Been a while since I’ve posted (~2weeks) and I’ve been thinking over a few things.  I’ve qualified for the Feast of Blades in Denver, and lists are due Oct 1st, so, enough procrastinating.  This is the list I’ve been working with for maybe a month now (before Tau vehicles got a 3+ cover save, 2+ when turbo-boosting, so that’s all Gravy now) and it’s been working pretty well.

Basic idea is that the Shas’El goes on top of the Bastion, with the pathfinders, and mans the Icarus Lascannon.  Broadsides go inside, so we have a nice, fairly nasty fire base there with cover on the battlements and AV 14.

Purifiers rush up (18″) to midfield and just sit there in their rhino as a deterent with 8 psycannon shots, and happy enough to assault you if you ask for it.

Coteaz goes with GKSS and they move up the field on foot behind the purfiers acting as the main Dakka unit, with Coteaz using Divination and Precience on them.

Psykers  move up however far is required to get within 36″, drop Str 8 AP1 pieplates.

Tau Firewarriors get in their Devil Fish (steal one from pathfinders) and probably don’t really get out until last turns, just scooting around with a 3+ or 2+ cover save as required.

Hammerheads do their thing, mostly their for the pie plates.

Dreadknight is there for disruption, counter-attack, and just outright breaking units when required.

Thoughts on the list:

Anti-tank: I feel pretty solid.  I have 5 Railt guns and the icarus lascannon available for first turn initial strike,  a strength 8 Ap 1 large blast, 4 psycannons that should be in play turn 2+, and many str 5 shots. Hopefully the hammherheads won’t be needed for their anti-tank and can be left for pie plates, but they’re there if needed.

Anti-horde: Super solid.  3 pie plates (2 str 6 and 1 str 8), the Heavy incinerator off the Dread knight, Cleansing Flame if required from the purifiers (I think not) and lots of Dakka.

Durability: Great.  AV14 bastion (vulnerable to Railguns, Lances, and deepstruck Meltas, but that’s about it).  2 Av 13, 2 AV 12 (which should have 3+ saves) vehoicles.  Weakspots are the rhinos, easy first turn kill sif I’m not careful.

Mobility:  Descent.  4 transports, GKSs can deepstrike if they want to (probably will not) and NDK can be wherever it wants to. (but will almost certainly make itself a big fat target)

Scoring:  This is what I’m worried about.  I have 4.  The GKSS are 10 strong and tough, but they’re walking and can get shot up if the opponent makes a goal out of it.  The FW will be pretty hard to kill inside their 2+ DFs, but accidents happen, and there’s only 6 in each.  I wanted to do a big squad of 12 but didn’t know what to give up.  Psykers are scoring, technically, but are very delicate.  So, 3 of those scorers really, really don’t want to get out of their vehicle until the last minute, and truth is the psykers rhino will probably be shot out form under them, anyway.

If it’s nightfight first turn, things are going very well for me!

Thoughts?

2000 Pts – Tau Empire Roster – Matt Bennett, FoB list 2012

Total Roster Cost: 1998

Continue reading »

 

Well, first of all, here are the Ard Boyz Semi-final Missions.

I was starting to wonder when they would post them, but then we were all wondering that for the Qualifiers.

Look them over, then let me share my thoughts:

Continue reading »

 

 

Let’s go on to the game by game battle report, shall we?  40k Preliminary Ard Boyz missions are here.  I should mention that our T.O. had ruled, ahead of time, that Infiltrate and Scout were universal rules that were active in all missions.

Game 1:

So, I hope the kid never finds this blog, because I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but my round 1 opponent was a 17 year old puppy we’ll abbreviate as J.  And I stomped the puppy.  Nothing noble in it, but I took it for the opportunity it was to get full battle points.

Continue reading »

 

So, I went down to my local store this past weekend, where I am in fact a paying club member, to play in the 40k Ard Boyz preliminaries.  I came in second, out of a fairly small 13 people, just narrowly missing first with a 61-58 battle points ratio.  Two other folks tied for 3rd at 48 pts.  I think the day mostly went pretty well, and I’m ok with coming in second, since it qualified me for the semi-finals……but in the semi-finals I need first, so I know I have a little work ahead of me.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the list I took:

Continue reading »

 

So, I guess my first post became at least partly a rant about my painting score, not really what I meant it to be, so let’s move on to what I really care about:  Tactics. For reference, my full list that I brought can be found here:  Draigo and Stormraven List.   First, some general thoughts:

  • People targeted the Land Raider Redeemer much more aggressively than I was expecting.  I thought they would be going after Stormraven first in all cases, since it was faster, more fragile, and had a much more nasty payload.  Maybe people didn’t realize just how nasty that payload (Draigo, Paladins w/ psycannons and a BroBanner, and a dreadnought) really was?  Didn’t seem like it, though.
  • The converse of this has to be that I was using the Stormraven too conservatively.  I was always turbo boosting it, but often up the side.  I probably should have sent it right up the middle, since I had designed the paladins and dread to be able to fight well if it crashed and left them center of board.  In the end, I probably just need more practice with this list.
  • Draigo and the Paladins, were the absolute MVPs, they performed fantastically.  Of course, they have to be, they cost like 625 combined.  Still, they were just awesome to behold, and were durable as all hell.  I think I lost a paladins twice to Str 8 Instant Death, but by and large Draigo did manage to keep them safe.  Even though they often had a lot of ground to cover, they made it across open terrain, and just bashed the enemies face in.  Game 1, all else was lost, they straight up ekked out a win for me.  Game 2, I lost, but Draigo, by himself, came so close to making it a tie.  Game 4, Draigo happily fought basically her entire demon army.  Nearly died, and all the paladins did, but he pulled through.  Very thematically appropriate.  I didn’t actually get to use their psycannons as much as I hoped, I wonder if I should re-balance things between them and the terminators, weapon load-out wise.
  • GKT underperformed, a little, mostly because they got their Redeemer shot out from under them.  But, that meant their lack of a psycannon was painful.  I had meant the paladins to get shot down far from the battle line, not them.
  • Yeah, kinda like I thought, I really wish the psycannon dread in the Stormraven was a venerable dreadnought.  He performed OK, he was in a lot tough situations, often contributed, but the durability would have been super, super useful.  He almost always did die, eventually, at least twice got knocked on his butt almost immediately.  I would say from experience a venerable dread is something like twice as durable, and BS 5 never hurts.  Problem is, I just cannot see how to fit the extra 50 (it’s 60, but I’d ditch the heavy flamer, too) in this list.
  • My Grey Knight Strike Squad was kinda “meh.”  I suppose that was to be expected, they were the average guys in an other wise all-star list.
  • Psyfleman worked great, did what I wanted, though I guess he was never really needed; the first time I fought rhinos, he got knocked on his ass before he had a chance to fire, the second time, his fire output was just gravy on an otherwise slaughter fest.
  • I had some heavy metal in there–an LR, SR, rhino, 2 dreads, and all those termie models, but apparently target priority was too clear for my enemy.  I could use with more, or harder, targets.  Which leaves us right back the dual LR list, unfortunately, because I don’t know how to fit more metal into this current list.
Review of the list by item: Continue reading »
 

So, I just came back from Boston Brawlcon.  It was my first Grand Tourney, and I suppose, in the end, I should be happy with my showing.  A few things deeply frustrated me though.  I’ll give my general thoughts here, and then post detailed battle reports in a bit.

 

I did quite well with my Grey Knights, my final score was 4 wins and 1 loss, though I was randomly selected for the “bye” 5th round (annoyingly, 3 guys left, not between day 1 and 2, but between game 4 and 5, in the middle of the second day, wtf?) so that last game doesn’t count, in a way.  I would have much preferred to have fought the last game, gotten in the hardcore practice (and just have the game) that I need, then get the free 20 pts.  I also would have had more data on how my list performed, and had more battle reports for you guys.

Once again, the missions can be found this posting about Brawlcon.  My scores were 17 (mission 1, it was very hard not to tie the secondary objective), 0, 20, 20, 20 (which was the bye).  I came in 5th overall, out of 26, which I guess doesn’t include the 3 people who rage-quit.

Here’s the results:

Ben Molie      102     Best overall
Ragnar Arnenson   101     Best General and Volunteer of the Year award!!!!
Alex Fennell   97
Wyatt Traina   91
Matt Bennett   85  <– I guess for those of you who can’t count from the top, this is me.
Sam Gould      80
ryan deane      75
Matt Cassidy   75
Rick James       68
Simon Leen      67  Best Painted
Graham Rockwell   65
Chris Bradley   64
Tom Greene   61    Best Sport
Troy Esposito   60    Best kick ass Beard!!!! Not a real award but needed to be said!
Will Souza  60   Players Choice and well deserved!!! Took a silver as well in the painting comp.
Gil Fuhr      53   Silver in the painting comp
Keith Bonneau   52
Tyler Gilbert   50
Alicia Ling      43
Rob Cline      41

Continue reading »

 

 

 

This is it, this is The List.  The List with which I hope to win fame and fortune at the Boston Brawlcon.

I’m very thrilled with it, actually, it has all the things I want; It can hit like a mobile flying truck, has sufficient anti-tank, and great scoring potential.  It only has 9 Kill points, total, which is also pretty sweet.  I was going to do 4 of these posts, with 4 different lists, running through the options, starting with that 3 LR list I posted last week, but nah, this is it, I’m done.

It’s like falling in love, sometimes you just know, y’know?

It doesn’t hurt that I did really pretty well against exactly the guy and exactly the list I most feared:  Frank, with his really heavy Dark Lance Dark Eldar over at the ‘Arvard ‘Ard Boyz in cambridge (they play out of the Pandemonium book store in Central Square).  Expect a mini Battle Report on that in the next few days, but the bottom line is I had a little bit, but not a huge amount of dice luck, and I nearly tabled him, so I’m pretty happy with it.  I still hope Frank, who is going to Brawlcon, stays the hell away from me, I don’t want to fight him if I can help it, but it was still a good sign.

Continue reading »

 

Yeah, this one is mine.  So I tend to be of the belief that real combat is a lot of quiet, subtle maneuvering, and then sudden, over-whelming violence.  If you can do your maneuvering more quietly, and your violence more sudden, things will go well.

On the table-top war-gaming front, I feel it’s usually more useful to think in terms of “pressure”.  I should really do a post on that concept alone, but the basic idea is that if your opponent only have to worry about one thing in a turn, even if there will be another one next turn, if he has a clear target-priority and threat minimization strategy, then that’s good for him and bad for you.

So if you give him multiple threats, all credible, and make them more than he can deal with, meaning that he has to make at least one decision by ignoring one, then that’s good for you and bad for him.

It’s not everything you need to know about tactics, but it’s a hell of a good start.

In short, you’re trying to overwhelm your opponent.  People are trying to do this when they have 9-11 razorback lists, or all terminators, or hundreds of gaunts.  You can also do this with Land Raiders.

 

I play dual Land Raider lists all the time, and it works quite well.  Two of them are pretty essential, as you need at least the two threats in order to give them multiple bad options.  It’s all pretty likely that you will have a LR go down sometimes, they’re not invulnerable.  Now, I’ve gotten into a lot of arguments on Kirby’s blog, people telling me that it doesn’t work because people can block your charges, and because of things like Dark Lances and such.  Well, I play these things in tournaments, I do pretty OK with them, this is not just a rumor.  I’ll write up a whole LR tactica later, but let’s leave at now that a big part of the trick is knowing when not to charge, which is a lot of the time, and using even the “assault LRs” such as crusdaers.

Now, Land Raiders are expensive, loading up on them can definitely leave your army thin in other areas.  It also does put a lot of eggs in one basket.  They’re tough, but that classic “6 and then a 6″ roll we all know and fear, 1/36 chance, well it’s rare, but it sure will wreck your day.

Conversely, though, they’re tough, and if you’re going to try to overwhelm your opponent in this way, you really want to push that to the limit.  In short, Go Heavy or Go Home.

Now, three Land Raiders would be considered by most a little crazy, and I certainly had trouble making a list that had other essential elements such as sufficient scorers that I needed.  However, I do own three, and I felt a terrible urge to use them.  Grey Knight Land Raiders are certainly helped out lot by the Fortitude rule.

 

The missions I’m designing these lists for can be found here. Continue reading »

 

A very good friend and I have decided to attend our first, big 2 day Grand tournament July 2nd, and 3rd.  It’s in Hudson, MA, at the Elks lodge.  It’s a $35 total entry fee (I guess $20 for entry to con and $15 for the tournament?) and it’s officially part of some big circuit, with prize support from GW.  I beleive 1st prize is airfare to next year’s adepticon, plus a full 2000 pt army (list chosen by the winner, no forge world), as well as, of course, a ticket to next year’s Boston Brawlcon.

The folks running this GT, Battle Road Games, have a post on their forums that should be considered the main source of info, here.

I will rule Boston Brawlcon, with an admantium, shiny Grey fist!

Well, that bravado helps me get my game face on…..truth is this is my first “Grand Tournament” and I while I think I’m smart, think I’m all tactical and stuff, for all I know, I’ll get eaten like, like a guppy in very large pond.

Or, I’m a shark.  I feel like a shark, anyway.

I’ve attached the mission packet here, with the Tournament Organizer’s permission, and for my own planning purposes, I thought it would helpful to figure what battle points are available where and for what objectives.  This is sort of my founding post for a few posts to follow, my “road to Boston Brawlcon”.  I figure totaling things up like this will help me decide how many troops I need, how to optimize my Kill Points, etc.
  1. Objectives: 35 pts (one objective has secondary to control your objectives, tertiary to control theirs)
  2. Kill pts: 34 (sometimes with special conditions, kill at least half your opponents kill pts, beat kill pts by 3 or more or draw)
  3. Victory pts: 20 pts ( > 186 victory pts.  Less is a draw)
  4. Table Quarters: 6 pts (always tertiary)
  5. Preserve Troops: 5pts.  Just a secondary in one mission.  If you eliminate their troops, but still have some, you win.  Both have some, draw, neither have any, dual loss.

 

Here’s the painting scale, pretty standard around these parts.  I like this system, actually.  I need to ask the organizer, with two judges, is that 20 pts total for painting, or 40?  20pts would be equal to one game, which seems about right, 40 pts would make painting rather….dominant.  EDIT, 6/14/11  Spoke to Alex, over at Battle Road Games.  Apparently yes, two painting judges scores are averaged, with a total possible score of 20 (23 for the very best guy), so about equal to one game.  Good balance, I think. Continue reading »

© 2011 Prometheus at War Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha