Chaos is Coming part 2

This morning I ordered myself a copy of Traitor Legions, a plastic daemon prince and some havocs as my personal christmas present. From what I have seen I am looking forward to trying out the new Death Guard rules. They sound just what I need to secure an end to my current losing streak.

Anyone getting some nice 40K goodness for the holidays?

Chaos is coming

With all the new Tzeentch CSM stuff on the horizon I am really hoping that Nurgle will get some 40K love. A nice Mortarion daemon prince would be nice and some new Nurgle toys.

Narrative Play part 2

It isn't always possible to get a group of players together on a regular basis to play a narrative campaign. This means that sometimes you have to find a single opponent and challenge them to a narrative game. With a single regular opponent things become much more simpler if a less impressive. Such games can still be fun though and you don't have to worry about players not meeting up often enough. You and your opponent can take your time and enjoy the details.

The layout below (taken from a rather nice blog entitled Going On Campaign) is a great example of how to play a one on one narrative. The idea is that one player plays the attacking force and the other, obviously, the defender. You play a scout battle and the outcome determines which way the war goes. If the attacker wins then things become a sabotage attempt and so forth. You could just play a game for each one or you could come up with your own scenarios or special rules to match what is written below.

The only problem with this sort of set up is that once you have played the third round, it is obvious which player has won over all. You are simply playing to see whether it is a major or minor victory. This could lead to one player just dropping the whole thing because they can't win. The problem with narrative games in general. You need an opponent who is just as dedicated to the outcome, good or bad, as you are. It is still a good but basic start to narrative play.

For the Emperor!

I've recently purchased a friend's Grey Knights army. So much for my loyalty to Nurgle but now I can surprise my opponent's when I bring them out. Just wanting a new Sisters of Battle codex so I can have a combined force. I also want an Avenger Strike Fighter to give better aerial support.

Midas Crusade 2016

Over the weekend we held the third Midas Crusade tournament. The last one was end of April but due to real world issues I forgot to cover it. But the third one went rather well with little in the way of hiccups. Once again Jon offered the use of his sizeable garage and we spent a day playing some 40K.

As usual it was 2000 points, fixed list, with three rounds of three hours each and tactical objectives missions. The VP's scored totalled over the day to determine the winner. Anything 40K is legal but not HH stuff.

Unfortunately we had two players drop out at separate times in the weeks running up so i had to jump in and play, and the eighth player, Gary D,  could not make it until the second round started. I set it up so I effectively played Gary D and we drew. Neither of us were playing to win anyway so it wasn't a big issue.

Armies played were:

Colin - Chaos Marines (Death Guard) with Chaos Knight ally.
Chris - Craftworld Eldar.
Jon - Necrons.
Ash - Astra Militarum with Genestealer Cult allies.
Benjo - Dark Angels.
Mike - Craftworld Eldar.
Dan - Eldar Corsairs with Craftworld Eldar allies.
Gary - Space Marines (Imperial Fists).

It was a hard fought day for the top spot but Chris' Eldar successfully spent the day claiming objectives and stole first place.

Broodlord and genestealers outflank into the Dark Angels. 

Mike brought some interesting Eldar toys with him. 

Astra Militarum gun line. 

The Death Guard prepare to surge forward. The Knight did a great job of stomping genestealer hybrids! 

 Lots of conscripts being pushed forwards!

The Eldar battle lines.

 Necrons and Eldar face off across no man's land.

The unexpected genestealer cult allies shortly before being trodden on.

Narrative Play part 1

I cannot just sit down and play a board game or card game without immersing myself into the world of that game. It doesn't matter that the game is Magic the Gathering or something like the Serenity/Firefly board game. I have to immerse myself and know why I am doing what I am doing or what a given action would entail in the real world. With Warhammer 40,000 I take that even further. Unlike everyone else I know I cannot just turn up to a game and play. I have to know why I am fighting Dark Angels and what relevance the mission has. Without that I may as well be playing chess against a computer. Sure it is fun but ultimately it is missing something. I am a narrative gamer and I'm proud to admit it.

The problem is that being a narrative gamer when no one else is can be a real pain. I have tried with my local club to introduce a narrative element with the Midas Crusade. The MC was based upon the Crusade of Fire campaign book from Games Workshop. I did it as an open-ended campaign where players could challenge other players for control of planets. I envisioned players colluding together or seeking to build that perfect list to drive the Orks from Volistad. But it never happened. There were a few attempts but no one was interested enough. It ended up with me making posts and basically running the fluff for three years. I recently decided to drop it entirely.

So how do you run narrative games? Well, I have realised that you can't do with a games club. It needs a handful of dedicated players willing to immerse themselves. Willing to go beyond just turning up with some dice and an army. It needs someone, an organiser, to come up with the overall story line, the missions and be able to alter things as wins and losses mount up. It needs structure but not too much detail.

What I plan to do with this short series of posts is to put forward some ideas for narrative campaigns that hopefully might work for you. But first, do any of you have thoughts on this? Have you played a dedicated campaign and see it through as more than just another game of 40K or whatever your game of choice is? If you don't enjoy them, I'd be very interested to see why not.

The floor is all yours.

No More Conquest

A few days ago it was at last revealed that the partnership between Games Workshop and Fantasy Flight Games has ended. No more GW related games from them. Normally I would not be too bothered after all FFG are well known for the board games and I have the 40K ones that I want and I have everything for the Deathwatch RPG. However, this also means the end of Warhammer 40K: Conquest, their living card game.

Conquest had a good future ahead of it. We have had three expansions and two new faction expansions (Tyranids and Necrons). It makes me angry as I feel now that I have wasted my money on this game. Card games like this, as good as they are, die off when there are no further expansions. The history of CCG's is full of such cast aside games. Surely the two companies could have come to some arrangement over this? I mean, really?

A couple of people have pointed out that part of the licensing agreement was that FFG would not make any miniatures based games as that is GW's domain. FFG have announced a skirmish war game based upon their own fantasy world of Runebound and I think that may have been the death knell. But again I ask, could they not have worked something out?

So, as we have hardly anyone who bothers to play any more anyway, it looks like Conquest will end up either gathering dust on a shelf or I may flog it all on EBay. It is going to make me think long and hard before I pick up anything else like this.

Anyway, rant over.

Painting Day

Due to work and other commitments I haven't had the chance to sit down and do some painting/building for several months. So having a day off today I gave myself the afternoon to get some done. Managed to get the Chaos Knight finished bar it's basing, and a few more plague marines and a rhino done. Lots of undercoating too so I can just sit down Monday evening after work.

Unfortunately what I wanted to do fell through. I have two boxes of Raptors to build and I want them for a game I have against Raven Guard this coming Thursday. But when I went to my pile of new stuff both boxes were missing! NNOOOO!!!! No idea where they have gotten to so I'm going to have to have a full on search when I get chance.

I did get slightly distracted watching TV in the background but it felt good to get back into painting.

What to field?

So, in a couple weeks we have the third Midas Crusade Invitational (MCI) tournament coming up and due to a drop out I am having to step up and be both organiser and the 8th player. I need to work out what to take in a 2000 point tactical objectives based tournament.

What I currently have finished is as follows:

Typhus.
Chaos Sorcerer.
20 Plague Marines with icon of despair, two meltaguns and the champion has plasma pistol and power weapon.
20 Plague Marines with icon of despair, two meltaguns and the champion has plasma pistol and power weapon.
10 Chaos Marines whose champion has a power fist.
5 Chaos Terminators with three power weapons, one lightning claw and a power fist (because of what comes in the box) and one reaper autocannon.
3 Chaos Bikers.
15 Chaos Cultists.
1 Helbrute with multi-melta.
2 Chaos Rhino.
1 Chaos Land Raider.
1 Defiler.
10 Plaguebearers.
1 Chaos Knight Errant with daemonic possession.
2x Vengeance Weapon Platforms with Punisher Cannons.
1 Bastion.
1 Aegis Defence Line with Autocannon.

Some things still to be built:

2 boxes of Chaos Raptors.
1 box of Zombies.
1 box of Plague Marines.
1 box of SM Terminators (so I can have a unit with lightning claws).
Cypher.
2 boxes of Dark Angel veterans (to be Cypher's Chosen squad).

I need some ideas what to field so I can finish building and painting before the weekend of the 24th September. Any suggestions?

Why no narrative?

I haven't used this blog for well over a year now. Part of it has been starting two new jobs and settling into a new relationship. But there has also been a slow grump growing over me which stole a lot of my love for 40K. That grump has been the ongoing Midas Crusade narrative campaign that I was trying to do. Basically a lack of interest from local club members. I seem to be the only person interested in doing such a narrative. It has got to a point that now after about three or four years of trying to do reports for it that I have given up bothering.

I can't fault anyone though. We all come to the hobby for different reasons and most of the people I know are in it just for the game and not for anything else. I've always been more interested in playing something with a storyline. While I don't like overly complicated campaign rules something where players with same factions can work together even plotting in the shadows appeals quite a lot but no one else does.

So, I've dropped the Midas Crusade narrative, and have instead started writing narratives for the games that my Death Guard play. I'm using another blog page: March of the Damned.

Slowly that funk is fading and I want to get back to discussing the game and getting some motivation for my painting - something else I am finding a hard time organising.

Hope you are all still around and looking forward to reading your posts.

Battle Report - Death Guard vs Eldar Corsairs

My first Warhammer 40K game of 2016 was against my good friend Richard McManus. I haven't had a game against him for a couple years now I don't think so I was really looking forward to this. He has bought into the a Forge World Eldar corsair army and wanted to give it a try. He didn't have much and I still won't play any Death Guard who aren't painted so it was a small game of just 1000 points.

I remember the old FW corsair list was quite nasty. I never played against it but I did watch a couple games. At the time I found them, like their craftworld cousins, rather too good. This time around they seem much more balanced. Their psychic powers are a bit odd but can be tactical and strangely they have their own perils of the warp table that makes me wonder why you would ever include a Void Dreamer in your army. A roll of 1 turns the psyker into a daemon of Slaanesh and goes over to your opponent's control! That never happened however.

The mission was the awkward Tactical Escalation. We faced off against one another and I was a little surprised at what was fielded by my opponent. He had a prince, a void dreamer, two squads of basic corsairs, 2 units of jetbikes, so vyper type things (maybe hornet's?) and a warp hunter. I wasn't expecting quite so much in the way of vehicles but that made it much more of a challenge. One unit of corsairs and both HQ's sat in reserve ready to leap from the webway to cause me problems.

My list was a basic level 3 sorcerer, a 5 man squad of csm, two squads of 10 man plague marines (with 2 meltaguns each), a rhino and a helbrute. I had been expecting more ground troops but as I still don't have much painted this was what I could managed to field.

Usually in these missions I find myself overwhelmed by the number of capture objective cards I draw so I made a point of starting next to the two objectives in my deployment zone. I then didn't see a capture objective card until the last turn when I was uncannily sitting with a single model on that very objective. My opponent on the other hand simply swept forward and starting grabbing a perfect set of objective cards. Oddly though, we seemed to draw the same ones throughout the game.

The Warp Hunter proved to be the biggest pain in the backside as it just sat there at the back and pummeled my forces. I lost so much to that tank that quickly I realised that there was no way I was going to pull a win out of this game. Two attempts at summoning plaguebearers and my sorcerer suffered a perils from one, losing a wound, and the second deviated and went into ongoing reserves. Neither unit did much more than be a speedbump for the corsair warriors.

My sorcerer went down to a warlord challenge before even getting a chance to swing his staff. By that point I was resigned to my fate so I didn't worry. The game ended turn 6 I think when my last model came off the table. Richard had beaten me 15 vp to 1 vp.

It was a fun game despite the crushing loss. Corsairs... Interesting to play against. We're going to have a rematch in a couple weeks and we'll see what transpires then.

40K Conquest tournament - Battle for Helle's Reach

On the edge of the Traxis sector lies a series of war-torn worlds known by the men and women of the Astra Militarum stationed there as Helle's Front. Although not rich in resources or population (or biomass) whichever faction controls these systems will be in a key position of striking at several nearby tactically significant systems. 

In order to get my local players back into playing 40K Conquest I have started organising a monthly casual event. Tonight we managed to get all six of us local peeps together to fight over Helle's Front.

Warlord Breakdown:
Broderick Worr - 2
The Swarmlord - 2
Ragnar Blackmane - 1
Nazdreg  - 1

Final Scores:
1st: Luke Townsend  (AM - Broderick Worr) - 3-0-0
2nd: Darren Davis (SM - Ragnar Blackmane) - 2-0-1
3rd: Steve Osbourne (Tyr - The Swarmlord) - 2-0-1
4th: Colin Goodman (Orks - Nazdreg) - 1-0-2
5th: Matt Gibson (AM - Broderick Worr) - 1-0-2
6th: Brian White (Tyr - The Swarmlord) - 0-0-3

My first match was against Darren Davis and this was a very tough game. I was getting resources but not the cards to spend them on. He quickly got some space wolves down and first turn started his warlord hunt against my Nazdreg. Despite both our warlords having a major scrap which I thought I was going to win, he turned the tables and forced me into a defensive game that I wasn't prepared for. I got a little flustered I think as before I knew it he had secured three planets and won.

The second game pitted me against Brian White and his Swarmlord deck. Like myself, Brian is a very casual player and we had a really good fun game. He felt a bit down I think as he had chosen what he felt was the wrong synapse unit (savage warrior prime) and he found his deck wasn't working as he wanted it to. My deck on the other hand, kicked off fantastically well and managed to score me my only win of the night.

My final opponent was Luke Townsend who is already a top notch tournament player so I never held out any hope of winning this game. He'd been at an X-Wing tournament earlier in the day so was fairly tired which I thought might give me an advantage. I managed to gain command across the board on the first turn but in subsequent turns he was able to put down more and more units than I was able to compensate for. I had real trouble deciding where to deploy units and where my warlord needed to go. In the end the game came down to him bloodying and then defeating my warlord with some very hard hitting guardsmen!

Luke's winning deck was:

Total Cards: (50)

Warlord:
1x Broderick Worr (Decree of Ruin)

Army Unit: (29)
4x Anxious Infantry Platoon (Decree of Ruin)
2x Void Pirate (Core Set)
2x Cadian Mortar Squad (Core Set)
2x Sanctioned Psyker (Core Set)
2x Iron Guard Recruits (The Scourge)
2x Steel Legion Chimera (Zogwort's Curse)
3x Elysian Assault Team (Core Set)
3x Tallarn Raiders (Zogwort's Curse)
3x Blood Angels Veterans (Core Set)
3x Righteous Initiate (Decree of Ruin)
3x Sacaellum Shrine Guard (Boundless Hate)

Attachment: (3)
1x Commissarial Bolt Pistol (Decree of Ruin)
2x Bodyguard (Core Set)

Event: (9)
2x Summary Execution (Decree of Ruin)
2x Preemptive Barrage (Core Set)
2x The Emperor’s Warrant (Descendants of Isha)
2x Muster the Guard (The Howl of Blackmane)

Support: (10)
1x Forward Barracks (Decree of Ruin)
3x Troop Transport (Boundless Hate)
2x Rockcrete Bunker (Core Set)
2x Catachan Outpost (Core Set)
2x Inquistorial Fortress.

Next month we decided for fun that we should each play a random faction so that we don't have the same matches. I've pulled Tyranids so that should be interesting as I have only played them once or twice since their release.

Been a few months since my last update. Starting a new job and the club having it's Christmas break sort of got in the way. As it is the new year has not been great for the club. Too many players not turning up on an evening or unnecessary arguments has begun to hurt things. Hopefully things will pick up as we get going. It's not too long until the Age of Sigmar league kicks off and we have another day event planned as well.

I hope the rest of you have some good gaming going on and I'll try to catch up on your posts as I can.