping Lascannon teams and a Leman Russ, exploding in a shower of plasteel and electronics!  The rattled meltagunner inside survived purely by the Emperor’s mercy, tried to get as small as he could inside the resultant crater to stay out of sight from the remaining Russ.  His position in the crater then just barely managed to put him out of assault range from oncoming Guard flamers—the team rolling a 4 for difficult terrain, short by ~1 inch—to hold the objective for the final, dramatically arrived end of the game.

In sum, over the last three turns, that meltagunner had survived an assault on a 20 man squad, shelling by two Leman Russes, scrambling over a burning Landspeeder that claimed his only remaining buddy, the annihilation and explosion of the transport he was embarked in, and more shelling by Leman Russes, as well as flaming and near assault by a nearby Guard contingent.  All in all, definitely MVP of the Kingbreakers’ force in this match.

Meanwhile, in mopping up operations, Angholan and Slayer flushed the Guard’s Company command squad from its objective, while the remaining Tactical Marine squads moved to cement their positions on objectives.

Outcome

Kingbreakers win, three objectives to one, with one contested.  Both sides had plenty of units left; casualties were very light for the game, though a good number of Guardsmen had of course gone to meet the Emperor.  Life is cheap in the service of the Imperium.

Notes

One rules question we had was whether or not an Independent Character, such as the Primaris Psyker, can Outflank with the Platoon if he joins Al’rahem’s unit.  Notably, Al’rahem does not have Scout, which would be lost if an IC without Scout joins.  Instead, he simply forces his unit to go into reserve and Outflank.  We’ll have to look into this more, but we played it as the Psyker could join a squad in the platoon and Outflank.

Another rules note that came up is that unexploded, destroyed vehicles become wrecks, which count as difficult and dangerous terrain (main rulebook, page 62).  I don’t think most people realize you can move over wrecked vehicles, though I’d definitely try to be reasonable about putting models on somebody’s painted vehicle.  In this game it was important because I placed one of the Landspeeder wrecks to block one of the Guard platoons a bit, but that came back to haunt me later when Titus’ remaining guys wanted to run back to their Rhino.  Going around the ‘Speeder was too far, but fortunately they were able to use that rule to move over top of it, though one of them—amazingly and almost calamitously—failed the dangerous terrain check and bought the farm.

There were several times when I had to hold back shooting in order to leave enough enemy models to ensure an assault.  In a couple cases though the overkill couldn’t be easily avoided, leaving my guys out in the open rather than able to assault.  I would have had to not shoot with every model in the unit, let alone not shooting with other units.  That’s something I’ll have to get a better handle on and try to think about more in the future.

Another interesting point is that one critical move occurred early in the game.  Dreadnought Slayer was facing a small squad of meltagunners in front of him, and a 20 man squad with a couple meltagunners behind them.  I needed to remove some of the front meltagunners, but really wanted to get into assault with the large blob behind and tie it up.  Fortunately, I was able to shoot the squad behind, placing the flamer template over much of the small front unit and hitting a cluster in the rear unit.  That removed a bunch of the front meltagunners, and left room for Slayer to assault the large blob, which he could do because that was the unit he declared shooting at.  I’m not sure it’s totally obvious to all players that you don’t have to choose to flame the unit directly in front of you in that situation.

In general I was happy with my loadout.  This game saw intense use of all the Kingbreakers’ flamers.  Kiril runs a troop heavy list, and with the Outflanking Al’rahem, occasionally winds up in pretty close contact.  The Heavy Flamer upgrades on the Dreadnoughts are definitely worth the 10 points.  Vulkan’s Heavy Flamer gauntlet also seems to come in handy much more often than I thought it would.  In general I’ve been pretty happy with Vulkan.  A little vulnerable in close combat against some units, but in general he’s pretty versatile at both close combat and shooting, and obviously his army-wide twin linked buff is huge.  The Assault Cannon on the one Dread is expensive, but its four shots paid off in this game against the hordes of Guard models.  Sternguard were basically a waste this time, but they rolled a ridiculous 11 for scatter on their Pod.  If they’d come down closer to the Leman Russ on the board at that point, things could have gone a fair bit differently.  Really my biggest disappointment was the Lascannons in the Tactical squads.  One spent the bulk of the game too hidden to shoot anything, and the other moving too much.  When they did get to shoot they invariably whiffed.  That said though, they’re pretty cheap in the Tac Squads, and would be more useful if there hadn’t been as much terrain between them and the Russes.  Their squads did also hold two objectives and that’s what wins games, so the squads as a whole did fine.

I think one of the big problems for Kiril in this game was that his Russes wound up without a ton of shooting opportunities.  They found things to shoot at every turn, but a lot of it wasn’t super critical.  Between the terrain and my Pods, there was just too much intervening material from where he brought them on.  Outflanking right onto my guys was also super gutsy, for which I give him credit.  In the end a lot of those units got rolled by just the one Dreadnought, Drop Pods, and Angholan’s squad, but if he hadn’t come on there I would have been left largely to my own devices on top of most of the objectives.

One other thought is that I was very satisfied to win the game after the extensive late-game action around Titus’ squad in the center.  I figured staying in the Rhino was a safer move but was basically playing for a draw, hoping to bunker down and contest the center objective.  By hopping out and attacking the oncoming large blob it was risking a lot more with the potential ruination of the squad under return fire, but it was playing more aggressively for a decisive win by clearing the center objective.  In the end it maybe didn’t matter as Slayer and Angholan were also able to contest the Guard’s home objective, but without Titus absorbing massive firepower in the last two turns it’s possible one or another of my other squads would have been wiped out and lost their objectives.

All around a solid game—pretty even for most of it, then up in Kiril’s favor, and then decisively for the Kingbreakers.  A few more photos are available in the Flickr gallery.

Company Commander Zvezdarov watched through his scanner as the incoming blips moved ever closer.  Turning to Al’rahem, Zvezdarov gave the nod and off 1st Platoon went, engines roaring along a wide sweeping arc around the field ahead…

Kiril and I got in two 1500 pt games pts at PAGE the other night.  Most notably, he decided it would be a good time to experiment with Al’rahem.  For those unfamiliar with the IG codex, Al’rahem is an upgrade character that takes the role of a Platoon Command Squad officer.  He has some interesting things, like a Power Weapon that inflicts Instant Death regardless of toughness (if only Librarians’ Force Weapons were that useful!) and the ability to give two orders, but his big effect is that the whole Platoon must then Outflank, so he grants a flanking move to potentially dozens and dozens of Guardsmen, Weapons Teams, Chimeras, and so on.  Kiril doesn’t sound too sold on it, but personally I thought the results were very interesting and favorable.

Game 1

We roll for Pitched Battle and Seize Ground, though we made a minor mistake and played it D3+3 objectives.  Rolling a big 3, we wound up with a hefty 6 objectives on the table.  I put mine fairly tightly packed into one corner and Kiril spread his out along a much longer diagonal in the opposite corner.  I wound up going first.  He put everything into Reserve and I deployed pretty much everything, with one squad strung out between two of the objectives I placed and the others shifted over a little to go grab the objectives Kiril placed.

Rushing forward in the first two turns, I quickly camped out on 4 objectives and had units near all 6.  Then almost everything of Kiril’s came in on Turn 2.  Al’rahem and his Platoon Outflanked almost directly on top of my original corner objective, completely neglecting the objectives he had placed and the tempting center cluster of objectives.  The Leman Russ, Colossus, and various Heavy Weapons teams walked or rolled on alongside the same table edge as Al’rahem, camping out in terrain close to their long table edge.

The effect of this was to basically rotate the table.  My one squad was very close to the incoming Platoon, but everyone else faced a long slog to get over to Kiril’s forces.  It seemed unlikely he’d be able to challenge two of my captured objectives, but it left my nearer two unsupported, with a lot of ground to cover by the ‘Speeders and Dreads, getting shot up the whole time.  I had assumed he was going to try and Outflank directly on top of the objectives he’d placed close to the board edge, and it sounded afterward like that was his plan, but my big push up into there made that pretty risky so given the choice he came on the other side, completely opposite the bulk of my forces.

At this point I probably made a mistake.  My Tactical Squad holding my two starting objectives started retreating.  As strung out as they were, if they assaulted or were assaulted by the Platoon, only a few were going to be able to use the reaction move to get into the combat.  I was worried that being under strength in combat would then start the unit getting chewed up piecemeal, swarmed by overwhelming numbers.  In reality I should have sacrificed the unit in order to tie up as much of that Platoon as possible.  In the event, after running away from that objective, Marbo came down next to the same squad and I was faced with a tough choice between trying to take him out or keeping on shooting and trying to take down as many Guardsmen as possible.  I chose the latter, and Marbo started finishing off the two squads in that quarter as the Colossus pummeled them.  As Marbo advanced forward the Platoon behind crept along and eventually by the very end of Turn 5, various squads had made their way onto the three objectives I had placed.

Meanwhile, along the other long table edge, I was left relatively powerless.  The Sternguard came down aggressively, but there were just too many Guardsmen around to make much dent in the horde, and too many of them making a buffer around the Leman Russ and Colossus for the Sternguard to dispatch either.  Having advanced all my units forward and out to grab objectives, they faced a long slog to wheel around and get into position to really hurt the IG line.  In addition, the Tactical Squads couldn’t really do much without vacating their objectives.  A lot of my forces were therefore left either quietly sitting on objectives for the battle, or running toward the IG gunline.  Also in the last turn, as the IG ran for the objectives I had placed, Tactical 2’s remaining Combat Squad decamped from its Razorback hideout and strung out between two fortuitously placed objectives to claim both.  The hold was tenuous, several were killed by the pounding they of course took in Kiril’s last round of shooting, but the game ended at the bottom of 5 before they were forced to abandon an objective to move back into cohesion.

By the end not a lot of Guardsmen died, had but they also hadn’t really been in a position to hurt much more than my two post-rotation leading Tactical Squads, and most of the damage inflicted on them came from the Colossus.

Recap

The general flow of the battle, or close enough; the pictures roughly but not quite correspond to turns (some things have shifted up or down to ease narrative), and I might be off on the countless numbers of Guard foot squads:

Results

Draw, 3 objectives each.

Thoughts

Marbo is a pain in the ass.  Not a game breaker, but definitely annoying.  You have to shoot him or he’ll just whittle away your guys, but he’s also not really worth shooting at when you have juicier targets around.  Personally from a design standpoint I think that’s a good unit, with interesting tradeoffs imposed on the opposing player and has good utility to the Guard player.  Either he does a fair bit of damage, or he rather cheaply takes up some decent amount of shooting if he can get some cover.

Once the IG rotated the table, I should have vacated the leftmost objectives I had taken and come to those in the center of the table.  This would have exposed my guys to more attacks, but if they survived they would have potentially prevented the Guard from moving forward toward and onto those objectives.

The Outflank could have gone quite worse.  If Kiril had rolled to come on via the short edge directly by my guys, things could have gone pretty bad pretty fast for that Platoon.  That is a big risk at these point levels and how Kiril was playing it, where that Platoon was the bulk of his army.  However, I thought it was a pretty good tactic.  Outflanking units have a 2/3 chance of coming in on the table edge you desire, even without taking an Astropath and getting a re-roll on that.  At this point level, Al’rahem’s one Platoon could make up a substantial part of your army.  This potentially lets you set up all those forces far away from the opposing player, giving plenty of time for you to shoot them up.

Where I think that move might suffer is on boards with a fair amount of high terrain that blocks LOS.  In some ways that will work well, as the IG has a number of effective indirect fire weapons like the Colossus that will ignore the blockages, while many army builds will be stymied (how often do you see a Whirlwind out there?), yielding the perfect mix of cover for your own guys but still plenty of shooting opportunities.  On the other hand, most of the Heavy Weapons teams and so on will also be blocked in their shooting by the terrain.  It could also be problematic if the opponent stays castled up near the center then moves to attack after the Guard arrive, rather than trying to camp out objectives early like I did here.  Probably worse, that Outflank move seems vulnerable to highly mobile units.  Fast BA Rhinos, Dark Eldar Raiders, and so on could all deliver their units pretty quickly directly on top of the gunline.  But, that’s maybe not really any different than usual.

Also, I made a mistake in putting the Rhino with full Tactical Squad on the left edge.  With the way things turned out, it would have been better suited than the Razorback with Combat Squad to string out and claim the two center objectives as happened in the end game.  However, I was concerned about the whole platoon coming down on that one left objective, so I wanted a whole squad in that Rhino ready to pop out and wreak havoc.

Game 2

The second game proceeded similarly, although we rolled for Annihilation instead.  Expecting and receiving mostly the same tactic, I moved most of the Kingbreakers up close to the centerline of the table.  A few Ratlings and a small squad tried to create a distraction in the far corner, but they were quickly dispatched.  The rest of the Guard bunkered down, tucked tightly into a far edge.  From there I had to rush across 3–4 feet of pretty open ground, with a large number of Autocannons and Lascannons working on my vehicles while the Colossus went to town on my footslogging troops.

Results

Kiril won by one or two Kill Points, basically an extra popped Rhino and Landspeeder in the final round of shooting.

Lessons

This is exactly the kind of game where you really really want a Whirlwind, with a ton of closely bunched Guard Infantry.  It’s just a shame they’re probably not the most cost effective unit against other armies and situations.

More Lascannons in my army would be useful.  It’s just too difficult to cross that much ground without giving away too many models in order to swoop in for the Melta kills.  I’m starting to believe that 1) Meltas have been over-emphasized in the metagame, and 2) my early learning experiences have bent me to worrying more about hordes than I should.  Either way, I should start fielding more Lascannons, though I unfortunately don’t particularly like the model.  The range is just so short on Meltas that it can be pretty hard for many armies to deliver them reliably.

Importantly, the Kingbreakers wound up just a bit too far to the left after the first couple moves.  I shifted them off center a little in order to tuck in behind some terrain in case some of Kiril’s units came in directly in front of them.  However, I should have just risked absorbing that shooting in favor of coming in right on top of the centerline and being able to rush either way more quickly.  I also popped smoke too early, defending against that straight ahead shooting that didn’t come.  That cover should have been reserved for the charge across open ground to whichever table edge the Guard did come in on.

The Colossus is a real threat.  Wounds on 2s on most things, indirect fire, pins, and ignores Marine armor and cover saves.  It did the bulk of the killing in both games.  Notably, Kiril did a good job tucking it away.  Not only was it as far as possible from anything I had that could hurt it, but there was also a pretty good wall of troops around it preventing units, such as the Drop Podding Sternguard, from getting too close.  Hence the need for Lascannons.

Conclusion

All in all a good time, and two interesting and close games.  More and higher res photos are available in the Flickr gallery.  I’ll have to think more about how to do better against this approach.

Yesterday was the semi-final rounds of ‘Ard Boyz.  Colin, Anthony, and I from Redcap’s/PAGE CC went out to the Adventurer’s Guild in Harrisburg, PA.

It was actually a pretty interesting and fun day.  But, damn. Representative of the whole thing, the glue on a bunch of my models decided to spectacularly, improbably collectively fail and now I’ve got a Drop Pod in a dozen pieces and a whole bunch of Sternguard and Assault Squad arms and heads rolling around in their case (Heads? What the hell?).  This is basically reflective of how I performed for the day.  It was almost like everyone else showed up to play 40k, and I showed up ready for Tiddlywinks…  Damn.

Scenarios

Scenarios are up on GW’s site.  Basically they consist of:

• Spearhead deployment, with three objectives placed along the neutral diagonal.  The neutral table quarters also have fog, applying Nightfighting rules.
• Pitched Battle deployment, with both players Deep Striking in two objectives anywhere on the table.
• Dawn of War deployment in an Annihilation mission with two objectives as bonus points & tie breakers, and each player having an entire short edge along which they may also bring in units.

All in all I thought the scenarios were pretty good.  Not too crazy and mixed things up just a little.  I also liked the strong emphasis on playing for objectives and table aspects, even with the Annihilation mission.  GW and John Schaffer also get credit for quickly posting revised versions clarifying a number of questions that were raised.

The only part I thought was a little unfortunate was the fog mechanic in the first scenario.  It’s a great scenario and a great idea, but I’m not sure how well it works in that competitive environment with a lot of emphasis on playing super fast.  It seems easy to overlook various parts of it (applying the fog, rolling for it to lift in each quarter, measuring it out/determining LOS accurately, etc.).  In my game I knew we were playing it slightly wrong (i.e., rolling for the whole table to lift rather than each quarter) but I let it roll because it just didn’t matter.

Game 1: Blood Angels

The primary reason it didn’t matter was because the game quickly came down to a lot of close range shooting and assaults.  This was the first time I’d faced a new Blood Angels list, and it was crazy.  The list was something like:

• Astorath with Death Company or Assault Squad
• Lemartes with Assault Squad
• Five or Six Dreadnoughts, mostly Furioso, some as Librarians, and some DC and regular, several of them in Drop Pods
• Three Storm Ravens
• Some other Assault Squads

Despite some premature and misplaced handwringing, the Furioso is incredible.  At around a meager 125 points it’s a MEQ killing machine.  Maybe not as strong against hordes and units with many weak models just due to the probabilities, but clearly awesome against smallish, more elite units; this is one of the main points the linked BoLS post missed, in addition to seriously overreacting to a single play.  The Furioso has a built-in Meltagun for potshots at bigger stuff, but the real story are the free-upgrade Blood Talons.  Stepping into assault with a pair of those, the Dread strikes simultaneously (I 4)—importantly, before any Powerfists—with 4 attacks (A 2, plus one for 2 CC, plus one for the charge), hits on 3s (WS 6), wounds on 2s (S 6), rerolls any failed wounds (Lightning Claws), permits no armor saves (Power Weapon), and then for every unsaved wound, it gets an immediate extra attack (!), which can then themselves be chained if they succeed (!!).  And all of that is assuming it hasn’t rolled for the Red Thirst, which would give it Furious Charge (+1 Initiative and Strength).  Plus, it’s armor 13 in front and a walker, so Krak Grenades can’t hurt it, Melta Bombs need a 6 to place with their single chance, Relic Blades can’t touch it, and even a Powerfist is going to have a hard time wrecking it.  And, you know, remember they’re only 125 points…

Worse though, that’s assuming the Powerfist even survives to get its attacks.  It’s not.  The Furioso can easily, reliably wipe out a full squad of MEQs.  Even Colin’s Plague Marines were annihilated by them. All in all, they’re a ridiculous nut to crack.  Your only chance is shooting, but if they Pod in on top of you or drop out of a Storm Raven, you’re not going to get many chances to do so before it’s all over your guys, and it is in turn all over for them.  Within a MEQ squad, Melta Bombs would have a pretty slim chance of taking it down in exchange for it simultaneously killing the whole squad, and that’s basically your only chance, as far as I can tell.

Beyond that, another Dreadnought could slug it out with a Furioso reasonably well in what would most likely be a pretty drawn out combat given the limited attacks.  Demon Princes and probably some of the Greater Demons and main Demons are most likely the best killers though, with their higher Initiative and large number of 2D6 penetrating attacks.

I also had to upgrade my assessment of Stormravens.  They pack a significant amount of firepower on their own, almost a ridiculous assortment of weaponry.  Worse, they’re highly mobile firebases; between being Fast and having Power of the Machine Spirit (fire one additional weapon) they can move pretty far and still shoot a large portion of their weapons.  Armor 12 is also no slouch, and with that mobility it’s hard to bring meltaguns to bear against them.  Worst though, the Ceramite Plating on their hull removes the D6 bonus from Melta shots. That’s a problem for anti-vehicle forces built around Melta. The three Storm Ravens I faced here absorbed a fairly significant amount of shots that would have destroyed normal medium vehicles, and I only took one down in the end.  As a side note, this BA player had really nice Stormravens, converted from Valkyries following the BoLS articles.

The plentiful rerolls to hit and to wound and Furious Charge traits granted by various characters spread throughout the army also mean that there are a large number of absolutely brutal assault units in the army, particularly combined with the large number of Power Weapons some of them can take.

All in all, I think really fighting Blood Angels is going to take some serious thought and specialization, or lots of mechanized protection and tons of firepower.

Game 2: Imperial Guard

Speaking of which, after getting shelled in Game 1, continuing my tour of the popular metagame, I faced a heavily mechanized Guard list, with something like:

• Two Company Command Squads
• Ton of veterans with meltaguns in Chimeras
• Ton of heavy weapons with lascannons in Chimeras
• Two Vendettas with lascannons galore
• Three Hydras
• Two Manticores
• Two Banewolfs

I rolled and chose to go first.  I probably should have gone second and reserved everything, but it seemed unlikely I could go toe-to-toe in a shooting war with that army, particularly as the table was unfortunately almost completely wide open, with very little terrain available to block anything.  Expecting him to then go entirely into Reserve, as he did, by going first I was hoping I could get most of my guys over onto his table side and pick them off at close quarters as they filtered in from Reserves.

In practice though it was a disaster.  Almost everything he had except a Vendetta, Manticore, and maybe a Chimera came in on Turn 2.  He rolled high enough throughout the Reserve rolls that it didn’t matter, but in hindsight an Astropath goes a long way to making that happen. So many tanks came on that they had to go cheek to cheek all along the line just to fit on the board.  Immediately afterward, they poured a ton of shots into my half-exposed guys that was just crippling.  Most emotionally devastating was the Sternguard who had come down in their Pod and set up near an objective in area terrain, fearing incoming Blast templates.  Having never faced them though and allowing them to slip out of mind, I’d not taken into account the Banewolfs, which rolled on and obliterated them with their chemical templates.  The screams of my Sternguard as they roiled in the chemical bath will haunt my dreams for some weeks to come.

After that it was just a long series of my guys getting pounded by shooting, with no viable way to really counter that many vehicles. I’d obviously thought about this kind of mech Guard list beforehand, but it just hadn’t really clicked with me exactly how many vehicles we were really talking about.

One thing I’ll note is that although they’re not flashy, Chimeras are no slouch, and an extremely valuable and relatively cheap unit.  They pack a lot of firepower on their own, particularly when they get close and can apply their Heavy Flamers, and the Multi-Lasers are pretty good against a variety of targets.  Their AV 12 front armor’s also very solid, and the weaker side flanks just don’t apply if there are so many tanks pressed up against each other that you can’t physically see any of the sides… Worst though, the large number of fire points provides an amazing bunker from which to shoot out.  Combine that with the large number of specialty weapons available to the Veterans and other squads, and you’ve got the makings of a lot of ridiculousness.

Game 3: Tyranid

After all that, I went up against Anthony and his Tyranid monster list.  This was a closely contested battle, refreshing after the previous horrible beatings.  In the end we tied on Kill Points, with me killing more scoring units to take that bonus point, but he held his objective and I did not hold mine so he won the tie breaker.  Tragically, if just one more Termagaunt had died under the heavy fire its unit received in my last round of shooting, I would have taken another KP and the victory.

This was a great, fluffy game, with many giant monster boards steadily rolling toward the Kingbreakers’ defensive line.

One thing that went well in the game was that I went second and put everything except my Drop Pods into Dawn of War, bringing it on in Turn 1.  As I hoped, that permitted Anthony to extend too far, coming in well up on his short table edge as the mission rules allowed.  I was then able to sweep in on top of those units with a lot of flamers and shooting, racking up early Kill Points.

However, one thing that permitted was that it gave Anthony the choice of table edge.  Along the side I wound up with there were a bunch of big building and ruins pieces.  It seriously cut down my line of sight, particularly across the long axis for enfilade and supporting shots, and funneled everybody into a couple fairly distinct channels. This was unfortunate as it provided a lot of cover for advancing ‘Nids, disturbing my fire prioritization and preventing my guys from ganging up shooting.

The other was that the Librarian came on very poorly placed.  I just wasn’t thinking about it; I was pretty fried and most of my Tyranid games have been at low points without a lot of monsters around.  In the event, Librarian Rorschach was not where he needed to be and it left a bunch of my guys very exposed to psychic effects and attacks from the Hive Tyrant and Zoanthropes, which promptly devastated a couple units, most notably my Sternguard.

Other Thoughts

One side observation that occurred to me is that I usually work out my army list in a spreadsheet and don’t denote all the stats.  It’s not usually an issue for anyone because most people are familiar with Marines, but I realized that it’s really nice when an opponent gives you a list that has all the stats on it, particularly for more rare armies or lists with many different types of units. I’ll have to work that into my spreadsheets somehow.

Back to ‘Ard Boyz, one common feature in many matches seemed to be objectives contested or gained at the last minute by very small units, often swinging people from victory to defeat and vice versa.  For example, in my first match, despite being absolutely slaughtered, my sole remaining viable unit, a single Landspeeder, managed to dash onto an objective at the very end and hold on to contest it, keeping my opponent to a Major Victory rather than a Massacre.  Colin was on the reverse side of that in his first two matches, with opponents decimated and even tabled for all but a few models that just barely managed to move onto and contest or hold an objective at the last minute.  I think this occurrence is mostly a product of missions with many objectives, which is great, and the sheer number of points involved (2500).  With so many models around, there’s a good chance there’ll be some stragglers around who are likely to be near an objective and make a last minute grab.  I also think this effect is also a product of people both choosing to focus on tabling opponents rather than play the objectives, and people still learning how to focus on objectives.  I think many people, including me, still aren’t good at really bunkering down around objectives and creating a buffer zone that prevents it from being contested at the last minute.  Similarly, target priorities probably need to be adjusted a bit to take out those units earlier that are most likely to be able to contest or hold, which may not be the units presenting the biggest immediate threats.

Looking around at the 11 tables in play, the list of armies was somewhat interesting.  Beforehand I had predicted lots of Imperial Guard, Blood Angels, and Space Wolves, in that order.  The first two were correct, mechanized IG and Dreadnought/Stormraven BA were all over the place, but there was apparently at most one Space Wolves player, which definitely surprised me.  There were also only two Tyranids and two Chaos Marines, though the latter wasn’t a huge shock. Several varieties of vanilla Marines were present, including lots of Terminators, a couple Salamanders, and Shrike.  Surprisingly, I had some trouble identifying who was who at the end, but I think a Khan bike army actually won the whole day.  A single Tau and one Eldar player were present, though I did not see how they fared.  Perhaps most surprisingly, there were absolutely zero Orks fielded.

Notably given ‘Ard Boyz’ reputation, there were a lot of great paint schemes and armies on display.  Although somewhat more subtle than many, one of the best was Justin from Big Gunz’ Genestealer Cultist army made out of super converted Skaven Plague Monks and Tyranids.  It didn’t really stand out from a distance like some of the bright, flashy Salamanders paintjobs and others, but when you really looked at the army it was great.

It also seemed fairly clear that the ‘Ard Boyz format of three matches is reasonable, and about all you could realistically manage within a single day at that points level, but it’s pretty random.  I believe if you have 2^n players in a Swiss Pairs style tournament then you need n rounds to ensure the best players face each other at some point.  I haven’t done the math, but it seems like the Battle Points scheme and the smaller groupings mitigates that requirement to some extent, but it’s surely still similar.  Three rounds just isn’t enough to definitively settle everything out for the number of people playing in these things, so there’s a fair amount lot of luck involved in getting ideal matchups against your army, whether based on the factions, lists, or weaknesses of the opposing players.

However, good scenario design can help mitigate this by having distinctly gradated victory conditions, better differentiating players.  For example, Scenario 3 in the Preliminary Round of this year’s ‘Ard Boyz probably didn’t accomplish this because if you won you most likely got a Massacre because the Kill Points thresholds between the different levels were set too close given how many were offered in the modified rules.  However, the scenarios in this semi-final round probably did a good job at accomplishing the needed differentiation.  The heavy focus on objectives and the tough requirements to pull off Massacres meant you really needed to be on the ball, and strongly better players could pull off better results than good but slightly weaker players.  This kind of structure is something tournament scenario designers should really think about and try to build in.

In Closing

All in all, despite getting clobbered, I had a pretty good time.  The atmosphere and armies were very different than at PAGE or Redcap’s, and it was very interesting—and soulcrushing—to go face real competitive Blood Angel or Imperial Guard lists.  Although there seemed to be the expected rules lawyers and slight rising of tensions throughout the day, my opponents seemed like pretty good guys (except that jerk Anthony, obviously), and my impression was that nobody was too over the top.

Rich and the guys at the Adventurer’s Guild also did a great job setting up and running the event.  I’d never been there before, but it seems like a cool store with good atmosphere and a ton of product. Things ran pretty much on time, Rich made sure no one had to sit out a bye when people (poorly) left early, and the whole atmosphere was just really solid.  They also had a good amount of terrain on most of the tables, and a lot of it was actually really nice pieces.  Good stuff all around.

Now the planning and scheming starts for next year.  I’ll definitely have to make some time to start playing at Showcase and other area locations to get more exposure to anything like the sort of forces throwing down at this event.  In the interim, on to planning for the upcoming PAGE Apocalypse/Planetstrike, Spearhead, and Kill Team events!

A few more photos and higher res versions are available in the Flickr gallery.

Week 2 of the first round of the Redcap’s 40k League went down yesterday, with 7 people showing up to play in the league.  So far we have a reasonably diverse group of armies: Chaos Marines, two Imperial Guards, two Space Marines, Orks, Tau, and Dark Eldar (!).

Last night I played against Rob and his Tau.  I was looking forward to this because Rob’s a fun guy to play against and nothing says awesome like getting gunned down by blast templates aplenty…

Rob’s list was actually fairly interesting.  It featured very few Fire Warriors and no Hammerheads, but a large number of Kroot and good amount of Broadsides.  I rolled my typical 1500 points of Sternguard, three Tacs, Devastators, two Landspeeders, and Captain, with some Drop Pods and a Rhino and Razorback thrown in.

From the league missions we rolled for Pitched Battle (12″ zones) and Capture and Control (one objective each).  I was tempted to put my objective immediately across from his and force a very close, tight battle within a confined space on the board—favoring my Kingbreakers with a lot of assault against the pushover Tau—but opted against it. Probably a bad strategic call, but I just didn’t want to throw half the table away to waste with no action, which is assuredly what would have happened.

Following that, I actually did manage to roll and Seize the Initiative.  I knew things were not going to go well, however, when my first turn essentially accomplished nothing despite that sneak attack.  The utter lack of dead Fire Warriors, Kroot, or anything afterward was not confidence inspiring.

By the end of Turn 3 I thought I was in real trouble.  I’d lost my home objective, made little progress on the Tau objective, and just had not really killed much of anything.  In general not a lot of things actually died in the game, very few Kill Points were taken, but I was definitely on the wrong side of the trend.

Most critical of my mistakes was that I had placed my home objective very close to a short board edge, and very minimally defended it with only one Combat Squad placed to guard it.  That left it wide open for a large group of Kroot to outflank and stomp all over it in short order, obliterating the Combat Squad.  To be honest, I’m not sure what I was thinking.  I think it’s just been so rare for me to fight armies with real outflank potential that I just didn’t think about it.

My list was also somewhat poor.  With only two Drop Pods, one of them is coming down unsupported in Turn 1, leaving them ripe to be pummeled.  I fortunately managed to back Sgt Harbinger’s Sternguard out before real destruction could be inflicted on them, but they didn’t accomplish much with their alpha strike.  Similarly, Scolirus’ Tactical 1 also managed to accomplish precious little after its drop before being utterly gutted in a single round of incredibly voluminous counter fire from the Tau line.

Fortunately (for me), in Turn 4 the momentum shifted dramatically.  My one saving grace in deployment was that I had kept back a Razorback with Combat Squad in case it had to swing over and support the guys guarding my home objectives.  By the time it got there the guards were all dead and the Razorback wrecked, but they were just able to jump out of the wreckage and flame the hell out of the Kroot packed tightly into the crater holding the objective.  A third or more them were removed from that round of shooting.  More importantly, the Kroot failed their morale check and broke, running for the hills.  That vacated the objective and all of a sudden things looked much brighter.

On the other side of the table, my offense finally managed to coalesce near the Tau objective.  The Landspeeders severely thinned the line of Kroot setting the outer perimeter before being immobilized by Broadsides.  Tactical 2 and Sgt Titus drove the flaming wreckage of their Rhino straight through the remaining Kroot and bailed just in time to run for the Tau base as it exploded.  Meanwhile, Capt Angholan and Sgt Harbinger regrouped their Sternguard and redirected up behind Titus, running and gunning at the Tau Commanders overlooking the approach.

From there, a tense battle was waged inside the base.  The remnants of Tactical 1 continued to battle on inside, the few remaining Fire Warriors presenting an unusually strong defense.  Titus and crew successfully scaled the levels of the ruins, assaulting the Tau defenders and throwing them to the ground floor.  Perfectly placed, Angholan shouldered through the rubble and into the newly displaced and disoriented Tau, singlehandedly slaying all of them with a single sweeping blow of his Relic Blade.

Encouraged by the breakthrough of their brethren into the Tau base, the lone defending Combat Squad tenaciously clung to the Kingbreakers encampment.  Careful placement kept the Kroot fleeing while barely holding onto the objective, as the battle brothers kept their Bolters roaring and piled on the flames to stave off a recently arrived group of Stealth Suits.

Both groups were relieved beyond words when the skies blackened and turned to fire as reinforcements arrived, the field held for the arriving Kingbreakers by a thread…

Lessons

Again, placement of my home objective was terrible.  I should have been castled up much more and much farther from the edges to forfend outflanking Kroot.  Nobody takes them that seriously, but them and their hounds put out something like 55 attacks onto that Combat Squad…  I take them more seriously now.

Another mistake, that I knew going in, is again that two Drop Pods is just a weak formation.  It doesn’t pack enough oomph to really pull off a meaningful first strike.

Rob probably should have been able to take this game.  I really had to pull myself back together after the first couple turns and those two big oversights plus a lot of little tactics errors, and would have been happy to eke out a draw, let alone the minor victory.

Really I think his biggest general mistake was that he didn’t move his Kroot enough during the game.  In particular, the one unit was somewhat left out in the center of his zone toward the end of the game.  If they’d moved earlier to come support his home objective, they could have almost definitely swept my guys back out of his base.

He also arguably should have assaulted my remaining Combat Squad in Turn 5 with his Stealth Suits.  It wouldn’t have gotten him on the objective, but it would have pulled me off it.  I had been forced to be stretched out too far away from the objective in order to keep the Kroot fleeing, so the mandatory countermove would have emptied the crater.  As it was, I had to allocate wounds super tactically and pull off some more valuable models (e.g., the Sarge) in order to keep the unit within 3″ of the marker.  However, he did note that he hoped the game would go on another turn and was hoping to wipe out the unit with shooting and have the Kroot rally and return, so there was some rationale to not assaulting and working toward the more likely draw.

All in all, a very tight game with a lot of back and forth and close calls.

A notable aspect of my meta-gaming over the past couple months has been debating whether or not to phase out my Terminators.  Sometimes they’re super effective.  But they’re frequently hard to get into place, particularly as safe Deep Strike locations are typically limited on the terrain-heavy boards I usually play on, and smart opponents will take down Drop Pods with Locator Beacons before the Terminators arrive from Reserves.  Often the Terminators are left just out of useful range as they huff and puff, running around the battle after Deep Striking, trying to catch up to their targets.  I’m not super interested in meching up into Landraiders to deliver them, so this is a problem.

As part of that train of thought, I’m considering shifting my Terminators from a Deep Striking offensive unit into a static, hard group of defenders around a home objective.  Under that plan, Terminators would deploy just forward of likely inbound paths, focus on shooting, and then step out to block any incoming push in order to stall it well forward of claiming the objective.  Alternatively, the Terminators would hang out right around the objective and be in place to guard against outflanking units and those damn Space Wolves Scouts (which I believe can enter from your table edge).

As part of that, I’m thinking about quickly rigging up some sort of Cyclone Missile Launcher for one of my Terminators (not having one on hand), and replacing the squad’s Assault Cannon with that.  I like the Assault Cannon, but it’s a legitimate question as to which is more useful.  One way to start breaking this down is by the squad’s intended primary targets: Are they for killing vehicles, or infantry?

For vehicle hunting, the tradeoffs are fairly interesting.  Four strength 6 shots with the Assault Cannon versus two strength 8 shots with the Krak Missile.  It’s not super obvious which is better.  Obviously, the Krak Missile has a chance to take down AV 14 vehicles, which the Assault Cannon just doesn’t.  However, more realistically these guys would probably be shooting at light and medium vehicles.  Rhinos, Chimeras, and Dreadnoughts are the ubiquitous examples there, so let’s look at them.

• Rhinos (AV 11 front/side):
  • Assault Cannon
    • 4*2/3 chance to hit (BS 4) = 2.667 hits
    • 2.667 * 1/6 chance to penetrate = 0.444 penetrating hits
    • 0.444 * 1/3 chance to wreck or explode = 14.8% chance of destroying AV 11
  • Cyclone ML
    • 2*2/3 chance to hit (BS 4) = 1.333 hits
    • 1.333 * 1/2 chance to penetrate = 0.666 penetrating hits
    • 0.666 * 1/3 chance to wreck or explode = 22.2% chance of destroying AV 11
• Chimeras and Dreadnoughts (AV 12 front):
  • Assault Cannon works out the same as for AV11 due to Rending:
    • 4*2/3 chance to hit (BS 4) = 2.667 hits
    • 2.667 * 1/6 chance to penetrate = 0.444 penetrating hits
    • 0.444 * 1/3 chance to wreck or explode = 14.8% chance of destroying AV 12
  • Cyclone ML
    • 2*2/3 chance to hit (BS 4) = 1.333 hits
    • 1.333 * 1/3 chance to penetrate = 0.444 penetrating hits
    • 0.444 * 1/3 chance to wreck or explode = 14.8% chance of destroying AV 12
• Predators (AV 13 front):
  • Assault Cannon:
    • 4*2/3 chance to hit (BS 4) = 2.667 hits
    • 2.667 * 1/9 chance to penetrate (AP of 6 plus 2 or 3 rending, probability 1/6 times 2/3) = 0.296 penetrating hits
    • 0.296 * 1/3 chance to wreck or explode = 9.9% chance of destroying AV 13
  • Cyclone ML
    • 2*2/3 chance to hit (BS 4) = 1.333 hits
    • 1.333 * 1/6 chance to penetrate = 0.222 penetrating hits
    • 0.222 * 1/3 chance to wreck or explode = 7.4% chance of destroying AV 13

Assuming all of that is correct, the Cyclone is a little bit better at popping Rhinos, but they’re equivalent against Chimeras and Dreadnoughts, and Assault Cannons are slightly better at Predators.  That’s a tough call on which is better, though I’d give a slight edge to the practical utility and likelihood of popping Rhinos with the Cyclone ML.

For infantry killing it’s again a tough call.  Straight-up against each other, I’d say the Assault Cannon is the clear winner.  Even with the Cyclone’s blast template with the Frag Missile and placing two of them, I would not expect to routinely get three or four hits on target as I would expect from the Assault Cannon.  Most opponents are just too good about keeping their squads spread out and in a nice linear formation you’re likely to scatter off.  However, the Cyclone doesn’t replace the Terminator’s Storm Bolter and both can be fired at once, so at the same range as the Assault Cannon the model wielding the Cyclone will probably get the same number of hits.

Confusing the issue even further, the Assault Cannon has a heavier punch in general, particularly as compared to the Storm Bolter, but the Cyclone ML can get those two strong Krak Missile hits in.  The Cyclone ML also has almost double the range.

All in all, I think all of the above means the Cyclone gets the slight edge, but these are very comparable weapons.  I consider that an example of good game design—two equivalently costed options that don’t have a clearly stronger option, but favor two different styles of play and work best against slightly different enemies.

For me at this particular moment that means I can de-prioritize modeling work on a Cyclone ML for this weekend at ‘Ard Boyz in favor of more critical tasks.  If I wind up rolling my existing Assault Cannon Terminator, it won’t be a big weakness or disadvantage comparing to fielding a new Cyclone Missile Launcher.

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!

A few more photos are available in the Flickr gallery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

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.

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.

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!