Dark Elves GT List: A Halloween Monster Mash

Nothing says scary like square base talk on a predominantly 40K-centric blog! Boo!

I am getting really excited about the fantasy GT I am playing in next weekend. I have been putting off and dreading painting my elves, and now today, after reviewing my list and looking at the scenarios I am in a fever pitch of being pumped! That is impressive considering I have not played fantasy since July, and I have only played four games of it in the last year (the other three were in a tournament where I got 4^th out in Cali). I am hoping to get a game in next week, but even that is no guarantee. The night before the event is a Malifaux tournament/Arena of Death fantasy event as well, both of which look great and I am hoping there is a way I can do both. It is really refreshing going to an event where “I don’t care how I do.” I have to put that in quotes because I still want to win games, but with only 45% of the total score coming from battle points I don’t think I would have a shot at winning anything, even if I was good at fantasy. With that reasoning in my mind I built a list out of what looked fun to play rather than what is apparently good;

Check it out after the jump!

Chaos Space Marine Analysis and List Building: Part Four

This series of posts has been composed a few paragraphs at a time over the last week as I have begun the journey of learning a new book, and play style, as I move away from tyranids this next tournament season. Rather than changing previous ideas or reworking this post I have left it as is. I feel that is shows the process I use while creating and testing lists as well as providing insight behind why I am and will continue to make the list building choices I have been. This is part four of four interconnected posts.

This next week a prep league for a GT in my area (and adepticon too) will start up, and after not being able to answer Grey Knights and select Imperial Guard build with my Tyranids I have spent the last few weeks seeing if building up (and converting) a Chaos Space Marine army would be a viable choice for Adepticon. This decision was not fully about simply being competitive and winning, as there are a lot of things that this book gives me to try and convert on top of allowing me to paint in a grimy gory style I have wanted to try, but being at least as good with Nidzilla seems a reasonable standard. I now believe I have found a list that meets both of these requirements.

  

The List

Typhus

33 Cultists

10 Cultists

10 Cultists

10 Cultists

Heldrake (Baleflamer)

Heldrake (Baleflamer)

6 Havocs (4 Lascannon)

6 Havocs (4 Lascannon)

6 Havocs (4 Lascannon)

Masque

9 Flamers of Tzeentch

5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle

Aegis Defense Line (Quad Gun)

The only small change after two games was dropping three cultists for an extra guy in the last havoc squad. It is a pretty simple list. Mass lascannons give me a big presence in terms of ranged firepower and by turn two most games I have three units with flame templates that ignore the armor of most everything, plus a Herald that allows me to move my opponents units into the right position to be hit by said templates. It also has five scoring units that all have FNP and are fearless.

More after the jump...

Chaos Space Marine Analysis and List Building: Part Three

This series of posts has been composed a few paragraphs at a time over the last week as I have begun the journey of learning a new book, and play style, as I move away from tyranids this next tournament season. Rather than changing previous ideas or reworking this post I have left it as is. I feel that is shows the process I use while creating and testing lists as well as providing insight behind why I am and will continue to make the list building choices I have been. This is part three of four interconnected posts.

So after I made two Chaos Space Marine lists in part two, I started playing theory hammer in my head, and decided I value the high rate of fire of the autocannons over the potential utility of the terminators. Ideally the 16 S7 shots would be able to work toward replacing the 24 S6 shots that I normally get out of my Carnifex units. I tested the second list (with the small shift in dropping the Icon of Wrath for the 4^th autocannon in the second havoc squad) against a Tyranid list with two flying combat hive tyrants, two trygon primes, doom of malan’tai, five hive guard, one genestealer squad with a broodlord, and a lot of hormagaunts.

We rolled up the relic and vanguard strike with night fight in effect. I went first and killed one hive guard with all my shooting (nearly all of his army was in cover, and both Tyrants were either out of line of site or out of my range). He had iron arm on both tyrants, with his warlord being T9 all but one turn of the game. I moved my zombie horde forward as well as my biker gang, leaving them on the middle line behind my aegis. His shooting did very little, and he progressed toward the middle.

Chaos Space Marine Analysis and List Building: Part Two

This series of posts has been composed a few paragraphs at a time over the last week as I have begun the journey of learning a new book, and play style, as I move away from tyranids this next tournament season. Rather than changing previous ideas or reworking this post I have left it as is. I feel that is shows the process I use while creating and testing lists as well as providing insight behind why I am and will continue to make the list building choices I have been. This is part two of four interconnected posts.

I got a third game it trying out a few new units. I played against Tyranids and it went quite badly. My biker unit had only passed three 3+ saves by the time they all died, and between both Heldrake's I only got to shoot once because he was rocking the Quad-Gun so well. I also received my non-preferred wave on the daemons. Neither Maulerfiend got into combat either before being wrecked. In other words, it was pretty rough. 

Here are my thoughts on some of the units I tried out;

Chaos Space Marine Analysis and List Building: Part One

This series of posts has been composed a few paragraphs at a time over the last week as I have begun the journey of learning a new book, and play style, as I move away from tyranids this next tournament season. Rather than changing previous ideas or reworking this post I have left it as is. I feel that is shows the process I use while creating and testing lists as well as providing insight behind why I am and will continue to make the list building choices I have been. This is part one of four interconnected posts.

I wish I had the time to write all of my thoughts on the new CSM book and other wargaming topics in my head. Most notably of the topics I will not be covering right now is how hard the hobby bug is getting me. I have big dreams involving doing a fully converted CSM army. I also have only 18 days to paint 2200 points of Dark Elves for a fantasy GT, which is itself a crazy task. Enough of that though, this is about Chaos Space Marines.

I have played two games with the new book. I faced a 3 flyer and a 4 flyer Necron list each game. My first game I had the Biker Lord and Daemon Prince from my last CSM post, 3 untis of havocs with missiles and flakk, 4 small cultist units, 1 large cultist unit, 5 spawn, and two heldrakes. My opponents dice were cold, but I got to see how the Chaos units interacted. The second game I took out the Prince and added Typhus with six units of zombies, and switched the spawn out for some bikes. Here is my unit by unit analysis.

Video Battle Report - Tyranids vs. Dark Angels (Tomb King) - 9/14/12

The night before the Midwest Massacre I was able to meet up with Tomb King, a very good player who even made it to the final 16 at Adepticon this year.

My Nidzilla faced off against his fearless Deathwing!

Belial
5 Deathwing (3 TH+SS/2 LC/1 TML/Apothecary)

5 Deathwing (3 TH+SS/2 LC/1 TML)
5 Deathwing (3 TH+SS/2 LC/1 TML)
5 Deathwing (3 TH+SS/2 LC/1 TML)
5 Deathwing (3 TH+SS/2 LC/1 TML) 
Land Raider Crusader
Venerable Dreadnought (Assault Cannon)

I brought;

Hive Tyrant (Warlord/Wings/Twin-Linked Devourers x2)

Hive Tyrant (Wings/Twin-Linked Devourers x2)

Doom of Malan’tai (Spore Pod)

Tervigon (Onslaught/Catalyst/Cluster Spines/Toxin Sacs)

Tervigon (Catalyst/Cluster Spines)

11 Termagants

10 Termagants

2 Carnifex (Twin-Linked Devourers x2)

Trygon (Toxin Sacs)

Trygon (Toxin Sacs)

Aegis Defense Line

The mission is best 2/3 while playing the Big Guns Never Tire (5 objectives), Purge the Alien, and Table Quarters.

Check out the video after the jump!

The Most "Broken" Part of the Chaos Space Marine Codex

I am currently at Tufts University in Boston for a conference, and spent last weekend at Yale for another. While I have been keeping myself busy slogging through senior thesis research on the chaos of Lenin’s shift from War Communism to the National Economic Program the last two weeks, my travel time now is all about another type of chaos…Chaos Space Marines.

I must say that this definitely is a Phil Kelly book. Nothing pops out as horribly broken or mispriced on first read, but instead there are plenty of options to make anything viable. I came back to wargaming as a Dark Eldar player just before the new book came out, and reading this book reminds me of the joy I had working my way through the multitude of possible builds in that book.

That said, I did find one unit that has stolen my heart as the bee’s knees of the new Chaos Space Marine codex…I have enduringly named him Bad Ass the Biker.