Walking in Slaneesh’s Shadow

The Apostate found the Sorcerer’s commitment to a single Chaos deity somewhat distasteful, but the Word Bearer needed him. The Slaneeshi adept had promised to teach the Word Bearer some of his warp knowledge and in return the Dark Apostle has for the moment bound his war band to walk in the shadow of Slaneesh.

Thank-you for the comments on my earlier post. I’ve had a look at the codex, the Arc players pack and my miniatures. A few tweaks and I think I’ll go to Arc 2015 with:

The Apostate, dark apostle with the black mace & a gift of mutation
The Cult of Pain, 14 cultists, flamer
The Cult of Light, 15 marines, icon vengeance, plasma pistol; asp champ with power sword
The Elect, 5 chosen, asp champ with lightening claws, 4 flamers, veterans of the long war; rhino with a dirge castor
Justified Vengeance Vindicator with siege shield

Nimrod the Untamed, sorcerer (level 1 psyker, discipline of slaneesh); mark of slaneesh
Cult of Noise, 9 Noise Marines, 5 sonic blasters, close combat weapons, icon of excess
Exquisite Fury, Land Raider with twin-linked lascannons

I don’t need armour. I have sun-glasses

The marines are to take or defend an objective. The cultists absorb damage while the dark apostle swings the black mace. The noise marines throw out shots with no cover saves and the sorcerer gives them buffs depending the power drawn. The land raider and vindicator deal with big or scary stuff.  The chosen will keep things simple with a 3 word slogan: “Kill, Maim, Burn!”

I think this list will go OK, provided I don’t face too much air, too much armour or too many monstrous creatures. I mean, what can go wrong?  Some extra bodies in the noise marines will make them more survivable. The loss of the second cultist squad will ultimately just save kill points as the squad not with the apostle would have been rubbish anyway. The other change is the sorcerer leaving his terminator armour at home. This way I get more noise marines in the land raider and otherwise fits the rest of the theme a little better. The sorcerer is still the only model yet to be completed.

I think the paragraph of fiction frames the army nicely. A Word Bearers coven allied with some Noise Marines for nefarious deeds. Lots of cultists and not too many toys offsets the vindicator and larger squads. I’ve taken a really tough weapon in the black mace but put in the hands of a dark apostle rather than a lord. The list may be on the light side, but apart from no helldrake I think is OK (it’s 1348 points, just under the 1350 arc limit).

For sale: one helldrake; still in shrink-wrap.

D.

WATT has left the building

More accurately, WATT left the Arcanacon building back in 2011, but Viv from RubbishInRubbishOut captured our final prize ceremony and has posted two videos:

(earthy wargamer language warning)

ARC40K 2011 CLOSING CEREMONY

and

ARC40K 2011 LEGENDARY MOFOS

These two nostalgia filled trips may only makes sense for those who were there.  Innocent bystanders are directed to the Arc website for a glimpse of just how cool the tournament has become.  Thanks Dan and crew for taking over and thanks to Viv for the videos.

cheers,

Dave

 

Arcanacon Rocks

Hi All,

EDIT: An ace picture gallery has been posted at the web site

I promised a blog on Arc but since then Viv from Knights of Dice has posted a series of videos that are a great round up of the week end.  I recommend you check these out for as good an Arc round-up as you will find.

This one is of the venue in general along with player interviews. It does a nice job of conveying the vibe of the weekend. And this is the first of two collages of the lovely armies that were on display. He also has some interviews with some of the trade stands. Hats off to Viv for creating and posting the videos.

The convention was well organised, the venue big enough and well lit (+1 for air con). The mission briefings were entertaining, clear and short. The missions themselves were good, not too wacky, and nothing that would break a reasonably balanced army. The awards ceremony was well paced and fun. A top job and a big thank-you to Dan, Ben and the rest of the tournament organisers. I love the direction that they are taking Arc. Huzzah!

I had six great games but didn’t take a camera so have no images. Thanks to my opponents: Hayden, Andrew (Eldar), Scott (Black Legion), Angus (Death Wing), Randall (Grey Knights), Anthony (Space Marines); I would happily line up to fight any of you or your armies again. I only won one game- I won’t say against who 😉

D.

For those who came in late, Arcanacon 40K is the 40K wing of the Arc franchise and is one of the biggest tournaments on the Australian calendar. It is also one of the most relaxed.

Late Christmas

My golly gosh! What a busy and rather fabulous couple weeks for gaming here at the Republic of Northcote.

A Stug III ordered from Black Tree Design one lazy day between Christmas and New Year arrived in the post. While the kit took three attempts plus some green stuff to assemble, I got it base coated this morning and it looks OK.  My Germans will be pleased that some reinforcements are on the way.

Then there is Arc.  That needs a whole post for itself but will need to wait until my head stops spinning. It was a great weekend of gaming. Six good games against six great opponents, amidst the mayhem of 150 other gamers doing the same.
(Five losses, but you can’t have everything.)

The forces of chaos were not totally at a loss over the weekend because WATT – on our 9th attempt – won the Saturday night Apocalypse game known as the Golden Fez.
A twitter run down can be found here (For those who don’t know me, I’m the homeless looking guy holding the fez; the one on the left, not the homeless looking guy on the right.)

Arc is such a blast I arranged a day off work to recover. And I’m glad I did, because a Kickstarter from Empress Miniatures arrived today: a platoon of modern Chinese PLA. These are really very nice miniatures and I’m looking forward to get them on the table against some of my Eureka moderns. Another blog post waiting to be written.

I’m off to bed now. I need a lie down after all this excitement. Oh, and I have to read the Fate Core rules that Gaming Guy put me on to.

Photos and detail will follow in the next week or three
(painting desk and work permitting).

D.

Word Bearers Can’t Take A Hint

Emperor be praised. The Exorcists have taken another step towards eradicating the foul presence of the Word Bearers that infect this corner of our Glorious Imperium.

Assisted by a detachment of Grey Knights, members of the Exorcists dealt a heavy blow to the traitor astartes, driving them from the field and taking possession of the strange relics found there.

The artefacts are now in the possession of the Inquisition, who deny all knowledge that anything was seized, that there were any Word Bearers here or that a battle even occurred.

Jim came over on Sunday for some Arc practice, 1,350 points of 40K goodness. We both used our Arc lists. Jim, his Exorcists with some Grey Knights and an Inquisitor; I used by Word Bearers.  We set up using dawn of war and played a variant of the relic where we placed three relics, one in the middle of each third of the table. The extra objectives were good, as it avoided the usual relic grid-lock in the middle of the table.

I conceded in turn six, given that in order to win 5 cultists had to rally and then take down his thunder hammer wielding chapter master to hold an objective to tie.  They didn’t rally.

The game was even for the first three turns.  Jim set-up rather spread out, which allowed me to hide from his somewhat diluted fire.  Highlight in the first half was my vindicator taking out a terminator squad in a text book pie plate spat!Things unravelled in the second half: the word bearer terminators had a deep strike mishap, ended up back in the warp and ultimately arrived too late to affect the game. Then, the Exorcist general tore through, mashed and made life generally unpleasant to daemonettes, chosen, marines and cultists. Not a bad day’s work and earning his second MVP award this season. Well done that man:

The Grey Knights: “Move along please, nothing to see here”

Too late to change the list for Arc, but I think the army will work OK anyway.
No AA, so air will punish me, but I figure I will meet on the second day the half like me without flyers and then start dishing out some damage of my own.

cheers,
D.

Enter, The Apostate

Arc lists are due Friday (6 Jan). I put up a draft list here and got a bit of feedback and a game. Here is the final list:

The Apostate Dark Apostle with plasma pistol and gift
20 Cultists; 2 x flamers
10 Chaos Space Marines; 2 x plasma guns; close combat weapons; VotLW
5 Chosen; Asp Champ with lightening claws; power sword, 3 x flamers; VotLW Rhino
6 Terminators; heavy flamer; 2 x combi-flamers; 2 x power fists; icon vengence
Hellbrute with twin-linked lascannon and missile launcher
Vindicator; siege shield, combi-bolter
Allies:
Sister Pain  Herald of Slaanesh with exalted locus of beguilement and greater gift
Sweet Nothings 10 Daemonettes; Alluress, Rapturous Banner

The chosen started life as havocs but have been promoted, loosing a flamer but gaining extra choppy goodness.  Most of the rest of the Word Bearers have turned up recent battle reports. The artist formerly known as a chaos dreadnought is still in the workshop getting fitted with its missile launcher.

I think this army will work OK.  Plenty of flamers for hoards – orks and ‘nids; choppy stuff for shooty armies like Tau and Guard and shooty stuff (plasma and bolters) for other 3+ armies (marines and necrons). Cultists will laugh at grav-guns. The Vindicator can laugh at the rest.  And the daemonettes ready to get stuck in with their rending and with the locus, re-rolls on missed to hits. Lovely!

See you across the table.

Old School Space Wolves

Steef won’t be making it to Arc this year, but he did make over to the Republic of Northcote with his wonderful Space Wolves army to give my Word Bearer list a test run.

We rolled Big Guns Never Tire (heavy support are scoring), with short table edges and five objectives for our 1,350 point armies.

Steef had a Lord in a drop pod with blood claws; two lots of grey hunters with plasma guns; predator with lascannons; whirlwind; and two or three landspeeders.

I had my Arc list: Dark Apostle; cultists; marines; chosen with flamers; termies with flamers; shooty hellbrute; vindicator; and daemonette allies. Slightly changed from the earlier post, but nothing major.

The game was draw, with one objective each, me with first blood and his Wolf Lord killing by Dark Apostle. He took four turns to kill him – which was four turns longer than it should have, but the Cultists having watched the fight decided they’d had enough and run like the drug addled gangstas they probably are:

Night and blocked line of sight kept deaths low on turn one. The drop pod landed behind my Daemonettes looking for a bit of bolter goodness and failed to kill any.  Logan Grimnar was not amused and he would like his blood claws back, please.

The landspeeders pushed forward for close range melta work, largely failed to destroy anything and were destroyed in turn – too much plasma for the open-topped flyers.

Old school lead landspeeders – the warranty will be long gone on those babies

 A lovely paint job by Steef – lovely smooth blue greys. I think a lot of the newer Space Wolves are too grey, the older blue shade is more reminiscent of deeply frozen ice.

I will do some shots of my army on another day. Here they are pushing forward just before the SW got stuck in:

Eagle eyes will have spotted the grey plastic. My excuse is preparing to Arc, and this is the only model that needs to be painted. I think even I can meet that deadline.

Back to the painting station you – you’re not welcome on the table like that

Steef’s army held up OK (build-wise), given the age of the codex and that he built it a couple of editions ago (3rd ed, I think, but that might be telling).

I was happy with the Word Bearers. Nanna Bols now has a bunch of ersatz grand-daughters in Sister Pain and the Sweet Nothings, a herald of slaanesh and daemonettes. Inspired by him they run with a locus of beguilement and a rapturous standard: close combat killing machines. The marines, with flamers for short range and demolisher cannon and plasma guns for medium range shooting, will help get them where they need to be. The cultists will die in horrible and otherwise funny ways and all up the Word Bearers will do OK.

Who am I kidding? They will die like dogs, but at least they have plenty of Word Bearer vibe.

Toodle pip! D.

Arc Planning

So, after a couple years running Ultramarines, I’ve decided to go back to my Word Bearers for Arcanacon this year.  I was reasonably happy with their performance at the Grand Duchy Dust-up, but I found I just couldn’t put out enough damage early on.

Thinking about the list, I think there was stuff I just didn’t use. Stuff I paid for it and forgot I had – self inflicted, really. And, stuff I had but found wasn’t very useful (which is not completely independent of the first reason).

So, I’ve tweaked my list.  First, I have dropped the aegis line, which never really seems to pay for itself. A slightly more radical change is having units take either veterans of the long war or an icon of vengeance. I have found that paying for the extra point of leadership and then making them fearless was expensive with only rare pay back.  So, the termies get an icon (leadership is already 9 and I mostly want them hanging around).  Marines get VotLW, lifting leadership to 9 (10 while the champion lives), and hatred that will useful if I run in to loyal marines.

With the points I free up I’m going to take a hellbrute with lascannon and a missile launcher. Its role is tank buster, although it can supply some spine to the cultists.

The list (1,350 points):

Dark Apostle with plasma pistol; gift (because he gets a re-roll)

5 Chosen with flamers in a rhino – VotLW

5 Terminators with flamers – deep striking BBQ specialists

Hellbrute with lascannon and missile launcher

10 CSM with plasma pistol, plasma gun; ccw; VotLW; Champion with p/sword

10 Cultists; pistols and ccw; flamer

10 Cultists; pistols and ccw; flamer

Vindicator (storm shield and combi-bolter)

Allies: Herald of Slaanesh with exalted locus

10 daemonettes with rapturous standard

I know people bag allies, but daemons and Word Bearers go together like flies and Nurgle. I have 9 points left – unless I can think of something else I will get an 11th daemonette

Discuss.