Campaign Round 2

The first round of our campaign neble2.blogspot.com is over and we hat 3 battles in this round. News, an updated map and more are now up on the campaign site.

I managed to win 2 of 3 games with my orks, only against the Tyranids I ended up with a draw. Not bad considering that I use a list that is very cobbled together. All games were fun kinda close. Except against the Imperial Guard there was no danger at any point of the game.

Sharing dice

pic from baxterboo.com

A short article on how time, space and dice can be saved during a match and increase the fun.

As we all know, when it comes to throwing dice nearly every player has his own habits and usually brings his own dice. All kinds of colours, sizes and throwing techniques, such as screaming out the needed results to hopefully influence the fortune, appear. There are players that like to use some dice shakers or boxes, some like to roll on the table, some like to roll on some special dice boards. There guys that from time to time claim that certain dice are 'empty' or 'have lost their power'. There are even guys that throw some dice through their kitchen because they lost some really important rolls (guilty!).

So usually when two players meet for a match, every body has a hudge amount of dice on this side of the board and every time they have to roll a certain number of dice, they start grabbing and counting some of them, counting again, grabbing some more, putting some back etc.. This takes time and of course if you place them on the board, also needs space on the gaming table. This is why in our gaming group in some of the last games we just used the dice of one single player, of course different colours but just one set of dice belonging to one player. This way, the dices are not located everywhere on the table and of course there are not so many. And whats really nice about it, is that it saves you time and makes rolling dice much easier.
Lets say one player shoots at the other guy he rolls his dice for hitting and wounding and then the other guy just takes the remaining dice for his saves. He can directly take the dice that wounded and does not have count how many dice are lying there and grab his own ones and maybe select a different colour for that melta gun hit,...

It turned out to be very comfortable to share the dices during the games and imho it is even positive for the gaming climate during the game. Of course there are some guys that refuse to use somebodies dices, but lets face it, these guys are just stupidly superstitious or use loaded dice! ;) So in both cases, just put your dice away and use theirs!


For us this was really new and it is probably some old stuff for you guys out there but I really wanted to share this with you.

No 'Risk' No Fun

On how small changes in a list and the way you play it possibly turn out to be a lot of fun and victory! But being hard to apply. Part I

Trying to play a little bit more risky with my marines last night, turned out to be fun and brought me the 8th win in the 10 games I played in our campaign. Usually I basically run a Librarian with nullzone and some other power, a dread, 2 Preds, a Vindi, 3 Landspeeders, 2 tactical squads and a stern guard and I try to vary depending on the enemy, sometimes drop the stern guard and add an additional tactical squad. I did pretty well so far. But as strange as it may sound, I wanted to change something to this working lists I had not tried before. I tried the Captain with Command Squad (4 plasma guns and an Apothecary) against the necrons and it worked out pretty good. So I wandered what to take and after reading a nice article on the 'Yes the Truth hurts'-blog I decided to run a 'Master of the Forge' (henceforth MoF).

the agony of choice
With the current SM codex one definitely has a lot of choices and some of them really sound great, considering the rules or the fluff, and there are many fantastic models BUT, if you do spent some time on studying the individual choices you will see, that in the end a player tends to reduce this plethora of units to a core, which typically is the same had used before. In my case this have always been, dreads, tacticals, scouts, landspeeders, predators , vindicators and stern guard. Additionally some units always drop out because they are really useless or because of personal taste. In my case this have always been things like, bikes, scout bikes, Land-speeder Storm, Assault Marines, ...

Wait, but this exactly melts down to the same list(s) I already mentioned above, and there is the dilemma, you cannot just change your army list completely, you can do changes judging on experiences with units, personal taste, enemies,.. But all these changes are (normally) very 'small' and the core of the army will stay the same. (Ok, at this point I should say that I specialise myself now to the case of a SM army.)
So, changes like dropping Melta bombs when playing against 'Nids or including them when facing IG are usually what happens.

Now what I tried was to at least change the HQ choice and take a look on how this effects my army. Taking the MoF I had to choose whether to give him the conversion beamer and or use him more close combat related. I chose the conversion beamer.
Ok, now since he probably should not move very much in that match, I had to support him with an unit to ensure his survivability. Now the MoF is able to bolster ruins by increasing its cover save by +1. Thus I chose scouts to support him carrying camo cloaks (giving them a 2+ cover save in that ruin), sniper rifles and a rocket launcher.But bolstering ruins is not the only and real advantage of the MoF, he also changes your army list composition by allowing you to take dreads as heavy support. Sounded great, lets play a dread base army I thought, until, until I realised the problem related to

Confinedness of the personal collection
I noticed that in no way I could field more than 2 Dreads, simply because I don't own more then two (well, in fact 3 but one is not usable). And this was not the only unit where I noticed that changing an army is not just limited by the personal taste and the usability of certain units but also the banal fact that one has to own enough models! To cut a long story short, I quickly saw me facing the same choices as always. Sure I could have used a whirlwind proxy but I did decide for the predator again.

Now the final list I used looked like this:

MoF with conversion beamer
10 Tactical SM, with Rocket Launcher, Flamer, Rhino
10 Tactical SM, with Rocket Launcher, Flamer, Rhino
10 Tactical SM, with Heavy Bolter, Melta gun, Rhino
7 Scouts, with Camo Cloaks, Sniper Rifles, Rocket Launcher
Dread with Plasma Cannon, Heavy Flamer
Dread with 2 x twin-linked Autocannons
Landspeeder Typhoon
2 x Predator with Autocannon, Heavy Bolter
Vindicator

As one easily notices, no big changes made even though I tried really hard. But at this point I was really sure, that the change of the HQ choice would enable me to change my style of playing against the 'nids. If it worked out and how will be told in the next part of this article, following the next days...

Long time no see

Its been a while since the last post, and this post is basically just a vital sign to show that this blog is not dead yet.

The reason for not updating this blog is, that we managed to start a campaign and that I set up an additional blog for this campaign in German. It is basically just there for presenting the rules of the campaign and some battle reports and I think the readers are almost only players from the campaign.

In this campaign I am playing my Space Marine Army Iron Knights, which I continuously keep painting. Thus there is no time for painting many Orcs or other stuff. But I as soon as I have some small updates I will post them here and on my DakkaDakka Blog.

But in the recent time I am working hard on my diploma thesis and spare time is getting really rare. In addition I am facing an surgery on my knee the next week and will be out of order for some days..

Cheers
Gewaltatron

A disaster & Pics

Not wasting any words on the ridiculous reasons why, the first day of our campaign can be summerized as a disaster. We were just able to play the first of our two games, the Kill-Team match. It was won by the loyal alliance. Allthough this game was very funny and very fast, the campaign-start could not have gone any worse. Disappointed, I hope to find some motivation to set up a second meeting.

But the upside is, that I painted some of my Space Marines and I am currently working on my librarian (pics later).


Here now some pictures from our first campaign day:

Preview: Campaign start set

Next week on Thursday it is a holiday here in Germany (ascension of Jesus) and we  decided that this would be a perfect day for finally starting our campaign. The rules are (up to small modifications in the size of the armies) set and delivered to all players. Unfortunately the rule book is in german and contains graphics without permission, so I will not post them here officially.

Participating are two alliances,  the 'loyal' forces consisting of Matthew's Imperial Guard and my Iron Knight Space Marines and the 'traitors' consisting of Mike's Iron Warriors and Tarek's Lost and Damned (using Imperial Guard rules), respectively.

The first campaign-day will include two games, one pre-fight and the first real mission.
In the pre-fight the Imperial Guard and the Lost and Damned will face each other in a 'Kill-Team' game using the new 'Battle Missions' rules.

The first real mission will be 1k pts. of the Imperial Guard vs. 1k pts. of the traitors, allied by 0.75k pts. Iron Knights and Iron Warriors, respectively.

The game will be a capture & hold mission with deployment chosen by the winner of the pre-fight.
The Space Marines, loyal and betrayers will start in reserve.

This so far, further informations will be presented when the campaign day has arrived. Hopefully with some nice pictures.

Quick WIP: Stern Guard I

Just a quick preview: These are 5 guys of my Stern Guard unit(s). This is just a WIP post and therefore mold-lines maybe there, shoulder pads and back pads are missing, heads and shoulder pads are actually not fixed yet. And of course the legs of one of the veterans are still missing. These guys are actually not forming a single unit but I have no more meltas left, thus I am not able to build the missing combi-meltas currently. For the Sergeant (the guy w/ the power fist) I did a conversion, placing his bolter under his p-fist with an ammunition belt.


Please  forgive the poor quality of the pictures, they were just taken in between.

Maptest & Symbol

Well, I spend some time getting comfortable with vector grafics (Inkscape) and changed the first test map. I replaced the hex grid by a new one and I did some symbols for three of the participating armies, namely Nurgle SM, Iron Warriors and Iron Knights. Also I made some test symbols for three buildings, the power station, the shield generator and the command bastion.

This is not finished and just some impressions of how I waste my time at the moment ;)

Rearranging & Map-Test

As mentioned in the last blog one of the main reasons why our campaign has not started yet is that one of our players is not participating any more. The last days I spent a lot of time taking a look at the 'Mighty Empires' and 'Planetary Empires' expansions of GW, in some WDs. And without knowing the exactly rules (at least not for 'mighty empires') I thought of planing a mapbased campaign for the rest of us 3 players. But since I have currently no money (as mentioned last time) I will not be able to buy me any of those two expansions and so I started creating my own map. This map turned out pretty well and I think I will start creating some campaign rules in the next days. The map was done with Gimp and contains 32 Hex-tiles, I was not sure about the number of tiles so I randomly took 32 because this number of tiles fitted best. Icons for infrastructure and the armies have to be produced as well. I will do this after talking to the other two players.

One advantage of this computer generated map is, that I will be able to put it online and the other players  will be able to see it anytime and everybody else who wants to.

So here is the test map. Comments are welcome (as always)

There's life in the old dog yet

Hi there,
long time no post but I  finished my exams and will know start to write my diploma thesis and hopefully have more time for the hobby again.
But I did play some games with my Iron Knights and I am unbeaten so far. Some 1k games against Tyranids and Iron Warriors, and some 1.5k games against Iron Warriors and Nurgle Chaos Space Marines. But I think it is merely  a matter of time before I am allowed to taste the bitter taste of failure.

Well, but since there is a new year (ah, btw. happy new year) I have some plans - but they are far from resolved. So here we go:

• paint more! - Yes I have to paint more! I have to finish my Space Marines at all costs, otherwise there will be no way I will be able to start a new army without getting over-challenged.
• sell old stuff! - I have got a lot of old GW things, particularly not even assembled that I have to get rid of. These are: Vampire Counts, Tyranids and some Chaos, Tomb Kings And May be my:
• Beasts of Chaos! - yes they are finally back, arriving at February and I had the opportunity to take a look at the new codex last week, it is very fine and some new models are also very nice (but the minotaurs are awful!). But I will decide how to move on with my army in February , earliest.
• Necrons! - Hell,.. I was this(!!) close to get me a Necron army, I really love them, I would really love to paint them and I think they will be finished very fast (fast for me) BUT: see above and there is no
  
• MONEY! - Its all about the money, in the next months it will not be easy to save some money and especially not for the hobby. I have to pay my kitchen and college tuitions have to be paid next month, so I think I will not be able to afford me a new army. But in a way this is not so bad for the first point mentioned above.
• play more and get the damn campaign started ! - Ever wondered how this blog is titled and never wondered why no campaign game has started so far? This is because of several events, e.q. first of all the father of one member passed away in November and second one of our members has a not called me in months! I am sick of calling people and never reaching them! But I hopefully will be able to launch the campaign soon!
• the real life! - I have planed to spent more time with doing sports and of course I have to write my diploma thesis. Two things that could work against the above mentioned points but I will do my best...

so far for my 2010.

Sergeant finished

I recently finished my Sergeant from the Black Reach Box. And took that opportunity to take some pictures because I  learned (but still have to learn a lot) something about taking pictures from a tutorial.

Lack of Updates

Sorry for this lack of updates.
I am ill and I have to study for my last exam. But nevertheless I've been busy doing some work on my Iron Knights. Most of it was trying to find conversion ideas for my command squad ( will be used in the first mission of our campaign ) and my Stern Guard. Additionally I finished the 'rule book' for our campaign (up to some minor changes), it is about 9 pages. There are two reasons I will not give it free for download: 1. it is in German and 2. it contains graphics that would - if published - maybe violate some copy rights. But maybe if I will find some time in the next days I will translate it and post a version here without graphics.

Speaking of conversions I did start to convert my 'Champion of the Emperor'-Model to a company champion with power-sword and combat shield. The shield was made of plastic card and has the form of the chapter symbol a cross crosslet. Maybe some pics in a couple of days here.
But I also painted some Marines and assembled my Vindicator and my Drop Pod. I HATE DROP PODS !!!!! It was a absolute horror to build this thing up! There was a point where I was thinking about throwing this thing against the wall. But I decided to save this 25 €...

So again no pics, sorry they will follow, but at least a vital sign.

... there's something out there...

my current armylist which i am building up:

HQ:
Captain: terminator armour, storm shield, Auxilaris and Claw (175)

Troops:
10 Tacticals: meltagun, multi-melta, combi-meltagun, teleport homer (200)
+ Rhino (35)

10 Tacticals: lascannon, flamer, power-Weapon, plasma pistol, teleport homer (225)
+ Rhino (35)

5 Scouts: snipers, missile launcher, cloaks, Telion (150)

Elites:
Dreadnought: multi-melta ,heavy flamer (115)
+ Drop Pod: locator Beacon (45)

5 Assault Terminators: hammer/shields (200)

Fast Attack:
Landspeeder: multi-melta, heavy flamer (70)

Attack Bike: multi-melta (50)

Support:
Predator: Auto-Cannon, heavy Bolter sponsons (85)

Vindicator (115)
------------------
(1500)

test version of campaign missions

I spend nearly the whole day to set up this test version of the campaign rules. They are not finished and need to be reviewed and some details are missing as well as a history part. Comments are welcome:

Campaign (click here)