Minotaur Space Marines + Sisters of Battle VS Orks!

Two nights ago I played my first game against the new orks and with the new Sisters Of Battle.

It was 1,000pts of Minotaurs and 1,000pts of Sisters vs 2,000pts of Orks.

Here is My Army List:

HQ -

Librarian Level 2 Psyker Force Axe, Meltabombs, Digital Weapons.
Psychic Powers rolled: Psychic Shriek, Fortitude, Shrouding
105pts

Troops -

10 Marines Missile Launcher and flamer
in Rhino
195pts

10 Marines Missile Launcher and flamer
in Rhino
195pts

10 marines Missile Launcher, Plasma Gun, Sarg with Power Sword
185pts

Fast Attack -

Land Speeder Typhoon Missile Launcher, heavy bolter
75pts

Heavy Support -

Predator Autocannon and 2 Heavy Bolter Sponsons
95pts

Thunderfire Cannon
100pts

Fortification -

Aegis Defense Line
50pts


Sisters of Battle -

HQ -

Uriah Jacobus
100pts

Elites -

9 Sisters Repentia
1 Mistress of Repentance with Meltabombs
160pts

Troops -

9 Sisters with Simulacrum Imperialis, Heavy Flamer and Flamer
1 Veteran Sister Superior with Plasma Pistol and Chainsword
in Rhino
210pts

9 Sisters with Simulacrum Imperialis, Heavy Flamer and Flamer
1 Veteran Sister Superior with Plasma Pistol and Chainsword
in Rhino
210pts

Fast Attack -

5 Seraphim one with 2 hand flamers
85pts

4 Dominions 4 Meltaguns
1 Veteran Sister Superior
in Rhino
155pts

Heavy Support -

4 Retributers 2 Heavy Bolters
1 Sister Superior
80pts


The Ork's list was roughly:

HQ -

Weird Boy

Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun

Warboss Zazzdakka

Big Mek with Kustom Force Field

Elites -

12 Burna Boys
in Trukk

Troops -

20 Grots

30 Boyz eavy armour

30 Boyz eavy armour

30 Boyz eavy armour

Heavy Support -

6 Killa Kanz



We decided to roll off on the Eternal War Mission Chart instead of doing the Maelstrom Missions because we don't have the cards yet.

We rolled The Scouring mission and Dawn Of War Deployment.

Here is a shot of our Deployment:

The Orks rolled up a really good Warlord Trait from their codex, it allowed them to infiltrate 3 units on foot.  So the 3 huge ork Mobs started closer to our lines than normal.

We won the roll off and decided to deploy and go first.

We basically did some shooting and killed a few things here and there, nothing amazing.  We kept the Seraphim in reserve to deepstrike and the Dominions are in reserve to outflank.
The Orks also kept their Burnas in Reserve.

Here is the Ork Turn One:

The Orks move forward and shoot a few things and don't do too much damage.  They do kill my Land Speeder right away for First Blood.

Turn two our reserves arrive.

The Dominions come in from out left side and go straight for the Big Mek with the Shokk Attack Gun.
4 Meltaguns ignoring cover because of their Act Of Faith, blows him away.

He was in the ruins.

The Thunderfire Cannon Opens fire and combines with the shooting of the Marine Squad, the Psychic Shriek Psychic Power from the Librarian and some shooting from the SIster's Rhino, the large Ork Squad gets shot up, losing their Nob and falls back.

On the other side the Repentia try to make it out of their building but stumble a bit and end up running back inside and a Sister's Rhino moves forward slightly.

On the other flank, the Seraphim deepstrike in and flame broil the ork squad with hand flamers, killing almost a third of the squad.

The Orks respond in their turn 2 by shooting up the Seraphim and wiping them out.

The Ork Burna Boyz on their Trukk come out from Reserve and fry the Dominions and almost take out the Dominion's Rhino as wel, taking it down to one Hull Point.

Turn 3 begins with more aggressive moves by the Imperials, here is an overall view:

The Thunderfire cannon combined with a Plasma Gun takes out a Killa Can.

The Sisters Squad in the Central Rhino move forward and Disembark and the Repentia move out of the ruined building.

The Sisters Squad flames the Orks with their 2 flamers and then rapid fires their bolters into the massive squad.  Almost half of them a killed in the fusilade but the Repentia are subsequently out of charge range because of that.

The bottom of turn 3 sees the Orks continue to advance.  The Squad that just got shot moves close and gets ready to charge into the sisters who just flamed their mates.

The Repentia squad then gets torn to bits by the shooting of the large Shoota Squad on the right flank which contains the Weird Boy.

On the Imperial's Left Flank the Orks advance with the Kill Kans leading the way.  The Large Grot squad stays back and the Ork squad who lost their Nob early on rallies and begins their forward march again.

The Burna Boys on the Trukk kick it into high gear and barrel towards the enemies.

The Orks charge into the central Sisters squad.  The sisters get counter-attack because of Uriah Jacobus who is right behind them.  They also test for their Act Of Faith which is successful and they are granted preferred enemy for the close combat phase.

Even though the Ork squad is depleted, their Eavy Armour helps them survive and subsequently defeat the Sisters Of Battle Squad in Close Combat leaving nothing behind.

It was getting late at this point and even though we only played three turns we learned a lot and had a good game, we decided to call it at this point.

Here is a final shot of the battle.

I feel that had the game went on, we had a very good shot of winning the game even though the orks were ahead by having first blood and they also killed 3 fast attack units.  We were poised to push them back and did have answers to every squad they had except maybe the Killa Cans.

The Ork player has been playing Orks for a very long time and knows his army well.  He played a good game and was always pressing us, which is the right way to lay Orks IMHO.

We did find out something very strange, though.

The first shot of the game was from my Thunderfire Cannon.

It is now a Barrage weapon.  Barrage in the past has always caused Pinning.  We decided to look it up just because it was a new edition and we might as well try to do things right.

Nowhere in the rule book does it state that Barrage causes Pinning anymore.

If anyone can find it let me know.

Anyways, Until Next Time.....

Commission Work

Over the past two weeks I did some commission work for one of my friends.

He wanted me to paint up 9 of the new Bullgryns and Gunnery Sargent Harker.

In the background of this photo you will see two of the slightly old metal Ogryns and one really old metal Ogryn.

These old models had the color scheme that he wanted me to paint them to.

Here is a group shot:

Next, here are some close ups of individual models:

My amazing girl friend also helped and I couldn't have got thse guys done in less than two weeks without her.
This is Harker, she painted almost all of him:

And his back:

I still have some 7th edition articles and hopefully some bat reps yet to do soon.

Until Next Time....

7th Edition Missions: Maelstrom of War + Tactical Objectives

The tactical possibilities of objectives changing every turn is awesome in my opinion.

Tactical Objectives and the Maelstrom of War missions promises a fluid exciting game with objectives changing every turn and the each type of mission changes how the objectives change each turn.

There unfortunately are some issues with Tactical Objectives and the missions themselves.

I have some ideas for fixes and they are presented below.



1 - Use the cards that GW sells or create your own.

2 - After Deployment make sure you have also seen your opponents list.  Then remove 6 cards from the 36 Tactical Objective cards to build your deck.  Then shuffle them.

3 - (optional) Remove Mysterious Objectives from the missions.

4 - Play only the following three missions with the changes listed above: Cleanse and Control, Spoils of War, Cloak and Shadows.


Explanation:

By doing step one above you are making the generation step of the Tactical Objectives smoother.  It makes sense why they made cards.  It is not just a money grab as some have suggested.  By making cards they offer you an easier and quicker way to play with Tactical Objectives. You obviously don't need them to play the game because the rules for them are all included in the main rulebook.  By using the cards it is just easier.

By picking only 30 of the 36 Tactical Objectives it allows each player to build their own deck of objectives.  This is important because the Tactical Objectives GW has come up with are not always applicable to your opponent's army.  Some of them gain you points for shooting down a flyer but if your opponent doesn't have a flyer in his/her army, then you are just screwed out of points.

By giving the players the power to choose what their objectives will be during the game, it adds a new element to the game which GW either didn't anticipate (which I find odd) or they intend to include this in a future supplement along with new Tactical Objectives or they wanted us the player base to do this sort of thing ourselves.

I included removing mysterious objectives from the missions because a lot of times in 6th Ed people would forget to do them or forget what they were and it also slow down the game.  Also the mysterious objectives in 7th are basically the same so we aren't really missing out on anything new here.

Of the 6 Maelstrom of War Missions, I feel the three I listed above are the most balanced.  The first one, Cleanse and Control is the basic mission.  The Second one is cool because each player can use either player's Tactical Objectives.  In the Third mission each player keeps his/her objectives secret.

All three of these missions also use a standard card drawing/discarding mechanic which I like.  All three start each player with 3 cards.  Each turn you must have 3 cards in hand and once an objective is accomplished you discard the card.  Each turn you may also discard one card you didn't use.  The next turn you draw up to three cards.


If you follow the above steps, you should have fun, challenging, engaging games.


These missions and the changes to them are something I think could be used in a tournament format or even just as a framework to allow pick up games at a game store or with friends.  It is a solid new way of playing 40k and I hope other people agree.

Until Next Time......

7th Edition Psychic Powers Part 1: Addressing Summoning

Well if this isn't a topic that makes people upset I don't know what is.

The interwebz is exploding with people claiming the sky is falling over Psychic Powers an the new Psychic Phase.  Its a bunch of Baloney.

Take a look at this Bat Rep:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/05/24/warhammer-40k-7th-ed-video-bat-rep-daemons-vs-imperials/

In this bat rep the Daemon Player summons a ton of extra units.  Yes he will out number his foes because he is using the Malefic Daemonology Psychic Discipline to summon more units.

NOTE: The Daemon Player did not win, he tied.

This is a possible thing in 7th Edition, summoning a ton of stuff.
The following list is how he did it.

Here is his list:

Note he has 6 Mastery Level 3 Psykers and one Mastery Level 4 Psyker and I beleive the Horrors are also Psykers.  That makes his Warp Charge points 28 + d6 each turn.

There are 4 Psychic Powers in Malefic Daemonology that summon Daemons: Summoning (the Primaris Power Warp Charge 3), Sacrifice (Warp Charge 1 but you take a wound when you cast it and recieve 1 Herald), Incursion (Warp Charge 3), and Possession (Warp Charge 3 and you lose the Psyker).

Note that 3 of the 4 powers are Warp Charge 3.

Unless you are playing the list above, your chances of successfully casting alot of summoned units each turn is not very high.

Here is another Bat Rep where the Chaos Player summoned units:
http://eyeofisha.blogspot.com/2014/06/defeat.html

There were a few issues with this one, the Chaos player used Chaos Sorcerors which should have rolled Perils for every double, but didn't.  Only Daemons or Psykers with the Daemon rule can cast Malefic Daemonology Psychic Powers and not take a Perils of the Warp on a roll of a double.

Also if you read the above Bat Rep, the Eldar player was ahead in points in every turn until turn 7, where he lost.


Here is the problem with going Psychic Summoning Heavy.
If you try to summon unit after unit, you will either die from Perils if you aren't a Daemon or you will only summon a few units through the course of the game because of how difficult it is to get off a Level 3 Power now or you will have to use a list like the above and continue to cast new units instead of being aggressive because all you can do is summon units and you are still not guaranteed to get them without s few heads exploding along the way!

Here is a podcast I highly reccommend you listen to where they discuss in depth the Psychic Phase:
Episode 199.5 v2: 7th Edition Breakdown Part 1
http://www.tangtwo.com/11thcompany/episodes.cfm

Psychic Summoning is not all that.

Remember you need to win the mission not just summon Daemons.

Until Next Time.....

7th Edition is upon us!

Well, I haven't purchased the new book yet and it will probably be another week before I do, but I have read a lot about the changes from 6 to 7 and here I want to discuss some interesting (to me at least) things.

Terrain-Specific rules
What I mean by this is apparently each piece of terrain that GW makes now has a corresponding set of rules to go with it as opposed to something more general.

I think this is also fine going forward so long as they still include some general rules for non-GW terrain as well as include rules for their new kits in the box with the model kit.

New Psychic Rules
The introduction of a phase is of course a big deal as I have said in a previous post.  This new phase and how Psykers and their powers work in 7th is beneficial to the game IMHO.

I at first didn't think this would be good, they were just copying and pasting straight out of fantasy battle and being lazy for some reason.

The more I have read and thought about it though the better it seems.

Having a Phase means all of the casting and dispelling happens at the same time during the turn.  And all of the rules should hopefully be on the same page in the rulebook.  Both of these things should speed up the game.  Unless you knew the rules by heart in 6th, it would take a while to page through the rulebook and FAQs to find out if say a witchfire could be cast out of a transport's fire ports or if a blessing would effect a unit inside the vehicle.
The blessings happened at the "start of the Psyker's movement phase" and the witchfire was in the shooting phase.  Splitting this up between phases meant that you would have to think more about positioning and go through the rulebook to find out if you could move and use the witchfire or not and whether it could be shot out of a hatch.
Also the phrase "start of the Psyker's movement phase" could be interpreted as start of the player's movement phase so before anything else happens or at that specific model's phase implying each unit or model has its own set of movement, shooting and assaulting phases.  This means that you could move a unit and then cast the blessing from the Psyker.

Now with one phase this is solved because everything happens in this phase, not spread throughout the turn.

The rules surrounding Casting and Perils of the Warp make it more likely that while the Psychic Power that you just need to cast will happen but it also makes it more likely that you and perhaps those around will die.

The dice pool is used to take as many dice as you want and roll them to get 4 pluses.  The more powerful a spell the more 4 pluses need to be rolled.  You take the amount of dice out of your pool that you want to try and take the test and roll them trying to get the amount of 4 pluses required.  This allows you to take as many dice as yyou want to ensure the spell works.  The problem is then rolling double 6 or double 1s increases dramatically.  So the possibility of dying is greatly increased.

I am encouraged by the new Psychic phase in addition to the following:

Objective Secured
Everything can hold objectives now.  EVERYTHING!  That means my 10 man assault terminator squad can, as can Scout Sentinels or Rhinos.
The best part about 7th however may be the Objective Secured rule.  It means that only a  unit (which if it has a dedicated transport also gets this rule) that has this rule can contest an objective held by another unit with this rule. Troops are the only units with this rule built-in.
Now I can hold the objective with my terminators, but if you grots show up and sit within contesting range of that objective they count as holding it NOT the terminators.

Wow, this rule along with the previous Psychic changes and this next rule:

New Vehicle Damage Chart and its Effect on Passengers
1-3 means almost nothing.  4 is again no big deal.  5 is weapon destroyed; again so what. 6 is Immobilized (possibly painful but again its not destroyed.) Only on a 7 is the vehicle exploded.

Also when an effect happens to the vehicle if the squad inside passes a LD check they are fine.
No no more having the passengers automatically do nothing the next turn because their tank got shot.

These two changes make vehicles much stronger and a fully mounted army is very viable and tougher than it was in 6th.



Combine the last three rules changes listed above and MSU is back and can compete against Deathstars or other super powerful 6th ed armies.

I am quite happy about this since my Minotaurs are essentially MSU.

Also my Iron Warriors may make a strong comback because of vehicles.

I am quite excited to get my hands on the new book!

Until Next Time.....

7th Edition Rules discussion continued and a Kickstarter

First of all, I usually don't do this sort of thing on my blog, BUT Ramshackle Games has started a kickstarter for some tanks:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/179741323/battle-dog-and-pug

I really like Ramshackle games and is one of the only 3rd party manufacturers that I have bought figs from to use in 40k and Book of The Arbitrator (modified Necromunda rules).

Here are three examples of their vehicles that I have painted up:

I really like the tanks that they have come up with for this Kickstarter and I wish them luck!

Now onto more 7th Ed discussion.

Allies
Supposedly all armies can ally with themselves as battle brothers.
I see this as fine as long as the 2000point limit is when you can take 2 force orgs.  Its not that big of a deal and I thought was kind of implied (or at least should have been) in 6th anyway.

Battle Brother ICs can join units from their ally and be embarked in a transport of that ally's army.
This should have existed before as well.  It made no sense for a terminator-armoured Inquisitor to be allowed to be joined to a squad of terminators but then not be allowed to jump in their Landraider.

The last rumor is Battle Brothers are Eldar/Dark Eldar; All Imperial Armies; All Chaos Armies.
The other levels of ally have not been released thus far as far as I know.

Jink Saves
A unit must declare that it is taking a 'jink' save.  If it declares that it is doing so then the next turn that unit can only snap fire.
I really like this.  It makes units like Wave Serpents and Bikers now less uber awesome.  They can still get the great protection a jink save provides but it now comes at a cost of reduced effectiveness in shooting the next turn.  Its a nice cost-benefit thing, it adds a level of complexity.

Skyfire
A gun with snap fire can only shoot at flyers with its full BS even if it has Interceptor.
This potentially makes Missile Launchers with Flakk missiles much less useful unless the bearer can shoot frag and krak at ground targets and use its normal BS, we shall see.

Things like the Icarus Lascannon or Quad-Gun on the Aegis Defence Line are also negatively impacted.  Before if someone didn't have a flier these guns were still useful, now if they don't have a flyer you might as well never even shoot the damned things.

Battle-Forged Troops have Scoring Priority
Troop units from Battle-Forged armies (armies made using the traditional Force Org chart) can control objectives even if other units are in contesting range (unless those other units are also Battle-Forged troops).

This is big for playing against Unbound Armies. In 7th Ed everything Scores except Zooming Flyers.  Because of this Unbound Armies can actually possibly win games without eliminating the entirety of their enemy's army.

One reason you would play with a Battle-Forged army (which uses force org) compared to an Unbound Army (which is anything can be put in the army) is that the if troops from the Battle-forged army control an objective the Unbound army can't simply move and contest the objective, in fact they can never contest an objective that has a Battle-forged troops unit on it.

I think this is great and fluffy and can help encourage using the force org which we all know and love.


Well this is all I got for now.  I am getting really excited to pick up the new 7th ed rules.

Until Next Time...

7th Edition: What we know and what I think about it.

7th Edition is right around the corner.

Unless you have been living under a rock and have not been paying attention to anything 40k for the last few weeks you will know that 7th Edition is apparently being released or will be available for pre-order on May 24th.

I at first was rather annoyed by the news.  I still feel that I have not mastered 6th yet.  I know most of my friends haven't mastered it yet.  A lot of my friends have barely even played it.

I have also been running tournaments regularly.  I feel I have a good grasp of the 6th Edition rules and now with 7th I have to learn new things.  I am putting an indefinite hold on the tournaments until I have a feeling for how the rules play and where the community is going in terms of tournaments.

My tournaments have been Bay Area Open style but with no Forgeworld and played at 1850 points. Depending on the new missions in the new rules I may or may not continue to follow the Bay Area Open format.  They may also change their format with 7th edition, who knows.

On to what we know about 7th edition:

There will be a Psychic Phase.
This is pretty big news.  This is a whole new PHASE to go along with the Move Shoot and Assault PHASES.
There hasn't been a Psychic Phase since 2nd edition in the 1990s.

This could be good or bad.  I am leaning towards good.  While adding a Phase is a big deal and it implies that it will have the same significance as the other three phases, I believe it will impact the game less than the current way Psykers and their spells influence the current game.

I have not played Fantasy Battle since 4th edition of Fantasy in the 1990s, so I don't know how the current Magic phase works in the current Fantasy battle game, but if spells are cast by using a pool of dice and anyone can dispell them by using their own dice and bad things can possibly happen.

It seems to me that having a phase may be better and it may be harder to cast psychic powers.  It may run counter to what people think.  Psychic powers even though they will have their own phase now, may not be as powerful as they are in 6th currently.

New Missions along with New Objective Cards
I am excited for this.  I can't believe my group of friends never thought about something like this before.  I don't know if this is how it will work or not but if you have a stack of cards, each one has an objective on it and you flip it over and try to accomplish it, once you do you then draw a new new card.

This is an awesome idea.  I don't know how the cards will be dealt out, if it is random or if each player selects the cards before the game or if they share or have separate decks but it sounds cool.

Grounding Checks
Flying Monstrous Creatures (FMCs) now only take one grounding check per turn.  This is a HUGE boon for FMCs.  Before you could basically kill them with lasguns, now they will probably just blow them off and not care.

FMCs, in particular Tyranids, just got a lot better and scarier.

Difficult Terrain
I heard that it is now -2 inches to movement.  If this is correct then it makes the movement part of the game less random, which is great.  It will help all units: on foot or in vehicles, unless vehicles are treated differently.

Sweeping Advance.
If the rumors are true and you are able to consolidate (or Sweep) into another unit after you wipe out one unit in CC, even if the new unit gets to over watch you, it will be huge for assault armies or just units.

Basically having a unit of assault marines in a land raider or the equivalent will be quite useful again as once they get into combat they will not be shot at as much after they initially charge.


Well these are some of my thoughts for now.

In just a few days we will have the new edition in ours hands and I can see for myself if these things are true.

Until Next Time....