40k: 1500pts Versus Chaos Marines

Posted on 2013/09/27 by tjkopena

Last night I made it out for Thursday 40k at Redcap’s. One thing that blew me away immediately was the ~12 people there for 40k (and a little Warmachine)! Quite a change from years past. It was particularly awesome to have a solid PAGE crew on hand: Lovell, Tom, Buford, James, and myself were all battling it out.

Alternate Thunderfire Cannon in an Imperial Fists army.

Pretty cool third-party Thunderfire Cannon model in somebody’s Imperial Fists army.

Tom and I got in a 1500pt round of Chaos versus Kingbreakers, basically a refresher game. I haven’t played since January, and that three game tournament made up my entire play experience with 6th edition before tonight!

Army

For the most part my list was constrained to be entirely fully painted, WYSIWYG models. Well, caveat a base-painted Techmarine, but his Thunderfire Cannon is painted! Pretty standard Kingbreakers, slightly less Drop-Poddy than usual:

Capt Angholan—Vulkan
Librarian Rorschach—Librarian w/ Terminator Armor, Storm Shield
Sternguard x5 w/ Drop Pod, 3x Combi-Meltas
Tacticals x5 w/ Razorback, Powerfist
Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino, Missile Laucher, Meltagun
Tacticals x10 w/ Missile Launcher, Flamer
Devastators x7 w/ 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
Thunderfire Cannon
Landspeeders x3

Tom had Chaos Marines with Daemons friends, something like a Chaos Marine Demon Prince, Daemon Prince, Lord + Berzerkers w/ Rhino, Chaos Space Marines, Bloodletters, Flesh Hounds, Obliterators, Maulerfiend, Soul Grinder.

Tom blowin’ things up!

Battle

Deployment came up Vanguard or whatever the cross-corners setup is called these days. The mission was Big Guns Never Tire. This was actually important because we both had Heavy Support units that wound up mattering due to the mission rule counting them for scoring.

We basically implicitly conspired to stack up three of the four objectives in my corner. This was a mistake on my part, especially on this deployment style. It’s not so awesome essentially sitting there on three objectives, staring at a slavering horde of Khorne’s faithful looking at you hungrily.

Tom Infiltrated and Scouted his Hounds basically right in my face, ready for a Turn 1 assault on my corner objective. I knew I should just ignore the beasts. But I was worried about that whole Tactical Squad getting swept right away. I was also thinking about trying to use my Sternguard less aggressively, keeping them alive for longer. So I dropped my Pod on the Hounds, hoping to shoot them away quickly and then turn around to Combi-Melta the Soul Grinder next turn as it advanced out of the rear terrain toward my line. The hounds though did not die. Half my army wound up shooting at them and still one remained on the board. After my Sternguard got pummeled by heavy shooting that one hound turned out to be one of Khorne’s favorite pets or something, because he tied up my Librarian and a Sternguard for ~4 turns in a piss-poor display of Space Marine close combat skills.

The line awaits.

HRUH?!

After that the Chaos guys basically came at my guys while my guys tried to blast away at them. Landspeeders went after the mobile troops, including a nice combo-attack popping the Rhino and frying the guys inside. The Thunderfire dumped some shots into the troops hidden way back on the Chaos corner objective, and some into the oncoming horde. Eventually the troops got mangled pretty well, but the big guys can soak up a ton of damage and proceeded to do so while my guys all braced for impact. Vulkan leapt out of his quickly retreating command Razorback to shield a Tactical Squad bravely standing their ground and wound up in mortal combat with the traitor Daemon Prince. Kingbreakers everywhere looked for their usual Drop Pod reinforcements but today it was not to be.

Hold the line!

Outcome

For a while it looked like it was going to be a close one, with Tom all over my guys but not able to claim enough objectives. In the end though he locked it up pretty well, able to keep fragments of squads on two objectives while contesting another to leave me with just one. He also managed to sweep the bonus points, popping a Landspeeder before I could wipe out the Hounds, eventually killing Vulkan, and being in my deployment zone. CHAOS!

And the beast strode amongst them as though a god!

Analysis

Both of us were kind of rusty but I think played fairly correctly and not terribly terribly slowly. I forgot my characters all got a Mastercrafted upgrade, Tom incorrectly thought his Prince was forced to Challenge, and I think we rolled a couple vehicle assaults incorrectly, but otherwise clean.

In general I think I failed to utilize what mobility I had, and should have brought more. I let myself got boxed in to close quarters, something I’m usually trying to do to others, and even though I didn’t actually lose a ton of guys, they couldn’t do much either. NEEDS MOAH DROP PODS!

Thoughts

Following discussion from last week, my Librarian of course rolled a stupid power on the Telekinesis chart and I opted for the base power (Assail, a beam attack). Though I keep repeating myself on this I’ll say it again: These random powers are just annoying and unfortunate.

Afterward Tom and I were talking about why I roll Vulkan, even without excessive amounts of Melta. Basically, even without taking serious advantage of his buffs, I think he’s still a pretty good bargan. Not that many Marines can stand up at all to an angry Daemon Prince, and Vulkan’s one of them. His 3++ is huge and the Relic Blade + Mastercrafted + Digital Weapons is just enough to get in a couple good shots on a big guy. In addition to committing you to other Chapter Tactics, the other Marine heavies like Lysander and Marneus are more points and somewhat less flexible: Lysander can’t Sweeping Advance, they can’t get into Rhinos, etc..

With the Landspeeders I’m always torn about whether to fly them individually or as a squad. Generally I do the latter to not give away kills so easily. In this case I ran them separately, which made it tougher for Tom’s small army since he had to spread shots and assaults across them.

In the previous edition the Thunderfire Cannon was obviously asking for Barrage and/or Large Blast to be really useful. So obviously that I don’t know what the hell GW’s designers were thinking debuting it without them. Direct fire only for a fragile artillery piece made it a questionable selection. This edition it got Barrage, which makes it much more appealing and fills a hole in the Marine codex—there’s never been much/any indirect fire in there. Against an elite-ish Power Armour army like CSM the Cannon’s not super amazing, there’s too few guys to reap a ton of hits, but I was ok with its performance. Faced with weaker, more numerous infantry it’d be a reasonable purchase for clearing backfield objectives. Large Blast would still be nice, and not obviously overpowered—with the full 2D6 scatter you couldn’t easily drop shots anywhere near your own guys—but overall it’s useful. It’s more or less competing for army points though against the Hunter/Stalker, and the latter probably gets the nod for combatting flyers.

Finally, the more I see them, the more Challenges come up a bit short rules-wise. I’d be totally down for HQs being able to challenge other HQs or something like that. Then you could even have cool fluff, like some special HQs being cowardly/strategic and able to reject a challenge, or Company Champions being uniquely able to take the challenge for their HQ, etc. But it’s pretty dumb and not even remotely fluffy for a Sergeant to be able to enter a challenge with a Demon Prince, locking up all of the latter’s killing ability, potentially while the Marines’ weak ass HQ pummels any squad with the Prince. The Demon Prince should be all “DA FUQ?” and swat that guy out of the way before cleaving into the squad or HQ. Games Workshop! My email address is tjkopena@gmail.com. You get a good draft going of 7e, you send it to me and I’ll fix it up real good. For free even.

More photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Hey guys! Let’s play! Guys? Guys!!!

Librarian Rorschach

Posted on 2013/09/19 by tjkopena

Introducing Librarian Rorschach, fresh from the dropship!

What do you see in me?!

Left side!

Right side!

Rorschach was started earlier this year and I finally dusted him off and finished him up this week. The core of the model is a Terminator Sergeant from the Black Reach box. The banner is from a Command Squad, spliced into a Terminator arm. Both arms are magnetized so I could attach them for play before he was painted, and for easier transport now that he’s done—no re-gluing that banner every time I open the box! Other details and photos from construction are in the WIP post.

My arms! My arms! What have you done?!?!

I think the paintjob came out a bit more gritty and dark than I wanted, as well as a bit sloppy, but overall I think he looks good and interesting. From most angles and lighting the banner puts his entire body into a shadow so he doesn’t really stand out well and the details are lost, but to a large extent that’s intentional. He’s supposed to be a dark, brooding, introspective danger.

I ignored the standard Librarian coloring because having a little Ultramarines blue in every army is great to let all those other guys know which chapter’s the boss, but I don’t think it looks good. Despite being awesomely painted technically, I think a lot of the GW Librarian paintjobs outside of the Ultramarines really don’t work well within their armies.

Rorschach also differs from the standard Kingbreakers khaki/blue/green because he’s part of the death mindset that’s settled in the chapter since the Exterminatus of Forestway, their home planet. The Librarian and many others, notably the Kingbreakers’ Ghosts (Sternguard), have painted their armor black and helmets white to reflect the attitude that they’re all already dead and fighting on borrowed time, purely for revenge.

Librarian Rorschach, Sgt Harmon, and a few of the Kingbreakers’ Sternguard.

That narrative is important to me and well established in the chapter’s background and history of play. They originally got this story because Kingbreakers’ Sternguard are known for hurling themselves into almost certain death, sacrificing their lives for tactical or strategic advantage. Rorschach is no different, and even more overtly effectively a high stakes gambler. His disconnect from reality and those around him leaves him unable to fully process consequences and thus he never hesitates to throw around the Vortex of Doom and other highly perilous spells, even within close quarters.

In terms of actual gameplay though, Rorschach most often deploys with my Sternguard. Those guys were given a variant paintjob to differentiate them from Tactical Squads on the table without actually breaking the cohesive, muted look of the whole army. Rorschach got similar styling in order to fit in with his usual fighting companions.

The Kingbreakers’ Ghost variant compared to the standard paint scheme.

Up next for painting at some point is probably a similar Ghost color-variant Drop Pod for these guys, and then moving on. I kind of want/need another five Sternguard painted up, but after doing all this black I’m actually a little eager to do some standard Kingbreakers.

40k 6e Space Marines: Core Dudes

Posted on 2013/09/18 by tjkopena

Games Workshop put out a new Space Marines codex last week. Recently I started creating army lists and am posting thoughts as I go. Previous thoughts were on Vulkan and Librarians. Up now are the core dudes of any Kingbreakers force: Sternguard, Tacticals, and Transports.

Sternguard

Sternguard got kind of a funny set of changes. The first five went down a point each, but any additional veterans went down three points each. Unfortunately Combi-Weapons went up five. That’s a little problematic for me as I’ve previously relied on a good number of Combi-Meltas. So my 5-man Combat Squad with 3 Combi-Meltas went up 10 points while a 10-man full squad with 6 stayed the same.

Tacticals

Tacticals have a similar story going on. Dudes got cheaper but a bunch of their stuff got more expensive. In general it works out to be kind of a wash. I guess the motivation was to drop equipment price lists from individual units and allow many of them to use the same armoury listings without really changing the overall unit prices from 5e, but that seems kind of a silly, unnecessary reworking.

You also need to pay to upgrade Tactical Sergeants to Veterans and get a second Attack and boosted Leadership. Personally I think the Veteran upgrades are probably worth paying for unless the squad is really not going to wind up in combat at all. Two base attacks plus a bonus third for wielding dual close combat weapons can be pretty decisive against a variety of opponents. In general I’m all for a la carte upgrades—if I don’t want it, why should I implicitly pay for it?—but these might be pushing it a bit. In particular, I think they create an opportunity for minor mistakes and abuses. E.g., I usually upgrade my dudes but one game I don’t to shave points, and I totally forget I didn’t and roll the extra Attack and +1 Leadership all game. Similarly, a large game could easily have ~4–8 Power Armour squads with the option. If I only upgrade my front line, I could easily “forget” and roll on the upgrades when my Devastators wind up getting assaulted, and many opponents aren’t going to catch that in the heat of battle.

Transports

One big difference for some lists is that Razorbacks went up 15 points, to 55. Rhinos and Drop Pods stayed at 35. I’m not sure how reasonable this is. Razorbacks seem to have a pretty solid built in tradeoff versus a Rhino: Carry half as many dudes, but be able to shoot stuff. Paying 5 points for the privilege seemed reasonable, but a 38% premium seems overkill. This seems to be aimed directly at neutering the Razorspam lists floating around in 5e, but I didn’t think they were that prevalent or overpowered, and mostly seemed to be a Blood Angels thing anyway.

Another significant difference is that Drop Pods were reduced back down to a transport capacity of ten, having been able.to carry twelve in 5e.

Kingbreakers

One of the things I had to learn in the previous edition was that cheap Special and Heavy Weapons are a strength of the Marines. Plasmacannons for 5 points were a bargain that had to be taken advantage of; ditto free Missile Launchers. The points changes make it feel like the weapons aren’t a good bargain anymore, at least for Sternguard and Tacticals, but the lesson probably still applies. Similar goes for the Sternguard Combi-Meltas. At first I thought my loadout was going to be too costly, but when you do the math a 10 man squad actually comes up 10 points cheaper.

I do usually bring a Razorback or two, but not enough of them to make that increase super punitive.

The Drop Pod transport capacity decrease is a huge deal for the Kingbreakers though. I can’t get super worked up about it because it just brings them back in line with the other codexes. But 10 Sternguard + Vulkan or a Terminator Librarian coming down in a Drop Pod was a keystone of my battle tactics. The Sternguard have fairly flexible armoury options so it wouldn’t be a huge deal in terms of equipment to cut them down to a squad of 8, whereas Tacticals would miss out on a fancy weapon. The real loss is not being able to Combat Squad that unit anymore. I thought it useful to be able to split up coming out of a Drop Pod, either dividing up existing targets or trying to pop a transport with one and frag the occupants with the other. Not being able to do this with one of my heroes along for the ride isn’t the end of the world, but it’s unfortunate.

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