Blood Angels vs Dark Angels

Played against Dark Angels.  Moving up to 2000 points, I tried out some allies.  My army was Reclusiarch with 15 Death Company (all with boltguns), 1 Scout Squad, 2 Tactical Squads (with Multi Melta, Flamer, melta bombs), 2 Assault Squads (Combat Squaded into 1 group with 2 flamers, 1 group with 1 flamer and melta bomb, 1 group with meltagun and melta bomb, and one group of nothing special), 1 Company command Squad, 1 Platoon Command Squad, 3 Infantry Platoons (flamer and autocannons), Gaurdsman Marbo, 2 whirlwinds, and a vindicator.
I don't remember exactly what the Dark Angels had (I should start asking for list), but it was basically 1 scout squad, 4 tactical squads, 2 Devestator Squads (Missile Launchers and Las cannons - I think 2 each per squad), 1 tooled out Command Squad, 1 IG command squad, 1 veteran squad, 1 Valkyrie with missile pods.
The game was relic, and the deployment was Vanguard.  The objective, I don't think I took a good picture of it, was a dead Blood Angel Terminator.
My picture taking was sporadic, and I haven't painted (bought a bunch of generic marines on ebay, and haven't repainted them, but the Death Company are primed black.

  Turn 1: Dark Angels went first.  I forgot to roll for thirst (the 5th or 6th game in a row), and we forgot to roll for night-fighting, which is too bad because I lost both whirlwinds before they had a change to do anything (that's the double crater in my deployment zone (on the left).  He has the IG command squad in the tower, and one of the devastators on top.  I moved my death company toward objective, move one tac squad for support, and then move the other behind the vindicator to go after his scouts (in the rocks on the bottom right).  I am not going to mention my scouts, because one squad (I combat squaded them) died turn 2 without doing anything, and the other one I forgot about for 2 of 6 turns (and did 1-2 wounds, which were both saved on the turns that I did save - move on that later).  Note the Valkyrie is on the board because he had just started turn 2 before I remembered to take pictures.

Turn 2 - He came on with the Valkyrie, and killed alot of guardsmen.  They were behind a wall, but using true line of sight from the vehicle, really only the first row got and cover, and once they were gone, it went badly - Luckily I had blobbed them into 1 large infantry platoon, so there were about 30 guys in that unit.  He did some other shooting, but nothing game changing, except he snap fired his heavy bolter into my death company, forgetting that it would stop him from charging, so my Death Company got the charge on his tactical marines on my turn 2.  Before that though, I dropped all my Assault Marines in, and Mabro.  Mabro threw his det pack on the command squad, killing a power fist and 1 or 2 power weapons (which helps out alot later on).  The squad with the melta land behind the tower and catastrophically destroy it (I had hit it earlier with an autocannon, lowering hull to 10, so he had moved his command squad out, but his devastators were still on the roof, and he lost 3 of them to the collapsing building.  My death company charged his tactical squad closest to the objective - I killed all of them except the Sergeant ( he survived challenge with reclusiarch because of the ap 4 power weapon).  He ran, but we caught him, which tied the death company up to be charged by another tactical squad and what was left of the DA command squad.  I issued bring it down orders, and hit the Valkyrie once, making him have to snap shot only on next turn)

This is the end of my turn 2.  The crater in the back right was the tower.  The yellow in back right are jump marine sergeants and their teams (the other 2 are closer, and out of the shot)

Turn 3.  Since his Valkyrie could only snapshot, and 2 of its three weapons were blast (the other was a lascannon he paid to upgrade), he just flew it off the board.  A tactical squad and his DA command squad joined the attack against the death company.  He did some shooting, and I think he finished of the vindicator in this turn, but nothing dramatic (he did kill marbro though).  My 4 tactical squads all charged or got charged this round (I think I got 3 charges, and 1 got charged).

Turn 4.  He flew his Valkyrie back on, to almost the same position.  I was trying to get a tactical squad to the relic while the death company help stuff up, but he parked his plane so that could not get into base with it and still be 1" from his base.  He fired at my marines again, and I lost some more, including an autocannon.  Melee went on (at this point my death company would have been dead from all the power weapons, but he couldn't roll 4's, although he had a lot of 3's (my WS was the same as his commanders).

Turn 5.  He switched his Valkyrie to hover mode, and moves behind the statue in the middle ( he is still close, but not within 1"), because I have a tactical squad moving in with a MultiMelta, and he doesn't want to fly off the board again this late in the game.  He killed the last of my autocannons.  By this time, I have 2 tactical squads near the objective (although his dev squad killed my MM before it shot, because it was the front of the squad, looking for a shot on the plane).  On his turn, he also kills off the last of the death company.  All my assault squads are still in combat.  My unit of 3 marines grab the objective and run.  The other tactical squad, not quite close enough to grab the objective in its movement turn, runs and screen the objective squad.
We roll for turn 6 and get it.  At this point we also remember that we need to roll for night fighting, and it is night fighting (although we forgot to use the rules for night fighting even then).  Here is where I caught a break - my assault squads were having a hard time cutting through stuff (5 men with no power weapons against 10 men who did have a power weapon), but I tied up alot of his shooting.  He used the devastators and Valkyrie to punch a hole in my screening unit, and then uses the first closest two units to shoot the squad with the relic, killing all 3 of them.  Now is where I get the break (even though I am being blown off the table), because he cannot assault the "screening squad" because everything in range to charge fired at the now gone unit - although it didn't matter too much, because I also failed my leadership roll, and ran 11 inches.  On my turn, I rallied, went back and grabbed the relic, and the game ended.  I forgot to take a picture, but I had 2-3 tactical marines with the relic, and 1 Assault SGT in his deployment zone, giving me 4 points.  He had 1st blood and killed enemy warlord, for 2 points.  It was a close game, and in another turn, I might have been tabled (except for the 5 scouts we had both forgotten about).

Thoughts.  I just did a big write up on scouts, and they still under performed my expectations.  Units of 5 just isn't enough when you need 4s to hit and to wound.  The one six I rolled got saved.  The scouts were definitely the duds of this list.  Mabro was one of my MVPs, hurting both the command squad and the tactical squad that later attacked the death company.  The Assault squads also did well, tying up units that outnumbered them, and letting the tactical squads run in and grab the objective with minimum fire (although it was still almost too much).

Hands down, the Valkyrie was his MvP.  It destroyed so much, since it was able to ignore most of the cover I had.  Additionally, it just brought a lot of fire power.  His power weapons also helped him alot.  He was able to win fights, or hold his own against the death company and the combat squads because of them.

Take-aways- my assault marines and death company NEED some power weapons.  The reclusiarch, while cool, only helps, at most, once a game (because once the DC gets the charge, the enemy will probably make sure it doesn't get another charge, ever), so those points are better spent on power weapons.  If the opponent is going first, and has devastators and IG heavy weapons teams, start with whirlwinds and vindicators off the board, so they get to shoot at least once.

Review of Scouts and efficiency

So, I was reading somewhere (probably one of the blogs linked on my page) about how making a list should consider point efficiency.  There are several roles you need to fill in an army, scoring, anti-vehicle, etc, and the idea is to study your codex and fill each role as efficiently as possible.  The author of the blog said you only compare your units to your own codex (because even if the land speeders are cheaper in another army, you can only work with what you have), however with allies this may not be true.  Once you determine who your ally is going to be, you need to see if you can fill some roles more efficiently from that codex.  However, for now I am sticking with C:BA, and starting with scoring units.  First up is the scout.

Scoring
  The first group I am going to look at from C:BA is the scoring units.  My rough draft of this post had a lot of spreadsheet math, broken down into lots of details, and points per kill, and stuff like that.  Instead of posting all of that, I am going to basically sum up.  If I am taking scouts to score, the most important thing for me is that they can stay on the objective, so I am taking 10 scouts, and giving them camo cloaks.  This means that the scouts will have 4+ armor save and 4+ cover save.  So it would take about 60 boltgun shots fired from MEQs to remove this unit.  If a unit had all plasma, there would still be a 4+ save (area terrain + cloak), so it would take 36 plasma shots to wipe them out, or they can go to ground and get a 2+ save by going to ground, which would enable them to be able to absorb 180 boltgun shots or 110 plasma shots.  While I wasn't going to do a bunch of match, I think talking about how many points you are paying per absorbed shot is relevant when talking about a scoring unit, so taking the median of 36 and 180, you can absorb about 108 shots for 170 points (my unit has all sniper rifles).  This comes out to 170/108, or about 1.57 points per shot absorbed.

Shooting
  You want your scoring unit to contribute, so an average unit of 10 scouts with sniper rifles will inflict about 9 unsaved wounds against MEQ in the open over a 5 turn game.  This comes out to paying about 18.5 points per wound this unit inflicts.

Melee
  If this unit gets charged, it can withstand about 40 melee attacks, or about 4.5 points per wound, which makes it the least efficient scoring unit when it comes to getting charged.  What is interesting though, is that this unit is equal to a tactical unit in terms of wounds inflicted on the charge (since the WS 3 will translate to generally hitting on a 4, just like the tac squad), and a scout squad armed with melee weapon is more point efficient on the charge than a squad of assault marines (same number of attacks, still needing 4s to hit and wound, and cheaper).

Disruption
  Scouts have outflank, infiltrate, and scout.  This gives them a lot of disruption capabilities.  Personally, I used to like outflank, but now that you can't attack the turn you come in, I am kind of meh about it, since it isn't really better than DoA; the assault marines have better armor to absorb that round of shooting, and aren't susceptible to being blocked off the board.
  Looking at infiltrate and scout, I noticed that you can infiltrate 18" away in the open, then scout move 6", to start the game withing 12" of the enemy, even in line of sight.  Since you can not assault first turn if you use either of these abilities, I am not sure what you gain, since scouts aren't great for standing up to charge.  I guess if you can get into cover within 12", with shotguns, combi-flamers (or maybe even boltguns), along with a melta bomb for the sgt, you can create enough of a threat that the enemy will have to take a turn to deal with that unit (if you go to ground they probably will have to use a unit to assault you too).  If I was going to do this though, I would probably pass on the camo cloaks, and I would probably combat squad the unit into 2 units, on opposite sides of the board from each other, creating 3 fronts for the enemy to deal with. I realize 2 of these fronts are not very dangerous, but the more choices your opponent has to make, the more chances he has to make a mistake (and if he completely ignores them, krak grenades in his backfield will hurt soft targets, and if the scouts are still alive one turn 3, you can throw them at whatever your assault marines are about to charge to suck up the over watch.

Conclusions:  I was trying to talk myself out of scouts, as they don't shoot as well as tacticals, outflank is inferior to DoA, and they aren't so much cheaper that tacticals anyway.  However, after the disruption paragraph, I may have talked myself into 1 squad (which I would have to buy, since my 10,000
points worth of Marines do not include a single scout.)

Sanguinary Priests - Are they worth the points?

Just some math-hammer on Sanguinary Priest, to decide if I want to put them in my army.  First, since they are only range 6", I probably want to have one per unit, as I am probably not marching down the middle of the field (we are not orks after-all).

First, I am going to calculate them with jump packs.  A priest with JP cost 75 points, about 4 ASM.  Assume that 1 in 3 in going to make the save.  This means that my unit can basically take 2 extra wounds. (I take 3 wounds, save 1, which leaves me with 3 marines, take 3 more wounds, save 1 again).  Add in the Sanguinary Priest himself, and I am basically getting 3 marines for the price of 4. 

So let's looks at 10 marines.  10 marines take 3 wounds, save 1 to FNP, leaving 8.  3 more wounds, 1 more save leaves 6.  3 more wounds, 1 more save leaves 4, 3 more wounds leaves 1. So it takes about 13 wounds to kill them all, instead of 10.  Add in the Priest himself, and I am getting 14 wounds for the price of 14 marines.  So it's a wash (except for the slightly improved stats in had to hand).

All of this is assuming again that the Priest is the last one killed, and that the enemy is not using Instant Death weapons.  If the enemy is using a lot of plasma, it will take less hits to inflict this number of wounds, but the number of wounds in the unit doesn't actually change.

Edit: While trying to calculate the most efficient scoring choice, I thought of another metric to measure this by.  A tactical squad costs 170 points, and it takes, on average, 90 bolter shots to kill all 10 of them.  This comes out to about 1.89 points per shot the unit can soak.  Adding a priest bumps the unit up to 220 points, but the unit can take 140 shots before being destroyed.  This comes out to about 1.57 points per hitpoint.  So it is slightly more efficient to take a priest in a tactical squad.  I don't think this invalidates my previous, empirically based deductions, since we cannot spend fractions of points, but it does show that a priest could be work it (these wounds do not the count the priest itself, who would still be alive at the end of these 140 shots).  

Making sure flyers deliver their payload

So, I was building a 2000 point list and, since I have 2 of them, I was looking for ways to incorporate at least 1 stormraven into it.  The stormraven does not have enough firepower to justify its cost as a gunship, so it needs to transport something.  So I add a furioso dread and some termies.  Now if the vehicle is destroyed, I will probably lose over 600 points.  My question is, how do I make sure that doesn't happen?

That is the point of the article.  As BA, we can significantly improve our flyer's chances of survival with the humble assault troop with jump pack.  I created 2 units, one with 2 flamers, and one with 2 meltaguns (I suppose if you were crunched for points you could take one unit, and give it 1 flamer and 1 meltagun).  I am not giving it any other upgrades (except maybe a melta bomb for the sergeant).

The goal of these 2 units is asset protection.  Before the game starts, I will look at my enemy's army and determine the biggest threats to my flyers.  Then I will combat squad my asset protectors accordingly.  If the enemy has units of lootas, or Tellion behind an AA turrent, I combat squad the flamer jumpers and drop them in a position to burn those guys out.  If the enemy has Hydoflaks, then I split the melta squad and drop them behind enemy lines.

Because of DoA, this works pretty well with Assault troops, as you can drop at just under 6" and be reasonable safe.  These are very likely to come in on turn 2, and can clear the way for your flyers.  Additionally you have a scoring unit behind enemy lines, that contributes to the line-breaker secondary mission.  That means that he is probably going to have to use at least 2 units to shoot at 5 men (unless he has uber plasma), because if even 1 man is alive, he will rally and give you the secondary mission point.  If you drop 2 squads, or even all 4 (throw the other one in for good measure), you can cause significant disruption that he has to deal with (otherwise keep flaming, grenading, and melta-ing stuff), and every vehicle, or loota, or dev that you kill is 1 less shot aimed at your stormraven.

I liked this idea so much that I decided to keep these disruption units even after I decided to put the stormraven points somewhere else (It will be very rare that you can't find SOMETHING to destroy that will make your army safer).

Who says vehicles are dead?

First, this is not based on actual game experience, as I have not run many vehicles since 6th edition, because, like everyone else, I read the glancing rules and thought, screw that.  Then you read the forums about how vehicles are getting glanced to death, so you think, "good thing I don't have any vehicles..."

I was thinking about this today, and I was wondering, who is glancing all of these vehicles to death?  Rhinos are 11 armor on front and sides - bolters can't touch that, lasguns can't touch that, and even though I don't have the book handy, I am pretty sure that tau guns can't touch that.  I know Eldar have alot of Str 6, necrons can glance anything, and grey knights with psybolt ammo can glance that.  Sure there are missile launchers and lascannons and all that things there have always been, and it is a little easier for them, but str 6 weapons are not so prolific that parking lots are getting glanced down in a turn or 2 by foot troops - and that's just armor 11, what about 12, 13, and 14.  Sure lascannons can glance them down, all 2 of them in your army (if you're lucky).  Sure melta can glance vehicles down, but melta kills stuff anyway.

I am not going to be able to play for a couple of weeks, but I am going to make a vehicle army (marines, since I don't really have IG), and see for myself.

1500 BA v Necrons

Right after my battle against the orks, I played the same list against necrons (same player, different army)

1 Libby in Termie armor with a stormshield,
 Brother Corbulo,
a Stormraven,
a 5 man dev squad with 4 missile launchers,
1 assault squad (2 flamers and sgt had twin plasma pistols and a melta bomb),
2 tac squads with MM and flamer,
and 6 assault termies (3 with TH/SS and 3 with 2 claws).

I don't know necron stuff as well, but he  basically had
2 groups of 20 gaus troops (each with some character - one the game him a re-roll per phase, and one with some cool shoota weapon and a 1 time use weapon, which I'm going to call the arrow of Str 10 of doom (but i think it was something like tachayon arrow),
2 units of immortals in flyers, with 1 character each.

We did Crusade, and it was the diagnol set up, orks went first, and deployed 1 unit of necrons in each of his 2 big ruins (1 objective in each).  I set my guys up in a ruin, like my assault termies to run across the board, and place 1 unit of tac termies so that it could go after the other objective, which I put further away.  When we rolled for objectives, but of his were skyfire - neither of mine mattered.  I put Brother C with the devastators, because I was so afraid of his flyers, and I wanted to make sure my missile launchers lasted long enough to make a difference.

Turn 1 - I don't think he moved or shot this turn, he might of moved 1-2 inches in the ruins.  I moved terminators out toward middle, and the tac marines toward my further objective.  His warlord skill let him pick night-fighting, which he did (I think it was just so he wouldn't worry about having to shoot in the dark later.

Turn 2 Necron - His flyers came on.  He dropped 1 unit off near my whirlwind, but the unit barely got around the rock, and had to snapshot, so no damage to whirlwind.  He moves around in the ruins a little more.  He shoots into my devastators and kills 3 of them (Brother C can't work his magic, since he was positioned to take shots from the front, and not the side).

Turn 2 BA - My flyer comes on, and unloads everything into the transport that hasn't unloaded yet, and destroys it, unfortunately his flyer crashed into my whirlwind, and removed my missile launcher.  I shoot a missile at the remaining transport, and actually get a hit.  My assault marines jet pack in and do 0 wounds to once of the necron groups in the ruins (I am claiming a moral victory anyway, since this is the first time in 3 games that my Sgt didn't die from "gets hot" on the drop.)

Turn 3 Necron - He zooms his flyer to shoot my tac squad.  Since my whirlwind has no weapon, his immortal squad reverses direction, and starts heading around the rock toward my middle objective.  He shoots my terminators, and kills 2 or 3.  He shoots the assault marines, and reduce them to 4.  Since his other transport is gone, he has to roll reserves on his immortal squad, they do not come on.

Turn 3 BA - Still advancing tactical marines and assault terminators.  I jump the assault marines into a ravine about 13" from his squad (my plan was to keep them hidden in cover until my assault terminators get into charge range, then popping out and taking the overwatch shots.  Since my flyer had to jink to dodge his "arrow of Str 10 doom", I turned 90 degrees and flew off his edge of the board

Turn 4 Necrons - His immortals come on between my assault squad and his troops, and shoot my up, killing 2 marines.  He unloads both troop choices into my assault terminators, and reduces me to my librarian, and 1 TH/SS terminator.  The immortals he has on my side move toward the middle (getting close to charge range on the tac squad there).  The squad is only 6 strong, but they have a royal court guy, so I get a little nervous.

Turn 4 BA - Not wanting to give up the warlord point, and realizing that my assault terminators were no longer combat effective, I started to retreat them.  I lined up my whirlwind for a tank shock on the immortal squad on my side of the board.  My Stormraven came back on, and I unloaded into his immortal squad (the one bothering my assault terminators.  I only killed 3 of 6 immortals / characters, but there really was no better target - did I forget to mention he flew his transport off the board on his turn 4?  The tactical squad on the border objective fire at his necron troops, but don't kill any of them.  He says I shouldn't have drawn attention to them, because he forgot they were there (although it was a good thing because...

Necron Turn 5 ... He starts shooting at my tactical squad with everything he has (including the transport that came back on).  He killed 5 of them, and made them break and run 9", but that means he didn't shoot at my librarian (warlord).  He also moves his immortal squad backwards to finish off my whirlwind.  Which at the time, I thought was a mistake, because the whole game I thought those immortals would tear up my tactical squad, he said something about a lightning field, so I was afraid of him attacking the middle tactical squad (I guess his psycological warfare was stronger than mine)

Turn 5 BA - I run my librarian further from his side (I am pretty sure I am out of 24" at this point, but I didn't measure because I didn't want to draw attention to my librarian in case the game lasted another turn or two.  My edge tactical squad rallied (ATSKNF) and moved back onto the objective.  My Stormraven zoomed over and killed his last transport - which crashed somewhere off the board.  My jump pack marines jumped over his immortal squad, and then ran into the middle of his deployment zone (a risky move, that would have been suicide if the game hadn't ended.)

I won, with 1 point for first kill (his transport) and 1 for have a scoring squad in his deployment zone.  We both had 6 points worth of objectives.

Overall, I don't think this list is working for me.  Even though I won both games with it, it was an uphill battle the whole time (if either game had gone past 5 turns, I would have lost both games, and maybe even been tabled).  If the necrons had marched across the board, I do not think I would have had the fire power to stop them from rolling me.  The stormraven killed both of his flyers, but partly because he didn't care - he didn't see it as a big enough threat to waste shots on, unless there were no other targets (and other than the 2 transports, it killed 4 necron immortals).  Likewise - I think his transports killed a total of 4 devastors, and 2 marines, so had I not been able to shoot them down... I don't know. Marching the Terminators across the board does not work without Brother C, but Brother C only helps if you can control what side they are shooting at ( a mobile army can take advantage of this)

1500 BA vs Orks, game 3

So, a third game against orks.  I wanted to try some new stuff, so I took out the Death Company and a whirlwind, and added some Assault Termies, a Storm Raven, and Brother Corbulo, so I had:

1 Libby in Termie armor with a stormshield,
 Brother Corbulo,
a Stormraven,
a 5 man dev squad with 4 missile launchers,
1 assault squad (2 flamers and sgt had twin plasma pistols and a melta bomb),
2 tac squads with MM and flamer,
and 6 assault termies (3 with TH/SS and 3 with 2 claws).

My opponent had:
 2 nob biker squads (1 medic, 1 melee weapon, and 2 power claws, + a biker boss in each squad )
 and 3 squads of 4 lootas

The game was relic and the deployment was hammer and anvil (I don't have my book handy, but I think that is what the second one was called).  I went first. (my BA are blue because I bought the marines on ebay, and am a lazy painter).

BA Turn 1 - I rushed everything toward the football.  I don't know why I kept the tac marines in cover, since he didn't have any ranged weapons that would overpower my 3+ sv.  I made sure Brother Corbulo was in front of the termies, so I could test his bullet catching ability (during the whole game, I never used LOS with corbulo, since there was no Ap 3, so the only difference between him now and him in 5th is that he was able to have all of the wounds assigned to him, which made a difference, but was not game-breaking).  Did a few wounds, which he passed around with LOS, but nothing died.

Ork turn 1 - Shot at some stuff with lootas.  first fired at Brother C and the termies.  Brother Caught 8 loota missiles and shrugged them off, and my opponent didn't shoot at that unit again for 3 turns.  Granted it was probably frustrating to watch him eat all of the missiles, but it's not a stretch to believe that a squad of termies could  make 8 2+, 5+ (armor and FNP) saves, anyway).  Bikers moved up (both units tried to charge my terminators, but he rolled a 3 and a 6 for charges, and he was mover than 6" with both units)

BA Turn 2 - I was all set to grab the relic with my termies when my opponent reminded me it had to be a scoring unit, so I moved them to screen while I moved my remaining full tactical squad up.  I also dropped some assault marines behind the bikes and flamed some.  My Storm Raven came in, but failed to inflict any wounds.  I concentrated all of my fire power on the far bike unit, because I was confident that my terminators could take out the other, which they did, forcing them to flee 17 inches (not enough to be off the board)

Ork Turn 2 - His bikers rallied and one unit of Lootas shot down my Stormraven and it crashed onto my damaged tactical squad, doing 3 wounds, all of which were saved.  Another unit of lootas killed most of my assault marines in the water, and his unit of 2 bikes charged and destroyed my 3 tactical squads.

Turn 3, my jump marines grab the relic, and his lootas shoot them to death, along with killing all but 1 of my devastators.  It was a really short turn, and nothing really happened.

BA Turn 4:This is the last picture I took of the game, the start of turn 4.  Not much happened from here.  My tactical squad grabbed the relic, Brother C and the Libby left the terminators and joined the Tacticals.  The remaining Terminators charged the lootas, and concentrated fire took out the group of 2 bikes.

Orc Turn 4: He moved his bikes into the river and charged my tactcials, after his lootas shot my terminators down to 1 guy with claws.  He charged, but my Librarian and Brother C, at the rear of the tactical squad, managed to finish the nobs off.

BA Turn 5 - Somehow my lone termie makes it to the lootas (a 6 difficult terrain roll and a 9 inch charge though cover.  I kill 3 lootas and survive the counter attack.

Ork Turn 5 - The other 2 groups of lootas fire at my tactical squad, killing the librarian, brother C, and 3-4 marines.  In CC, my terminator kills one more loota before he is overwhelmed.

We roll a 1 and the game ends.  Had the game gone another turn, there is a good chance I would have lost the last 5 guys of the tactical squad to combined fire power of about 38 loots, in which case I would have lost.  As it ended, it was 4 - 2 (he got first blood from my raven and we killed each others warlords)  I might have been on his half of the board in the end, but I don't think so, and we didn't measure since it didn't matter.

I only remembered to use my psyker powers the first turn, and then I remembered to activate my force sword on the 3rd turn (to kill is warlord), so I did not get my money's work from the librarian.  The Stormraven was underwhelming as well.  The whirlwind did a good job denying the lootas (he lined them all out of range of the whirlwind, so even though it didn't get many kills, it added to my control of the battle space in a positive way.  Whirlwinds are alot less useful against multi-floor ruins, half the turns I attacked the bikers with it, even though they were sub-optimal targets, because I just didn't care about killing 1-2 lootas.

1500 points and Reclusiarch

So, I had alot of success with the Death Company up until now (2 games in 6th :) )  As I have been trying to add more to my army, I have been stealing the points from the death company - until I got to 10 led by a reclusiarch.

I wondered if 10 is enough to justify the reclusiarch, and it was pointed out to me that the reclusiarch still makes a big difference, which is true.  After thinking about it though, I am not sure that a reclusiarch leading a death company is the best choice for a Warlord (and at 1500, having more than 1 HQ is tough).  In both of the games I have played, the death company has done well as the forward element in my army, and in both games I lost my warlord - basically giving up a point.  This hasn't been an issue so far, but it could become one in close games.

Get some Whirlwind

As mentioned in my first two battle reports, I got a lot of mileage out of my whirlwinds (even though they didn't kill anything the second game, they held all of my opponents heavy choices to the far edge of the map (so that they could not offer support to the uber bike squad.).

That being said, I did not expect to get nearly as much mileage out of them against any other army however, after talking to a friend today, I think I might have been wrong.  He was talking about all the crazy combinations of super cover units: harlequins, scouts with 2+ re-rollable cover saves and sniper rifles, etc.   Most people play marines though, so it doesn't really matter, right?  Think again - after this talk, I thought about alot of net lists people were throwing around, and alot of MEQ lists had scouts as their scoring units (so they could squeeze in flyers / allies / etc.)

Add all of this to the fact that more people will be running dismounted armies, and that night fighting will be more common (barrage might lose 12" of range - assuming a starting range of 48" but that is the only effect darkness will have on it), and that they can be used (with a bit of luck) to target specific models.

The problem is that, at least for now, the whirlwind is competing for spots with a Devastator Squad and Stormraven - not to mention predators, which got a decent boost.  Still, I am thinking that whirlwind adds more bang for the buck then a stormraven, and 1 whirlwind and 2 devastator Squads, or 2 Squads and 1 whirlwind might be my standard 1500 pt heavy slots.

The end of Rhinos? Maybe not.

So after my first two games with no transports, I was thinking that I would have been in alot of trouble that second game if my warlord hadn't rolled outflank as a power.  I have 2 Stormravens, so I thought I would make a list to take advantage of them. (Had to use 2, because if 1 Stormraven was the only vehicle I had on the board, it wouldn't last long despite it's coolness.  Here are are my thoughts on the subject:

Stormraven = 200 pts                                            Rhino = 50 pts (cheaper with assault squad)  Stormraven = Heavy FoC                                      Rhino = No impact of FoC

Stormraven = Earliest assault is turn 3                  Rhino = Earliest assault is Turn 3

So with both vehicles, you are getting a turn 3 assault

If you are talking about just transporting ability, the Stormraven can take more people (only complaint about Rhino is it can't take a squad and a character), and it can take a dreadnought. On the other hand, if a Rhino gets popped, it will probably not take my whole unit with it. After the Rhino drops the troops, it can stay there to block counter assaults or provide cover. All things considered, while the Stormraven can fill a niche for fast assault armies (although you could put you dread in a drop pod for cheaper, and have on the board on turn 1), it hasn't really replaced the Rhino for getting a standard assault squad across the board (the rhino is just as fast, and is 15 points for assault squad, instead of 200.

This means that the Stormraven is going to have to make up at least 150-185 points in fire power.  Say you have the assault cannon and the Multi-Melta, along with blood-strike missiles.While IG might provide a target rich environment (but is also the most likely to have a way to shoot you down), and maybe marines (especially of everyone start taking bikes), but 185 points worth? What if you are playing against orcs, or a foot-slogging army (about to be more popular I think). If you take something a little more versatile, like Typhoon missile launcher and/or hurricane bolters (You will need to take the sponson if you want to maximize your ability to fire 4 weapons a turn at ballistic skill after turn 3 (when you've fired off all you bloodstrike missiles). This would take you to at least 230 points, which is enough to 2 whirlwinds, or 2 devastator squads, or a Land raider (with assault marine discount). All of these have similar firepower, but is more likely retain some of the firepower after a lucky round of shooting, whereas the Raven could be killed with 1 lucky shot.

For the same points, I opted for a tooled out assault squad with jump packs, who can still assault on turn 3. There is a place for Ravens, but since I am playing 1500 points, and I believe taking one by itself would be 200 points wasted (and maybe everything it was carrying), I just can't afford to put 400-460 points into 2 vehicles, whereas a Rhino can get them there just as fast, and cheap and buy some breathing room (by blocking assaults, providing cover, etc).



I guess the bottom line is: take a Stormraven if you need its particular transporting abilities, but if you just need to move 10 guys from point A to Point B, the Rhino is still a better choice.

1500 BA vs Orks

Game 2

Played 1500 BA vs Orks today for second game (he made a few changes after our first game):

Blood Angels
1 Reclusiarch - Bolt Pistol and Crozius Arcanum
19 Death Company with Boltguns. +1 Hammer, +1 Powerfist
2 Full Tac Squads (+1 Plasma gun, +1 Lascannon, SGT armed with meltabombs)
1 Full Assault Squad (+2 Flamers, SGT armed with meltabombs and 2 plasma pistols)
2 Whirlwinds
1 Devastator Team (5 Marines with 4 Missile Launchers, SGT has meltabombs)

Orks
4-5 Ork Bikers (medic with squig, most of them had power claws)
Boss on Bike
3 units of 15 lootas
Shoota boyz (20-30) led by boss 
Aegis defense line


Game was Emperors Will, map was Hammer and Anvil.  Looked like it was going to be a tie, since he looked like he was going to camp 60+ orks on his objective. (The white squares are objectives and the picture only shows the significant terrain, there was more stuff - lows walls, aegis defense barrier, etc, but none of it game into play, because I Jumped In or Outflanked past it all).

My warlord got outflank, so I outflanked the death company with the reclusiarch (which ended up being a big game changer).  He put his boyz in reserve, and all of his lootas out of range of my whirlwind.

First turn very little happened, except his bikes moved up the side, everything else was out of range.

Second turn, my assault marines jumped in and burned the right unit of lootas, and chased them off the table.  The double plasma pistols failed me, as my sergeant blew himself up with gets hot!  He brought his ork boyz into the gap left by his lootas, shot my jump marines to death, and his bikes assaulted, and destroyed, one of my whirlwinds.  He moved his loots up, so that he could start shooting some of my Marines.

Turn 3: He assaulted my Tactical Marines (by now he has been shot up for 3 turns - since that unit was the only thing close enough to shoot at by my entire army, so that almost everyone in his bike squad is down to 1 wound.  My death company killed his boyz (but his warboz killed my reclusiarch in a challenge - although he had to make 3 invulnerable saves at 5+ to do it).  I've realized that my marines are going to lose the objective, so I start moving across the water.

Turn 4: My death company shot up the second unit of lootas, killing 13 /15 of them, but also putting them out of charge range.  His bikes assaulted my Devastators (by now he was down to 2 bikes, his boss and a nob). His nob won the challenge, but my other 4 devastators killed his boss before he could attack, making it a tie. My last tactical squad was down to 2 people, and they ran for the objective.

Turn 5:  I moved my tactical squad to the edge of the river, shot the last 2 lootas in the squad that was in the river (although I should have not shot, and charged them instead, to get closer to the last unit of lootas).  My devastators killed the last bike.  My opponent surrendered before his turn, as he no longer had any scoring units, and there were no other points available to him (I had the VP for first blood, linebreaker and killing warlord, he had the vp for warlord.  Just for fun, he rolled to shoot his lootas at the DC, but only got 1 shot each, and didn't bother rolling for wounds.

Thoughts:  I was a little worried after first games that my army was too dependent on the whirlwinds, and if I hadn't happened to bring them and happened to be facing orcs, I would have been in trouble - however, he kept everything out of range of the WW the whole game, so at most, I got a hit on one bike per turn, so they were not game changing.  I like having the cheap sergeant.  They are not going to win a challenge against an IC (although one of mine did), but having that powerfist nob inflict 1 wound toward combat resolution,  instead of 4, saved my devastator squad.  Getting the charge, my death company did much better than the first game, basically tying up his backfield, leaving the bikes with almost no support (still don't know if 19 is needed). Two of my characters killed themselves with plasma this game, bad luck or time to change?  Is three units of troops enough at 1500?  First game I finished with all 3 troop units on an objective (even if one of the only had 1 man), this game I was down to 2 tactical marines.  Outflank saved the day, without, the death company would have ate a lot of missles to get across the board, and his boyz probably would have been able to walk across the field to his objective - so mobility might be a factor in future games.

1500 BA vs Orks

Played 1500 BA vs Orks today:
Blood Angels
1 Reclusiarch - Bolt Pistol and Crozius Arcanum
19 Death Company with Boltguns. +1 Hammer, +1 Powerfist
2 Full Tac Squads (+1 Plasma gun, +1 Lascannon, SGT armed with meltabombs)
1 Full Assault Squad (+2 Flamers, SGT armed with meltabombs and 2 plasma pistols)
2 Whirlwinds
1 Devastator Team (5 Marines with 4 Missile Launchers, SGT has meltabombs)

Orks

4-5 Ork Bikers (medic with squig, most of them had power claws)

Boss on Bike 

3 units of 12 lootas

hardboyz (15-20?) led by boss

Aegis defense line

2 kans

Game was the Scouring, and Deployment was Dawn of War. (trying to find vassal to include pictures, until then, instead of a blow by blow, I am going to just put the hi lights / comments)

Whirlwinds payed for themselves big time.  The person I was playing had several armies, I knew I would probably be playing Orks, IG, Salamanders or Necrons.  I took the whirlwinds because I knew they'd be decent against everything but the IG parking lot, and even then I could glance some vehicles.  The caused a group of lootas to run off the board after their first turn of shooting, and then destroyed his hardboys (bad rolls kept him in the water for 3 turns, and very few got out of the water alive.

I was careless with the death company.  They were across the river from the bikes; I moved close to get rapid fire shots (was still a little short), I thought the river would stop the bikes from getting the charge, but it didn't even slow them down.  Even with about 24 rapid-fire shots, I only got 2 hits and no wounds on overwatch.  Even without the charge, they lasted 4 rounds of combat - the change to fearless made made a big difference.  By the time the death company was dead, there were 3 wounds, each with 1 wound left.  

The devastator squad was demolished on turn 1 (broke and ran off board after losing 3).  

Tactical Squads did well, but I made a mistake - moved plasma gun and lascannon to front (for best shot), and they were the first casualties when I got hit with lootas.

Assault Troops did well-ish.  They dropped in, and broke a group of lootas, and then finished them off when they rallied.  They got assaulted by two 'kans.  The Sgt killed one with melta bomb.  Second one killed all but one marine.  The marine eventually killed the 'kan with krak grenade (immobilized one turn, and then glanced to death next turn)

Thoughts:  double plasma pistols didn't really do anything.  Since the assault marines are taking out soft targets, I didn't really gain anything by having plasma or being able to select targets.  Make sure to keep heavy weapons in back of squad.  Devastators didn't do much for me this game, but I will keep them for now - although might add some extra marines for absorbing wounds.  The melta-bomb worked brilliantly when the squad got hit by the 'Kans, striking at weapon-skill makes a huge difference, especially for 5 points.  The death company did not rock quite as much as I thought it would (I thought 19 was going to be over-kill, I imagined walking down the middle of the field killing everything in range, and then just walking my tactical squads onto the objectives.)

1500 BA

First 6th Edition BA List

I am going to play my first 6th edition battle tomorrow.  I don't know what I will face exactly, so making an all comers list (really the only kind I ever make) but it will probably be orks (lots of shoota boyz, probably 3 units of 15 lootas, and maybe some 'Kans with forcefields) or IG (parking lot with 2 units of 3 vendettas with 3 lasguns each)

Its been a while since I played BA, but 6th edition was good excuse to leave GK and go back to combined arms marine list (GK were fine, but there were such a limited number of units, and the reason I became marine in the first place (from 3rd edition necrons) was to have more flexibility.

Anyway, here is my list, I thought about a Stormraven, but I just didn't see it (or 2 of them) standing up to 45 lootas or 6 vendettas - figure I will just suck up the wounds as they fly by.

1 Chaplain - Bolt Pistol and Crozius Arcanum

19 Death Company with Boltguns. +1 Hammer, +1 Powerfist

2 Full Tac Squads (+1 Plasma gun, +1 Lascannon, SGT armed with meltabombs)

1 Full Assault Squad (+2 Flamers, SGT armed with meltabombs and 2 plasma pistols)

2 Whirlwinds

1 Devastator Team (5 Marines with 4 Missile Launchers, SGT has meltabombs)

Gun Slinger

With the 6th edition, I am able to use some models I bought a long time ago from ebay.  Someone had modeled some marines with 2 plasma pistols, and one with 2 Infernus Pistols.  At the time I thought they looked cool, but that I would never be able to play them.

Now I want to put them in my list, because they look cool, but I want to make sure I am not gimping myself, so I have given it some thought:

Advantages: 2 pistols = +1 Attack in HtH
                     2 Plasma Pistols on a character (sergeant), who can single out targets on a roll of 6

Disadvantage: No power weapons.  I am not sure if this a big deal, because the change of my sergeant getting a kill in a challenge is pretty small anyway, unless it is against a non-melee character (which I can still probably handle).  With the 2 shots, there is a chance I will kill those other sergeants / weak characters in the shooting phase.

Final analysis:  Not having a power weapon is going to suck sometimes (and I will probably regret my decision each of those times), but gunslingers look cool, and I think they gain as much potential as they lose (and I'll throw in a melta-bomb to make up for not having a fist), so I will probably run them - at least the two that I have (and see how that goes before I model anymore.)

Let's try this again...

I have started a blog on Eldar and on Grey Knights, but I didn't really follow up on them.  I am excited about the new edition, and might even start playing some local tournaments.  I like Grey Knights, but I have probably over 15,000 points of "Marine" stuff, and only about 4,000 of Grey Knight Stuff (there is some overlap for things like Rhinos / Razorbacks / etc).  So using a "normal" chapter will allow me to use more of my models then just playing Grey Knights (and I can always ally in some units if I want).  I am leaning toward Blood Angels, I have played them before, because I like their lore, and because Ultra Marines still just don't compare.  I have a few squads of Space Wolves and Dark Angels, so I may Ally them in from time to time, but I am probably going to officially make my Marines to Blood Angels (they are currently unpainted), and just ride out the codex creep storm.
I have a new iphone, with a decent camera, so I might even start taking pictures to go with my battle reports, we'll see if I can keep this up again.  (Usually, if I have time to dedicate to 40K, I am making army lists or looking up rules, and not blogging).