Yellow Submarine Display Board WIP

I will be playing in Orktoberfest this weekend and whilst my Crimson Fists are not ready (because they only arrived a week ago), I am going to enjoy taking my Iyanden Eldar.  After seeing that I have received the third highest comp score, I decided to do something a little bit out there.....

Yellow Iyanden

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Third softest list at the event

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Yellow Submarine Display Board!

Eltnot

Cowcon 2011 Report

So I headed back up to Rockhampton to catch up with friends and get in some games in the event that I used to run.  I had decided to take my Sisters as they took up less room in the car than the large Eldar case and so would be easier to transport along with a my desert table as the Pig Pen had to make another appearance (a 12" by 12" fenced off area filled with Ork boars that counts as dangerous terrain.  The boars accounted for an immobilised Rhino and Landraider along with two terminators in one game a few years ago).  Wonna picked me up from my parent's place on Friday night to help setup, but the old time dance went longer than expected and it was 11:30pm before we even started setting out the tables, leaving me to crawl into bed at 1:30am on the Saturday.  To help make sure things went smoothly, Wonna picked me up at 6:30am to head over to the hall and get ready for the day with last minute preparations.  The bugger had got himself a coffee on the way but it wasn't until midway through my first game that I finally got some caffiene into my sleep deprived body.

Game 1 versus Collin Donaldson, Eldar, Annihilation, Pitched Battle
Farseer
2x 10 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents
5 Wraithguard in Wave Serpent
2x Fire Prisms

I've played Collin a few times, both at the club and at other tournaments.  I won the roll for first turn and deployed fairly standardly, but I made the first of many mistakes that game and forgot to blob my IG platoon together for less kill points.  On turn two I forgot to disembark two units with meltaguns to shoot at tanks before beginning the shooting.  I then forgot to charge an immobilised Fire Prism on turn three with my Seraphim.  That caffiene hit couldn't kick in fast enough for me apparently, and I lost narrowly 5 kill points to his 6.  I did however manage to pick up three out of four bonus points for table quarters and was 2.5VP's away from grabbing the fourth.  Gained: 9 BP's

Game 2 versus Callan Reah, Eldar, Milk the Cows (3 objectives, you get 1 point for each objective that you hold uncontested at the end of your turn from turn two onwards), Spearhead
Karandras
Autarch with wings
3x 10 Striking Scoprions
2x 5 Rangers
2x 5 Pathfinders
2 War Walkers
3 War Walkers

I again setup first and deployed aggressively to the fore, hoping to get onto the objectives and clear them off with flamers early on.  Callan then surprised me but outflanking his entire army except for the Autarch who deepstruck instead.  I pushed up and used the time wisely to run units into positions and bring my Exorcists into a protective circle near the central objective.  I made my guesses of ranges well and left my rhino transports just outside his charge range.

My Canoness ran interference until his units became bunched up and my Rhinos deposited flame weilding Sisters who removed Striking Scorpions aided by Divine Guidance with a vengance.

I did make the mistake of focusing too much on the primary objective and failed to get most of the secondary objectives, but instead won overwhelmingly with 12 tokens to 0.  Gained: 17BP's

Game 3 versus Luke Williams, Space Marines, Escape Capsule (Dawn of War, single objective that arrives near the centreline at the end of turn 2 or 3.  The person with the most VP's of scoring units within 6" wins with scaling for draw, minor and major wins.)
Chaplain Cassius
5 Assault Terminators (4 TH/SS 1 LC's)
Land Raider
Techmarine with Thunderfire Cannon
2x 10 Tactical Marines (PF, Lascannon, Plasmagun) in Rhinos
10 Scouts with Telion (Sniper Rifles)
Vindicator
Triple Las Pred with Chronus

Luke deployed first and put down his Techmarine with thunderfire, and the scout squad up in buildings.  I deployed my blobbed infantry squads and platoon command in building and attached my Canoness to cause havoc if an opportunity arose early on.  Luke's thunderfire cannon fired when the sun rose on the bunched up guardsmen and in one round killed about 2/3rds of the unit, Ouch.  In return an Exorcist popped out from behind a building and smashed the techmarine and his cannon into scrap metal.  I used my Exorcists on each flank to strike at his side armour on the Vindicator and Predator and quickly removed them from the game.  Luke's terminators were quickly dispatched by a combined charge or my Canoness and her Celsetian Retinue and the Seraphim, but after the Seraphim hit and ran away to engage other targets.  Chaplain Cassius soloed the Celestians for about three rounds of HtH before finally losing his last wound.  The objective crashed down on the side of the table where I only had one BSS squad and Luke jammed both of his tactical squads onto the objective via lucky deployment.  At the end of turn five I was looking down the barrel of a minor loss or at best a draw, but turn six and seven saw my other units bounce across the pig pen (safely) to the objective and my Jump Canoness and the remaining Celestians cleared the marines from the area.  Gained 19 BP's

Game 4 versus Dan Corkran, Grey Knights, Pitched Battle, 5 Objectives
Librarian
5 Paladins built for wound abuse
3x 5 Grey Knights (Thunderhammer and Psycannon) in Las/Plas Razorbacks
5 Grey Knights (Thunderhammer and Psycannon) in Psybolt Heavy Bolter Razorback
3x Dreadnoughts with twin linked Autocannons and Psybolt ammo

Before I left at the end of Day one, Wonna already had the draw up for day two which would see me face off against Dan Corkran.  Dan and I have played a few times at the local club but this would be the first time I would face him in a tournament.  He was fielding a tough Grey Knights army that I knew I would struggle to beat, and on top of that Dan had played my sisters before and lost against them.  His ability to analyze his losses and learn from them is pretty good so I decided I needed a plan to help me through the first game tomorrow.
Plan A: Get Dan drunk at the dinner that night.
This plan failed miserably when I found out that Dan wasn't going out and had head to bed by 9:30pm.

Plan B: Play differently.
I figured if I played in a manner different to how I normally would, I might through Dan off, which sounds simple, but is hard to do when you have mech sisters which really only play one way.  I decided that there was no way that I could smash Dan's army so I opted instead to play for the Minor Win/Loss or a draw.  I would advance and grab nearby objectives, and then stop and hold them staying just off the objectives so that I could move up and ambush incoming units.  Better than Plan A at least.

Dan of course won the roll for sides and stole the side with the best cover for his Razorbacks and Dreads which left me little cover for my tanks.  I made things worse by deploying one of my Exorcists right out on a flank and it proved to be just out of range and immobilised itself on the first piece of terrain it touched.  Dan's shooting knocked out two transports on the first turn so the sisters advanced on foot running between the limmited cover towards the objectives.  I beat Dan to three of the objectives (one near my deployment zone) and settled in to hold off the wave of firepower that began to knock me off it.  Thankfully my Jump Canoness held him up by assaulting units in his back lines, but I again forgot to give the Celestian invulnerable saves and most of them were killed by Plasma fire.  My Canoness went down when she failed her Ld test to get an invun save and was buried under power weapon attacks.  The game flowed back and forth around his back field, but his Paladins sat just outside my rapidfire range and tried to shoot my sisters off the objective.  I think Plan B worked as I would normally have pushed forward agressively and Dan wasted precious time before pushing up to contest after he realised I wasn't moving.  At the end of turn 5 I held 3 objectives to his two, but in turn 6 he contested two of the objectives whilst holding his two with only 1 and 2 Grey knights huddles out of site of my units.  A very close game that was great to play against a very skilled player.  Gained: 6 BP's

Game 5 versus Adam Bullmore, Nurgle Chaos Space Marines, Annihilation, Spearhead
Nurgle Sorcerer
Deamon Prince with Warptime and Wings
2x 7 Plague Marines (powerfist and two meltaguns) in a Rhino
7 Plague Marines (powerfist and two plasmaguns) in a Rhino
Vindicator
2x Defilers

I deployed first in an agressive posture, hoping to knock out his Defilers early and then dominate the game by picking off his tanks and out manuevoring him.  Unfortunately Adam positioned roughly the same so I knew things would get messy early on.  I remembered to blob my guardsmen this time though :)  I decided to switch things up and shift my forces to the right to bring him off balance, unfortunately my Exorcists decided to play a slow waltz or something and only rolled one's and two's for their shots most of the game.  I did however manage to bottle neck him around some central spires as he struggled to get around one of his Defilers.  I shot and charged units as they came through the gaps, staving off the bulk of his forces whilst conserving mine.  Combats dragged on however and my faith pool ran down quickly, especially once he turned one of my Canonesses into a giant bunny spawn (pictured above).  I just managed to finish of his units in the nick of time with only one faith point and my Jump Canoness on one wound and the Seraphim all but wiped out.  My lead however had been maintained and finished on 11KP's to 5KP's for a major victory.  Gained 18BP's

I slowly packed up my gear as I was chatting to a few of the Townsville guys, discussing various things and the awards started whilst I was still away putting my miniatures in their cases.  I had just walked over to the rest of the group when Wonna called out my name for second place.  What? Huh?  I thought I was going to be near the top but I certainly didn't think I was going to place after suffering two losses and only getting a smattering of bonus points.  I also got a Black Library book for bringing along my table of terrain so I was very happy when I finally got home on sunday afternoon.  Unfortunately the late nights and days of thinkings had taken their toll and I've gotten a bit of a cough which was very painful on the flight back to Brisbane.

Other shots from the weekend:

All in all, a great weekend with good mates and lots of laughs all round.  Next year Cowcon is expecting to increase the limit from 40 to 50 players which will cement it in as one of the largest events in Queensland with only Quarter Master and Orktoberfest currently larger.

Eltnot.

Missions, Armylists and Tournament Organisers

I don't normally do the editorial style posts but this is something that has been churning over in my brain for a few weeks if not months now and I want to get it down onto paper/interwebs.  I apologise now if this comes across hugely rantish.  I've recently seen a case of tournament organisers going away from varied missions in an effort to maximise balanced missions.  This includes things like defining where objectives are placed on the tables (12" in from the long table edge, 18" in from the short table edge, etc), to making changes to how kill points are dealt with in an effort to achieve what they feel is balanced.  Well I cry bullshit.

The above is a normal game of chess on a normal chess board.  It's balanced and it's what you expect, kinda like the current 5th Edition Missions.

This is not a normal chess board.  It's still balanced, but it requires to you to approach the problem in a new manner if you want to have a good chance of winning.


I can go to places like 3++ and find lots of well built lists that are designed to smash face based on stock standard missions (I'm not having a dig at Kirby and the guys on 3++ just pointing out that they are very focused on list building and tactics.  They do it well and their lists work well in established missions, but due to their nature of being optimised to work with standard missions, they may not work as well when you have non standard missions).  When someone with one of these kinds of lists comes up against an odd ball mission (my Milk the Cows mission from COWCON 2010 is a good example), they cry foul that the mission isn't balanced and shouldn't be used.  Before we go further though we need to establish what is and isn't a balanced mission.

Non Balanced
These are the kinds of missions where the objectives have a great chance to advantage or disadvantage a given side.  Examples of this are things like wildly scattering objectives or objectives that hurt things around them when they arrive.  I played one mission where the single objective did both, leading to my mate's Deathwing army getting killed by the objective arriving and a poor scatter whilst I had the unfortunate situation of having to charge across the table to my enemy's deployment zone to try and secure it whilst he got to sit there and shoot me up.

In short a unbalanced mission is generally one where the nature of the mission immediately has a good chance to greatly skew the results based on chance, not because it favours one type of army over another.

Balanced
These are the opposite of non balanced obviously.  They have little to no random luck involved and are often based around existing idea (like those provided in the rulebook).

Now if we have a close look at the missions from the rulebook, you see some based on capturing objectives or multiple objectives, to those based on killing as many enemy units whilst minimising your own losses.  These different types of missions often make it difficult to build an army that can secure multiple objectives whilst having a low amount of kill points, the result of which is a compromise.  A force built around having a low amount of kill points often finds it difficult to hold/and or contest multiple objectives due to its limited amount of units.  A force with lots of units will have an easier time of holding and contesting objectives but finds itself giving up kill points much easier.  A force that combine the two might find itself disadvantaged when facing an enemy that excels at one type of given mission when it gets the right match up.

Recently I've seen a case of people trying to adapt the various missions from the rulebook to make them easier for one type of army or another to complete.  Examples of this are restricting the amount of kill points available or by fixing in place or reducing the amount of objectives.  This doesn't fix anything however.  The result is that one type of army style or another dominates the scene as when you give strength to one type of army, you're reducing the impact of the strength of another.  If you want to reduce kill points, that's fine, but expect most lists to be MSU style affairs because you just made them stronger.  Don't like objectives, give the minimum kill point guys a boost.

So my point here really is stop trying to make missions "fairer", make them more interesting and get people to build the lists that suit those missions.  I've had people complain that they felt my Milk the Cows mission which requires people to take an objective and then hold it for as long as they can, hurt their army.  Sure it did, because their list was built around the last turn objective contest.  Build a different list, if you're list doesn't do that kind of thing well, change it so that it can.  Add that sub optimal unit that just so happens to fill the gap.  Adapt.  Be a better general and learn how to handle the curve balls rather than complaining that the mission was unfair.  You built you're army around the missions in the rulebook, well here's a new one to add to the mix.  Try it out, adapt your army to suit, and then move on.  The mission isn't unbalanced because it is unfair, it just seems to be unbalanced because you hadn't planned for it.

In the end, the powerhouse lists are built to excel at set mission types.  When the missions change, and you want a powerhouse list, you will need to change it also.  That's the nature of the game.  This is why the lists that people took in fourth edition 40k are different to those in fifth.  The missions changed and what was good became less so, and what was less so often becomes good.

Lastly, I'd like to make a note on fixed objective placement.  Ditch it please, it's insulting.  If someone plays an all biker army and I put the objectives in difficult terrain, that's his problem for taking that style of list, and he or she should plan for it accordingly.  He or she can still place his objective out in the open.  All fixed placement does is change it into a game of chance as to whether that particular spot will have terrain in it or not.

Eltnot.

Quarter Master IV 2010

I left just prior to lunch time on Friday and began the long drive down to Brisbane, unfortunately up this way we've had a lot of rain and the roads weren't roads so much as strips of bitumen filled with potholes large enough to swallow my "Shoebox of Death".  I eventually made it safely to my brothers house with just enough time to say hello and borrow their loo before driving across town to catch up with some mates at Lonestar.   Mmmmmm Cheesy Fries....

Saturday morning I got to the tournament and found out that I was the first one there, closely followed by Ross and Damo.  I got myself a coffee and the TO's got our first round under way which saw me face a rather nasty Space Wolf army.  This army got the lowest comp score at the event, and rightfully so.  I lost my game before even placing a model as we faced off in a Killpoint mission with Dawn of War.  He won the roll and choose to deploy first.  His three squads of Long Fangs, three las/plas Razorbacks and multimelta/heavy flamer Land Speeders tore me up as I tried vainly to cross a board with no line of sight blocking terrain.  So first game was a lovely major loss for me.  Only up from here.

 

On my second game I got to play against a nicely done Pre Heresy World Eaters army (using the Blood Angels Codex).  I enjoyed my game and it came right down to the wire in the end. He smashed me with long range firepower whilst I tried to hunker down on the objectives and managed to pull through with a minor win.

My third game was against Tyranids with a wide variety of units.  I opted to deploy second and managed to seize the initiative.  My refused flank approach smashed apart his army as I countered his fast moving units and whitled down his slower ones.  We ran out of time on turn four with me holding a minor win.  Had we had a further turn, I had a good chance of pushing it to a major, but such is life.

I went home from the first day with a major loss and two minor wins, it could be worse.

I was running a little late on the second day as I'd managed to sleep in, and people were already setting up there armies for display.  I didn't think I had time to setup the sisters so I got a coffee and spoke with a couple of people that I knew and placed my votes for best army.  Turns out I probably could have.  For some reason I didn't take any photos of the armies which was a shame as there was some lovely pieces of work there.

My fourth opponent was to be Saul, a friend of Adam's who I'd faced in round two.  He had a cool all biker army with no biker nobs.  Unfortunately for him the dice were against him and I pulled back my shell of rhinos whilst smashing unit after unit with flamers and bolters.  My canoness pulled off a lucky second turn charge that held up Wazdakka and his unit for most of the game and let me control the board and the flow of the battle.  I finished up with a very convincing major win.

For some reason I don't have any photos of my last game, probably because it went downhill so fast.  He had a tooled up ten strong biker nob squad which was fine by me.  But my Exorcists failed to roll higher than a 2 for the first two turns, letting them hit my lines almost untouched.  I tried hard to pull it back but they just crushed my units under weight of attacks.  In the end I conceded the match on turn four as he had already won and completed all of the bonus victory requirements when they called 20 minutes left.  We figured it was better to finish up and get packed up sooner rather than spend another twenty minutes of slowly trying to grind through sisters of battle squads.  He was a good opponent and pleasant to face, and I still enjoyed the match even if I was crushed to a pulp.

I finished dead middle of the pack in the end which wasn't bad considering my list.  I've decided that since I'm getting most of the points for painting now, that instead of pushing on, I'm going to paint up my guard platoon to replace the Storm Troopers and their Chimera.  I noticed my biggest problem was suppression fire when either my Exorcists were dealt with early on or failed to perform by rolling a high number of shots.  The guard platoon will help to counter this which will give me a better edge in my games next time.

Eltnot.

Madgrot 2010

So I played in Madgrot this weekend just gone up in Mackay.  We headed up on Friday afternoon and as we drove up I sat in the front seat and marked army lists for Higher Grounds in Adelaide.  We arrived their safely despite travelling up in Wes' newly arrived V8 Commodore and Wusty's Evo 8, checked into our motel and then went in search of food and alcohol.  A few beverages later and some last hour painting from me and we eventually turned in for the night, I paper, scissored, rocked Wusty for the fold out bed, ominously I lost.

Day 1 of the tournament we arrived nice and early and I setup my two tables of terrain.  I'm glad I brought them as the amount of terrain on the tables was lower than last year, and they gave at least a few people some good games.  Some of the Mackay players said that I must like terrain heavy tables, until I pointed out that they were only 25%, the recommended amount.

Damon put up the first round of matchings and I found myself against Tim, a local who I had played last year.  He'd brought his Space Marines again with a few changes.  You can see my deployment below.  I made one big mistake and bunched my Repentia up slightly to hide them better from his tactical squads behind my rhinos.  I realised my error just as I finished my turn, before he dropped in an Ironclad dreadnought in a drop pod and flamered the entire unit.  Only the priest survived who then ran and hid in a building for the rest of the game so as not to give up a further 125 VP's.  We battered away at each other and ended up in a draw in my favour.

My next game was against Adam Buckley and his Imperial Guard.  Damon had decided to try and steal my Milk the Cows mission but unfortunately in making his changes, also made it unbalanced.  Dawn of War deployment and Adam winning the roll to choose sides meant that he held two of the three objectives for two turns before I could even attempt to contest.  Coincidentally just under the amount of points that he won the game by.  It was still a close game and a lot of fun, especially my Canoness knocking a Valkyrie out of the sky on her first turn after it moved flat out.

Next up I played Stewart from Gladstone.  I deployed second and got lucky by seizing the initiative.  I rolled forward and popped smoke and from there started to destroy his army.  I screwed up again in this game, this time by deep striking my Seraphim near a fresh tactical squad and their rhino that was holding an objective.  Naturally they scatted onto the Rhino and were destroyed, handing away my minor win and pulling me back to a draw.

So I finished my first day with two draws and a minor loss, not great but not all bad either, tomorrow I would play against some of the lower half, and would hopefully pick my game back up.  That night Wusty, Dan and I went out for a feed, margaritas, more margaritas, various rum based concoctions and finally dancing.  It wasn't until the early hours of te morning that we crawled into our beds.

I woke up the next day feeling hungry and thirsty, we hit up Subway for breakfast and the Nightowl for some powerade.  I set my army up on the table and then started going around and taking photos of the other armies on display, it was at this point in time that my batteries ran out, so no more pictures of the actual games.

My next game was against another local who had a mostly foot slogging Eldar force with way too little anti tank to handle my wave of Rhinos.  I rolled forward and destroyed his entire army except for a Farseer on one wound and the last of a guardian squad.  Major win for me.

My last game was against Captain Steve from Townsville with his lovely Nurgle army.  He was a great opponent and we ended up playing musical chairs around a central building as our armies struggled to get to grips with each other.  I had some really bad dice rolls for acts of faith that caused me to give away some easy VP's early on and only managed to pull it back to a draw.

In the end I placed 7th overall out of 32 players which given that the games were mostly kill each other with some bonus points thrown in for objectives, I felt that I did fairly well.  Lastly I picked up a Citadel Battlemat from The Games Room.  I've been trying to hunt one down for ages as GW had stopped making them but it appears they're back on sale again.

Below are some more pictures of the event and armies.

Eltnot.

Bling my ride

 

Well I had a lot of fun at Orktoberfest and got a reasonable amount of painting done on the Sisters before I went down.  I'm continuing to work on them in preparation for Madgrot Mackay next weekend.

I jumped onto Ebay today though and thought I'd share my find in my "recommended for you"section.
Saladin Armoured Car

Yes that's an armoured car for sale there minus the turret.  Awesomeness on six wheels.

The Saladin was a large and heavy armoured car, weighing at about 11.5 tonnes it was a six wheeled drive vehicle which bore many similarities to the WW2 American staghound, or M38, which were used in number by the British in 1945. The Saladin was armed with two machine guns, as well as a very powerful 76mm main gun. This vehicle was of the same 'family' as the FV603 Saracen armoured Personnel Carrier and the Ferret Scout Car. 

Photos of the sisters to come shortly along with a batrep I hope.

Eltnot.

Splashdown 2010

Here's some photos from the Gladstone Splashdown Tournament. Apparently my camera must have been setup for close up work a lot of the shots a blurry but you get the idea. Good times had by all and I ended up with 4th overall.

Eltnot.