Friday 12 October 2018

A tale of knights

Sir" the words were spat at him like an insult. Of course that's what he should have expected. He tried to change his stars and had nearly succeeded. The only thing his countrymen hated more then the nobles were people that dragged themselves out of the mud in which they toiled. "Enjoy your stay, Sir. Sorry if the accommodation isn't up to your usual standard!" The guard laughed as he shoved William into the cell. "Don't worry pretty boy we'll find you someone to keep you warm tonight." The guards foetid breath lingering in the cell as the door was slammed shut.
William sat upright. If he was to meet his end then he would met it head held high. Seconds turned into minutes turned into hours. The frigid night air setting his teeth chattering. He pulled his knees up into his chest and looked back at how he had got to this point. A smile crept across his face as he realised that he would make the same choices even knowing where the road leads. 

Friday 28 September 2018

Tale of four gamers

So for my tale of four gamers I have decided to do knights. I've have a couple bouncing around in my pile of shame for a while. As a couple of knights is essentially an army of one model a month it seemed like a good choice. So my first months painting (due today) is one knight crusader with rapid fire battle cannon, gatling cannon and missile pod. 

Month 1 completed!
Still awaiting transfers but those can wait until a group effort at the end. 

Monday 2 January 2017

CATCH 2 A Clash of Orks

++Proceed++
Was all the message said. Was all it needed to say. In that one word Veddack had been granted the full authority to pursue a resolution of this unwarranted IIC intrusion using whatever means he deemed fit. 
Alas due to the vagaries of long range astropathic communication, the IIC had already landed and begun broadcasting by the time the message arrived. This meant that the most expedient option of blowing their ship apart upon arrival, was no longer viable. 
Veddack checked his internal Chronometer, 23:52.48 EST. The magos leaned back allowing himself to become fully immersed in the noospheric data realm.  Information followed through and around him, allowing him to perform actions at a rate that would astonish even the astartes.  he checked his internal systems correcting a 0.2° phase variance in mechcandrite drives, satisfied that everything was running at peak efficiency he quickly trawled through the stations servitor inventories until he found a suitably equipped model and uploaded a new set of instructions. Moving on he checked the stations camouflage systems. The equipment the IIC had brought with them would have struggled to find the facility had they been firing the defence lasers into space, fortunately the IIC had never been blessed with a particularly large budget. Even though, one could never be too careful. Systems seemed normal though the frequency of one of the optical emitters was fluctuating from previous readings. He despatched a repair log to the priest responsible for their maintenance. Once the proper prayers and rituals had been performed he was sure the emitters machine spirit would be appeased. His next action was to wake the skitarii. As part of the force located in the facility they were intended to act as the first quick response in the event of an attack. Although today they would serve a different purpose. A squad of vanguard, infiltrators and a dunecrawler were available for immediate deployment. Veddack himself would lead them it would prove an opportune time to test his latest combat wetware in action. 
Utilising his facilities powerful communications array, he launched an attack on the IIC surveillance equipment. Breaking though their aegis protocols was childs play. Hiding his intrusion as background noise he expertly worked through the data captured on the implanted feral orks. If he could end them the IIC would have no reason the remain in-system. Subject B was the first target. Having set himself apart from his ork brethren he would prove an easy target. Veddack hacked into the monitors observing the young ork and buried a command to loop playback at his signal. Carefully extracting himself from the system making sure to cover his tracks, one link drew his attention. A seemingly insignificant data pad connection. A passive probe revealed that this connection was protected by some of the strongest aegis protocols Veddack had seen. 
Curbing his curiosity, Veddack returned to his physical shell. The restrictive nature of physical concerns felt taxing after the noospheric connection. Checking his internal Chronometer 4 seconds had passed. 12% longer than expected but within his normal performance metrics. "let us begin"
3 miles away in the facility. Along corridors that hadn't been used for decades. A servitor that had been scouring the walkway flashed with an updated command set. It's connection light blinking rapidly with new directives being written. Stopping it's previous task the servitor set off into the depths of the facility. 

Saturday 31 December 2016

CATCH a beginning

++++++++ Incoming transmission ++++++++
+Received via  astropathic relay 258GB45A+
++ Vermillion Level clearance required +++
.   .   .   .
++Thank you Arch magos++
++originator: Magos Veddack++
++imperial time stamp: M41.9801-451++
++Location: Research Facility FS-21++
++Message begins++
Arch Magos. 
Surveillance satellites detected an imperial ship entering the system at the Mandeville point. Cross references with imperial databases estimate a 98.47% chance that the ship is the IIC cruiser currently assigned to Achtenburg. IIC broadcasts reveal the Biologis Scholar is intending to study feral ork society. The facility was located on this planet partly because of the lack of strategic value and feral ork infestation making the planet unattractive to imperial or xenos  interests. Probability of discovery has increased by 34.2% in light of the IIC presence. A 35.1% probability exceeds safe margins. 
Recommend that we take appropriate action to dissuade the IIC.
++Message ends++

++Reply++
Proceed.
++dispatched++



Thursday 2 June 2016

London GT 2016

I recently attended the inaugural London grand tournament, with a total of 86 attendees this was quite a large tournament, and the largest that I have attended. I took my Tau as per my previous post. I’ll just post a quick run through of my games rather than a detailed account of the action.

Game 1, vs chaos sorcerer cabal and zombie horde. With Typhus and cypher.

So this game I was playing against ~120 plague zombies with the sorcerer cabal having five level 3 sorcerers. With their ability to take control of one of my models for shooting. With the obvious target of the Stormsurge of this power, I was hesitant to deploy too much of my army. My opponent deployed two large zombie blobs one with two sorcerers and the other with typhus and a sorcerer. He had a large squad of chaos spawn deployed behind typhus's blob. Cypher and one sorcerer were outflanking with one of the zombie hordes.

I deployed my storm surge and ghostkeels far apart to prevent the sorcerer cabal taking too much of a toll in the first turn. Keeping the rest of my army in reserve.
He marched his hordes forward in the first turn, successfully using the storm surge to kill a drone from the ghostkeel unit. But failing to cast invisibility on himself. He then made what I thought was a mistake by gating next to my storm surge. In my turn I used to wall of mirrors to kill a couple of the chaos spawn before charging into his gated unit with the storm surge and stomping all over them until there was only a single zombie left. In the following turns in managed to six out Typhus with a D hit that he failed to look out sir. When his reserves arrived I intercepted them with a lot of my army to reduce their numbers and then charge in with a riptide to tie them up. The tide survived on a single wound and he hit and run out of combat. In his final turn his remaining models killed the riptide and then I retaliated by killing the rest of his unit. Wiping him out for a full win.

Game two.
In this round we were playing end game objectives and a the maelstrom mission where you generate objectives based on the number of objectives you control. I was playing battle company...

My opponent had the battle company with basic upgrades, an entire parking lot of razorbacks and the vindicator formation along with some drop podding dreadnoughts for flavour.
My opponent won first turn, which gave me a chance at the end game objectives. I knew that I wouldn't win the maelstrom for the secondary's against that many obsec units, but fancied my chances at the end game. My opponent started by moving up into the mid table grabbing as many objectives as possible. I took the fight to the enemy with the ghostkeels excelling in killing space marine vehicles. Three tanks a turn fell to these elite vehicle hunters. The Stormsurge unfortunately spent a lot of the game tied up with a single marine in combat (I rolled double 1 to wound three turns in a row).

The rest of my army was slowly chewing its way through the marines, being careful to stay in a mutually supportive position. My opponent didn’t have a huge amount of weapons that posed a significant threat to me once the vindicators were taken care of.
We had to rush through the last turns to try and get to the end of the game, but I ended up holding four objectives to the space marines 1. However the maelstrom went completely to the marines. Had we had time for another turn, I would have killed the two remaining marines and the final drop pod to table my opponent. As it was the game ended on a narrow victory for myself.

Game 3
With two wins under my belt I was doing a lot better than I expected. But the narrow win against the battle company meant I dropped down through the rankings. The next mission was kill points. (battle company would have been a great opponent in this one).
In this round I was facing Grey Knights using the new angels of death powers. With an allied skyhammer annihilation force running lots of grav cannons. The grey knight portion of the army composed of two nemesis dreadknights and two large terminator squads with attached librarians.
I got the infiltrate warlord trait and infiltrated my Stormsurge and stealth cadre to get some shots on his dreadknights. My commander infiltrated into a building to get in range with the markerlights so I could D shot his dreadknights.
The game started well for me with both of his dreadknights being torn apart by destroyer missiles and D shots from the pulse blastcannon. I intercepted his skyhammer devestators taking all the grav cannons from one squad while the other squad remained untouched. One of the assault squads mishaped on the deepstrike going into ongoing reserves.
His return fire put the grav cannons into one of the riptides who survived on one wound thanks to his nova charged shields. The assault squad charged into my commander and drones keeping them tied up in combat for most of the game, with the commander eventually emerging victorious.
In later turns the game boiled down to a combat between his remaining terminators and the Stormsurge, riptide and ghostkeels. By the time the combat had ended my Stormsurge, two ghost keels and a single riptide were victorious. Leaving my opponent with a drop pod and he conceded.
So at the end of game three I was 3-0 up on wins, so even if I lost my next two I would have still achieved the 3-2 I set out to at the start of the tournament.
However this also meant that I would be facing the top tier tables in the next round...

Thursday 26 May 2016

London 40K GT 2016

As some of you may know, there is a tournament coming up in London this weekend. As my interest in 40K has been rekindled recently, I have decided to go along and try my hand. I don't expect to do too well as my experience has been somewhat limited in regards to gaming. However I thought I would post a copy of the list I am taking. My force will be as follows:

Primary Detachment Faction: Tau
Tau Hunter Contingent [1217]
HQ1: Commander (), Iridium armour (), Neuroweb System Jammer (), Missile Pod (), Drone Controller (), Stimulant Injector (), Target Lock () 2x Marker Drones () [WARLORD]            []
Elite1: Riptide Battlesuit (), Smart Missile System (0), Ion accelerator (), Early Warning Override ()             [190]
Elite2: Riptide Battlesuit (), Smart Missile System (0), Ion accelerator (), Early Warning Override ()             [190]
Troop1: Strike Team, 5x Firewarriors (), DS8 Smart Missile Turret (10) []
Troop2: Strike Team, 5x Firewarriors (), DS8 Smart Missile Turret () []
Troop3: Strike Team, 5x Firewarriors (), DS8 Smart Missile Turret () []
Fast Attack1: Drone Squadron, 5x marker Drones
Heavy Support: Stormsurge (), Shield Generator (50), Pulse blastcannon (), Twin linked Airbursting Frag Projector (), Advanced targeting System (), Early Warning Override ()            [423]

Auxiliary Formation: Optimised Stealth Cadre [633]
Elite3: Ghost Keel s battlesuits-Bonding Knife (3)
GhostKeel (130), Cyclic Ion Raker (), Twin Linked Fusion Blaster ()
GhostKeel (130), Cyclic Ion Raker (), Twin Linked Fusion Blaster (), Target Lock ()
GhostKeel (130), Cyclic Ion Raker (), Twin Linked Fusion Blaster (), Target Lock (), Velocity Tracker            
Elite4: Stealthsuits x 3
Elite5: Stealthsuits x 3

Total [1850]

The tournament is limited to two sources, decurion style detachments use up both slots. I have decided to go down the hunter contingent route as this will hopefully allow me to maximise the use of my limited markerlights. I was really impressed with the damage output from the optimised stealth cadre in my last tournament so decided to re use them at this event. The rest of the army is pretty self explanatory. The drone commander will go with the marker drones to hopefully allow me to hit something with the D missiles pretty hard in the first turn or two of the game. Riptides are awesome, although the limit to two sources prevents the addition of a riptide wing. That, and I only have two riptides. :). The firewarriors in the hunter cadre are there to secure objectives and also useful for buffing the ballistic skill of another unit through combined fire. I'm also hoping that their sms turrets will help against warp spiders.
The storm surge is there as a D platform to hopefully take out other superheavies in a flurry of D missiles. The EWO will prove handy for intercepting drop pods. But I'm not convinced by the use of a singular storm surge. I think they excel in pairs but one is outclasses by other super heavies by a large margin. On thee other hand, it did perform pretty well on its own in a 1500 point tournament.
Anyway, that's all for my list. Hopefully it wont go too badly.

Wednesday 25 May 2016

Ghostkeel WIP

Just wanted to post a quick work in progress shot of the latest addition to my Tau army. The rust effect looks a little over the top in the photo. But the flash from the camera shows it up far more than in actually looks in daylight.
I recently got to try the optimised stealth cadre in a tournament. I was hugely impressed with their performance. They took huge chunks out of a war convocation, survived an eldar D fest, and took an impressive toll against another Tau army. I will definitely be using these guys again soon.