Order of Battle! 1500 Point Tournament Lists

I have not played in a tournament in over a year now. It just seems like something comes up or I change my mind at the last second. But for $25.00 and a chance to spend a few hours in Calgary how could I pass this up! The plan is simple. Get Zwiss to go to the Cross Iron mills for a day and BAMN! I am free to game my little heart out!

I need to consider what I am going to take for an Army. 1500 points is not a level I traditionally play at. It’s fairly small and I am really feeling the crunch. I am going to play Space Marines. Here are some sample lists concepts:

Drop pod list: Steel Rain

Pedro Kantor

X2 Sternguard 4 combi-meltas 2 lascannons melta bombs

 10 man in a drop pod

X1 tactical squad. Melta multi-melta, Power Sword and melta bombs

Drop pod

X2 5 man Scouts with sniper rifles, camo-cloaks, missile launcher/Heavy bolter and melta bombs

X1 5 man Assault Terminator Squad

This list gives me a good deep striking capacity. The Sternguard with a follow on Tactical and Terminator Squad can be devastating. My reservations from this list come from the possibility of flyers ruining my day and the lack of AP 2. But mid to short range they are dangerous! It also has a pretty good theme going for it. It not to much of a stretch to say that it's Pedro Kantors Retribution strike force. If I bring this I want to play an Ork player for sure!

Bike list: Rapid Assault

Captain: Bike Relic Armour, Relic Blade Storm Shield

Command Squad x4 vets, plasma guns Power weapons, Storm shields

Apothecary

X2 Bike Squads 2 Multi-melta attack bikes with 2 plasma guns and 2 melta guns respectively.

X2 Storm Talons

X2 5 man Sniper scouts

The choice comes down to 28 models vs. 44 in the Drop Pod list. This list is faster and all the fire power is a lot more condense. I took a Captain over Khan because Khan’s hit and run is redundant now and I want to have my entire army able to take advantage of combat tactics. This list also has the advantage of flyers zipping around but really lacks staying power. If my dice go south on me I am straight up screwed. I don’t have the bodies to take a lot of punishment.

I’m going to give both lists a test run over the next few weeks and see what I like more.

     

Weekend gaming round up

Well what can I say about this weekend? It really was a perfect example of the best and worst kinds of players you can meet in war gaming. I guess I'll start with my game on Friday night. 2000 points at my local GW; I ended up playing a Daemon player and I knew that this was going to be a frustrating experience. Now I have nothing against playing strong lists. I love the game enough I will take 1000 loses as long as both sides are bloody and ridiculous things happen. A Hail-Mary charge with A Space Marine Captain into the open arms of a Bloodthirster is the only way to play this game. But I understand the tournament mentality. You want to put forward the best possible list and compete. I understand that. But what I don't understand is when you completely sacrifice competitiveness for fun.    

At least he let me deploy! 

My opponents list was simple 

2000 Pts - Chaos Daemons Roster

HQ: Lord of Change (1#, 365

   6 Flamers of Tzeentch, 138 pts 

   6 Flamers of Tzeentch, 138 pts 

 Flamers of Tzeentch ( 212 

   8 Flamers of Tzeentch, 212 

      1 Pyrocaster (Character)

 Screamers of Tzeentch (9#, 225 pts)

   9 Screamers of Tzeentch, 225 pts (Jetbike; S: Lamprey's Bite; S: Slashing Attack; S: 

   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos, 270 pts 

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 270 pts)
Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 270 pts)

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 170 pts)

   10 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 215 pts)

   9 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 215 pts 

      1 The Changeling

He plopped this on the table and all I just wanted to walk out. This isn’t fun to play against! This is a list mathematically designed to make him feel good by winning. In a casual environment if you bring this you are an unfathomable asshole. It's rude to assume because you made the tough as nails list to assume other people will do so. If we had paid $60.00 to play I wouldn’t bat an eye at this list. I lost this game on turn 1 when my Librarian perils on casting Null zone. Throw in some blood letters or daemonettes you jag! Make the game exciting!  

I was pretty bummed after this game. But then a player and a gentleman arrived with a steel clad army of undead robots that was exactly what Warhammer armies should be!

It's blurry but this army was awesome!  

This game was so much fun I am still giddy about it. My Crimson Fists against a horde of Necrons! The army wasn’t finished being painted but it looked good with the ice blue details over steel bodies. I can’t remember the army competition as most of the models looked the same but it had a few immortals, warriors. Scarabs and wraiths.

There are a lot of highlights in this game. One 5 man terminator squad made about 45 saves on turns one. All of the we’ll be back rolls were on fire; I just could not keep the Necrons down!

1 in 1,000,000 shot! 

Despite a strong first few turns my line came unglued under the Necron pressure. I committed both combat squads of Terminators to a prolonged melee in the center of the board and ignored the objective. My Captain fought a Necron Overlord for 4 rounds and emerged victorious but with only 1 wound to show for it and an Iron-armed Librarian was picked off by scarabs. I even had a plasma cannon scatter back onto itself!

The guy with the plasma gun killed himself later on. 

 The result was a 4-2 win for the Necrons. But the game was so fun I could hardly care; which is the moral of the story this weekend. The result doesn’t matter when the game is interesting. We both had an even chance right up until the end of the game. His list wasn’t bad; In fact I think his list would have made a very good showing against the daemons from Friday. But it all came down to attitude. He wanted to have a good time and make toy soldiers die.  

So that was my weekend. In other news there is a 1500 point tournament next month in Calgary. I think I am going to attend but I haven’t decided on a list yet. I am going to try and do a second post this week. I have 4 articles drafted but I need to finish them. 

Glorious Return! No BS this time!

Line of battle!

I think it’s common for War-gamers to burn out. I know that’s what happened to me. After months and years of playing Fifth edition I just wanted a break! It was a nice reprieve but now I just want to wage war in the grim dark future!

Probably the biggest development is my new-found frugal attitude. I promised my girlfriend (we’ll call her zwiss because she is a person and not a title) that I would massively cut back my spending and work through the pile of bitz and sprues I have lying about.  So since September 1^st 2012 I have not purchased a Warhammer model. I will not purchase any new model kits until September 1^st 2013 or I finish my entire collection (HA!).  No easy task! But I am making good headway.

My Crimson Fists are massively expanding as new squads and specialists are being painting and added to the army. The addition of storm talons and a bike command squad gave me a lot of tactical flexibility and blistering small arms fire! Unfortunately Pedro’s battle-brothers have been benched for other armies.

Incoming Eldar. Independent fire at will!!!

I started a Daemon army on a whim back in 2009. I never played it, built very little of it and largely pirated bits for whatever I needed. But recently I traded my Orks for another daemon army and have had a blast! Daemons are the kind of army that is just fun when things aren’t going terribly wrong. My first two games saw me blasted off the board before I could even say ‘boo”. But after some practice I managed to bring down a Grey Knight terminator army. It was a little shocking how effective Daemons are at killing Daemon hunters. I am planning on looking into this more later but my Daemons are an after-thought since my chaos army took off!

My Night Lords are getting base coated and have fought their first engagements. I love the new Chaos Marine Codex. It is so full of fun units and crazy combos I pee a little when I think about it! So my to-do list pretty much reads like a Chaos Space Marine list

Paint a Chaos Lord in terminator Armour –Check

Paint x2 CSM squads – half done

Paint x2 Noise Marine Squads – Half done.

Paint CSM Sorcerer- Not even started.

Chaos rhinos –in the mail and have been for two months!

Cultists etc etc.

Advance! 

Aaron Demski-Bowden is wholly to blame for my selection of night lords. His awesome books convinced me to learn to paint lighting on power armour!  I got to meet the man in the beanie in person a couple weeks ago.  I attended the Chestermere Black Library Expo in sunny Chestermere Alberta. It was awesome to meet the Authors and discuss their work!

So that`s the happenings in the Battle-Ranch. This weekend I am hoping for a game on Friday night and will strive to do a battle report; perhaps, on YouTube?

So sit tight until then my brave friends.

Battle-Ranch