Warhammer 40K Tabletop XXII: I C'Tan Has Cheese?

[Requizen]

Haven't posted any pictures in a while, but after my diorama "Mawloc eating a tank" got second place in my store's painting competition this summer, I'm hoping to score decently with this one, too (even if it was weird to make a flyer for an entirely tunnel-based hive. I hope I managed.)

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cool pics were here

That's pretty sweet! The pose and paint job is fantastic, the only thing I could say is that maybe the base could look more like it just was "bursted out of", like more debris or flying bits. But the Crone itself is pretty fantastic.

[Eldan]

Yeah, I'm redoing the base, actually. I was out of sand, when I did it, so it looks a bit flat in the middle. I tried a few ways to do flying bits of rock, but nothing looked good.

The best thing is that the Crone is not actually connected to the base, it's just held there by a bit of green stuff that the tail fits into. It balances astonishingly well.

[Cheesegear]

Well, the bad news is my order didn't come in, so I don't have the parts to finish my project, which means the project wont be finished until next week or so. However, it's 'Christmas week', and it's totally fair for mail orders not to come in on time, especially last-minute orders like mine. So, I'm not too bothered.

The good news is that I don't need to spend the next two-three days (including Christmas) frantically trying to cobble together my miniature in time for a comp.

[Drasius]

Merry Xmas from forgeworld



It is indeed Alexis Pollux. One of the resident fluff bunnies was convinced it was going to be Sigismund, and will be quite dissapointed to find out outherwise.

[Cheesegear]

It is indeed Alexis Pollux. One of the resident fluff bunnies was convinced it was going to be Sigismund, and will be quite dissapointed to find out outherwise.

If he was a real Fluff bunny, he'd know that Sigismund doesn't wear that kind of armour, and doesn't carry a Storm Shield, both of which could be seen in the puzzle picture.

But the full picture, also shows a Power Fist and 405 (CDV) on the Shield making it a dead giveaway. I want it. I want it so bad. So what if I already have a Captain with Power Fist and Storm Shield, I'll bench him.

[Vaz]

I love the CDV touch on the shield.

[Renegade Paladin]

I have to say that I am severely disappointed with the new Cities of Death rules as outlined in Shield of Baal: Leviathan. Stratagems are gone. Poof, up in smoke, not a thing, kaput, done and over. Instead, it's just a variant on Maelstrom of War with a different Tactical Objectives deck - that they apparently don't sell, so it's back to rolling dice on the table if anyone wants to play it. Oh, and use six buildings and/or ruins, because you have to place your objectives in buildings and/or ruins.

They cut down the Planetstrike rules considerably in The Red Waaagh!!!, but they didn't get rid of the defining portion of the game mode. This is just lazy design, through and through. I want my artillery spotters back.

[Wext]

Does anyone here have any experience writing campaigns and such? I seen there's been people playing Sanctus Reach and that stuff, so if I could get some help that would be awesome. My buddies playing the Orks and Nids are hoping to do something in a Space Hulk with me for the story, and either advice or an impartial GM would be appreciated.

[Adrastos42]

[Cities of Death sadness]

Well, that's disappointing. Guess I'll stick to the old book then.

Does anyone here have any experience writing campaigns and such?

Not much experience, but I am in the middle of one at the moment. Best piece of advice I can give from our experiences so far is to be careful how you balance storytelling with, well, balance. We wondered why the guy designing the campaign kept losing until we realised that he'd, while making a great story, designed the last few missions so that they screwed him over. And then almost did it again after having it pointed out:D

[Renegade Paladin]

Well, that's disappointing. Guess I'll stick to the old book then.

I could see hybridizing the two systems, but they're just that - two different systems. If you like Tactical Objectives (and I've found them not bad, with the addition of the houserule that you can immediately discard and replace any objective you draw that you cannot physically achieve due to your opponent's army composition) then the Cities of Death Objectives are fine and dandy, but in the new rules there is literally nothing else to the game type - it's just dressed up Maelstrom of War. And they stopped printing actual Cities of Death in favor of this dressed up Maelstrom of War, that's buried in a $66 (softcover) campaign supplement that not only doesn't play to everyone's army, but doesn't even support three of the four armies involved with additional rules.

I never had the first Death From the Skies supplement, so I don't know what was in there that didn't make it into the Fighter Aces tables, but I'm the only one in my meta who fields flyers in significant numbers anyway, so I don't think I'm going to see much use out of that to begin with.

[Wraith]

I believe it was Winterwind who did that. He's not been seen in the 40K thread/s for a while.

I compiled Threads 1 to 13, Winterwind did 14 to... 18 or so, I think. Not that I'm demanding citation, or anything, just stating that it wasn't the work of a single person.

[Requizen]

Hey all, hope your holiday season is happy and full of cheer/plastic minis/both!

[Drasius]

I compiled Threads 1 to 13, Winterwind did 14 to... 18 or so, I think. Not that I'm demanding citation, or anything, just stating that it wasn't the work of a single person.

Huzzah, I did get it right then, mostly.

In a stunning show of actually doing something for a change, I finally got my Heldrake ready for the conversion comp tomorrow. Now to get my forgefiend ready for Oath of Moment on the 27th. Hopefully pics tomorrow when I can get some decent lighting.

[Cheesegear]

I compiled Threads 1 to 13, Winterwind did 14 to... 18 or so, I think. Not that I'm demanding citation, or anything, just stating that it wasn't the work of a single person.

Well, whoever's doing it, I've always got a link ready to go in the OP.

In a stunning show of actually doing something for a change, I finally got my Heldrake ready for the conversion comp tomorrow. Now to get my forgefiend ready for Oath of Moment on the 27th. Hopefully pics tomorrow when I can get some decent lighting.

My oath was getting 1000 Points painted during December. Fail.
My conversion for the comp on the 27th? Also fail.

Though I will maintain that the latter isn't actually my fault.

[Grim Portent]

Merry christmas/Happy holidays everyone.

I've got a question to ask from an unusual perspective for this thread. I got an Imperial Knight from my parents and I'm going to paint it up all Khorney and spiky and I'm not sure which gun to go for. This is probably going to be the centerpiece of a Khornate themed guard army so I want it to scream Khorne.

So in your own opinions which gun sounds more like Khorne's thing, a rapid firing battlecannon blowing enemies to bloody chunks or a melta cannon blasting enemies into blood mist in a flash of incandescent fury?

[Eldan]

Hey all, hope your holiday season is happy and full of cheer/plastic minis/both!

Didn't get any new minis, but I painted some few hundred points yesterday, so yaaay!

(Another flier, but this one with a less extravagant base, a toxicrene, a tyrannocyte and a sporocyte).

So, all done for the campaign finale on the 27th.

[Vaz]

Shotgun firing Explosive Sword Grenade Launcher sounds about right for Khorne.

Swordsplosion!

[iyaerP]

Merry christmas/Happy holidays everyone.

I've got a question to ask from an unusual perspective for this thread. I got an Imperial Knight from my parents and I'm going to paint it up all Khorney and spiky and I'm not sure which gun to go for. This is probably going to be the centerpiece of a Khornate themed guard army so I want it to scream Khorne.

So in your own opinions which gun sounds more like Khorne's thing, a rapid firing battlecannon blowing enemies to bloody chunks or a melta cannon blasting enemies into blood mist in a flash of incandescent fury?

Like this, but with khorne/chaos iconography.

[Cheesegear]

2014, a review

The year opened fairly weakly, with Tyranids coming out of the gate first. The book was met with overwhelming negativity, not because it was weak, but because nothing really changed. Weak units were still weak, and strong units were still strong. There was nothing really to get excited about, because whatever you already had, was probably what you were going to use. However, there were two big game-changers in the book that nobody really noticed because they weren't HQ or Troops (the units you most commonly build your army around); Hive Crones and Exocrines. Hive Crones were just a fairly average Flying Monstrous Creature whose importance wouldn't be known for the next several months, and Exocrines finally gave Tyranids some invaluable AP2 shooting attacks that weren't terrible. The main problem with Tyranids wasn't the book, but also that Eldar and Tau were really strong, and could wipe off whatever Tyranids put on the board without too much hassle, and the Tyranid book was largely swept under the rug.

Fast forward to March, where we're given something new pretty much every week; First up we got Legion of the Damned, utterly reviled by some, as it was labelled as a 'Codex' and that got people very excited, only to be let down when Legion gave us nothing new, then people were even more upset when it was discovered (within the first few hours of release) that Legion could not be a stand-alone army, if you used The Legion by themselves, they would lose on Turn 1. Again, another release that was swept under the rug because nobody could see its value. Very soon after Legion we were given Crimson Slaughter, which gave every unit in the Chaos Space Marine book, Fear, for 0 points. Due to the fact that nothing in the book actually changed anything, Crimson Slaughter was only used as a way to get four Heldrakes in a Chaos army. Then we got Imperial Knights the best or worst thing to happen to 40K in a long time, depending on who you were. But it was quickly discovered that as good as Knights were, they flat-out couldn't deal with Fliers, and again, turned out to be really weak on their own. However, at this time, Tau was still going strong, and any Flier/FMC put on the board was just going to get shot off the board, so Knights were relatively safe...For now. Then we got Militarum Tempestus which gave us an early shot of the Taurox Prime, but nothing really stood out.

April opened with Astra Militarum, with a lot of shake-ups. Comissar Yarrick and Knight Commander Pask were amazing. Chimeras got a hard nerfing, and Vendettas were almost costed out of the game. Leman Russes' points costs were shuffled around and the Guard were given Wyverns. The standard 'Leafblower' list was no longer viable, and for the first time in a long time, we actually saw 'hybrid' Guard armies of Tanks and Infantry in roughly equal number because 'Eight Chimeras' was no longer viable. We finally saw how the Guard were meant to be played, and it was actually kind of cool. But, when we were given the 'main' Codex, we also noticed that the Storm Trooper Codex had completely different (and better) Orders to give, and we saw the value of taking Storm Troopers outside of the main book, and running from the Storm Trooper book. Unfortunately, we're in 6th Ed., and limited to two Detachments, Primary and Allies, and frankly, nobody had room in their heart for Storm Troopers when the Guard had much better uses for the Allies slot.

Then May came around and told us we'd been playing the game wrong for the last two years. 7th Edition is here, and it is awesome. Several changes were made; Assaulting through Cover gave a -2" to Charge range, making Assault even less viable. But, Flying Monstrous Creatures in 7th Ed., only have to take one Grounding check per turn, at the end of the Shooting phase and they must have taken an Unsaved Wound, not just a Hit. This severely crippled Tau, as now they couldn't 'wing' an MC, then shoot it to **** when it fell down. No, if you want kill and FMC, you need to actually kill it in the air, and Tau weren't so good at that, since MCs are not Vehicles and don't die in one shot, Tau were even worse at it, because even if the MC did come down, Tau sure weren't going to Assault it in the next phase, no sir. In the FMC's next turn, they can just go back up into the air like nothing happened, and you can try Skyfire again. However, while people were upset that you needed to Glide to be able to Assault, people didn't kind of catch on with how that interacted with the opponent's shooting phase; If you are Grounded at the end of the Shooting phase when nothing can hurt you anyway, it's your turn next, where you can immediately Charge, suddenly being Grounded was good. Turns out, monsters could stay in the air almost indefinitely, and if/when they are shot down, they Charge, or simply start Swooping again, no problems here.
Another change to 7th Ed., was the Psychic Phase. Manifesting Powers is now completely different to 6th Ed.'s Leadership check. Manifesting Powers is hard. But the biggest change was the addition of Sanctic and Malefic Daemonology - mostly Malefic. Malefic allows models with the Daemon rule to Summon new units without problems. Not Chaos Daemons, but any Daemon, while not having problems Sanctic was specifically only reserved for Grey Knights. Suddenly, Crimson Slaughter almost made sense, as a particular item gave a Sorcerer the Daemon rule and could therefore cast Malefic as much as they want. Unfortunately, we hit a problem...
The Allies Chart was massively changed, particularly in regards to Come the Apocalypse, where you can now Ally any army with any other army, there's problems, but you can do it. This was particularly jarring for Crimson Slaughter as they don't use the Allies Matrix, they have words, which specifically exempt them from Allying with anyone that isn't Chaos Marines. Given that Chaos Marines could Ally with Daemons, this was the much better choice, once again, Crimson Slaughter almost has a chance to shine, but, with Daemons being so strong due to Malefic, well, the choice was an easy one. But, the changes to the Allies Matrix also hit Tau and Eldar really hard. Tau were no longer the bee's knees because they didn't interact with anyone in any meaningful way, and Eldar were shafted into only Allying with Dark Eldar (which is what they were doing anyway, really). With Tau on the outs, and Flying Monstrous Creatures suddenly getting much safer as a result, Chaos Daemons - with the Daemon rule - are very, very strong. However, do you know who else has FMCs? Tyranids. Tyranids were coming back, and they were going to come back, hard.

But, lastly, perhaps the biggest change, was the amount of Detachments that anyone could take. We were no longer limited to 'Primiary + Allies'. We could do anything we wanted. We could have three Allied Detachments, four! As many as you want! But the other huge change was that we were no longer limited to a single FOC, the FOC was practically meaningless, and in case you missed it; We could do anything we wanted! We were no longer limited, and we no longer had to resort to 'tricks' in order to get four Heldrakes, Riptides or similar, we could just do it. If we were willing to pay extra unit taxes, we could just have the units we wanted, in any number we wanted them in. The changes to Detachments also meant that Legion of the Damned and Storm Troopers could actually be used without feeling like we'd just gimped ourselves - not least because Guard were also hit pretty hard by 7th Ed.'s Allies Matrix - in fact, Legion and Storm Troopers were actually really strong under 7th Ed. Extra Detachments also gave Tyranids extra slots that they'd been missing out on for the entirety of 6th Ed., while Chaos Marines were 'tricking' us into giving them four Heldrake slots, Tyranids were stuck with the three Fast slots they had...Not anymore. Have as many slots as you can pay for, and Tyranids can pay for a lot of things.

In case you didn't notice, Tyranids immediately shot up to the top tables. Flying Monstrous Creatures...Well, fly, and they have two Flying units with access to Haywire weapons, meaning that they can Fly around Knights indefinitely, pinging them with Haywire weapons until they fall down. But with many of the sweeping changes to 7th, we saw Escalation and Stronghold Assault actually being used in the game...Fine. Tyranids have a Flying Gargantuan which is one of the most invincible things in the game, and using Stronghold Assault, Tyranids could plonk Tervigons on a Skyshield and just pump out Troops until the game was over. Whichever meta you played in, Tyranids could find a way to triumph. The only problem for Tyranid players was in trying to suss out their own meta, because there was no longer a mono-build that people could just look up online, many Tyranid players found themselves scrambling for what to do, because for the first time in two years, they'd had to think for themselves because there wasn't a 'One, True Build' for Tyranids anymore, because everyone was trying to put their own 'spin' on 7th Ed.'s 'do whatever you want' policy to make it slightly more easier to deal with.

All these individual 'pocket metas' making their 'own' game were actually doing themselves a disservice. It was quickly discovered that changing the rules of the game, doesn't fix anything, it merely creates a new meta, without access to all the tools that each Codex is given, many Codecies simply fall behind - hence the reason for Allies - and nowhere was this more obvious than in the next Codex...

Our first 7th Ed. Codex was Orks. Orks came out swinging. But, due to the changes to the rules many people were making in early-7th, Orks were simply whitewashed out of the game. Orks really, really, really needed the 'unlimited Detachments' rule to function, since to be playable, an Ork army pretty much needed three or more HQs to be any kind of playable, and the strongest unit in the Ork book - the Stompa - was simply locked out of the game. So while people were fielding three or more Knights (that's 18+ HPs), Orks couldn't field their strongest unit against Knights and were simply locked out because of the players - not GW - putting in their own arbitrary rules about Lords of War. GW gave us Escalation with the expectation that we would use it. After Orks we got Waaagh! Ghazgkull, which was basically just a book of Formations...Oh, okay...This is where the game is going. Use more Detachments!

In July, we got Red Waaagh!, which for some (including myself), was the best thing that GW had ever written. GW were getting back into Forging a Narrative which they hadn't done for a long, long time...Not really since the Eye of Terror campaign back in 3rd Ed. Red Waaagh! was met with much applause for the people who could use it; Imperial Guard, Orks and Knights. Similar to the Apocalypse War Zone series, but without the Apocalypse stamp on the front making everything in it pretty much unusable. However, the game-changer in Red Waaagh! was the Adamantine Lance, Imperial Knights gained a bunch of re-rolls for taking the units that they were going to take anyway, for 0 points, and we were given Gerantius to boot (pun unintended)! If this was the 'new meta', we had to start using Lords of War and Fortifications. We just had to. It was readily apparent that Gargantuan Monstrous Creatures were brutal. Necrons came out swinging first, with Transcendent C'Tans having an Invulnerable save. But, as Tyranid players got their conversions off the ground (pun unintended, again), and got their Forge World money ready to go, Tyranid players began dropping Harridans, and we were terrified. But, Ork players knew all along that they could play this game, and were psyched to go! Enter Stompas with Kustom Force Fields getting repaired to full Hull Points every turn. This is happening. Deal with it.

Shortly after Red Waaagh!, we got Space Wolves. Like Tyranids before, seven months ago, nothing about Space Wolves changed. Strong units were still relatively strong, and weak units were still weak. But a month or two after release, we had people getting together the army that they'd been building; Hover-mode Fliers in their Troops slots. Of all the things that could have happened, it was Space Wolves' turn to be a mono-build. How weird is that!? But then, quickly, we got Champions of Fenris, which gave us a Detachment type that doesn't even need to field Troops, making Space Wolves really, really, really good Allies. But, not as Primary Detachment, right? One of the most disappointing things to happen in a long time, is that Space Wolves were no longer a top-tier army. Where did Jaws go? What happened to Long Fangs? Blood Claws are finally good? Well, that must mean that everything else is terrible, right? Then we got Hour of the Wolf, which seemed a step backwards from Red Waaagh!, not a big step, but a small one nonetheless. Nothing from HotW seemed amazing, and we moved on with our lives...

Except we didn't. After the weak release of Space Wolves, we got Grey Knights. Nobody wanted to talk about anything other the fact that Inquisition units were removed from the Codex. But, that was going to happen anyway, right? We thought at the time when Inquisition was printed that just reprinting units was stupid and dumb (which was only reinforced with Legion of the Damned, remember?). People expected Inquisition units to go away, but there was a certain crowd who totally thought that that wouldn't happen, and, as it turns out, that certain crowd turned out to be really vocal. But, for the people who weren't spamming 3-man Acolyte units in Razorbacks, they were actually really happy with their Codex. It wasn't a mono-build like Space Wolves and there were still plenty of good units in the book provided that you knew what you were doing. But the biggest thing to come out of Grey Knights, is that they were able to play in the 'Escalation' meta without even using the book themselves. Grey Knights didn't need Gargantuans to be competitive. Grey Knights had entire units full of S8 Force Weapons, S10 with Hammerhand! You tell the Gargantuans to bring it, and the Grey Knights will beat them using units that they already had on the shelf costing them no extra money. Straight up awesome! That is, of course, unless you were fielding 3-man squads in Razorbacks, but, no-one really felt sorry for those people. We also got the Officio Assassinorum book which was pretty boring, save for one model; The Culexus Assassin, which could stop Summoning, make Invisible units visible, and all 'round just screw with anybody trying to Manifest Powers, which was a lot of people, coupled with Coteaz, and his unlimited not!Interceptor, Daemons lists that relied on Summoning took a hard look at themselves and tried to think on how to be the Culexus/Coteaz combo, and they really couldn't. However, the Culexus faced the same problem that Coteaz did, is that there were a lot of metas putting arbitrary restrictions on the amount of Detachments any one army can have (this is a bad thing, remember), and many players simply weren't willing to spend a whole Detachment 'slot' on one model. Exactly the same problem that Coteaz faced. By using limited Detachments, it only allowed Daemons to flourish, GW gave us the tools to beat Daemons, and we weren't allowed to use them. Because. That's why.

For a long time, players thought they were going to get a Part 3 of the Sanctus Reach campaign, due to the stupid way that Hour of the Wolf ended, there was even a novella written about Grey Knights in Sanctus Reach to tie-in with the campaign! Where did that Part 3 go!? We'll never know. Because we moved onto...

Dark Eldar in October! At first glance, this Codex came off as weak. Then we saw an army with six Ravagers on a Skyshield destroy an Adamantine Lance Formation in two turns, and we started taking Dark Eldar seriously. If you're in a meta with Super-Heavies - particularly Knights - Dark Eldar were the Codex to go to. True-to-form, Dark Eldar had a weak release, then turned out to be the meta-buster for the third edition in a row! THREE TIMES! But nobody really noticed, because, once again, negative opinions were the loudest, and all we really heard about was how Vect and Sarthonyx had been removed from the Codex and that the Beast Star had been nerfed, and how Jet Councils would never be the same because of the loss of Sarthonyx. Gimmicks lose. A properly built Dark Eldar army is a force to be reckoned with, but the rules-exploitative gimmick units were nerfed, and that's what mattered. Similar to Grey Knight Razorspam, nobody with a brain really cared about what people with Beast Stars had to say, because those people with brains were now dealing with no Scatter, Webway Portal'd Wraithguard with Scythe weapons. 40K changes, some people move on, some people don't, and people don't care about what's good. The Governments of the world have known this for ages, and the 40K-community is only catching onto it now. Haemonculus Covens was released - fairly underwhelmingly. Another book full of 'Do you like this unit? Here's how to make them better!' type Formations, similar to Waaagh! Ghazgkull and Champions of Fenris, but, unlike those two books with units that people sort-of care about, no-one really cares about Talos and Cronus Engines and the Covens book was basically ignored...Call Dark Eldar players when you've found a way to make Ravagers even better.

Then we got EVEN MOAR Tyranid releases. Like The Goonies, now is THEIR TIME. If you thought Tyranids were strong already, GW gave them a whole bunch of extra units that they totally didn't need to make Tyranids even more better. With these releases, Shield of Baal: Leviathan came out, gave us a Fighter Aces rule-expansion that nobody cares about, and a really, really, really poor showing of Cities of Death, watering it down to a Maestrom game with slightly more terrain. Really poor. What's worse, is that the Narrative Campaign that follows Leviathan is even worse than Hour of the Wolf's. Hour of the Wolf is basic stuff, just copy that one and you've got something not terrible. But SoB: Leviathan has the forces involved on the not-Tyranid side swap and change pretty much every battle making it next to impossible for the same two people to play straight, and, with a book full of new releases, the Leviathan campaign doesn't even force the Tyranid player to use any of them. Ignore the narrative, and just play a straight Cities of Death game, and you're pretty much doing the Leviathan campaign.

Finally, for the holiday season, we got Blood Angels, and Exterminatus, part 2 of the Shield of Baal campaign. Surprisingly, all of the faults of previous books were apparently ignored because people just like Blood Angels that much, any update is a good update. Blood Angels received no new units, zero, none. But they also didn't lose any units either, and everything was competitively costed against the Space Marine book, where Blood Angels got several unit upgrades for free, which Codex Marines would have to pay for. But, similar to Orks, Blood Angels actually get worse when you try and add Allies into them, so a big part of what makes Blood Angels so...Unique...Is that it actually really is quite a good, self-contained book. Like Tau. Trying to do gimmicks with Blood Angels actually increases your chance of losing, not winning. While every unit in the Blood Angels' book is basically doing the same thing like Grey Knights, unlike Grey Knights, Blood Angels get to paint their units differently; Black, gold or red. Instead of every unit looking exactly the same like Grey Knights. Ultimately, the greatest thing about Blood Angels, is that it actually lets you do what you want to do - Assault things. The only real complaint so far, is that Assault Squads are no longer Troops, but, since Blood Angels are a Codex Chapter, that's actually legit, Assault Squads shouldn't be Troops, because of the Codex Astartes, which they totally do follow. If, what people are actually complaining about, is the inability to field discounted Razorbacks, then they get the same response that 3-man GK Razorbacks and DE Beast Stars got; "**** you, ****head."
Part 2 of Shield of Baal isn't bad either. Got a bunch of decent Blood Angel Formations, a few Necron ones, and the campaign is more like Hour of the Wolf which isn't bad, rather than Part 1 of SoB which is terrible. Could Part 2 of Shield of Baal been better? Absolutely. Red Waaagh! proves it. But, Red Waaagh! has the problem that a 'casual' player can't just pick it up and go, Red Waaagh! is too specific. Hour of the Wolf and Exterminatus are good middle grounds, which can appeal to competitive and casual gamers alike, so it's not bad, just not great.

It's hard to believe that 7th Ed., is only ~6 months old, but there it is. Screw 5th Ed., and endless Razorback parking lots of different colours. Right now, is the best time to be playing 40K. We don't even have Eldar winning all the time like we did in 6th Ed. Tyranids are strong. Orks are strong. Dark Eldar are strong. Grey Knights are strong. Most of the Supplements actually aren't complete wastes of money, but, more importantly, none of the Supplements are auto-win buttons either which is kind of a huge deal. The only real problem with the game as it currently is, is the Adamantine Lance Formation, but, we've also seen that the ALF can be beaten, not just by one army, but several, if only those armies can use the tools that they've been given - and that's on the players, not GW. As far as books go, once we got 7th Ed., a lot of the early-2014 releases started making a bit more sense, and the only 'mistake' in the entirety of 2014 was the Space Wolves Codex, which was underwhelming and boring, and people really like Space Wolves, so it actually was a problem.

As a last, personal note, I hate Space Wolves, so I thought this year was pretty much perfect.

[Drasius]

stuff.

You missed out that Crimson slaughter finally giving CSM Div was actually pretty good at the time. Other than that, very nice summary

As a last, personal note, I hate Space Wolves, so I thought this year was pretty much perfect.

Amen.

Here's my entry for our conversion comp, which while it gained unanimous vocal support from the store patrons (bar myself), lost to an unpainted ork wagon as decided by the store manager.

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And my effort for tomorrow's Oath that I still need to do a tiny amount of touch up on the blue on the armour and some additional work on the glow effect on the exhausts;

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I also managed to pick up an entire black dragon and base ( no rider) in our Giffle that will be converted into a Tzeentch Daemon Prince, along with another 1/4 of a land raider. Only 1 more set of tracks and side armour to go and I'll have scored a land raider (sans instructions) for the princely sum of nothing.

Will try and claim a finders feed of a pair of bloodcrushers from another player who had me hang onto his giffle tickets as I managed to score some elves (which he plays), a pair of bloodcrushers and a complete 5 man death company with instructions (which he is starting).

We also had a game of kill the cultist, to see which single unit could kill the most out of 50 cultists in 1 round (shooting and then assault, but no psychic powers). My 16x thousand Sons and an aspiring sorceror that I had on hand had a crack, but rolled slightly below average and only managed to kill 28. Was eventually won by 10 tactical terminators with a body count north of 35. Then some jackass took a trancendant C'Tan (though he took seismic assault rather than sky of falling stars for some reason, not that it mattered), but was eventually disqualified.

[Jormengand]

We also had a game of kill the cultist, to see which single unit could kill the most out of 50 cultists in 1 round (shooting and then assault, but no psychic powers).

Hmm...

Assault squad with two flamers is two templates, a plasma pistol and seven bolt pistols to the face, an then 10 hammers of wrath and 29 CC attacks (S5 because why are you not BA? Unless you wanted to be RG for HoW or Salamanders for the Flamers, possibly?). That should work, right?

If that's not enough flamers for you, flamers and T-L flamers in a farsight honour guard (actual farsight probably isn't allowed, but you can take a bodyguard team, right? Otherwise just substitute three crises and they'll still get the job done). If you can't get 14 templates to land 75 hits on a 50-man squad, you're doing something terribly wrong, but you also get 28 S5 WS3 attacks and... is it 6 S5 WS... again, 6? Can't remember, but power attacks. That's gotta kill the lot of them.

If that's not enough for you, termagants can have Assault 3 weapons and come in blocks of up to 30, so even they can probably tear up a sizable chunk - for that matter, couldn't warriors do some pretty nasty stuff to the squad?

Ork Boyz can chuck 80 CC attacks onto them, hitting on 3 wounding on 3. That'll take out most of them without shooting (which will itself have 6 of them down with normal sluggas). However, if you thought that Farsight was packing enough flamers, the Burna Boyz have a real surprise for you.

Necrons I'm not too familiar with, but immortals with tesla might have a good go at taking the cultists down. Tomb blades? Hells, Scarabs? I'm sure that something in the book will work.

Eldar can chuck dedicated close combat units at them, or get an avenger exarch to unload all their ammo on the cultists before remembering that their weapons are assault.

Hmm... I'm gonna stop going through codices with which I'm not actually familiar. But yeah, it can't be hard.

[LeSwordfish]

My thinking was Salamanders Sternguard with Combi-Flamers and heavy flamers.

[Eldan]

Hm. Toxic adrenal hormagants... 3 attacks per model on a charge, with S4 and reroll to wound..

90 attacks. Hit on 3+, so 60 hits. 3+ rerolled to wound, so 53.3 wounds.

Hard to beat, really.


Raveners with acid:
Shots: 27 shots, 13.5 hits, S5, so 4.5 wounds.
Attacks: 45 attacks, 30 hits, 20 wounds.

24.5 Not even close.

Warriors, toxic, adrenal glands, deathspitters:
27 shots, 13.5hits, S5, still 4.5 wounds.
36 attacks, 27 hits, 2+ rerolled to wound, so 26.2 wounds

30.7 wounds.

Hormagants win by far. As expected, really, it's their role.

[Jormengand]

Oh, also I forgot that Death Company were a thing. Hmm...

[Grim Portent]

I decided to pick up Kharn's dataslate and I'm liking the look of the Butcherhorde.

Kharn + 4 berzerker squads + 4 marine squads with the MoK.

They all get adamantium will, if they roll an 8 to charge (after rerolls) they double the attacks on their profile, and any 6s to hit add a new attack with any 6s from them also granting additional attacks (I think this dicesplosion is worded to be infinite as long as 6s are rolled).

So if Kharn is in a squad that rolls an 8 to charge he gets 11 attacks. 4 from his profile doubled to 8, 1 for dual wielding and 2 for rage. With bonus attacks if he rolls any 6s to hit. Fun.

[Requizen]

Nice write up Cheese! Interesting to see where we've come in the last year. The haul this year was pretty good, though now that I own Escalation and Codex: Imperial Knights, I feel the burning need to put superheavies on the table.

Kill the Cultist: Hmm... Is there a points limit? 10 Praetorians with Particle Casters+Voidblades and a Destroyer Lord with Gauntlet of Fire. 10 AP5 Shots and a Heavy Flamer -> 30 Rending attacks + 4 regular from the DLord rerolling to hit and to wound. This setup is actually more effective than Wraiths given the situation that you don't need to worry about having the Invuln saves and Wounds shouldn't be an issue.

[Renegade Paladin]

We also had a game of kill the cultist, to see which single unit could kill the most out of 50 cultists in 1 round (shooting and then assault, but no psychic powers). My 16x thousand Sons and an aspiring sorceror that I had on hand had a crack, but rolled slightly below average and only managed to kill 28. Was eventually won by 10 tactical terminators with a body count north of 35. Then some jackass took a trancendant C'Tan (though he took seismic assault rather than sky of falling stars for some reason, not that it mattered), but was eventually disqualified.

A squadron of Leman Russ Eradicators with heavy flamers all around should just about do the trick, I would say.

[Wraith]

My thinking was Salamanders Sternguard with Combi-Flamers and heavy flamers.

Depends on how he challenge worked, I think. If it's a thought experiment, then you can assume to hit the maximum number of models that you could physically fit under a template - between 7 and 9 each sounds about right. But if your assuming that it's attacking an actual opponent with real models, who is setting up anything like sensibly, your targets won't be base-to-base with each other; even a small gap between models dramatically lowers the number hit per template, and if it's the full 2" that cohesion allows then you might be lucky to get 4 or 5.

Having said that, hitting 4 or 5 targets with a template is essentially better than an Assault 6 weapon with BS4, so I would probably take the same Maybe add something like a Chaplain on top, just to get that extra little bit of damage from the Assault, though, as Sternguard aren't a stellar choice in that respect.

[LeSwordfish]

4 cultists x8 re-rolling flamers = 32 hits, on average 28 dead.
4 cultists x2 re-rolling heavy flamers = 8 hits, on average 7 dead. (Though I'd be very surprised not to see all 8 down.)
3 attacks x10 sternguard = 20 hits, 14 wounds, 11 kills (cultists have a 5+, right?)

This is all mental maths so dont take it too seriously, but that suggests a total of 40Something dead. Could be better, but when you take that as the lower bound of hits, I think the Sternguard could pay their way. (And spread the cultists out enough to take fewer flamer hits, and fewer will be in range to take wounds from assault, lessening the effectiveness of yer Death Company and yer Eldar Assaulty Aspects.)

If you can add ICs, as in the Destroyer Lord example above, then either Vulkan or a maxed-out combat captain/chaplain could add considerable killing power. (Add the Rampage Chainsword and combi-flamer.)

This is actually a challenge that the playground could do. Create a map of cultist positions, then use a thread in the RPG subforum to test attacking squad positions and rolls.

[Requizen]

Well I guess it really depends on what the rules are. One squad? With/without ICs? Or just a points limit, so multiple squads?

Kind of a fun experiement, even though it doesn't mean anything realistic