Mini Tournament - Game 2

This is the second game following on from my previous report, you can also see my two lists there.

Before kicking off we needed food for winners, I was a winner so I had a finest dessert and a Cherry Coke.

Winners get rewards!

The Second game was against Rob, a Cryx and Menoth player, today was Menoth day. He had eFeora and a pKreoss lists. He picked and I once again rolled for list, Haley was summoned by the dice gods to do some work. Rob had selected eFeora:

Protectorate of Menoth
56 / 56 (50+6) Warcaster(s) : 1/1 Warjack(s) : 3 Battle Engines : 0 Solos : 4 Units : 3
Feora, Protector of the Flame - WJ: +6
- Judicator - PC: 18
- Redeemer - PC: 6
- Vanquisher - PC: 8
Vassal of Menoth - PC: 2
Vassal Mechanik - PC: 1
Wrack - PC: 1
Kell Bailoch - PC: 2
Choir of Menoth - Leader & 3 Grunts: 2
Holy Zealots - Leader and 9 Grunts: 6
- Monolith Bearer - Monolith Bearer 2
Temple Flameguard - Leader and 9 Grunts: 6
- Temple Flameguard Officer & Standard - Temple Flameguard Officer & Standard 2

The Scenario was Close Quarters (Kill Box)

Rob won initiative and opted to deploy/go first. I selected the side of the table that had a huge impassable tower sat in the middle outside of the killbox, the Haley Hidey Hole.

Deployment

Rob deployed with The Judicator opposite his flag the Vanquisher left of that with Feora sandwiched in between the Redeemer on the right. The Choir Vassal and Mechanik were all behind the Jacks. In the centre were the Flameguard and on the far right the Zealots.

I set up the Nyss on the left flank split around the Boomhowlers, the risen made a central front line with the Forge Guard behind. The Gun Mages went on the far right to face off against the Zealots. Haley, Squire, Alexia and the Lancer were behind the building with Rhupert and Jr behind them.

Kell Bailoch gets advance deployed up in a forest on the right in front of the Gun Mages and the Wracks get put down, two on the left and one on the centre/right.

Now with colour arrows

Menoth Turn 1

Both Jacks get a focus and the Judicator gets one for free because of some silly Menoth mechanic that exists that I don’t want to look up right now*. The Zealots Run and sing a prayer for no spells, the Flameguard also run up. Feora activates and casts escort and advances. All three jacks run with their extra speed. Kell Bailoch moves up and toes in the forest managing to kill a Gun Mage.

*it’s a Judicator special rule called Reliquary.

Cygnar Turn 1

The lancer gets a focus and pretty much everything runs. Boomhowlers go to ground and get 4+ tough. Jr puts Arcane Shield on the Forge Guard who’ve run. The Nyss run up the left flank. The Risen run up and spread amongst everything. Haley gives the Gun Mages Deadeye and advances to get closer to her safe LoS blocking building, casting Deceleration. The Gun Mages advance and are within sniping distance of the Zealots so they manage to kill 3 of them, even with the ARM buff they get when one of them dies. Rhupert puts fearless on the Boomhowlers so they don’t get too scared of the Flameguard.

Cygnar Turn 1 end

Menoth Turn 2

Feora upkeeps Escort and gives out a few focus. The Zealots run up and get in the Gun Mages face and use their mini feat that makes them immune to all damage other than feats and spells and then pray for no spell damage. Kell Bailoch advances and manages to kill another Gun Mage. The Flameguard charge in to engage some Boomhowlers and kill a couple. The Choir pray for passage. The Vanquisher advances and takes a shot as does the Judicator and the Redeemer, lots of things are set on fire, the Vassal also uses Ancillary attack on the Judicator as you can imagine this means that there is a lot of time spent rolling deviations for fire templates and damage etc on all my dudes. Feora activates and the timer beeps, there is the option for an extension but its Robs last model, he opts to call it there. I remind him he’s in the Kill Box but he accepts the 2 point loss.

Cygnar Turn 2

Fire, lots of things are on fire, I roll some dice, Rob rolls some dice, things die, Alexia gets lots of tokens. These tokens go on to be lovely fresh Zombies, something in the region of 14 of them. Haley gets a focus from the Squire. She Activates first, shuffles forwards and checks her Control, decides it’s time to feat, and does so. She then puts Deadeye on the Boomhowlers and casts Deceleration again. Jr wanders over and puts Arcane Shield on Haley, I’m worried about fire. The Boomhowlers Assault into the Vanquisher and the Flameguard, with some shots and swings they manage to make a large dent in the Jack and take out a few bodies even through set defense. The Nyss also run with two charging into the Vanquisher and leaving him with crippled arms. Half the Forge Guard can charge into some Flameguard and they do so, leaving only 4 of them left alive and Alexia on another growing pile of tokens. Alexia activates and her Risen advance and swing using some CMAs trying to kill stuff, they fail although they are now tying up some Zealots in melee. Rhupert provides Fearless and Tough for the Boomhowlers again. The Gun Mages try to get LoS on Kell but he’s safe behind immune Zealots and I run out of time, even with my extension, for any fancy push shenanigans.

Cygnar turn 2 end

Menoth (Cygnar) Turn 3

It’s my feat turn so not a lot happens, I force his Jacks to go before they can have choir support, the Redeemer misses a shot, the Vanquisher is swinging on one dice against the DEF 12 Boomhowlers. The Judicator kills lots of stuff, including Junior, and puts even more of it on fire, this does mean that next turn I’m getting more Risen. The count for the Boomhowlers is now pretty low as well as the Forge Guard. A few Gun Mages and Zombies die to Zealots. Feora is out of the feat and is able to escape the Kill Box.

Cygnar Turn 3
Things are still on fire, a huge amount of it dies. I pull one from the Squire. Alexia makes more Risen around the Flameguard and Zealots. The Nyss advance up and shoot 2 Choirmen and the Mekanik. The Risen advance and swing getting a Flameguard dead and a few Zealots through CMAs Alexia makes a Thrall who charges off to smack the Redeemer, he doesn’t do anything. The remaining Boomhowlers advance and swing, Gregor goes to sit on the flag. Haley casts Deceleration again and camps what she has left. Rhupert gives the Fearless and Tough to the Forge Guard. The Lancer Advances and pokes a Flameguard to death. The Gun Mages leave 2 Zealots alive. I’ve gathered a few more souls to make more Risen.

Cygnar turn 3 end

Menoth Turn 4

The Judicator shoots and fires plenty more things but kills most of what it hits, including Gregor. Feora advances up and feats turning 4 fires, from the Forge Guard near her, into focus. The Redeemer charges Jonas and bops him on the head, not after taking a free strike from a Forge Guard which does a bit of damage, Jonas dies, a couple of Boomhowlers also get squashed. The Vanquisher connects and kills another Boomhowler. The Zealots polish off the Gun Mages with the help of Kell. The last Flameguard with a weapon shield walls up with the standard and stabs a Risen.

Cygnar Turn 4

The Squire is empty, there’s 4 Forge Guard on fire, one dies. Alexia creates yet more Zombies. The Nyss Charge into the Judicator and smack it up as much as possible. The Forge Guard are all on fire but they charge Feora anyway, they need 8s to hit and 2 manage to connect but with her camp there isn’t enough damage there. The Zombies charge and do nothing Alexia then sacrifices a bunch of them to kill the Redeemer. The Squire runs towards the Zealots to be close to the flag. Rhupert advances and puts fearless and tough on the Nyss. Haley Decelerates and camps her focus.

Cygnar turn 4 end

Menoth Turn 5

The Zealots go first and bomb some Zombies and then dice down is called.

The aftermath.

My bacon is saved from the cooking it was likely to get from Feora and the Judicator, as I had no way to deal with it. I win the game, because of the earlier Kill Boxing, 2-0. I didn’t know dice down was coming and I was just lucky that I managed to hide for long enough.

It’s time for dinner, time to visit Corks finest chicken establishment, the Chicken of John, John’s Chicken. http://cork.ratemyarea.com/places/john-grace-s-fried-ch-110388#show_reviews you should check out Luke E and his honest review.

So you buy one and get one free?

Musings on 6th Edition - List building

Just to preface this article I've been sitting on it for some amount of time because I simply haven’t had the time to finalise it.

I've also been busy doing lots of other bits and pieces, including a quick foray into Dreadball as well as taking the Dark Angels out for a spin and sorting out my CGK:LRL (Comedy Grey Knights : Land Raider List) for the 3^rd Shack Attack in the Hobby Shack, Wicklow

I was reading an article over at Imperius Dominatus, here:

http://www.imperiusdominatus.com/2013/03/discussion-unit-counters.html

And it was talking about how there are ‘hard’ counters to certain units, plasma for sanguinary guard, for example.

I wanted to apply this in a more general sense and look at soft counters to certain trends that are apparent in 6^th edition and slot this into my meta, which is the Irish 40k scene.

I then want to apply this to list building for my armies, I’m looking to have a Take All Comers (from here on it’ll be known as TAC) list built up.

There are a few army types that we can start to look at before getting into the actual units that make up armies as these types have a fairly standard composition.

The Horde Army

This is commonly seen as a big pile of Ork Boyz or huge swarms of Tyranids with the idea of numbers being the key to victory; this is generally countered by template Weaponry, Flamers and Blasts, the larger the better.

Tarpits These are a sort of subset of horde forces, using either numerous or very tough models to hold up something that could cause a lot of damage to the rest of your force. It’s not so much something you need to build your list for but more of a tactical element when playing.

A ‘Mech’ force

An army that consists of Vehicles generally with troops inside. This is less prevalent in 6^th Ed than it was in 5^th with the ability for lower strength weaponry to glance a vehicle to death. To counter it one needs to bring decent strength ranged firepower, Strength 8 and above ideally.

Flyers

Flyers are now becoming pretty popular in 6^th Ed, with Cron Air being a big player as well as Guard planes and Helldrakes. Dealing with them really requires some Skyfire so an Aegis Line and Quad gun is starting to become a pretty standard piece of kit in most lists. The new Codicies also include Flakk Missile Launchers and the new Daemon Book has a Skyfire Autocannon. Armies without access to these can try with Twin-linking (prescience) and Volume of fire to try and cause some damage.

Edit: The Tau Codex is now out and Brings the option to sling Interceptor and Skyfire onto all of the Battlesuits including Broadsides and the Riptide.

Terminators or Equivalent (TEQ)

This covers all the folks packing a 2+ Armour Save on the field e.g: Terminators. The hardest counter to this is anything AP2, Plasma tends to be the favourite due to weight of fire, a Lascannon is AP 2 but gets 1 shot, Plasma gives 2 at 12” or you have the cannon with a small blast. Another option is a demo charge but they tend to only really show up in the hands of Vets or Marbo. Another tactic for TEQ is just to force saves, volume of wounds onto models.

Marines or Equivalent (MEQ)

This is what most of the 40k Armies are based around, warriors in Power Armour toting a 3+ save, they can be handed by any AP3 weapons although there aren’t too many dedicated commonly found versions. Again, with the TEQ, volume of fire and forcing saves will sort you out.

AV14

Armour Value 14 and to a lesser Eextent 13 can be problematic if there’s nothing to take care of it, looking at the below, even if we are packing a Lascannon the chance of scoring a penetrating hit is slim.

Weapon Str	Glance	Pen
0-7	n/a	n/a
8	6	n/a
9	5	6
10	4	5

The best bet is a Str10 weapon or anything with the Melta or Armourbane special rule which usually gives Str 8 with 2D6 Armour Pen and even with Average Rolling you are only just getting a Pen.

High Toughness Units or Monstrous Creatures

This includes models starting at toughness 6 and going up to 10, a Str4 weapons only wound T6 on a 6+ and can’t even hurt T8, again High strength weaponry is required to take care of these beasties, I’m looking at you Monstrous Nid’s, (Greater) Deamon (Princes), Dread Knights and most recently Riptides. The latter of the two who are 2+/5++. Poisoned weapons/Fleshbane is a good choice here but unless you’re Dark Eldar there isn’t all that much available.

An Assault Death Star

Death Stars tend to come in the form of a big melee blob loaded up with special characters, a load of wargear and some super nasty combination of other things. Some Examples are; a big Unit of Nob Bikers with Klaws, Loganwing Space Wolves with mixed and matched Terminators and power fists, Some combination of nasty Necron things that never die. Sometimes these units will fall into the TEQ category and can be dealt with, mostly, with Plasma and other AP 1/2 although they usually have some sort of invulnerable save or a mutli-wound Eternal Warrior component. Volume of fire or “more guns!” is always an option.

In conclusion you need the following to build a TAC list:

• Templates
• AP 2 or Lots of guns
• Ranged Str 8
• SkyFire
• AP3 or Lots of guns
• Melta/Armourbane
• Fleshbane/Posion

Lots of guns

I'd love to hear anyones thoughts on this, add a comment and tell me how wrong I am.

Warpcon Rulespack and Missons

With Warpcon this coming weekend I wanted to take a look at the missions in the rules pack to just get my head round what’s needed to actually attempt to win some games.

I often find myself losing sight of the victory conditions and just wading in looking for as much death and destruction as possible. Whilst this is great, if you’re going to table someone, even then that doesn't guarantee a full win of 20-0.

The pack is pretty standard for the 40K Irish tournament scene with one exception, the introduction of a new rule, Nemesis.

Nemesis

The unit or independent character that achieves the first blood objective becomes the Nemesis, If the Nemesis is Removed as a casualty by the end of the game it is worth 1 VP to your opponent, If First Blood was Achieved, but not by a unit or character, then choose a unit, in your army and on the table, at random, to become the Nemesis.

Now I spoke at length about the First Blood rule being critical in 6th edition here. 

With the introduction of this rule I think it really shakes things up and makes “core 6 th ed list building” not quite the same from my Point of view anyway. The emphasis on hiding squishy things is replaced by the idea of taking FB with something that is hardy and can hide out somewhere, but that’s a discussion for another time if this rule becomes more prevalent.

Anyway, on to the missions for the tournament:

Just to note the secondary for all of the Missions are:

Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Nemesis, Linebreaker. – These grant a VP each.

And VPs gained with the Warlord Personal Trait "Legendary Fighter" if rolled

The Secondary’s are calculated with +/- based on number of VPs each player earned.

Game one:

VANGUARD STRIKE deployment

Primary Objectives: Crusade (5 objectives) One objective is placed in the centre of each table quarter and one in the centre of the table.

This is what the table should look like, the triangles can flip sides but you will have 1 objective centrally with 3 roughly down the middle of no man’s land.

This is a pretty straightforward game to play, making sure you have three scoring units that are on objectives at game end, a fair bit of this will come down to deploying correctly and manoeuvring into position to take and hold.

Game Two

DAWN OFWAR Deployment

Primary Objectives: Purge the Alien

Artists Impression

This mission is all about minimising casualties and maximising kills, it’s your standard Kill Points affair with not much to really think about.

Game Three:

HAMMER AND ANVIL deployment

Primary Objective: Big Guns Never Tire (3 Objectives worth 3 VPs each) Placed 12 inches apart and 12 inches from the board edge along the centre of the board between the two deployment zones.

Big Guns Never Tire means that your Heavy Support choices count for a VP when they are killed, this means that either I need to have 2 of 3 objectives and lose my Colossuseseseses OR them not die and I still get 2.

So two objectives need to be secured to take this one, with the Hammer and Anvil deployment it means that the Big guns can hide away at the back and still provide fire support.

Game Four:

DAWN OF WAR deployment

Primary Objective: The Relic

The Relic is an odd mission, the need to be swift to go and grab the thing is important, so is being able to shoot anything that can get near it as well. This will likely end up as a huge scrum in the middle, the main issue will be nippy armies that can infiltrate or zip onto it in the first turn and start running before I have a chance to close the distance.

Game Five:

VANGUARD STRIKE deployment

Primary Objective: The Scouring (3 Objectives worth 3 VPs each) One placed in the centre of the board and the others 18 inches either side, along a diagonal line through the centre of the board, between the two deployment zones

The Scouring makes all fast attack scoring and worth 1 VP when they are killed, problem with the Vendettas is that they are too high up on flying bases to score. The table will also be different depending on the opponent, as you can see form the diagram, it could end up with 1 objective in each deployment (red blobs) or with three up the middle (blue blobs). This could make a huge difference as this is the final game and favours fast armies with the potential to zoom onto objectives and have them captured quickly.

Overall the rulespack looks like it will work well with plenty of scoring troops, something that I have recommended before in 6th ed.

My list has a potential 8 scoring units, although none of them particularly resilient, they are guardsmen after  ll. These can of course be reduced to bigger more resilient blobs and a lot of my games are going to be decided at deployment most likely. For anyone curious the list is here.

Regardless of what happens, this is one of, if not the biggest Wargames events in Ireland every year and also a great craic for all involved. I just hope that my social obligations do not end up with me under performing due to alcohol related performance reduction.

One man really knows about Gin.

Hopefully I’ll see some people there who read the blog, if anyone actually does, I’ll be on the bottom tables getting smashed mostly, I imagine, but it’s all about having fun. And when I fail to do well, it’s the taking part that counts!

Dark Angels? Bandwagon, yes.

Now this is me, jumping on a Band Wagon, big style.

It's not a Wagon but it's for a band! (I'm off to see Maiden at Donnington this year)

After having a leaf through a Codex t'other day and seeing how pretty it is and talking to Caolán over at Skibb Wargamers I decided that I would, in my head, imagine myself a list.

Now the lovely thing about Dark Angels has always been the Death/Raven Wing aspect of things and has always appealed to me. Now I've got some Terminators already, some from Space Hulk and some I got assembled and painted to be allied Blood Angels

Libby has a Storm Shield and a Bolter, suck it.

I also have a load of old school Terminators, in a vat of Dettol somewhere, I'm talking Mk 1 Space Hulk Old, they can be augmented with Shields and hammers, was thinking these.

Picture from http://gardenninjastudios.blogspot.ie/

So anyway, I came up with a little list that uses some Terminators and some zippy bikes. 

+ HQ + (215pts)
* Azrael, Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angles, Keeper of the Truth (215pts)

+ Troops+ (795pts)
* Deathwing Terminator Squad (265pts)
* Deathwing Terminator Sgt
Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield
* Deathwing Terminator Special Weapon
Cyclone Missile Launcher & Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield
* 3x Deathwing Terminators
Storm Bolter and Power Sword, 2x Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield

* Deathwing Terminator Squad (265pts)
* Deathwing Terminator Sgt
Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield
* Deathwing Terminator Special Weapon
Cyclone Missile Launcher & Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield
* 3x Deathwing Terminators
Storm Bolter and Power Sword, 2x Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield

* Deathwing Terminator Squad (265pts)
* Deathwing Terminator Sgt
Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield
* Deathwing Terminator Special Weapon
Cyclone Missile Launcher & Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield
* 3x Deathwing Terminators
Storm Bolter and Power Sword, 2x Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield

+ Fast Attack + (420pts)
* Ravenwing Black Knights (210pts)
* 4x Black Knights
1x Ravenwing Grenade Launcher
* Ravenwing Huntmaster
Corvus Hammer

* Ravenwing Black Knights (210pts)
* 4x Black Knights
1x Ravenwing Grenade Launcher
* Ravenwing Huntmaster
Corvus Hammer

Imperial Guard 5th Ed (2009) (Allied Detachment) Selections:

+ HQ + (50pts)* Company Command Squad (50pts)

+ Troops + (240pts)
* Infantry Platoon (240pts)
* Infantry Squad
Lascannon

* Infantry Squad
Lascannon

* Infantry Squad
Lascannon

* Platoon Command Squad

+ Fast Attack + (130pts)* Vendetta Gunship Squadron (130pts)
* Vendetta
2 Twin-linked Lascannons


Now I would need to buy a few bits, and a big box of Bikes, but it looks like a fun list, now to order a metal Azrael before they f(uck)inecast him up.

Some list reflections and bits.

I meant to post this earlier but I forgot and then Christmas and drinking etc..



The other week I was up in Wicklow at the Hobby Shack for Shack Attack! It was a 1 Day 3 game event at 1850 points and it gave me a chance to try out my Guard and Wolves list a bit more.

I just wanted to say that the shop is great and the whole event was cracking, if you are ever in that neck
of the woods pop in and say hi, also they are doing Online ordering too, with free shipping in Ireland.

Now onto the thoughts, I took the following list:
HQ
CCS w/ Astropath

Troops 1
Platoon Command Sq

Infantry Squad
1 Lascannon
Flamer
Commissar

Infantry Squad
1 Lascannon
Flamer

Infantry Squad
1 Lascannon
Flamer

Infantry Squad
1 Lascannon
Flamer

Infantry Squad
1 Lascannon
Flamer

Troops 2
Veteran Squad
2 Melta @10

Fast Attack 1

Vendetta
Heavy Bolters

Fast Attack 2
Vendetta
Heavy Bolters

Fast Attack 3
Vendetta
Heavy Bolters

Heavy Support 1
Colossus Mortar

Heavy Support 2
Colossus Mortar

Heavy Support 3
Medusa

Fortification
Aegis Line

HQ
Rune Priest (Bolter)
Jaws, Living Lightning

HQ
Rune Priest (Bolt pistol)
Hurricane, Wolf Spirits

Troops
7 Grey Hunters
Meltagun
Wolf Banner
Drop Pod

The list itself seems solid enough, it was expanding on the Gaelcon Blob but with Artillery instead of
Orks, the Priests were there to buff the blob and provide Prescience where it was needed, the Grey
Hunters and the Pod for First Blooding.

Because it was only 3 games I didn't really get the chance to try it out against a huge variety of armies
but I got a good taste of how it performs, I ended up playing against Dark Angels & Eldar, Tyranids and
Chaos (Marines and Daemons).

I want to look at each unit and how it did in the games I played, and see what can be changed about the
current list and what needs to be added.

Company Command Squad.
Game 1: Orders were given, successfully, the reserves arrived but then they got charged and failed a
Leadership check on -1 and broke.
Game 2: They hid in a ruin and gave some orders, not much else to report.
Game 3: they got gunned down and are particularly squishy out in the open, they were lacking
something to pack a punch really.

Infantry Platoon
Game 1: They were split for deployment and the non stubborn 20 man Blob was meleed and ran whilst
the others held their ground.
Game 2: The whole platoon held firm and shot, loads.
Game 3: the 30 man blob was seized on and lost 10 men in turn 1, they held a unit up in combat for ages
but didn’t do as much as they should, the other two 10 man squads held on but were overwhelmed,
that was because my whole force was.

Veterans
Game 1: They Grav Chuted in and managed to grab an objective on the last turn.
Game 2: They Chuted in again and Melta’d/distracted some Hive Guard, but then got smashed.
Game 3: No chutes list time, they went to a last ditch draw attempt but didn't have quite enough
fire-power.

Vendettas * I talked about Scout/Outflanking with these lads here.
Game 1: 2 Survived, 1 was vector locked @ 36” and had to leave on the last turn.
Game 2: they chewed up some Tervigon and 1 made it out alive.
Game 3: they all survived and did some damage but it was too late.

Colossus(eseseseses)
Game 1: With Terminators and TH/SS they couldn't really smush anything that well but they caused
wounds.
Game 2: Plenty of wounds onto piles of gaunts, giving them no cover as well was excellent.
Game 3: Splatted some marines and generally made a nuisance of themselves but T6 Infantry is a bit
more annoying, as is FnP.

Medusa
Game 1: It died turn 2 after getting Shaken turn 1, had it lived I’m sure it would have been good.
Game 2: it failed to really deliver in terms of damage, the lack of indirect fire wasn’t great.
Game 3: Short range meant that it wasn't really capable of doing much unless it exposed itself.

Rune Priests
Games 1&2: They cast spells and were generally good.
Game 3: The Shaky Stick came in Handy nullifying psychic powers.

Grey Hunters
Game 1: There weren't any juicy targets but they tied up some shooting.
Game 2: They drew a lot of fire and focused movement.
Game 3: They secured first blood and tied up a unit or 2.

So what didn't really do very well? The Medusa was lacklustre and doesn't really fit the gunline due to
it being range and sight restricted with no real option to reposition without giving up the 4+ Aegis save.
Grey Hunters did will but invariably died each time. Other than that everything seemed to perform fairly
well. One thing that I really noticed was lack of any real melee ability. The tarpits of a blob is nice to hold
up an enemy unit and be a pain, eventually they will wipe something out due to weight of numbers or
suffer. A lack of stubborn when splitting the blobs really makes a difference as well.

So what do I need to change?
Well I think I need to bring in some sort of Melee, now I've heard about rough riders but they just seem
a little poor and they are competing for a Vendetta spot, so they aren't going to be joining. Ogryns are
S5 T5 but lack any power weaponry and are 43 points each with a 5+ save. Power weapons are 10pts
a pop but you still have S3 unless you take a Maul or Axe and then you loose the AP 3 or striking at
initiative, I suppose the Axes are okay when they are snuck in there, might be something to consider.
One thing that was touched on was some Thunder Wolves, being part of the Fast Attack slot in the
Wolves codex this makes them scoring in the scouring, they are also pretty nasty in general, although
they do cost in at 50pts per basic model.

If I drop the Grey Hunters down to 5 and make them a Melta delivery system (no banner), to grab first
blood where appropriate, I can pick up 45 Points. With the Medusa gone I can get another 135. Taking
2 Rune priests is nice but if I opt in for 1 blob I can perhaps afford to lose one, giving me another 100 to
play with. So there’s a solid 280 Points going spare.

TWC are 150 for the basic 3 scrubs, 30pts for a Storm Shield up the front and maybe a 20pt Wolf Claw
in there for some AP 3 and rerolls then 1 standard guy. This puts them at 200 points all told, I could in
theory splurge 60 more on another SS a Thunder Hammer and another Claw which would eat my 80
points but I think that might be better spent elsewhere.

80 points could buy me any of the following:

Marbo a power weapon and a flamer – Cos well Marbo.
5 power weapons and a Melta + Lascannon for the CCS – More Melee potential but also shooting
A Griffon and a flamer – I am tempted to try the Griffon, as prescience on a Colossus was good.
Office of the Fleet, Lascannon for the CCS, 3 power weapons – I like the idea of messing with reserves
more and having 1 more cannon.
Maintain the Grey hunters and grab a Lascannon, power weapon and a Flamer – I don’t think the Grey
Hunters are worth it at 7, reckon it needs to be 10 with 2 Melta/Plasma.

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition, looking at the book.

This post is part of an ongoing series of musings on how some things are working in 6^th Edition I'm going to hopefully take a good look at how things have changed and reach some conclusions. Other things are being covered by some other local chaps who are active in the Irish 40K scene.

Merv at Touched by Greatness has been discussing Chaos Characters as well as Calgar and Guard.

Dave “Little Dave” Coleman over at The RedThirst has been talking about Blood Angels in 6^th Ed, looking at foot lists and all those Assault Marines.

Caolan, one of the members of Skibb Wargamers, another local club in Cark, has been talking about BloodAngels but as a Mechanised force.

With all these articles read and digested, I want to discuss how Guard works in 6^th Edition and what’s good and what’s bad.

Valhallans, true heroes.

I spoke briefly about the direction I am currently taking, Space Wolf Allies, here. I expect much of the same will come up in this series.

I think the best way to start would be to look at the components that make up a 6^th edition force, based primarily on the ‘Fighting a Battle’ section in the book, primarily the missions as they are starting to be played in tournaments. This includes ‘The Armies’, ‘The Mission’ and ‘The Battlefield’.

The Armies

This includes lists, with two major things to consider, fortifications and allies, because of the nature of how I’m going to look at things in this post I’ll just skip over this for now until we know what this force needs to do.

The Mission

So the book has six missions built into, I want to look at each of them, they are:

• Crusade
• Purge the Alien
• Big Guns Never Tire
• The Scouring
• The Emperor's Will
• The Relic

Crusade

Primary: D3 + 2 objectives

Secondary: Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Linebreaker.

Purge the Alien

Primary: Kill Points – 1 VP per unit

Secondary: Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Linebreaker.

Purge them

Big Guns Never Tire

Primary: D3 + 2 objectives, each one worth 3VPs and each Heavy support killed is 1VP.

(Heavy Support are scoring)

Secondary: Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Linebreaker.

BIG Guns!

The Scouring

Primary: 6 objectives worth variable points and each Fast Attack killed is 1VP.

(Fast Attack are scoring)

Secondary: Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Linebreaker.

A Scourer.

The Emperor's Will

Primary: 2 objectives

Secondary: Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Linebreaker.

The Relic

Primary: 1 mobile objective (the relic)

Secondary: Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Linebreaker.

Yep, that's a relic.

Now this is arguably the most important part of the book, certainly for deciding how to proceed with building any list in 6^th Ed, I know some tournaments will not use these missions but the game was designed by the people who wrote these so there must be some correlation.

Before getting into discussing the missions I guess I need to explain how scoring is done in the tournament scene, each game is worth a total of 20 Battle Points divided amongst three criteria primary, secondary and army points. The primary is worth 8, the secondary 6 and army points 6. The primary is either win, lose or draw as is the secondary. Army points are calculated based on the points value of the enemy units that you killed versus the points you lost, this is then split using a malus system:

APs Difference / Battle points.

1301-1850 / 6/0

851-1300 / 5/1

401-850 / 4/2

0-400 / 3/3

Winning Primary - The first glaring thing of note is how the missions are setup, 5 out of 6 involve objectives, objectives that need to be captured by scoring units, the 6^th Ed book says:

“An army's scoring units are normally all the units that come from the troops selection of the Force Organisation chart”

There are a few exceptions, however:

If the choice is a vehicle or embarked in one

If it is a Swarm

If it is currently falling back

There are also denial units, they can stop you claiming an objective by contesting all units are denial units, and again there are exceptions:

If the choice is a vehicle or embarked in one

If it is a Swarm

If it is currently falling back

So knowing this and knowing that there are missions with anywhere between 1 and 6 objectives we can see where the primary focus of any list should be, troops.

Realistically to even have a chance of winning most of these missions a minimum of 4 scoring units is required; ideally you are looking at 6-7, especially when you have squishy units, like guardsmen.

As for denial, it can be done by Elites and HQ, this generally will be a nice big melee unit or commanders death star for some armies. Guard doesn't really have anything that could charge forward and deny whilst not being scoring anyway, reinforcing the idea that we need troops, plenty of them.

That’s pretty much the primary taken care of, now the one exception being Purge the Alien where Kill Points becomes the main concern, this is always a tough one as guard, we are sat with loads of cheap scoring units, which is great, but they are so very squishy, a stiff breeze could wipe out a unit of these guys, unless they are hidden in cover behind walls and gone to ground, or there is 50 of them, in 1 big pile.

I am of course talking about the Combined Squad rule, allowing up to 5 Infantry squads, and these squads alone, to form together into a huge unit, throw in a Commissar for Ld 9 rerolled, at the cost of 1 of the 5 Sergeants, and these chaps are going nowhere.

There is always the concern that the support units for the guard are going to fall foul of kill points, especially when facing off against tough and expensive armies with very few units, I'm looking at you Grey Knights, but if the Infantry numbers can be reduced to yield just 1 point for that many troops, the support sections can afford to die as long as they can get a kill themselves.

So to summarise, to win the primary objective in missions you must have troops, lots of them. These troops should be resilient enough to survive when you outnumber the enemy. For kill points supporting units should not be spammed, I'm looking at you Chimeras, AV 12 just isn't as daunting as it once was and AV10 is near worthless, glances have made a huge difference in the way that armour works, rapid firing Str 4 bolters are going to start hurting Chimeras at some point.

Winning Secondary – First Blood, this is pretty much the key to secondary, it is the only objective without potential retaliation, Warlord can be contested by making the other chap a priority target, Linebreaker can be sought at any time. First blood can only be countered by making sure to not concede any other secondary.

First blood!

So how do you secure first blood? A lot of it comes down to who gets 1^st turn, if you have it, then you set up for an alpha strike, pick the closest available and most easily killed target and set yourself up to hit it with whatever it’ll take to kill it. IF you don’t get first turn you are playing prevention and a counter strike, hide things out of LoS, screen and provide cover saves, make sure there’s nothing exposed that can be taken out.

Guard are masters of the alpha strike, the gun line is without compare. Make sure to include a Lascannon or two for turn 1 tank popping or a couple of juicy templates to place over squads hiding in terrain, I'm looking at you Colossus/Manticore/Medusa/Griffon/Basalisk.

Linebreaker is an interesting one you just need 1 model that is either scoring or denial in the opponents deployment zone, if you are crushing someone this is easy enough to get when it’s close, you may need to jostle for position and try and secure it, grav-chuted troops from a Vendetta in the final turn is an option or just advancing from turn 3 with a Run Run Run order does the same.

Securing warlord should be a case of simply dedicating firepower at the warlord, for most armies they are an offensive character and likely to be up in your face anyway, the issue guard has is in protecting your ever so poorly armoured company commander or other independent character. The best option is to hide them away at the back in some ruins whilst they throw out orders to those 12” away, if they are likely to get killed in turn 1 they can always be reserved or hidden in a Vendetta.

It’s my belief that this should be the main focus when deploying a force for a game, if you can secure first blood, you are most likely looking at a minimum of 3 points for the secondary, but more likely a 6, unless you get tabled, but if you do, you have other things to worry about.

So to secure secondary you need to have first turn and be offensive, go hard or go home, if going second play as defensive as possible in the hope that you can strike back in your round. Bring some hard hitting guns or artillery to the table turn one and if you want to up the ante on the defensive, bring an Aegis (this is something that I’ll talk about more in the future)

4+ for 50pts? I think so.

That pretty much covers all of ‘The Mission’ part of the book and we end up seeing 2 major trends for both primary and secondary, objectives and first blood. This means we need plenty of troops and plenty of fire power (that won’t die too fast).

The Battlefield

The Battlefield part of the book is simply the deployments for each game, of which there are three.

Dawn of War

Hammer and Anvil

Vanguard Strike

The only remarkable thing about the deployments is Hammer and Anvil (aside from it being a pain to play at a tourney if you happen to be on tables in the middle of a row) whilst each deployment gives a 24” minimum distance this one provide the option on increasing that even further. With night fighting being a 50/50 chance you can easily hide artillery outside of the 42” negating a turn 1 move and shoot against you.

Conclusions

After going through all of the above we can see a trend in what needs to be done, grabbing objectives to secure a win. I feel the secondary objective in all these missions and potential securing of 6 BPs for just first blood makes it a top priority.

Next time I intend to look at units in the Imperial Guard Codex in 6^th edition and how they fare with the new ruleset.

For the Emperor!

Thanks for reading, looking forward to getting some comments and thoughts.