Tag Archives: gaming

40K Skirmishing

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I’ve been thinking a lot about playing skirmish games with 40K lately.

This is, I think, entirely the fault of Battle Missions.  I’ve yet to get in a game of Kill Team myself (in fact, I won’t be able to pick up my copy of the book until this evening), but I’m very excited about giving it a spin.  I expect I’ll be able to play a few games at Madicon, for sure.

Sons of Taurus has a pair of KT battle reports that are worth checking out.  (They’re also a great example of why I much prefer that format to video battle reports.)

It’s also stirred up a lot of interest on RPG.net’s Other Games Open forum, my primary gaming forum.  A number of alternative options for playing with skirmish games with 40K figures have come up, and I thought I’d share them here.

I haven’t played (or really read all the way through) any of these, but I’ve flipped through them all.

Thunderhawk Down requires the 5th Ed rules, but Brutal Conflict and Death Squads appear to be stand-alone.  Thunderhawk Down and Brutal Conflict appear to have pretty complete sets of armies, while Death Squads is a little light (with several listed as “Coming Soon!”).

For the heck of it, I threw together a chart comparing armies each game supports:

Army
System
BC
DS
TD
13th Company
Y
Black Templars
Y
Blood Angels
Y
Chaos Daemons
Y
Y
Chaos Marines
Y
Y
Daemonhunters
Y
Dark Angels
Y
Dark Eldar
Y
Y
Eldar
Y
Y
Y
Imperial Guard
Y
Y
Y
Kroot Mercs
~
Lost and the Damned
Y
Y
Necrons
Y
Y
Orks
Y
Y
Y
Space Marines
Y
~
Y
Space Wolves
Y
Y
Tau Empire
Y
Y
Tyranids
Y
Witch Hunters
Y

I’m definitely going to give Brutal Conflict and Thunderhawk Down a read-through (Death Squads is a bit too verbose for my tastes, and I don’t have any of the armies it supports) and will probably give them a spin when the shiny-newness wears off of Kill Team.

Skaven FAQ

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GW has posted a FAQ for the Skaven book.

Some things, as usual, were pretty obvious.  Some things are silly.  (Master Moulders in the front, for example.  I’ll give you RAW, but it’s silly.)  Some things I like (Unit Strength on a Bonebreaker Rat Ogre is 3(+1).  Vindication!)

Microposts

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A few random things, smushed together into a single post:

I’m officially sick of the Soul Grinder model.

On Tuesday, I noticed that some of the leg blades on one of them had broken off when I’d dropped it a few weeks ago.  Uncool!  Especially because I’d vacuumed that area just a few days before having this realization.  Fortunately, I was able to turn up both blades (which means I must not have done as good a job cleaning as I’d thought I had).

Closer examination of the Soul Grinder legs reveals some chipping, both on the blades that had gone AWOL and some that hadn’t.  Ugh.  The model’s been painted for less than a month, and already it looks like it’s been ungently used by years by a middle-schooler.

Finally, on bringing them in from gaming, I stabilized the foam tray I’d bought hours before (specifically to protect these stupid models)… and in doing so snapped off another leg.

This is frustrating.

I’ve gotten all of two games in in the past month: too busy with work and painting Daemons.  Both games have been against John C.’s Tyranids

I’ve come to the conclusion that, with my mono-god Khorne list, if I see a Tyranid army on the other side of the table, I should shake hands and thank my opponent for the game before we roll for mission.

I’m hope this is a little different with more diverse daemon lists… I’d be surprised if it weren’t.  But with all Khorne, it’s too much of an uphill battle.  Against Khorne, Tyranids have:

  • Faster, more mobile units
  • Too many models to kill
  • Too many dice being thrown around for a 5+ invul save to weather
  • Monstrous Creatures that out-Monstrous Creature my Monstrous Creatures, for fewer points
  • A vulnerability to cover that I can’t leverage
Tyranids don’t really care about Hellblades; their saves aren’t all that great, and they have enough wounds or bodies that I can’t spit out enough attacks.
I also think that using cover to your advantage is key to defeating Nids… but I can’t do that.  No grenades and little-to-no shooting means I can’t hunker down in, or assault into or out of, cover.

Bloodthirsters are expensive chumps compared to Tryanid MCs.  Trygons have higher Toughness, more wounds and vomit out more attacks than a Bloodthirster, for 50 fewer points.
The key, I think, is recognizing and resigning myself to this upfront.  Knowing that winning just ain’t gonna happen means I can just put that aside and focus completely on having a good time and khorninating what I can.

Due to what is almost certainly a combination of the above two points: I have no energy for painting Daemons.  I’ve hit burnout point.  I’m hoping to just power through the Bloodcrushers over the weekend but… I’m just tired of painting.

That puts me at:

I’m excited about Battle Missions.

I expect many of them will be… meh, but Kill Team looks like fun.  I have every expectation that, within the next few months, I’ll have allowed it to seduce me into building a Kommano team.

I think there’s a lot of thinking to be done about Kill Team.  How the format will require different sorts of lists. For example, each of my first cut lists have included something like a Klaw or a Powerfist because, you know, that’s just what you do… except there are no hidden Powerfists anymore.  That sort of thing.

Running the Numbers

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Earlier today, I made the claim that I felt like “[Bloodcrushers are] more resilient than Bloodletters.”  3+/5+ vs. 5+.

I took a moment to doodle out the math.  I don’t fetishize Mathhammer or anything; there are a lot of factors that it can’t weigh (and likely just as many factor’s I’m too lazy to try to include), and it’s sloppy statistics.  It’s inevitably built around flat percentages, no accounting for standard deviation, &tc.  It’s another tool in the toolbox, though.  A quick and dirty way give you an idea of whether something’s better, or worse, or about the same… even if it doesn’t immediately appear that way.

Anyway, the numbers:

For starters, 1 Bloodcrusher clearly cannot eat as many bolter shots (as good a metric as any) as 8 Bloodletters.  But he’s 2/3rds as resilient for less than 1/3rd of the cost.  Still, I was wrong about that.

Bump it up 2 ‘Crushers, though, and they’re still considerably cheaper and we’re talking something much more resilient… even before factoring in Would Allocation Shenanigans (which I have no doubt can be calculated, but it’s been a few years since I took a discrete math class).  They’re also possibly killier (another claim I probably need to verify).

I think that, instead of running 3 ‘Crushers in my list from earlier today, I’m probably only going to run 2 in a single unit, just in the interests of kill points.  The points left over from not buying the third will go towards Icons and Fury on some models, I think.

Shrinking the List

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Just learned that the Madicon 40K tournament is going to be 1,500 points.

Now, there are a few things I could probably say, but I think I’ll leave it at: “1,500?  Really?”

Of course I haven’t thought through a 1,500 point list.  I’ve thought through a 1,750 list that I can sort of ham-fistedly bloat up to 1,850 and 2,000… but nothing a 1,500 points.

On the one hand, this is vexing.  On the other hand, this is an opportunity to run a list that’s somewhat tuned instead of a tuned list (as I consider my 1,750 list to be) plus points wasters.  I’m going to choose to be positive about this.

So, give me your opinions!

The first cut is my 1,750 list – 250 points.  Fundamentally, that’s going to describe all of these 1,500 lists, but this is the most direct path.

I drop the Bloodcrushers entirely, as well as Karanak and an Icon.  I pick up a Fury of Khorne on the larger Bloodletter squad to hit 1,500.

MAXIMUM KHORNAGE
Chaos Daemons – 1,500 points

HQ
Bloodthirster
Bloodthirster

Troops
Bloodletters x16 – Icon of Khorne, Fury of Khorne
Bloodletters x8

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne

Heavy Support
Soul Grinder – Phlegm
Soul Grinder – Phlegm

Pros: I can run this right now.
Cons: Bloodletters suck, and having fewer units does me no favors.

This next list is very similar to the previous list: it just splits the big Bloodletter squad in half.

MAXIMUM KHORNAGE
Chaos Daemons – 1,500 points

HQ
Bloodthirster
Bloodthirster

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Icon of Khorne
Bloodletters x8 – Fury of Khorne
Bloodletters x8

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne

Heavy Support
Soul Grinder – Phlegm
Soul Grinder – Phlegm

Pros: I can run this right now.  More targets than the list above.
Cons: Bloodletters remain the weakest unit in the army.  8 is really fragile, too.

I can’t tell if this final list is The Way to Go or Silly.

Instead of paying for more Bloodletters than the bare minimum, I can buy Bloodcrushers.  They’re the cheapest thing I can put on the table (while sticking with the powers-of-two number scheme of 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 that Khorne likes), and feel like they’re more resilient than Bloodletters (I’ll do the math, later, to see if that’s true or not).  They’re also More Units, which means More Targets, which makes the overall army that much more resilient.

I could shift the Bloodletter upgrades onto the Bloodcrushers. Not sure if I want to do that or not.  If I do that, I’ll have to model up and paint another Bloodletter.  (Only have one octet without an Icon.)  Without doing that, I think I can fudge the Fury, unequipped, and Instrument Bloodcrushers as just regular ‘ol Crushers.

MAXIMUM KHORNAGE
Chaos Daemons – 1,500 points

HQ
Bloodthirster
Bloodthirster

Elites
Bloodcrusher x1
Bloodcrusher x1
Bloodcrusher x1

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Icon of Khorne
Bloodletters x8 – Fury of Khorne

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne

Heavy Support
Soul Grinder – Phlegm
Soul Grinder – Phlegm

Pros: More targets!  More resilient targets!
Cons: Bloodcrushers have A Reputation for being really ‘Ard and Killy, so this could look bad.  I don’t think that’s they’re going to be too hard and killy run on their own, however.

What do people think?

Khornate Daemon Lists

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Given that I had to bump the list up to 2K for March 20th, as well needing to swap out the Soul Grinders for… something else, I’ve done some thinking about my lists.

My 1,750 list has been unchanged.  Part of me looks at all the scary new psychic powers that these new codices have… but then the other part of me tells me that Blessing of the Blood God really wouldn’t be as useful as it should be (since it only works for wounds).

MAXIMUM KHORNAGE
Chaos Daemons – 1,750 points

HQ
Bloodthirster
Bloodthirster

Elites
Bloodcrushers x4 – Fury of Khorne, Icon of Khorne, Instrument of Khorne

Troops
Bloodletters x16 – Icon of Khorne
Bloodletters x8 – Icon of Khorne

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Karanak, Fury of Khorne
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne

Heavy Support
Soul Grinder – Phlegm
Soul Grinder – Phlegm

My 1,850 list is identical to my 1,750 list.  100 points just isn’t enough to buy another unit, so I have to throw more points at the units I have.

MAXIMUM KHORNAGE
Chaos Daemons – 1,850 points

HQ
Bloodthirster – Death Strike, Unholy Might
Bloodthirster – Death Strike, Unholy Might

Elites
Bloodcrushers x4 – Fury of Khorne, Icon of Khorne, Instrument of Khorne

Troops
Bloodletters x16 – Fury of Khorne, Icon of Khorne
Bloodletters x8 – Fury of Khorne, Icon of Khorne

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Karanak, Fury of Khorne
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne

Heavy Support
Soul Grinder – Phlegm
Soul Grinder – Phlegm

My 2,000 point list is considerably rougher.  For one, I’m swapping out the Soul Grinders with which I’m very comfortable and happy for Daemon Princes I’ve never put on the table.  Furthermore, besides the Daemon Princes, I really don’t want to add any new models: I’ve got my eye on shifting from running mono-God to something more… ecumenical, while sticking with the Khornate theme.  That will involve some fun conversions and such… none of which I’m permitting myself to think about until I’m done with this mess.

The Daemon Princes I’m not particularly happy with.  They’re loaded up with a bunch of crap that gets them up to 170 points a pop.  That’s the same cost for a Winged Daemon Prince with Iron Hide, which I think would probably be considerably more useful… but I don’t think I can run them ’cause I can’t think of a way to model them this side of ordering Tyranid Warrior Wings, which is cost-prohibitive.  Also, I’m kinda-sorta holding out for the plastic Daemon Prince kit.  I’d run them cheaper… but I don’t have anything else on which to spend the points.

So, that leaves me with:

MAXIMUM KHORNAGE
Chaos Daemons – 2,000 points

HQ
Bloodthirster – Death Strike, Unholy Might
Bloodthirster – Death Strike, Unholy Might

Elites
Bloodcrushers x4 – Fury of Khorne, Icon of Khorne, Instrument of Khorne

Troops
Bloodletters x16 – Fury of Khorne, Icon of Khorne
Bloodletters x8 – Fury of Khorne, Icon of Khorne

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Karanak, Fury of Khorne
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince – Mark of Khorne, Death Strike, Instrument of Chaos, Iron Hide
Daemon Prince – Mark of Khorne, Death Strike, Instrument of Chaos, Iron Hide
Daemon Prince – Mark of Khorne, Death Strike, Instrument of Chaos, Iron Hide

There’s a lot of room for improvement with the 2K list, but it’ll get me to where I need to be for the time being and it should, hopefully, be a fun list to play.  Then, come April, it’ll be time to look to diversification.

Battle for the Cure

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Frank is running a tournament mid-March (3/20) called “Battle for the Cure.”  At the same time, we’ll be running a silent auction, auctioning off various donations.

Tournament fees and the proceeds will go to sponsor fellow IFL’er Bill Donovan’s participation in the Susan G. Komen’s Race for the Cure.  He’s been doing it for years, but this will be our first year doing something organized to support him.

Breast cancer’s very recently touched my family: my mother’s spent the better part of last year fighting it (and beating it)… so it’s something that I’ve been pretty cognizant of, lately.

I’ll be donating to the auction: I’ll paint a squad of ~10 models for the winning bidder.  I’m not the best painter in the world, but I am a Golden Daemon finalist, so I think that should be worth something.  (I’m a little tempted to make a high bid for my own services: I don’t particularly enjoy painting for other people :) )

Of course, this is further motivation for me to have my army nicely and completely painted in time for the tournament, so I can point to it.  “See, I’m a good painter.  You should spend money on boobs and, in doing so, get a nicely painted squad.”  Given that the tournament is one week after my previous target date, that should be doable, but it’s a 2,000 point tournament.  So, one more week… but 150 more points.

Anyway, if you’re in the area (within driving distance of Fredericksburg, VA), you should check it out.  It should be a lot of fun, and it’s for a very good cause.  More information about the event can be found on the IFL Forum or on the Game Vault Forum.

Daemonhunters vs. Daemons

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Awesome Grey Knights art from here.

Someone on the IFL Forum made a comment about “the fact that [Daemonhunters] have anti-demon stuff that doesn’t affect the new demons is just a bit stupid.”

This appears to be a pretty common, yet significantly inaccurate belief, and it bugs the snot out of me.

So, to set the record straight, I decided to run through the codex and pick out the items that specifically refer to Daemons, as well as the things that people would think would work against Daemons (read: things that relate to Pskyers and psychic powers).

Now, I’m hardly claiming that Daemonhunters are a power army or anything, and they definitely have some things that, while still broadly useful (in a world with the new Space Wolves and new Tyranids, they’re increasingly useful), aren’t as useful against Daemons specifically.   But it’s not as dire or “stupid” as people claim.

The List

Still Useful:

  • Annointed Weapon (Wargear) – Unchanged, still works except vs. Soul Grinders by RAW
  • Daemonhammer (Wargear)- Unchanged, still works
  • Destroy Daemon (Psychic Power) – Unchanged, still works
  • Grimoire of True Names – Unchanged, still works
  • Hierophant (Henchman) – Unchanged, still works
  • Mystic (Henchman) – Unchanged, still works
  • Incinerator (Wargear) – Unchanged, still works
  • Psycannon / Psycannon Bolts (Wargear) – See Incinerator
  • Rites of Exorcism (Special Rule) – See Hierophant
  • Sacred Hull (Vehicle Wargear) – See Hierophant
  • Sacred Incense (Wargear) – Unchanged, still works
  • Sanctuary (Psychic Power) – See Incinerator
  • Scourging (Psychic Power)- See Incinerator
In summary, Daemonhunters have:
  • A number of things that make Daemons assault as if through Difficult Terrain.  This is never a bad thing and, given that most Daemons lack grenades, it’s even more effective.
  • A host of things that ignore Invulnerable Saves, which is all most Daemons have
  • Rules that weaken Daemons in combat: making them ½ Weapon Skill and/or -1 Initiative.
  • Rules that help against Daemons in combat: wounding on a 4+, granting (effectively) Preferred Enemy or providing an at-Initiative Thunderhammer.
  • Something that allows free shots at every single Daemon unit in the army as it deploys.
Clearly, Daemonhunters have a number of things going for them that are 1) intended for use against Daemons and 2) still very much useful against Daemons.

No longer Useful:

  • The Aegis (Special Rule) – Daemons don’t take psychic tests
  • Banishment (Psychic Powers) – Instability is gone
  • Blessed (Vehicle Wargear)- Daemons don’t have vehicles that have the listed attributes.
  • Culexus Assassin (Elite) – See The Aegis
  • Daemonic Infestation (Special Rule) – Simply not relevant, but this was hardly an “anti-demon” rule.
  • Null Rod (Wargear) – See The Aegis
  • Psychic Hood (Wargear) – See The Aegis
  • Ungents of Warding (Wargear) – See The Aegis

So, in other words, all of the Daemonhunters’ “anti-demon stuff” still works just fine against Daemons except:

  • Things that affect psykers and psychic powers
  • Banishment, because Daemons no longer have Daemonic Instability
  • Blessed, at least by RAW

The psychic thing is something of a legit complaint, I think.  The things that one would want to classify as “psychic powers” in the Daemons army, though, really aren’t in the same league as other armies’ psychic powers.

Pavane of Slaanesh is kind of a lot like Lash of Submission, but it’s not nearly as strong.

You’ve kinda got me on things like Bolt of Change (being the same between the Daemonic Gift and the Chaos Marine Psychic Power) and Daemonic Gaze/Doombolt (which is actually better for Daemons), but at the same time would it really be reasonable to classify 100% of an army’s shooting as psychic powers?

Blessed isn’t, by RAW, useful against Soul Grinders.  I’d feel a little dirty making that claim at the table, but at the same time… ‘Grinders are affected by all of the rules that work against Daemons.  That makes it a bit more of a wash.

So, even with the nerf to psychic defense (nothing to defend against), items that still kick daemonic butt outnumber items that are no longer useful in fighting daemons nearly 2:1.  That psychic defense stuff, while not useful against Daemons, is more important than ever against other armies.

Doom of Malantai Debate

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I’ve been strenuously avoiding the Doom of Malantai debate because I’ve yet to get through the new codex.  As far as I can tell, it’s a tough question.  Someone linked to this video, though, and it got a good laugh out of me.

Rapid Fire 2010 Results

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The Second Annual Rapid Fire tournament went down on Saturday at Game Vault.

Turnout was shockingly low.  We’d had nearly 20 people signed up for it and had 6 at the start of the tournament (with 2 more showing up through the day).  Some folks gave a heads-up (which is fine), but many didn’t (which is less so).  You always expect a little of that (because life happens), but the scale (> 50% of signups) of it was pretty disheartening.

Regardless, it really seemed like everyone who showed up had a good time, which means the event was a success.

Results were:
Most Battle Points: John S (Space Wolves)
Best Army: Doug McN (World Eaters)
Longest Streak: (tie) Jay P (Space Marines), Matt M (Orks)

Because we had so few people, Matt H and I played a number of ringer games to ensure that 1) everyone who’d signed up was playing and 2) that people got to play different people.  This unfortunately undercut the point of the format a bit, but nobody seemed to mind.  The person “on deck” would have had to have waited around a very unreasonable amount of time.  (To offset this, we decided that losses to the ringers wouldn’t break winning streaks, but it never came up.)

That meant I finally got to use the ringer list I built for last year’s Rapid Fire:

Tau Empire

  • Ethereal
  • Fire Warrior Honor Guard x12
  • Crisis Suit x1 – Flamer, Fusion Blaster, Multi-tracker
  • Fire Warrior Team x12
  • Kroot Carnivore Squad x20

It put up a better fight than I thought it would.

I was very excited and interested to see how the opposing scenarios would work out.

In short (because it’s detailed in the RF post), each player rolls for scenario.  Each player works towards their scenario and tries to prevent their opponent from succeeding in their scenario.  So, Player 1 could roll Seize Ground and Player 2 could roll Annihilation: Player 1 would try to hold the objectives and lose fewer KP/VP than Player 2, while Player 2 tries to kill more KP/VP than Player 1 while trying to deny them objectives.

Frustratingly, in the vast majority of games, both players rolled the same scenario.  So, there weren’t many cases of opposing scenarios… certainly not enough for me to get a feel for how good/bad an idea it is.

Similarly, the change to Annihilation (VP on a per-model basis vs. KP on a per-unit basis) didn’t come up often enough for me to get a feel for it.  I’m quite sure that it’s wildly impractical in a larger game, but at 500 points, it didn’t seem very hard to work out at all.  It also has some odd impacts on rules, like Combat Squadding or blobbing IG squads together, but I’m not sure that’s a big deal in the small, small points levels.

Despite the turnout, I had a good time and it looked like everyone else did.  It’s always a treat to get down to Game Vault, which is simply a great store.  (I wish it were closer to Manassas.)  We’ll be doing it again in 2011 (though likely with preregistration).