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.

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.

I’ve been posting this around various fora, but just in case this catches anyone else in the Philadelphia area: Redcap’s Corner Gaming Store in Center City/West Philly is starting up a monthly 40k league, beginning next week. Basic idea:

• Everyone is encouraged to come Thursdays at 6pm, which will be set aside for 40k, but matches may be played at the store any time.
• Reg is $5 or a $15 purchase for each one month round, with store credit going to the top two finishers.
• 1500pt armies, you must use the same codex throughout the round but can use different lists. Missions are based on the standard ones with some extra victory conditions.
• Best 4 matches each month count toward your results.

Mission scenarios, rules summary (everything but obscure details like what if a new codex comes out), and so on are available here:

http://www.pagegaming.com/uploads/Warhammer40k/redcaps-40k-league.pdf

I’m planning on being there each Thursday in June to get this off the ground, so I hope others will join me as well!

Results from the 40k ‘Ard Boyz preliminary round at Redcap’s Corner:

Rank	Player	Battle Points	Victory Points	Faction
1st	Colin	54	3129	Chaos Marines (all foot Nurgle & Iron Warriors)
2nd	Anthony	42	3013	Tyranid (heavy on big monsters)
3rd	Joe K	32	2330	Kingbreakers Space Marines (balanced)
4th	Sam	32	2002	Orks (balanced slightly mech focused)
5th	Andrew	23	3616	Tau (heavy on Crisis Suits)
6th	Rob	23	1390	Tau (very mixed)

Turnout was a little disappointing but workable.  Most people from PAGE were unavailable this weekend.  In general I think although moving the schedule up a couple months may improve attendance at the later rounds, it crippled attendance at the preliminary.  In mid-May there’s just too much going on with schools, sports, etc., I think June and July are much more open for this sort of all day gaming affair.

However, we had a great time.  The group was pretty well balanced.  Despite the decent spread of points above, it was actually a fairly close bunch in terms of ability.  For example, Colin and I both played Andrew and both thought him a super tough opponent despite winding up on the bottom of the stack.  The sheer firepower his Tau were putting out was almost unbelievable, as attested by the number of Victory Points he racked up.

Quickly, I think the missions were mostly reasonable and probably more mainstream than last year.  The third scenario and its heavy penalties on fast units and vehicles was a little weird, but not crippling.  I don’t think anyone except Colin optimized against it in our group, but even for him there’s a good chance he would have brought the same no-vehicles list anyway and has done so in the past.

I had mixed feelings about the lack of Dawn of War setups.  That’s a hard start for non-mechanized forces, so it makes some sense in terms of the apparent general agenda to boost foot armies.  But it is an interesting tactical problem so I sort of missed it.

What I really did miss though were more missions based around objectives.  The second and third scenarios were effectively both variants on Annihilation.  That’s fine, but I think objective based missions are in many ways more interesting, and more of what people are playing at this point.

The emphasis on Victory Points for both mission (e.g., second scenario goals) and tournament parameters (e.g., the bonus point in the 3rd scenario for killing 3000 points throughout the tournament) was also interesting.  I do think they’re more balanced than standard Kill Points—there’s just no way a Rhino should yield up anything near the same value as wiping out a group of Plague Marines…  But, they are definitely just enough of a hassle to calculate that they’re problematic.  Among friends it’s no big deal, but in a schedule crunched tournament every couple minutes is crucial.  More importantly, I think they lead to creating more mistakes in accounting when people slip up in their math and so on.  Really it would be best to have some sort of modified Kill Points scheme that had the quickness of standard Kill Points but the balance of Victory Points.  I’ll have to think about what that might be, it’s not totally obvious.  For example, you can’t really just give rules like “Dedicated Transports are 1 Kill Point” since several armies have Landraiders in that slot, which should again clearly give up more value than Rhinos and Chimeras.

In any event, my battle report(s) are to come, but below are some photos.  More are available in my flickr gallery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Structure

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

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

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

Background

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

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

Mission 4: Population

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

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

Goals

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

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

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

Morality

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

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

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

Tournament Stuff

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

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

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

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

Mission

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next, I have a bunch of different columns:

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

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

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

Now on to the slightly more interesting stuff…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=SUM(G2:G65)

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

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

=COUNTIF(A2:A66;"HQ")

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

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