Update the Last?

So awhile back I updated after a long break and promised to get some more posts up despite my busy and hectic life. Big surprise, I didn't get any done. I did play some games in there, and also got a bit of painting done, but never got around to posting any of it. Shame on me right?

So now it's time for it all to come to an end.

Just kidding, just trying to throw some drama in there, really hook all 5 of my readers.

So the blog will quiet for a bit, or maybe even for a big bit. I am just running out of time for this little personal play area. Sad as it is, there are bigger and better things in store!

Jawaballs has called! He sent out a request a long time back and asked for contributors. I responded and he decided to add me on as a writer. Woot Woot! Makes me way excited. It's a big boost to my 40k ego as it were, getting some validation from one of the big names. Not that I'm the best at anything, but that I do some of it well enough.

Anyways, My first post is up HERE. Check it out, leave me a comment or three. I'm fairly certain that if you are reading this you are reading Jawaballs periodically anyways. But head on over!

I won't let this blog die completely. I will probably do some posts every now and again. I put a lot into it, and don't want it to go away altogether.

I do want to say thanks to all you that commented and gave me a reason to continue. See ya at my new venue!

A little update . . .

Well, a concerned citizen by the name of Anonymous brought the fact that I have not updated in awhile to my attention. And who am I to not give the public what they want . . .

So here goes!

RL has been kinda crazy. I have been shuffling around trying to get my license to practice optometry in AZ and get a job at the same time. Thank goodness the economy is so bad and made the job hunting REAL easy. Anyways, got both of those taken care of, and now onto other things.

I have to buy a car to fit my family now that doesn't fit in our Altima so much. I have to buy a house because the one we have for dirt cheap now is no longer ours in December. Curses to living in your parents house, that's what I say.

Lastly, I just haven't had any time to paint or play much. I have gotten in a few games and tried to finish up some of my bikes, but nothing substantial.

I did play two games last week though with my little Tau army. Relevant points: railguns eat razorbacks and dreads for lunch, Plasma rifle/missile pod is the only configuration if you want to really compete, My tau army excels at kill points, but is horrible in objective games that end on turn 5 from a lucky roll from the opponent. I had him about 10 Kp to 3Kp when it ended, but you have to play the mission not to annihilate, I know. Also, more than 2 troops choices is a good idea . . .

And before I forget, I did get some games in with my Blood Angels, and I am loving an army with 6 rzbs, 3x TL-HF and 3x TLplas/las with assault squads, 2x libbys, 2x sang priests and 2x furioso dreads. It has been really fun to play. It is way mobile which wins games, but the dreads are out of place a bit, they are too slow to really contribute to the game meaningfully, except when they kill 20 boyz in one go from the Blood Talons. Now that was fun.

So the little update turned into a long boring one, but I will be trying to get back on my feet, but with much less frequency than before, I just don't have loads of time to do it, and frankly, life is more important than plastic soldiers.

Until next time.

Battle Report - Blood Angels vs. Salamanders

Hello boys and girls! It’s everyone’s favorite time here again. BATREP time!!!

Thought I’d start with something a little different, lol. As luck would have it, my wife let me sneak out again with my Blood Angels for a little game time at the LGS. I took the new list I just posted about and found some unsuspecting Salamander player to sink my vampire teeth into. He was a younger guy, but fun to play against. He had a decent looking army, and by decent I mean completely painted with no proxies or counts-as. I’m one of the worst offenders, so I look at a fully-painted army, suppress my jealousy, and tell them how cool it looks. I just really need to stop playing FF XIII and do some painting. Great game btw if anyone was curious.

So onto the game. I used my ChaplainHammer list posted earlier.
Salamander army was this:
Vulkan with obligate 5x TH/SS Termies in LR Crusader
2x Tactical squad w/ flamer and multi-melta w/ TL-heavy bolter Razorback
1x Tactical squad with flamer and multi-melta on foot
1x 5-man assault squad with flamer and plasma pistol + power weapon on the sarge.
2x multi-melta attack bikes
2x Dreadnought with multi-melta and storm bolter

Annihilation game with Spearhead deployment. 1750 points.

I won the roll off and chose to go first.

I put my Land Raiders centrally, a few inches off the center circle, and my 2 Razorbacks on the opposite side of a building next to my LR’s. They were deployed as far back as possible while still maintaining LOS on most of the other deployment zone. My attack bikes were put in reserve to try and do some backdoor melta late game.

My opponent set up just off the center circle with his own Land Raider, Razorbacks slightly behind and more leftward. His two Dreads were further back, one to each side of the LR. Neither Tac squad took advantage of the Razorbacks, which was bad, and they all deployed on foot a little behind the LR. That was also bad. He should have had everything way forward to take advantage of his mostly immobile multi-meltas. His bikes were behind the dreads ready to zoom around a large central building to flank my LR’s. His assault squad was deepstriking. Right at deployment I knew things were going to be easier for me. He was not aggressive enough with his deployment. I was afraid of all those TL-multi-meltas, and for good reason. I had 4/5 of my army tied up in LR’s and if those baskets were opened then all the eggs would come spilling out.

Turn 1
I had to get rid of his dreads; they posed the biggest threat to my LR’s. With the multi-melta and str 10 attacks, they had to go. So I moved my Razorbacks into position and fired away at them. I immobilized one of them, and stunned the second. Pretty good start. My LR’s stayed still for fear of all the melta on his side of the table. His side of the turn sees his bikes trying to round the building towards me, and everything that could advance did, although his LR stayed back for some reason. Neither of us wanted to commit just yet. No shooting from him, he was out of range.

Turn 2
I rolled for my bikes and they came on. Sweet! I had the perfect counter to his bikes. Things were looking good for me I thought. My Razors scooted away a bit to keep the lascannons firing without any kind of reprisal. My LR’s stood still again. My Razorbacks blew a HB off one razorback and that was it. Not so good this turn. Attack bikes get ready to fire and I roll snake eyes. What a joke. I just handed him an easy kill point. Things were not looking good here.

His end of the turn he still can’t draw a bead on my Razors in the corner with any of his firepower except for the HB Razorback. He fired at me but no effect. Then came the moment of truth, as he fired his attack bikes at mine. He hit both times, but rolled a one for the second wound! Lucky me, I only lost one bike, and still had a chance to protect my flank.

Turn 3
I still keep my Land Raiders out of striking distance from his multi-meltas, I am just not ready to jump in there and toss my LR to all of his multi-meltas. I don’t trust the dice this game. So I am still hanging back, from the middle of the board. I take my bike and run it into some ruins to try to get cover from the shots that will be coming that way. Shooting was ineffective this round from my Land Raiders, but my Razorbacks blew up one of his Razorbacks. Then my attack bike made good with his multi-melta and fried one of the opposing ones. Other than that it was an uneventful turn, again.

On the opposing side, he moved up a bit more to get some better shots at my Razorbacks. He blew up my last attack bike when I failed my cover save, of course. He also got one of my Razorbacks with his Land Raider. That was unfortunate, but they had lasted longer than I had thought they would.

Turn 4
This was time to get things going finally. I was sick of holding back, but I knew that whoever got the charge on the other was going to be in better position. So I got more offensive and moved my Land Raiders forward to put the pressure on him. They moved up, but I still had to take care of the last bike hanging out on my flank. A multi-melta from my Redeemer took care of it well enough. My Crusader managed to take out his Land Raider with a well placed shot from the multi-melta on top, while my assault cannon took the multi-melta arm of the adjacent dreadnought. I finally got Vulkan and his crew out of their box, and it was time to crush them. The rest of my shooting was effective, in that my last lascannon popped the final Razorback.

His turn was unfortunate for him, but good for me. His dread advanced on my Redeemer for assault, and Vulkan failed to reach my Crusader while struggling to get out of his wrecked ride. His dread failed to hurt my Redeemer in assault. But he had my assault ramp and tank blocked off from moving forward and frying the remainder of his foot slogging marines with my flamestorm cannons.

Turn 5
This was the beginning of the end for him. I disembarked all of my termies and prepared to erase Vulkan and his squad. The Redeemer smoked the dread blocking his path, while the Crusader sent a boat load of shots into Vulkan and his cronies. He lost only one terminator from the shooting and had a wound on Vulkan. My Las Razorback also managed to toast his remaining dread that had been immobilized turn one. The kill points were adding up for me! The scrum in the middle of the table was about to begin. I was able to charge Vulkan and Co with both squads for a total of 10 terminators, 2 Sanguinary Priests in Terminator armor, and a Reclusiarch in termy armor. It was epic. The Chaplain killed a termy; the priests took down another one and wounded Vulkan again. The 4 LC termies took another termy and Vulkan, while Vulkan took down one TH/SS terminator with his attacks back. Then I had 5 terminators with TH/SS attacking back. I hit 10 times out of 15 and wounded 10 times. His last Terminator couldn’t take the hurt and was wiped off the face of the planet. What an assault, I thought I was going to lose more men than that, but the LC termies and Priests really carried their weight in the assault. The chaplain didn’t kill much, but his re-rolls were great for the other 12 bodies in the assault. I then consolidated towards the remaining tac squads that he had ready for me to assault.

On his turn he just lined up to shoot me to pieces, as all my terminators were lined up 10” away from both his tac squads. He put down 2 termies each from the two squads, which wasn’t too bad I suppose. But it wasn’t enough for him. I asked him at this point if he wanted to continue, and he said yes. It was about 8 or nine KPs to 2, and he had no way to come back. He is a fighter I guess, and thought he could get some things done.

Turn 6
I was finally able to put my Redeemer to good use this turn. I ran it up 12” right next to a beautiful line of marines. I got 8 of them under the template and fried 7 of them. I love the smell of flamestorm cannon at any time of day. The pesky marines stuck around, and were assaulted for their foolishness. They were wiped in assault, but the other squad was too far into some terrain and I couldn’t come to grips with them with my other Termy assault squad.

His turn he shot me some more, killed a terminator maybe, and finally remembered his Assault squad. They dropped in next to my Razorback and other assault squad that was hiding out in the crater left by their ride. He shot at me, and I lost just one marine. I asked again if he wanted to call it, but he said no, so we rolled for it and the game went on.

Turn 7
My Redeemer put both templates down on his tac squad nearby and cleansed their filth from the Emperor’s sight. On the other side of the board, my two assault squads attacked his jump-packers and wiped them as well. All he had was one remaining tac squad in a fortified position in a far corner of the board that I couldn’t reach in
time to do anything about, and it hadn’t done anything all game. Game over.

Blood Angels were victorious! I kind of felt bad for the guy though. I don’t know how new he was to the game, but he made the game easy for me. He deployed so far from my army that he couldn’t use half the points in his army. His multi-meltas were all out of range for 3/4ths the game. And they were the real threat to my list. He should have packed some multi-meltas into the Razorbacks and bum rushed me. It would have made the game completely different. His dreads were a non-factor because of deployment too. They could have given me some fits, but were neutralized easily. It was nice to win a game again, but it unfortunately was not a hard fought game, and those are the types of games I enjoy the most.

My MVP was hard to determine. The large terminator fight in the middle of the table was fun for me, but I really think that the Land Raider Redeemer was the winner. He slagged the lone melta bike coming for me, popped a dreadnought, popped a Razorback, and toasted nearly 2 full tactical squads. Not too bad of a kill tally. I have always wanted to run a Redeemer in a game, and it fulfilled my expectations fully.
Now I just need to find a way to balance this list some more. It is such a “rock” type list that I don’t want to get stuck in noobslayer mode. I want to build balanced lists that can take all comers. The game was fun, but it is back to the drawing board.

New Blood Angel List - for funsies!

Ok, new army list time. I am going back to my roots, with extreme prejudice, lol. For those of you that followed my blog from the beginning, I used to run a dual Land Raider list with Mephiston, and some other assault elements, terminators or Dreads, depending on how I was feeling that day. The list worked well for me, and incorporated some of my favorite things about 40k. First, Land Raiders. I’m a sucker for the big beautiful anvils of doom. I just like them, one of my favorite units hands down. Second, I really like the assault phase. Like Goatboy and some of the other internet personalities, I like to win the game in close combat. I think it is time I go back to what I know how to do, at least reasonably well.

Just so we can get this out there, this is a “rock” list, as in paper, rock, scissors. I expect this list to do well against a few armies, and not so well against the others. My support elements will have to be designed to pick up the slack when my assaulting units don’t have the strength of numbers to take down horde Orks or ‘Nids. And that is ok with me, I can live with that.
So onto my list. I’d like to talk this through a bit so stay with me. It’s important to get the evolution of the thought process down, so you can find the weaknesses and fix them. So let us get to evolving.

First off HQ. Librarian with Blood Lance and Shield of Sanguinius right? Wrong. I’m mixing it up here. I have loved Librarians in the past and still will, but this is going to be an all-out assault army, and I’m not sure they fit the bill here. So onto another HQ unit I have wanted to try, the Reclusiarch. He is a combat machine, and with the Blood Litanies, he makes a squad of Terminators even more dangerous. Rerolling to hit is dangerous when swinging thunder hammers around. So we have a Reclusiarch and a little gaggle of Termies following him around. Let’s put that hammer unit into a Land Raider so they can get where they want to ideally. Now the question is what kind of Land Raider. There is the Crusader and the Redeemer to choose from in my mind, but which one suits my purposes better? In this case it is the Crusader. I want this unit to be super killy so I will throw in a Sanguinary Priest for the Furious Charge and Feel No Pain. Str: 5 I: 5 lightning claw Terminators that reroll to hit are absolutely ridiculous. So that makes for 7 models in the unit, and a Redeemer isn’t capable of holding that many Terminators so the Crusader will have to do.

Now one Land Raider is good, but two is better. So this time we take a Redeemer, because flamestorm cannons are super cool, and I at least need to play test with them a bit. I may make some lists with flamestorm Baals in the future, and I’d like to be able to gauge their effectiveness. We don’t want this sweet ride to be empty so let’s get some more Terminators, of the assault variety of course. This leaves us one empty seat in the Redeemer, and who better to fill it than another Sanguinary Priest. This ensures both squads of Terminators will have FNP and FC at all times.

So we have our super killy units of death and destruction ready, how about some Troops to make things legal. We are going to have to minimize these squads because I have already used most of my points for my standard 1750 list. What to take in this slot? I am surely lacking in any kind of long range fire support, and the cheapest way to get some of this in is with assault squads and Razorbacks. Two assault squads with a Razorback apiece fit the bill. So we will throw some heavy weapons on the Razorbacks so they can open up tanks from the other side of the board. I will need all the shots I can get, so let’s do the lascannon and twin linked plasma gun. I will lose some accuracy at long range, but the extra shots at close range will make up for that loss. For when the marines get taken out of their Razorbacks I will give them some goodies to help them retain some kind of effectiveness. Let’s start with a meltagun and finish with an infernus pistol on the sergeant. That should give them a bit of punch still. And discourage people from trying to tank shock them off objectives late game. Death or Glory ftw! I could also put in a power weapon instead of the infernus pistol, but I’d rather not but a CC upgrade when I don’t really want these guys in CC.

This leaves me with about 125 points or so left over. What to do with these points? I still have the need to pop tanks and give my Terminators juicy targets to assault. I like speeders, but I don’t have the points to fit in some with melta and Typhoon missile launchers. The long range of the missiles would be nice, but I don’t know how I would squeeze them in. I could try Predators for long range support, but again, only one autocannon/lascannon Predator won’t do the job. A Vindicator could possibly work, but I don’t have the model so that is out. This leaves me with some attack bikes with multi-meltas on them. This is a unit I have used before and really enjoy. They have some tactical flexibility that I like. They can be reserved easily to come on the board later game to pop tanks that are getting into your own deployment zone. They have a 36” threat range for light armor, and a 24” threat range for heavy armor. They are resilient to small arms fire, and they can tie up weak CC units for an entire game. Lastly, I can put 2 of them down for the points I have left over. Sounds like a winner to me.

So to recap I have:
Reclusiarch with Terminator Armor-170
Sanguinary Priests x2 w/ Terminator armor and power weapon -160
5 man Terminator Assault Squad, 2x LC, 3x TH/SS - 215
Land Raider Crusader with multimelta-260
5 man Terminator Assault Squad, 2x LC, 3c TH/SS - 215
Land Raider Redeemer with multi-melta – 250
5 man Assault Squad w/ meltagun and infernus pistol – 125
Razorback with TL plasmagun and lascannon - 55
5 man Assault squad w/ meltaguns and infernus pistol – 125
Razorback with TL plasmagun and lascannon – 55
Attack bike w/ multi-melta x2 – 100 points
Total: 1730

This leaves me 20 points for some upgrades. I was thinking about a combi weapon on my Reclusiarch and maybe some melta bombs for my sergeants. That would round out my squads with some extra tank killing up close, and I can’t see anywhere else to use the points.

So let me have it. I want to hear some opinions on the list, even if it is to tell me that I am half retarded for even putting this list on the intarwebz. Be honest with me, I’m ready for the truth.

Blood Angel Devastation-and not in the good way . . .

I got another game in last week sometime, can’t even remember what day. I took my same list and went up against a Chaos Marines army. I will spare the unimportant details, and try again to get to the important parts of the game. It was an ugly game for me; I was totally tabled. I hate being tabled. It has never happened to me before, and it sure hurts me inside to see it happen.

Anyways, on with the show. The Chaos list looked like this:

Demon Price, Wings and Warptime
1x Obliterator
3x Squads of Chaos Marines w/ 2x plasma guns, plasma pistol and PF
1x squad of Chaos marines w/ 2x melta and power weapon
1x squad of plague marines w/ 2x melta
2 havoc squads, one with 2x lascannons and 1 missile launcher. Other one had 2x heavy bolters and 1x auto cannon.
1x Chaos Dread with TL-las and missile launcher.

Game is 1750 points, Annihilation with Dawn of War deployment.

I won the die roll and gave him first turn, and reserved everything. He set up his army across the middle 2/3rds of the board. It wasn’t the best deployment, but it was obviously good enough. He moved around a bit first and second turns, not able to do anything.

My second turn I start to drop things in on him, and just like I have done previously, I split up my units as I drop them, meaning no support for each other. I really don’t understand why I can’t do a decent drop. I just lose focus and start putting squads all over the place and right in the lines of fire, it is really quite stupid of me, and it costs me the game. Secondly and less important, I can’t get even one squad of Vanguard in. This really cripples my army I think. Surviving to turn 2 on the board is difficult to do if his whole army can shoot me to pieces. Had I been able to get in one squad, then the two squads with plasma that I forced out of rhinos with shooting would not have been shooting me with 10 plasma shots. I could have multi-charged them and taken both squads out of the equation, and I would have really fared much better in the long run. But let me reiterate that I lost because of my crappy choice of landing sites.

I landed 2 naked 5-man squads and another 5-man squad with meltas and a priest attached behind them right in front of the majority of his army. It was utter madness is all there is to it, lol. They were subsequently eradicated with concentrated fire from his army. I have got to remember that 10 pistol shots will really get little done and that my jump marines have much more mobility then I give them credit for.

I got slaughtered turn 3. Completely shot to pieces. And I deserved it for my stupid deployment. Most everything was killed except for one Librarian I think. Next round both my Vanguard squads come in and they smash face. I kill the two CSM squads that were toting plasma, and my Libby hopped over and smashed the Chaos dread in the face with some Str 10 attacks. That round of combat was satisfying at least. At this point the kill point total was about 8-5, with me losing.
The next round his Prince comes over to mop up my Vanguard, but their Storm Shields hold out vs. the monster, but I still lose a few models of course. My Libby was hiding so he couldn’t be shot.

Turn 5 I take my Libby to the havocs and he fails to kill enough of them to make any difference. The prince finishes up my Vanguard. Turn 6 he torrents my Libby down in the ruins and game over.

That was a brutal wake-up call for me. Even more so than the last beating I took at the hands of the Space Wolves. It makes me want to drop the army in favor of a more user-friendly mech army. This army takes some finesse to run right, and I don’t know if I have the ability to make it work well all the time. Mech armies are much easier to run, and I tend to do much better with them.

What are your thoughts out there? Do I stick with my Descent of Angels Army, or do I start using a different list? Here are the options so far: Razorback spam army with some Predators, Assault Terminator based army with Land raiders, Assault army with RAS squads and Dreads(meched up or coming out of proxied Storm Ravens), or a Death Company themed army?

Please give me your thoughts and comments. And if you have a good army list idea you want to see me try out, then post it up. I will give just about anything a whirl. Just put it at 1750-2000 points, and I will play each suggested list that is put up here, at least once. Of course I am limited by models, but I am not afraid to proxy, or counts as. Just no blatantly crappy lists is all I ask.

So here is your chance to put up a somewhat gimmicky army and see how it performs in the hands of a not so skilled general! So let me have it all of you out there, I want to see some lists put up.

Battle Report: Blood Angles v Space Wolves, pics included!

I had a chance to play this last Friday against a friend of mine by the name of John. He is one of the coolest guys I have met in the gaming world in quite awhile. He is a really good 40k general. He is also pretty good at Fantasy, if you think that 6th place nationally in the Fantasy ‘Ard Boyz last year is good. I had met and played him once before with my pdf Blood Angels, and it was a hard fought game. I barely came out on top in VP’s after we tied on objectives. It was the toughest game I had ever played of 40k. And he had a fluffier list with his Wolves, lol.

So I called him up and asked if he wanted a game, and told him to bring me a tough list to face. He obliged and brought a decent list to smash my face.

I brought my Descent of Angels list to playtest it some more.

Space Wolves List:
Ragnar Blackmane with a squad of 10 Grey Hunters in a LR Crusader. Pfist and 2x meltas
Land Raider with Las sponsons and a 10 man squad of Grey hunters with pfist and 2x melta
5 man squad of Grey Hunters with melta in a TL-las Razorback.
6 man scout squad with melta and a plasma pistol
4 man Long Fangs with 2x lascannons and a plasma cannon
2 speeders, one with multi-melta, and one with multi-melta and Typhoon ML
We rolled for mission and deployment and got 2 objective game with Dawn of War deployment.

He won the die roll and passed me first turn. I told him I was reserving everything and deepstriking it, to which he replied he was reserving all also. Well, I was beaten at my own game. He was smart enough to reserve it all to take away my alpha-strike, and truth be told, it ruined my whole game for me. Ruined my game in that I am new enough to this army to not know immediately how to deal with this type of deployment, and because of that, I lost the game. Now that the cat is out of the bag, let’s proceed with how things went down.

Turn 1
Nothing happens, we are all in reserve.

Turn 2
I got about 4 squads to drop this round, although I wanted none of them to come down. I placed them foolishly quite frankly. I placed one combat squad back on my objective, and some over to the right hand side of the board near some ruins to run into for cover. Melta squad with Priest and Libby drop on his board edge, along with a squad of Vanguard Vets. Stupid placement and bad deployment, we will go over this at the end of the report. Here is how that looked.

I have one unit hiding on the far side of the building at the top-left of the pic

His part of the turn saw the razorback and 2 speeders hit the table. His scout squad also sneaks on the board right behind my objective. Razorback kills one marine from the Libby squad, Typhoon speeder kills another marine from the same squad, and other speeder whiffs with the melta. The scouts kill 2 marines in shooting then assault me and kill the remainder. What a mess for me. I was not able to make my saves.

Here is how he came on.
speeder and Razorback

second speeder. you can see my hiding squad now.

here are the scouts coming on. the model on the container is my objective :)

Turn 3
My other Vanguard squad and Honor Guard come in along with the other Libby/Priest squad. Vanguard in between the Razorback and MM speeder, and the HG mishap and are sent back into reserves. Bad luck, but it could have been worse. Libby lands in front of the speeder near the just landed Vanguard squad. Libby vaporizes the speeder with a blood lance, and the nearby Vanguard roll snake eyes to hit the Razorback with their meltas, after I forget to call a Heroic Intervention with them. What a failure there. The other Libby detaches from his squad and moves towards the other speeder along with a combat squad and an Honor Guard squad. Mistake number about 26. Second Librarian sears a hole in the speeder with a blood lance causing it to explode in a ball of fire. Not too bad I thought. Meanwhile the remaining priest and attached squad run into a building, and the other Vanguard squad climb up to the next level to weather the shooting from next turn.

His part of the turn is the beginning of the end for me. Both Land Raiders roll on and promptly smash my face. Ragnar’s Raider heads for the building with 2 squads in it, and the other raider towards my second Libby Squad.



His Long Fangs also march onto the board to the left of the building housing my 2 squads. Shooting phase was bad. The crusader melts the lone Libby into a mound of blue power armor with the multi-melta. The other Raider obliterates one of the marines in the other Libby squad with a well placed lascannon shot. The Razorback spits out its marines and they score 2 bolter wounds on my Vanguard hanging out nearby, and I promptly roll snake eyes with them again. Ugg, 2 dead Vanguard. The Grey Hunters from the Las Raider shoot up my Libby squad and kill one of my marines because I can’t seem to make a FNP save at all. His scouts move away from my objective towards my HG unit and a combat squad. Assault phase is even worse. Ragnar wipes the Priest unit in the basement of the building, and his cronies assault the Vanguard on the top. I lose one Vet, and save his one powerfist wound on a storm shield wielding Veteran. I then smack the cronies around a bit, but still lose combat but pass the test and am stuck in combat. The Libby squad was assaulted and my Libby failed me miserably. The Libby gets pulped by the powerfist, after only killing one marine. My priest survives and I lose combat but stick in there. The scouts assault my combat squad near the speeder wreck and kill a few of them, and I kill a few of his in return with a drawn combat result.


scouts assaulting me near the speeder wreck, and the honor guard coming from behind to help out

I didn't take any pictures after this, it was just too bloody for me, lol. I was too wrapped up in losing to remember my camera.

Turn 4
My Vanguard jump into assault to help the Priest out, ignoring the jerks who just shot them up. The Honor Guard jump in against the scouts to turn the tide there. The second HG squad mishaps again! And this time they try to avoid their battle brethren and smear themselves all over the ground in a really bad landing. Ouch, that one really hurt. I have no shooting to resolve, so we move right into combat. I win both combats with the HG and assault squad combo and the Vanguard and Priest combat. The result being units stuck out in the open ready to be shot up. My Vanguard on top of the building finally die to mass attacks, but they take a few more guys down with them, barely.

His turn is the end of the game essentially. His Long Fangs score a direct hit with a plasma cannon against my Vets that just won combat. Adios to the Veterans. The combat squad loses 2 of the three to shooting also and has to fall back, which is kind of helpful because it brings me closer to my objective. I lose a few more marines to lascannons shots over on the other side of the board, but my Priest is still kicking along with a few other Vets. Ragnar meanwhile has hopped back into his Land Raider and zooms towards my objective.

Turn 5 was just for fun at this point, to see if I could get anything done. My priest shakes the lascannons LR with his infernus pistol and the Vanguard blow up his Razorback with some powerfist love. My last marine jumps over to my objective behind cover, hopefully keeping Ragnar and his LR of death at bay.

His turn has Ragnar getting out of the Land Raider and running through the terrain to get to my last guy. As an aside, he had Ragnar modeled on a terminator base. Is that legal? I ask because it gave him another inch or so out of the front of the LR because of the wider base. He said that was the base the model came with, but after looking on GW’s website, they have Ragnar on a standard base. I’m calling shenanigans. I don’t think he was trying to cheat me, but I think it wasn’t correct. It just gives him way more base coverage to get into CC, and to get into btb with more models. It didn’t change the game on its own because we went to turn 6, but had the game ended, it would have been a draw.

Turn 6 was the last bit of fail as my priest and Veteran powerfist fail again to blow up the LR. I get 3 pens against the tank and they all end up 2’s, every single result. How fitting for this game. One final set of crappy rolls.

So I lost to the Space wolves. I had had such a good winning streak vs crappy lists that I was bound to face a good list piloted by a good general and get stomped on. I was glad it happened, I had become complacent as a player and I really learned from this game.

Here are some of the more important things. First off, I should not have dropped into his deployment zone. Way dumb. He has a good 20” threat radius with those Land Raiders and I just handed him those units by leaving them near his table edge. He entered, shot at me, and assaulted me, and subsequently cleared me out. Second, I should not have detached my Libby early on. Big mistake there too. I just handed him the ideal multi-melta target, and he capitalized on it. Third, with no targets to shoot at, I should have kept my assault squads together, and attached my IC’s to the Honor Guard Units. I should have had a full assault squad on my objective so when the scouts inevitably came for it, I had strength of numbers to beat them down. Fourth, I need to be more careful when deepstriking my units in. I should not have to lose units to mishaps. I have little enough scatter to keep them safe, I just need to estimate distances better, and not try to stick the landing every time. Fifth, I need to let my army units support the others. I look at my deployment after the fact, and it makes me think that I was retarded or something. I have units all over the place and no cohesion at all to my force. I give him individual units piecemeal. Stupid.

This was a good learning experience for me, and will help me with deployment, especially dealing with the jerks that reserve their whole army on me ;) So I have to thank John for pimp slapping me around, and helping me to up my game a little bit. I need to call him again and get some more games again, it was loads of fun!

How do I get in more games???

I think we all probably feel like we could use more practice with our armies, or more test games to help tune your list. Practice makes perfect after all.

But I have a question for all those guys out there in my similar situation. You have work or school, family, or whatever other thing that is more important than your hobby of little plastic toys. How do you find the time to get in practice with your army? How do you play test it enough to know that you have a good list going? How do you know your new tactic ideas are worthwhile or not?

I have read about how some people play games out in their mind. I'm not entirely sure that is valid, but if it works for someone else, then by all means. I have heard about Vassal as well, and being able to play online vs. other people. I have never tried it personally, but I think there would be some loss in translation from table top to computer monitor. Maybe I'm wrong.

There is one idea I haven't ever read about, and maybe because I am looking in the wrong places, but does anyone ever play test against themselves? I'm wondering if this is a viable way to play test an army. Maybe this sounds like craziness, maybe not, but hear me out on the subject.

First off, I would say the majority of players at my LGS are not super competitive. They are all good guys, and make for friendly games. They like to win and all, but it doesn't show in their lists. Read through my battle reports and you will see what I mean. Playing weak lists doesn't help improve my game. Granted it is the only real playtime I get, so I really enjoy it, but it doesn't up my game much. I don't get to see where my lists weaknesses are. I feel like I mostly roll over the people I play. I'm not trying to say I am a great player, and I never lose and so on, I am speaking of the general lack of competition I seem to face. Mech just beats up on foot slogging lists, it is mostly a fact.

Second, one game a week at best, and once a month at worst, does not help with list building skills and playing your best. It just doesn't cut it if you want to tune a list to be tough. It doesn't allow you the chance to hone your tactics with your list either. More games are necessary to really improve yourself.

So what are my options then? My super cool wife would play with me, but only about up to 1000 points. And she wouldn't want to play competitively against me, let alone learn all the intricacies of the game to do so. She is smart enough to stay away from my competitive nature, lol. I can't take off and leave the fam a couple nights a week and be a poor parent, and neither do I want to. I have been thinking these things over and have decided to play games against myself and see how it goes.

I know there are those with disposable income who have multiple armies, sometimes across different game systems, but I'm not one of them, nor will I ever be I'm pretty sure. I do have some extra Tau models knocking about my house and they will soon be recruited into games vs. my Blood Angels, as well as my extra marines that are gathering dust. I will have to do some proxying and "counts as" all along the way, but I'm ok with that. I will have to look at the current winning lists, be they good or bad, and start going up against them. Play as hard as I can for each side, and see how things go.

Has anyone ever tried this before? How did it go? Anyone have any better ideas? I'd love to hear all about it, so please let me know how you all would go about this process. I need the help, so let's hear it!