Note: I’m writing this from a GK pov, but a lot of it is applicable to Blood Angels as well.

Ah, the flying land raider.  Using a Stormraven was pretty simple in 5th edition, at least for Grey Knight players.  Blood Angels sometimes got tricked into using it as a gun boat, because of their fancy schmancy Bloodstrike missiles, but it’s use to GK players was very clear: Deliver Termiantors and maybe a psychic dreadnought to your opponents face.

I basically used my Stormraven like a really expensive drop pod in 5th edition.  I’d load in Draigo and either some paladins or purifiers (later it was purifiers, because I decided I need the fearless in case of tank shock) and just ran the thing straight at the enemy first turn.  24″, get a 4+ cover save (librarians and shrouding were popular to make it 3+, but I had neither the points nor the room) and melta some poor tank, just because I could.  That usually failed to hit or pen for whatever perverse reason despite the demands of statistics, but who cared?  Draigo was now on the enemy door step.

Then, always, the enemy would fire basically their entire army at it.  They had to, because if it didn’t go down, draigo was going to get to charge whatever he wanted, the SR was going to go nuts shooting, and it would be pretty much an auto-win for me.  Since I was often fighting fellow GK, I’d really look forward to shooting the mindstrikes, but that rarely ever happened.

Stormravens are tough, even in 5th ed, but most of the time, they’d be able to bring it down.  (how many shots does it take to get to the center of a SR?  ”most of whatever you got”, honest assessment at the time.)

That was fine, though, because 1) It usually took a full turn of shooting to do that.  2) Draigo and friends, again, is on your doorstep.  They’d just climb out of the wreckage, and murder everything within arms-reach.  Turn 2 charge.

Now, keep in mind, that was easily a 700-800 pt investment in that one Stormraven, 200 pts of which usually got blown up on the way in.  But still, totally worth it.

 

Soooo……..flyers are awesome in 6th, and the SR is a Flyer.  The Stormraven was good in 5th, so it must be total broken-sauce in 6th, right?   Uh……..yes and no.  The truth is trying use my SR in 6th has left me a little conflicted and confused.

Firstly, let’s be clear, it is a flyer, and flyers are gross.  If your opponent doesn’t have appropriate counter measures (which are hard to come by, absent their own flyers, at the moment) you’re going to run rough shod all over them.

But how are you going to use it?  How are you going to use those 205-260 points to further your goals in winning the game?

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 »

 

The internets, by and wide, seem pretty happy with the new GK codex. Well, I’m not.

 

No, it’s not sour grapes cuz they made the GK codex less powerful, or nerfed my favorite trick.  Quite the opposite, I think it made GK more powerful.

 

What I hate is that these FAQs (both the Main Rulebook FAQ and Grey Knight FAQ) is that it was kinda the usual thing, only more so.  They answered questions that no one was asking, didn’t answer most of the questions actually had, and then made some extra stupid decisions besides.

 

So, I’m going to grade the FAQs.  1 pt for each questions answered, -1 pt for each totally stupid ruling made, and then divide that by the total questions people actually had.  I’ll leave the questions they answered that no one was asking neutral.

 

Questions they answered that no one was asking (0 pts):

From the Main FAQ:

  1. Q: Are Wounds from Dangerous Terrain tests allocated….?
  2. Q: Can a model equipped with multiple grenades us….?
  3. Q: What psychic powers count as psychic shooting…..?
  4. Q: Do psychic shooting attacks need to roll to hit….?

From GK FAQ:

  1. Q: If a unit is the target of Unyielding Anvil, from the Grand Strategy special rule, and it splits into combat squads…?
  2. Q: Can vehicles benefit from the effect of The Shrouding psychic power if they are in range?
  3. Q: What effect does the Cleansing Flame psychic powerhave on vehicles?
  4. Q: Does a Dreadknight armed with two Nemesis doomfists get an extra attack in close combat?
  5. Q: Can Brother-Captain Stern use his Zone of Banishment psychic power if he is not engaged incombat?
  6. Q: If Justicar Thawn is dead at the end of a game involving kill points, does he only give away one killpoint regardless of how many times he was killed?
  7. Q: When are the shooting attacks from Inquisitor Coteaz’s I’ve Been Expecting You special rule fired?
  8. Q: Will Inquisitorial Servitors in a squad without an Inquisitor that has been joined by a Techmarine stillsuffer from Mindlock?
  9. Q: If a Callidus Assassin chooses a unit of vehicles as itstarget for its Polymorphine special rule what facing ishit?
  10. Q: If an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor takes 2 Daemonblades how is this resolved?
  11. Q: Does the entire unit need to be equipped with rad, psyk-out and/or psychotroke grenades for their effects to work or is just one model being equiped with them enough?
  12. Q: Do you take into account the strength increase fromthe psybolt and psyflame ammunition vehicle upgradeswhen working out if a weapon is a defensive weaponor not? If a vehicle has either of these upgrades, mustyou use them?
  13. Q: Can you only take an Inquisitorial henchmen warband if you have an Inquisitor in your army?

OK, folks that is 4+14=17 absolutely useless questions.  They don’t hurt anything, but seriously, no one wondered this stuff.  Just wasting our time and assuming we’re stupid.

 

Continue reading »

 

So this may be the shortest blog post ever, but there’s something I wanted to share with you.

We know servo-skulls are good, right?  Stupid cheap, cheapest if you can get them on a techmarine or inquisitor, and they let you play all sorts of board control games:

  • They deny infiltrators within 12″
  • They stop scout moves by the enemy within 12″
  • They reduce scatter for Deep Striking within 12″
  • The reduce scatter for blast templates similarly

I mean, we all know this stuff, and it’s been my policy to take 2 or 3 of them since the codex came out.  But I was stricken, in a game today, by just how awesome they can be.  It was GK on GK, and we were playing a practice game for the Boston Brawlcon that’s coming up, mission 4. It was spearhead deployment, and he had an infiltrating vindicare that I was quite scared of taking out my Land Raiders.  I was able to, using my 3 servo-skulls and careful deployment, keep that vindicare more than 36″ from any of my  units.

Turn 2 I take him out with a couple autocannon shots, easy.  145 pts down.

Continue reading »

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