Ad Mech rolls on

So we are in week five of the 40K old school league, and last night I faced off against an armored cav Dark Eldar army. There were three raiders, three vemons, two ravagers, and a bomber thing, plus a squad of jet bikes. Kalabite warriors were the troops inside most of the vehicles. One contained some grotesques and his Succubus. Now my opponent had challenged me after last week's game. I had battled against a blood angel army stuffed in drop pods. So I knew I was facing DE. So out went anything with high toughness, as his poison was going to make short work of that. Instead, I tried to bulk up on numbers. Grav weapons wouldn't be any good against his low armor, so in came the breachers. My list was the following:

Dominous with upgraded weapons, and cognis armor with conversion field.
10 rangers with long rifle thingies and -1 cover gear
10 rangers with three arc rifles
10 vanguard with three plasma (Dominous went here)
8 vanguard with one arc rifle
5 stock breachers
3 ironstriders with autocannons
2 dunecrawlers, one neutron, one icarus array

So I will admit I loaded up on haywire and weapons that could take down light vehicles. But almost everything was modeled that way...so it wasn't a huge stretch. I just made sure I didn't take stuff that wouldn't do well vs the DE.

And it worked. He had one guy left on the table by the end of turn 5. He conceded instead of having a turn 6. I will say that my dice did well for me most of the time, which was a huge turn around from last week. But my opponent also made some pretty big mistakes. He didn't really use his speed to get to me when he had the chance. Also, he concentrated almost all of his fire on my breachers and dunecrawlers. Those were the two units that had the highest survival rates of my whole army. Had he spent only half of the shots at the breachers and put them towards my rangers or vanguard, I would have actually lost some units. As it was, I lost one dunecrawler and my breachers were down to one model. One of my ranger squads was down to two, and a few guys were off a vanguard squad...but that was it. I didn't lose a single unit.

I think the game could have been a lot closer had he been more aggressive. Instead, he hung back, and tried to out shoot me. My stuff was just tougher and I was rolling more dice.

There are at least three opponents I haven't faced yet, a nid player, a nurgle deamon player, and a sisters player. So I'll most likely be going up against one of them next week. I have three wins so far and one loss. Not doing that badly which is a big surprise for me. The format is helping to keep the game simpler. I've also expanded my Ad Mech collection a bit too. I just got some electro priests and will be adding more elites and a strider. I need to stop buying this army! :)

Warmachine V3

So the news has just dropped that Warmachine/Hordes is getting a new version of the rules, 3.0. I have to say I'm a little excited about this. A while back I had tried my third hand at warmachine. I even blogged about it. Since that blog ended, I haven't done too much with the old steam powered game. I did buy the Cryx All in One box. I am currently sitting on a decent Cryx collection and a starter for Menoth. I've actually been trying to sell my Menoth stuff, but so far no biters. However, with a new edition on the horizon, I'll have to come up with the tricky decision to keep it or sell it.

You know, because the Menoth faction might be super cool in V3 and then I'd want to keep it... :)

Actually, I've always like Menoth and wanted it as my first faction. But, most of my friends also wanted to run Menoth, so I chose Cryx instead (being the resident undead player).

I really dig the original infantry and rocket guys. If only the All in One box had had more of the stuff I liked, I probably would have picked that one up too.

The new battle boxes seem pretty cool. More figs than the previous ones, extra stuff tossed in, and cheaper! That is a great way to suck more players in. Plus I've heard the game will be faster and a bit more balanced as well. I'll be keeping my eye on the new release.

Ad Mech = Dwarves

So I've now played my second game with my Ad Mech forces. I didn't change the list at all and this time I faced a nurgle deamon army. The setup used opposite corners with a large night fight area in the middle of the board. We kind of forgot about it because it really didn't come into play for the most part. My opponent was rocking two GDs with Iron Arm for each of them (even his DP had Iron Arm). So my shooting just wasn't doing jack to them. That and he couldn't seem to fail a freaking 5+ ward save most of the night. When his softer stuff got in range, they were evaporated fairly quickly. And truth be told, by the end of the game, I had killed one of his GD, and his DP, as well as most everything else. However, my forces were equally bloodied.

What tipped the scales into his favor though was that the scenario was an objective grab. And that is when we discovered that the Ad Mech army on its own is like playing Dwarves. I simply didn't have mobility at all with my units.

Okay, so that really isn't a true statement due to the fact that my whole army is relentless and can move and shoot without issue. But that list simply didn't have any speed to it. The farthest I could go on a turn was 6" and only a handful of my units could run. The fact that he was running nasty CC units also kept me pinned into my corner. It is clearly something that I am now going to have to keep in mind while I'm playing. With limited turns, I'll need to make runs for locations fairly early.

Also, I'm adjusting my list a bit to give me some more speed. I've dropped the breachers and the kastelons in favor of some ruststalkers and ironstriders. I've also added a small unit of vanguard plainly equipped. Those Rad Carbines are just super nasty. They can toss out the wounds. I actually went out and got a Starter box for Ad Mech just so I could make another squad of vanguard. Plus, it gives me my third dunecrawler.

And don't worry, I got it second hand from someone getting out of Ad Mech, so no paying GW's prices. Which brings me to my opinion section of the day. I have seen the initial images of GW's Orruks for AoS. Holy Crap, they have finally ruined an army. I just can't believe how bad the models were. The orcs were always one of the best and most characterful armies that GW produced. It truly saddens the heart to see them now morphed into....this:

Look at me! I'm an angry green ape in a crab shell!

I am so glad I have a large orc army and that I did not sell off my extra models. Till next time.

All Hail the Machine God!

So I got my first game of 7th ed 40K in last night, and I got to play with my brand new Ad Mech army. My club is doing an old school league as described in my last post. I get to mash up the two Ad Mech codexes into one army list.

We played 1500pts last night as I warned my opponent that this would be a learning game for me. We had to use the standard org chart, so I had the following:

vanilla Dominus
5 breachers with arc rifles
4 destroyers with grav cannons
10 rangers with 3x snipers and ominspex
10 vanguard with 3x plasma
2 kastelans with power fists & tech dude
2 onager dunecrawlers with Neutron lasers

My opponent was running a chaos marine list with 10 levels of psykers. However, all of his units were fairly small, and he had no long range shooting.

I didn't record or take notes for a full battle report. Sorry. It was a long game with all the pauses for me having to look up rules and stuff. The forces of the machine god won the day, nearly tabling the chaos forces. Basically, the chaos guys came in too piecemeal to have any effective shooting, and when they did shoot, they went after the dunecrawlers. They were successful in killing one of them off, but they just didn't have the numbers to survive the massed fire that was returned. The grav cannons were a huge deterrent for my opponent. They really only ever shined by wiping out a 3 man termie squad. However, the sheer amount of firepower (24 shots each turn) was enough to constantly plink away wounds even when the target had a 2+ cover save. Really, that was the lesson learned last night. Ad Mech will put wounds on you, and you will roll ones. Since I never really had to split my fire, it was always enough to decimate whatever target had presented itself.

I was really concerned about the psychic superiority that my opponent had. First turn was 14 dice vs my 4. And it was only on the last turn when he was tossing one die at a power did he finally start to fail any. But he was too timid with Ahriman and always limited his targets due to LOS or range. He did nearly kill my dominus with three castings of psychic shriek, but between the 5+ refractor field and Feel No Pain, the Dominus only took one wound. That guy is a beast. (plus lots of 5+ rolls on my part).

It was a fun game and it definitely helped me figure out my army a bit more. Hopefully by the end of the league I'll be able to figure out some actual strategies for them other than "shoot", "shoot" and "shoot again".

Cogs from Mars

So my cohort for DW has to take a break, which leaves me without an opponent for a while. An open invite went out to the club, but so far no takers. Therefore, Dystopian Wars learning games will be on hold until Robert is back in action.

Never fear though, I'm rolling right into my latest army, Adeptus Mechanicus! I have to say I was pretty impressed with the models from this army when they were first released. However, GW's silly pricing and general assness kept me from getting them. Luckily for me, a local player decided to get rid of his army and I was fortunate enough to be in a position to buy it at a price I did not mind.

Better yet, the whole army is already assembled. Sure, I didn't get the say as to what they were armed with and such, but basically the guy did a good job and I really didn't care that much. I didn't have to build a darn thing...whoo hooo! And, he had pretty much the entire army from both books. I'm only missing one kit. I added up the points for the various units and weapons that were on them and it makes an army over 2000pts. So all I really need to do is paint this sucker.

Anyways, enough on the sweet deal I got, the good part is that my club is running a new 40K league and I hopped in with my Ad Mech. Now this isn't a typical 40K league...in fact, it is called the Old School League because it restricts the armies quite a bit. No formations, no super heavies, no allies, no fliers. Standard force org for everyone. Armies like the Ad mech have some special consideration for them since the Skitarii doesn't have a full org chart. But pretty much, its 40K the way we used to play it...just using 7th ed rules.

Also, truth be told, these guys had come up with it before BoLSs had released their document. But it is refreshing to see that others feel the same way we do.

I'm sure my army is going to be the underdog in most match ups, but I'm not too worried. I love the models and I think I should be able to just go out, roll some dice, and have fun. And with the weather turning nicer, I may even get inspired to start painting on some of the models. I'm liking the Metalica faction for the army look. I don't have a white army and I think it can really stand out over a gun metal underbody. Should be interesting. Keep an eye out for updates.

Dystopian Wars, game 2

Hello gentle readers,

Last night, my friend Robert and I engaged in game two of our Dystopian Wars learning series. This time we upped the game size to 700 points and added in local air support. This time Robert brought his own fleet in the form of the Covenant. I stuck with my Chinese Federation.

I didn't take pictures last night, and I'm just going to give a brief recap of events. Robert had not made an army ahead of time, but just brought his naval models, so he was a little short on points. We played with far too much terrain on the board, but it did make for an interesting game.

Highlights:
I'm still getting flamethrower rules wrong. I had a chance to roast his BB a little, but I thought they linked fire instead of combined fire. Would have been nice to put some corrosive and fire tokens on that beast.

Robert rolls like crap. I've never seen anyone roll 3d6 and get less than 10 on almost every roll. His light cruisers did almost nothing the whole game, despite having energy weapons.

My dice were still hot. I was popping his frigates all over the place and was taking out a light cruiser a turn.

Energy weapons are just sick. His BB finally got in a good firing position and he laid out the hurt. Honestly, what was Spartan thinking? 6d6 to determine your AD, which then ignores shields and armor MARs?? At all four range bands???

It won't be so bad when we are playing mixed forces, but right now, since we are only doing naval, those energy weapons are just sick.

So the game had ended with me having a lightly damaged BB and battlecruiser. My destroyers were missing one of their number, and my last cruiser was waiting for the killing blow to land. Robert lost all of his light cruisers, and was down to a single frigate in all three of his squadrons. His BB though was only lightly damaged from a bombing run.

The SAS rules were still confusing, but we muddled through them. I have to give a huge shout out to Element 270...not only do they have great podcasts, but their download section has fantastic reference sheets. I wish I had found them prior to yesterday's game. Now I do have them and expect the games to go much smoother with my new mini rulebook. :)

https://element270.wordpress.com/

Check them out.

On somewhat related news, last night at the gamestore, there was a pair of gamers playing Planetfall. So that was great to see another game I'm really interested in being played. More opponents! Plus, one of those guys was interested in DW. And another DW player swung by our table as we played. So for some reason, in the PACNW, there are DW players...they just don't come out often.

Until next time!

Dystopian Wars Battle Report v2.0

As promised, I will try my best to chronicle my learning of DW 2.0. I had my first real learning game. We kept things very simple to make sure we had a firm grasp of the basic rules. We had 500pt fleets that just adhered to the first rule of list building. So we each had one large squadron, a medium squadron, and a small squadron.

I fielded my Chinese Federation (CF) models for the very first time. I took Jian mark I battleship, three Dao cruisers, and four Nu frigates. My friend Robert fielded my Federated States of America (FSA) models, and had a Liberty heavy battleship, three Georgetown cruisers, and three Augusta frigates. I will have to say, after looking at the stats of the two fleets, I was pretty sure the CF were going to be fighting an uphill battle. Both Robert and I had played DW 1.2 a few times, but were by no means experts.

I ran out and bought a new blue table cloth just for the game. :) We rolled for terrain as in the book and only got one item, which I got to put down. So I plopped the largest island from the starter set. That is the FSA on the left, and the CF on the right. I won the roll off for init and went first.

I'll apologize now for not taking activation by activation pictures. Since this was such a small game, I tried to take when something major happened. I started off with moving my frigates around the north side of the island to get some shots off at his cruiser. However, the boats didn't have enough speed to get everyone in range, so no damage was done. Robert then swung his frigates over to shoot at mine, and blew one up with a crit. I passed the motivation test.

I then moved my cruisers forward and linked their fore guns at the battleship. Five sixes later, a nice crit was placed on the FSA BB (I have no idea why battleships are abbreviated as BB). He then activated his kinetic generator to speed his BB an extra 5" forward and launched everything he had at the CF BB, but only succeeded in putting on a single hit. The CF BB then moved forward and fired its broadsides at the FSA BB and put on another critical. Due to the special rules on the CF weapons, I had stripped of several crew and put on raging fire tokens as well. Finally, his cruisers moved up and unleashed on the CF BB, but only succeeded in adding another point of damage.

In the end phase, the FSA BB failed to put out the fire or remove the chaos critical.

Turn 2: (above pic shows status after two activations)
On my first activation, my cruisers moved up to fire upon the BB and the cruisers. The BB was unscathed, but I critted a cruiser and knocked out its engine. He then advanced his BB before it got damaged further and fired upon my battleship. The dice were going well for me, and not so much for him.
Seeing how my BB was screened by my cruisers, I activated my frigates and was able to take out one of his frigates, and damage another. The FSA frigates, now down to two, were still potent enough to take out one of mine in return. All motivation tests were passed.

I then advanced my BB slowly, I was just short of ramming distance, and I didn't want to risk one. Why put damage on my ship when his was hurting so much?

The heavy flamethrowers roasted his BB and put on a crit (this is where I goofed in the rules. Apparently flamethrowers don't put on crit damage, but just add on heaps of fire tokens) So now his BB had fires, corrosive markers, and other damage while it drifted ahead. The broadsides were able to finish off one of the FSA cruisers as well. Those cruisers were still very lethal though, taking down one of mine and damaging another, in fact, he triple critted one of them. Thankfully though the first crit was enough to destroy it (I think his BB had put damage one of the cruisers as well).

In the command phase, his BB was able to stop one of the fires, and one of the corrosive markers, but was slowly burning and melting apart. I think my cruisers had failed their disorder test, but we missed doing its effects in the end phase.

Turn 3:
Here is where things went sideways. I finished off his BB with my BB after carefully avoiding the ram. His cruisers then fired at mine, and destroyed another one...but not only destroying it...teleporting it 16", right over the island, and smack dab on top of his two frigates. No lie. We checked the lines and distance over and over again to make sure we were doing it right. The two little boats got crushed by the CF cruiser and sank.

He almost took out the last cruiser as well. Those FSA cruisers are simply nasty. However, now the rest of my fleet was able to turn their attention on them and very quickly the crits started to roll in. At this point we called the game due to time. Had we gone one more turn, I'm sure he would have finished off my last cruiser, but would have been wiped out in turn.

All in all, very unexpected turn of events. I was sure the FSA was going to mop up. As this was a learning game, we knew mistakes were going to be made. However, at every turn, we discussed what the best firing options were for each player. So in those regards, no errors were made. The only tactical error in the game (other than my small ships going too far to get that first turn shot off which didn't do anything but make them a target) was when he used his kinetic generator to catapult his BB ahead. The FSA had the range advantage, and by putting his BB so close to my lines, it let me concentrate my cruisers and BB on it, leaving his cruisers to catch up.

Still, I think the game went reasonable quick for a learning game. We did play for about three hours. I'm sure that repeated play will cut our time down for turns. We are going to slowly introduce other aspects of the game each week. I think we are going to try out the SAS tokens for our next game, and maybe up the points a little.

The weather here in the PACNW is dismal, and not conducive to priming. So you might be seeing a lot of bare ships for a while. However, I do think Robert is going to bust out his Covenant for next week. Lets see if the Chinese Federation can handle them.