[40K] Rescued pictures

So I scheduled this last night after I spent some time figuring out why my pictures wouldn't upload from my camera (let's call it operator error and leave it at that, shall we?) and thought you'd enjoy a look at some of the fun things I saw.

First off, the conversion bug has hit a couple of the guys at 40K night HARD. There's an incredible Chaos/Dreadknight conversion, and now this guy- a Defiler/Dreadknight kitbash.

I love the arms on this guy!

Next up, we have my Terminator squad- yeah, the one that ran off the board. It was such a rare occurrence, I just had to take a picture. This particular one is from earlier in the evening, before they chickened out.

Last but NOT least, Tom's Eldar flying beauties.

I just love his use of color and "light". I'm also very fond of his thick black lines between sections. It's a real trick to get even lines without any bleedover, and his models always look nice and clean.

Thanks for stopping in!

[40K] Eldar/IG vs BT/GK

This was the last week of league, with my partner and I scheduled to face the Eldar/Star Wars IG army.

My good friend Tom came with his Eldar, but his partner of the "Ballerina Darth Vader" had to work. Tom got partnered with a different IG player, who brought TONS of mech. My partner brought Justicar Tharn, some Terminators to back him up, a Dreadnaught, a Rhino with some guys in it, and a small squad of elite guys.  I went with a "silly" list suggested by a friend, full of nothing but Terminators and a small CCW Squad of Initiates.

I got stuck at the counter for a bit with customers, so deciding first turn (them), deployment (standard), mission (seize ground)  and even setup was pretty much all done when I finally arrived. I got my doodz out of the bag and promptly rolled to seize. It worked!

On our first turn, we blow up a Vendetta and an artillery piece, which was pretty important to prevent template death. (That was pretty fun!)  Our opponents shot at us with a metric crapton of guns. That was pretty fun, too. Watching all those dice hit the table is always a good time. It does stink when your guys get blown up, though.

Turn two, I moved my Initiates across the board from cover towards another area of cover and shot some more. I refused some shooting by those Xenos and Heretical scum with my CMLS (yay), and got blown up by template weapons (boo).

Turn three was the GK show, with all kinds of shooting and IG death-dealing going on over the opponent's corner. A Demo squad got eaten up some, and then they shot at us.My contribution was support, along with deep striking the ThunderHammer/Storm Shield/Lightning Claws Terminators in close to their objective.

Turn four, my little CCW squad was headed towards the objective (a two-pronged assault on the area, wow!) when they got SHOT UP. Of course, this made my guys run the other way (towards the enemy), and put them pretty close to hand-to-hand range. They wound up taking on WarWalkers and having a little snack, but the big news was that my squad of Terminators at the back of the board (sporting CMLs) was shot up and they FAILED THEIR LEADERSHIP CHECK. (They have a 10! It's pretty hard to do on 2D6!) Then, I rolled 11" for fall back, and they ran right off the board. UGH. This was of course, good news for the other guys.

Turn five was pretty grim looking over all: We were down to the GK Terminators holding our objective and a few of my Assault Termies.Tom had a ton of Eldar troop doodz and was shooting the ever-loving bejezzus outta me with them. He shot them off the objective, which made me kinda sad, but my partner saved the day by staying put with his guys on ours, and when Tom rolled to end the game, we were up by 1 objective.

What I learned: Maybe I should be playing GK. Those guys kick serious butt. I pretty laughingly said that my job all league was to die so my partner didn't. But it was true. His guys were there to kick rear, take names and chew some bubble gum- and they were all outta bubble gum.

What I can improve on: I can really work on being a better distraction (heh). Maybe paint my guys pink or something (serious joke.)


About my opponents: Tom is a class act, a ton of fun, and has the loveliest models I have ever laid eyes on in person. His partner was very effective with his army but not so much fun.

I was all set to show you Tom's magnificently pretty Eldar, but my camera is acting up and I can't upload pictures. BUMMER.

The game moved very quickly, which was pretty interesting to me. I've been really catching on the rules and doing better, but I caught a couple mistakes and a few moments where I didn't know what was going on.

[40K] IG/Eldar vs GK/BT (with a question)

My camera is MIA! No pictures! Suckage.

My partner and I played against our local Bat-rep extraordinaire dude and his partner, the Jet-Bike Eldar of DOOM. (Seriously) The IG guy who writes glorious reports has decided to take a break from writing (apparently it took him scads of work) and so we were going to be left with my and my notoriously less-than-stellar reporting abilities. AND, of course, my camera goes missing. GAH.

So we faced an army composed of something like:

Seer Council on Jetbikes
Autarch on Jetbike
3 Squads of Jetbike Guardians w/ 2 Shuriken Cannon/squad
2 of the Hellhound variants with the Multi Meltas, forget the name…
3 Leman Russ Demolishers with LC and Plasma Sponsons

and we brought something like:

EC, AAC
Terminator Squad w/ 2 CML and Tank Hunter
Large squad of CCW/Pistol Marines
2 Line Squads, 1 ML, 1 Las Cannon
Vindicator
Librarian
10 man Terminator squad w/ 2 Psycannon, Banner
DN w/ 2 TLAC and Psybolt ammo
Dreadknight w/ Teleporter and Heavy Inferno

We got Spearhead with Annihilation - and they got first turn.

Knowing this was KP was sort of a kick in the teeth for me.I brought extra feet because so many of our battles have been close due to not enough troops, and now I have a LOT for them to shoot at. Can't win 'em all, right?

I'm skipping ahead to my usual wrap up chatter here, for reasons explained shortly.

What I learned:  Having dedicated fire squads actually can and does work. Also, hiding Termies is MUCH better than leaving them in the open.

What I need to work on: I'm addressing that later on in this post.

About my opponents: One of them has smoked me right off the board before. The other has consistently been at the top of the league for months. I was not super confident, especially when they had so much mech and I had a ton load of dudes. However, they are fun players and I enjoyed seeing certain parts of the game in action,


My partner did a pretty effective write up here . Rather than repeat his efforts, I'm going to cover an issue that came up in the game a lot.

I do not understand how damaging vehicles works. Every time I think I have a handle on it, I am wrong. Something about the strength and armor and facing just confuses the crap outta me. Help a girl out, will ya? 

[40K] Starting Over

So I am not the only person at our FLGS trying to learn either a new army or 5th Edition rules.

My buddy FunDave has been an Eldar player for as long as I've known him. He loves his space cows (inside joke) and I was really surprised to hear him not only TALKING about another army, but building a list for one. Even stranger (to me) was that it was a Marine army. FunDave's been pretty vehement that he doesn't "DO" Marines, and to see him pushing dudes with backpacks around seems very odd to me.

However, he wanted to try something different, and so he broke out Space Wolves the other night. He borrowed the guys to make up his list from another regular, and tried his hand at Puppies. I'm absolutely astounded to say that he won, despite being blown almost entirely off the board by his opponent. He seemed to have a good time, but I heard a lot of "what does that do, again?" over the chatter in the room. I guess starting something new wasn't so hard to someone that's actively been playing a lot for several years now. I'm glad to see FunDave doing something new. It means a shift in the balance of the meta at our store, and maybe will make him deploy differently. (He loves the all-reserve approach.)

Another friend was looking to get back into Eldar after at very long break. He wrote and brought a list based on old assumptions and discovered the units he used previously just weren't as good anymore. I think (but could be wrong) the drastic differences in effectiveness and editions really threw him off. He is trying again- looking at what he has and seeing how to use it (perhaps proxies or changing parts to be something else) so that he can join us. I'd love to see him play with us- he's really fun and I think our group is sufficiently without extra cheese that he'd have a good time.


Doing something new or different can be pretty scary. I know I waffled on playing again for a lot of reasons, but I am really glad I'm back in the game. I'm making friends, learning something, painting again (I FINALLY found a scheme I like after about 5 or 6 test runs) and enjoying the company. I'm playing like a total idiot, but I'm having fun (for the most part).

The store has renewed and/or fresh blood; new eyes and new perspectives, and I like that a lot. Our playing will be enhanced and our friendships will be enriched. It's pretty nice to see.

Eldar

This is where I will post links and information for Eldar players.

I do not have any at this time. WIP as emails are being sent this week. 

[40K] Living Librariums

Monday was 40K night at the FLGS and I decided to head on down to hang out rather than do dishes or laundry. [I'm convinced that I'm going to Mom Hell, so I can be lazy now and then.]

I spent some time admiring folks' paint jobs, army composition and generally chit chatting. I then sat down to check out the Eldar Codex because it's one of 2 armies I am considering. It's also slightly more accessible than BT, as one of my real life friends who comments here is contemplating selling his Eldar army. His army is 1: already put together, 2: almost entirely complete, and 3: already painted.

A pre-painted army of ANY kind is a bonus for me if I'm looking at Eldar with any seriousness (and I am) simply due to all the detail work that Eldar requires [and I've established that I suck at details]. I haven't even seen the army in question, and I'm pretty interested, just based on the talent of the painter. He's one of the 3 best painters I know. I love his color choices, and he has a sense of lightness and life with a brush I'd hurt kittens to get.

While checking out the Eldar Codex, I was encouraged VERY strongly to continue considering Black Templar by T, a guy that everyone in our 40K community truly admires. He's one of those walking founts of rules knowledge, endless in understanding and application. He knows every Codex as well as all the FAQ's, and as far as I can tell, UNDERSTANDS what all the variations, combinations and esoterica means when it comes down to how an army plays. What's best about T is that he's an incredibly nice guy. He's absolutely approachable, willing to share information and knowledge, fun to talk to, pretty easy going, and he has a fantastic sense of humor.

T took the time to talk to me about why I like the BTs, and what advantages (as well as disadvantages) they offer.He's letting me check out his BT Codex next week so I can read it over a couple times.  He additionally talked to me about Eldar and gave me some insight I just really didn't grasp about them. He offered some pointers on how to address my playstyle with ANY army as well.

I'm aware that my community is pretty rich in talent. It's hidden by the fact that the guys at the store are generally there to have a good time. They enjoy a silly game just as much as a serious, in-the-trenches campaign, but don't let too much get to them. A good number of guys seem to have the "Gentleman's Ones" curse, and there's a lot of good natured bitching about dice results. But the guys playing are smart, critical thinking, and creative. They're not pushovers; they're guys that get the difference between wanting to win and being an ass.

All these guys defer to T when it comes to a rules question. It sometimes happens that a question will come up and it will get posed to the League Organizer that he simply doesn't know the answer to. He's not afraid to say, "I don't know, ask T". Even when a rule kicks you straight in the balls, guys take it in stride if T confirms that's the way it goes. I'm glad he's around our store.