A few random thoughts on Thousand Sons

I am a Thousand Sons player and I look at everything from that perspective and I am not seeing too much in the new codex that is speaking to me. It is still early on and we have not seen everything that they codex has to offer but the dribbles that we have seen does not look promising.

Right now it seems like the codex is filled with demonic engines which might make the Iron Warriors happy, but not the Thousand Sons players.

Thousand Sons

The cost for them is 150 points for 5 Thousand Sons Marines including the Aspiring Sorcerer and then they are going to be 23 points each with stays the same. The only difference is that they pay 35 points instead of the 70 points for the aspiring sorcerer that made them so expensive in the 4^th edition codex.

If you have the Mark of Tzeentch you have to take at least one roll on the Tzeentch power table. I thought one of the things that made the TS aspiring sorcerer not very viable was that they could only take one power. If they could have taken warptime for assault and a shooting power to add to the squad they would have been much better. If they still get only one roll (and it has to be on Tzeentch) then they are not going to be that great. I hope that they are at least mastery level 2.

Chaos Psychic Powers

Let’s break down the Tzeentch powers.

Primaris Power: Tzeentch’s Firestorm

First off, I always hate blasts. They are so inaccurate and if your opponent spaces out you will get about 2 models if you hit at best, but you have a 66% chance to miss. 

Then let’s take a look at the sequence you have to go through to kill a model.

1. You have to make your psychic check.
2. You have to hit.
3. Your opponent has to fail their Deny the Witch.
4.  You then have to roll a decent strength.
5.  Then you have to roll to wound
6. And then they have to fail their save.    

After all of that it seems like you have better chance to kill yourself from Perils of the Warp than kill your opponent.

1-2 Boon of Mutation

A friendly character takes a strength 4 hit for a roll on the Chaos Boon table. Well, a regular SM character will die on a 16%. That is not so great since you are paying a lot of points for them, and they are generally critical. Even with ICs who are more able to take a S4 shot the Boon table is not that great.  Then who knows what you will get and most of them are not even worth it.

3-4 Doombolt

An 18” Bolt of Change is still 6” less than the old one, and 6” less than what your TS Marines can shoot. The fact that you will want to use this for anti-tank shooting that range is very bad.  The fact that is a Beam attack is nice, but that range is still going to hold this power back.

5-6 Breath of Chaos

The new Winds of Chaos.

So overall they are just ok powers, maybe a bit below average. The other powers that they can take are Biomancy, Pyromancy, and Telepathy.

Pyromancy might be the weakest discipline. Biomancy is good if you are an assault character but Thousand Sons armies are not assault based. Telepathy is ok.  

Other Tzeentch Wargear

Icon of Flames: Mark of Tzeentch Only: Boltguns, Heavy Boltguns and Bolt Pistols have the Soul Blaze

Really…soul blaze?

Special Rules 

Mark of Tzeentch: Invulnerable Saves improved by 1 It was only good last edition because you get to cast and extra psychic power. +1 Inv save sucks.  

Demon of Tzeentch: Hatred (Demons of Nurgle), May Reroll all saves of 1. This one is a little bit better.

Psyker: May chose psychic powers from pyromancy, biomancy or telepathy. Tzeentch he must chose at least 1 psycic power from the appendant discipline. See above. Not that good.

Ahriman

For 230 points let’s take a look at his rules.

Power Armor, Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak Grenades. Ok, standard Marine equipment.

Inferno Bolts (AP 3 bolter rounds) standard for him, but I have never seen Ahriman shoot his bolt pistol.

Aura of Dark Glory: 5+ Inv save (meh)

Warlord trait:

Master of Deception: (1d3 units can infiltrate). At first I thought this trait was bad, but since TS Marines have such a short range that this might be useful. It might also be good if you have cultists.

Special Rules

Champion of Chaos: Has to give and receive challenges. Isn’t Arhiman a bit old for that foolishness?

Independent Character  

Mark of Tzeentch: +1 Inv save for a total of 4+ Inv. Standard for ICs.

Psycher Level 4:  The best in the game so far and able to cast 3 witchfire powers. The problems are that he is unlikely to get 3 witchfire powers, and his powers are not that great (see above)

Veteran of the Long War: Hatred Space Marines (but not Space Wolves?)

Live video broadcasting at Nova

 

 

 

This in from the 11th Company:

 

"Next week, the 11th Company will be live video broadcasting the top tables at the Nova Open starting next week Thursday roughly at 4PM Eastern time. http://www.ustream.tv/user/the11thcompany

 

We will have the players wear wireless mics, so you can hear their discussions during their game. We will have between game interviews with various attendees and guests, and have the channel open for players wanting to broadcast their game live before and after the tournaments during open gaming. Please join us in the chat room while watching the broadcasts live Thursday August 30th - Sunday September 2nd, or catch the archived broadcasts after the event."

 

Well I hope I can make it up to table #1 again like I did last year for games #6 and #8. Of course I am not planning on being there since I am talking an army that I have never played before.

 

 

Why I am opposed to Forgeworld in tournaments

I have gotten some flack about my opposition to forgeworld and a lot of people wanted to know why. Well in a random and poorly written manner, the reasons why are these:



Price

Here is a barrier to some people playing forgeworld. I know that this is one of the reasons why I don’t play with any. Don’t get me wrong, I am not poor and I own a ton of forgeworld dreads, land raider/rhino doors, and even 3 contemptor dreads. So why am I priced out of forgeworld especially considering how many armies I own, and after I just paid $75 for a rulebook? The reason why is that I will use the rule book many, many times over these next 5 years, and those FW doors I will use once or twice a month for many years to come. I have had my Thousand Sons FW Dreadnought for about 8+ years and I have gotten a lot of use out of him (and he is starting to show it).

Now let’s say that I wanted to add eldar hornets (think better vypers with 2 heavy weapons) to my army. They will cost me over $300+ to buy 6 or $150+ to buy 3. The problem I have now is it that I would only be able to use them once or twice a year in the events that allow forgeworld models/rules and even then only if I want to play eldar at each of these events. So I will not be getting much use out of my investment compared to the other armies I own.



Now there are also a lot of players that are less well off than I am. I hear the argument that the GW hobby is expensive and you should just expect to pay a lot of money to play the game. Well I question just how expensive the hobby is. There are a lot of FLGS that have a bazaars at their stores where people sell their unwanted models. You can pick up a lot of deals there for very cheap minis. You also have barter town and swap shops at some warhammer forums where you can horsetrade for models. Good luck doing that, or finding any Forgeworld for sale at a reasonable price. If you go on E-bay you can pick up ork and space marine units for pretty cheap not only because they come from the Assault on Black Reach box set, but because there are a ton of their models for sale. On the other hand forgeworld is still very expensive on e-bay and a lot of units closely rival their retail price. That is the wonders of economics and supply and demand at work. So if you are a student or anyone on a budget you would be hard pressed to add any forgeworld to your existing army.





Knowledge

Most people have no idea what anything in the forgeworld books even do. I do not own any Forgeworld books and I do not want to pay $50+ for each book (and piracy of them is not a reasonable option). I own every codex, and I know just about what every unit/army can do, not only by reading there rules, but by constantly playing against every army. I am still reading the 6th edition rulebook and the FAQs and trying to figure out how they all interact with the codexes and now you want to be familiar with 10 (or how many books there are out there) of huge books filled with a ton of equipment?



Also I question my opponents rule knowledge of his units. I play a lot of armies and I know a lot of codexes very well. I often times know my opponents codex far better than they do, so I know when they are making mistakes. Very often they misinterpret a rule, or forget some important fact all of the time. [Note: If you are looking for a good example of this look at the final game #7 of Wargames Con on Ustream. Ben Mohle had to constantly correct his opponent on all kinds of rules and wargear etc] How can I correct my opponents mistakes when I (and most people) have no idea how any of the forgeworld models/units even work? What if my opponent has an unfavorable ruling in the forgeworld FAQ and then he forgets to mention it or bring a copy of the FAQs then how would I ever know?



Confusion

Since a lot of people don’t know what forgeworld units can do, where do you learn? Sometime right before a timed tournament game seems like a very bad answer. Either your opponent is going to be telling you half remembered rules, or you are reading them out the forgeworld book right before a game under a time pressure is not going to end well. How long does it take you to understand some of the rules of these very convoluted units (Hades breaching drill, cassius assault ram) before a game? I have played with forgeworld before as part of the adepticon team tournament and there have been many times where they have even read the rules, and then when they have seen the model in action they are all shocked because they had no idea how devastating they can be. So how much time does it take to really understand the different forgeworld rules and get familiar with their rules? The funny thing is that this is the worst time to throw forgeworld in to the mix because everyone is going to be flipping through the 6th edition rulebook while they play to figure out rules, and forgeworld is going to slow down play even more. People who are playing forgeworld have to juggle knowing 6th edition, the 40k FAQs as well as Forgeoworld and their FAQs and do it in a timely manner?



Here is an example for you that happened last month at Wargames Con’s team tournament:



From Wolf 11x

“Come to think of it, I wish I had played an easy 3rd round opponent (with 20ish points instead of 34). Would have meant we wouldn't have faced some Hades Drill whatever-the-hell bull ! I will say we still beat them 15-0 despite having no idea what their units did (and never being shown actual rules). ”



From skank911

That Hades drill team was me, and y'all never asked to see the rules, I had offered to show the book.



From Wolf 11x

When I asked, "What do this do?" I was expecting you to fully explain it to me in good faith. Saying "It's like a Mawloc" was very misleading, whether intentional or not. To be fair, we would have spread out more if we knew what they did, but the game would have gone the same.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/150/418653.page#4441332



Expect to see a lot of that.



Balance

Everyone says that the codexes were pretty balanced in 5th edition with the FAQs updated the older codexes with the new equipments creating balance and now 6th edition adding allies to make up for some armies shortcomings. Now with the addition of forgeworld how can anyone know what would happen to balance without playing every single unit and model in all of the forgeworld books? GW has a hard time balancing there codexes and there are always units that are must haves in each list (ie. psybolt dreadnaughts) and there are going to be a lot of overpowered units in the forgeworld books, Since it human nature to always take the overpowered units and none of the crappy units in the book you will see all of the broken units. With allies and everything else how can you say that there are not a lot of combos out there that someone can come up with that are nearly unbeatable? Remember when the BoLS crew brought Reaver titans to Adepticon’s Gladiator tournament? They dominated that event because they thought of something that the TOs didn’t. I am worried that there will be abusive units and combinations that no one will even think of and then they will win because of it. Remember the nob biker craze of early 5th edition when they dominated tournaments? That was an example of an army that came out of nowhere, that no one had thought of before but the new rules made it a dominating build that no one had an answer for. Now they are not just talking about adding the few units in the Imperial Armor Apocalypse book, but they want to add everything and there is no way that will be balanced. No I do not know if that is true or not, but my guess is that it is. Why add new levels of complexity when you do not have to? It is not like 6th edition is so old and tired that you need to add some spice to make it interesting.



I would really like to hear what a lot of top players whose opinions that I respect think about having forgeworld added to GTs.

Countdown to the Nova Open: 60 days and counting!

Well it looks like we are down to only 60 days until the Nova Open and I (like a lot of you) are pouring over the 6 edition rulebook and the codex FAQs to figure out what to take. I am glad that they dropped 5^th edition and are going with 6^th. There is so much interest in 6^th, and everyone is sick and tired of 5^th edition. Now there is going to be a lot of interest in the event to see what is going to happen to the future of 40k.

I said that I was going to retire my Draigowing and it is time to start a new army. I am starting from scratch, so I have my work cut out for me to get it done in 60 days. I have a couple of ideas for a new army, and I do not know which way to go. The new rules opened up so many possibilities and I am sure that we are going to see a bunch of combos that no one saw coming do well at the Nova. 

At first glance it looks like Necrons got an even bigger boost (warscythes, no retreat gone, night scythes, etc)  which is surprising because they have been secretly the best codex out there. If you doubt me look at the tournament results...necrons have been a very small percentage of the field but they have won a lot of GTs and the ones that they didn’t win they had a very good showing. Compare this to Grey Knights which the conventional wisdom says is the best codex. We all know that they have had huge numbers of people playing them at tournaments, but they have failed to produce a lot of top finishes (oddly enough the exception that proves the point is adepticon).

The good thing is that I have several unbuilt armies, (and one of the reasons why I am nearly immune to GW’s price rises). I have it down to 2 armies and I have not made up my mind. This is rough without knowing what direction the meta is going to go, and I will have an army that is half built by the time I have a sense of it. Oh, well, I will just dive in and see what happens. It has a great theme, and I have a little practice playing it. The one downside is that I do not know if my painting skill is up to a level that will do it justice.

Road to the Nova Open

So I have to get a lot of test games in to hone skill with this army to get it up to a level so I can compete in one of the largest US GTs, and do well. The hard part is that I have to do it in 60 days so that means that I need to go to a lot of tournaments to do that. The problem is that it will eat into my hobby time. 

Here is my schedule of the events that I have planned. I am sure that there are going to be some other RTTs along the way, in addition to:

July 14^th

1500 RTT at Game Empire in Pasadena Ca.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/457767.page

August 4-5^th

I have a choice here:

The Golden Throne GT in San Jose

http://www.goldenthronegt.com/

Feast of Blades qualifier event or,

1500 RTT at Game Empire, San Diego

August 18^th

Feast of Blades qualifier at Imperial Outpost in Glendale Az

And then to cap it off:

August 30^th- September 2^nd

Nova Open Arlington Va.

Vehicles got better in 6th edition?

Alright, most of us know the changes to 6^th edition by now and a lot of people are wondering if vehicles got better or worse.

My answer to that is that we will not really know until a few months from now. If they are bad we will see a meta shift away from them, and if they are good you will see a move to even more of them.  

Now if I had to take a guess, I would say that vehicles got better and here is why:

It is much harder to kill vehicles now with one shot.

I know what you’re saying…what about hull points killing them in the long term? Yes it is harder to kill tanks in the short term, but easier to kill them in the long term. What this means though is:

  A) You have to allocate a lot more resources to kill them. In 5^th edition if you glanced a vehicle you could stun lock it making it not fire the next round. You could stop shooting at it at that point because the threat of it shooting was neutralized for a turn, and you could move on to the next tank. Now in 6^th edition what you have to do is keep shooting at it if you want it not to shoot next turn. Same goes when you hit a vehicle with a penetrating shot because in 5^th edition you had a good chance of wrecking it, and if you did that you did not have to allocate any more shooting at it for the rest of the game. Now because they are harder to kill you are only knocking off hull points so you have to keep shooting, and shooting, and shooting at it to wreck it. That is a lot of shooting over several turns that you did not have to do in 5^th.

  B) A vehicle with 1 hull point left is just as big of a threat as a vehicle with 3 hull points left. Here is another thought for you…all game you are shooting at vehicles and they are getting whittled down so that they are almost dead. For the most part now they are firing back still at full firing capacity (minus any weapon destroyed results of course). So for an example if you look at a comparison between a vehicle (predator) and an infantry squad (tac marines), the predator will still be firing and blazing away until it is dead in the later turns. If you allocate the same amount of shooting to tac marines over several turns they will take damage each turn and more and more marines will drop lowering their combat and shooting effectiveness. So each turn marines are taking damage their damage output is constantly diminishing from casualties, but the predators damage output stays nearly the same until it is dead. 

Cover saves!

Now you only have to cover 25% of the vehicle. There are many times when you try to get a 50% cover save you could not fire all of your weapons due to the way that terrain was configured. The downside is that it is now only a 5+ cover save, but the upside is that you are going to be getting it more often. 

Shooting and scooting
Now vehicles can shoot better on the move. Sure, you are only taking snap shots with the other guns after the first at 6", and if you are moving 12" you are snap shooting everything, it is still better than what you had before.  


The vehicle losers

I will tell you one group of vehicles that did get worse though, and we might be seeing less of…vehicles with no armor and 2 hull points. Yes, I am looking at you storm talon, venom, land speeder, sentinel, piranha, vyper, war buggys, and killa kans. With only 2 hull points you might survive the first shot, but the second will kill you. Add to this that you have no armor, almost everything is going to glance/pen you.

Also vehicles have to be a bit more weary of assaults. They are hit easier, but on the whole I think the gains out weight the losses. 

2 GTs in the last 2 weeks, and why I have no Apothecaries in my Paladin squads.

Well, the new job has been taking more time than the old job but it looks like I will have a bit more time on my hands going forward.

Slaughter in Space GT

At the Slaughter in Space in LA I went 1-2-1 which was one of my worst outings at a tournament. In my defense one of my games I lost due to time. I need to watch the clock when I play foot elder. I have literally lost more games due to time running out and only getting to turns 4-5 than actually losing by play. The Eldar are kind of slow (odd saying that about an eldar army) and it needs a full game to move out and take objectives, and shoot the opponents off of theirs just like Tau do. The tie game was to (oddly enough) to a paladin army. The game ended turn #5 and I think I could have won it on turns 6 & 7, 

The other game I lost was to the #2 player in the US (according to Rankings HQ) and his brutal Grey Knight list. It was a really close games but I made 2 mistakes:

#1. It was a kill point mission and I was shooting my Wraithlords at his Land Raider redeemer which was a waste of shots. I have not played my Footdar in a year and I have been playing my Grey Knights where a land raider packed with DCA are a huge threat. To the Foot Eldar they move forward, the get out, kill a screen of guardians and then they get taken out by dire avengers. The Wraithlords should have been shooting at his razorbacks and getting the ‘low hanging fruit’ of his weak kill points.

#2. Was not having Jetbikes. After Adepticon I was going to stop playing my Draigowing army and I was going to work on an all jetbike army. I decided to hold off on it because I have no idea how it will function in 6^th edition. I do not want to put all this time and energy into converting it and painting into it to have it be nerfed with the new rule set. So the current state of all of my jetbikes are disassembled at the moment. I was going to do a harlequin themed jetbike army so I was going to use the metal jetbike cowlings and hack up some metal harlequins. So right now all of my jetbikes are scatted over my workbench in a million pieces. I run 2 squads of 4 bikes with destructorlocs for not only some quick scoring units, but for a heavy flamer as well. What I did not realize is that I rely on them for anti-tank. I have posted in the past how good they are at taking out land raiders, but the fast moving shriken cannon and the singing spears are really good at killing vehicles. Footdar have trouble with anti-tank because they only have the wraithlords, and what strength 6 shooting they have, and I really felt the loss of the jetbikes from my army.

Game Empire GT

The other GT I went to last week was at Game Empire San Diego. I took my Draigowing and at 1500 points the army does not functioning as well as it does at higher point limits. I took:

Draigo

10 Paladins w/4 psycannons (fully upgraded of course)

10 GK Strike Squad w/2 Psycannons

2 Dreads

That is it.

The games I lost were to Mech Eldar. I just do not have the firepower to kill skimmers (especially after he took out my dreds really fast). So at the end of the game he just bum-rushed the objectives and contested/controlled all of them. I won kill points, but lost Capture and Control and Seize Ground. I thought his army was a very good list for the BAO mission set. I might try something like this in the future only trying to make the army a bit more durable to limit the kill point failure source. Maybe a bunch of Falcons with DAVUs would be better.

The other game I lost was to Battlewagon Orks. I normally do well against them, and I had just beaten 2 others in the tournament and this time I shot the heck out of the side armor of his battlewagons with several turns of Dreadnaught fire and psycannons, and  I ended up killing 1 Battlewagon on turn #2 when my army came on from reserve, then after 3 turns of fire, and after a ton of penetrating hits and glances I killed the second Battlewagon on turn #5 from assault. They were open topped for the +1 on the result table, but I could just not roll above a 3. I did immobilize one and then grot riggers fixed in the next turn. I lost a dreadnaught and my strike squad when my deep strike ended up going straight at him 10” to get lost in a sea of green. So the Battlewagons contested all of the objectives, and we tied 2-2 on kill points. That was a very frustrating game since I just could not kill those battlewagons.

I ended up with the 3^rd highest Battle Points, and middle-of-the-pack sports and paint. Again if was obvious that my army was missing something, It is very different when you have everything working well, and you have a lot of synergy, and then you take out an element, and your army does not work the same as it did. This time I really missed my Interceptors. My army was so slow without them and I could just not get to where I needed to be. They are a vital unit to my army doing well.

So as I said I am going to play out 5^th edition with the Draigowing because there is so much uncertainty with 6^th edition. I think the last run for them will be Wargames Con and possibly the NOVA Open if they are going to use 5^th edition.

Here are some thoughts about Apothecaries in Paladins squads  

Everyone wonders why I do not take the Apothecaries in my paladin squads and there are a few reasons why.

#1. Cost. You pay 75 points for the apothecary upgrade and for that you could buy 3 wounds worth of paladins. So he is not worth his points unless he can save 4 wounds (3 wounds he just breaks even). How often do paladins fail 4 wounds? Remember, you can’t use him on Strength 8 weapons or AP 2 weapons which are the ones that kill paladins. So if you extrapolate what those 4 wounds mean, it is very hard to do. Remember, you have to fail 8, 2+ saves to get FNP to save 4 wounds, and that is after rolling to hit and to wound. To give you an example of the numbers, it would take 6 turns of 3 war walkers with scatter lasers to do it, 144 bolter shots, 144 venom shots, etc. You see how difficult it is to make him worth taking.

#2. You lose squad flexibility. I like to combat squad my paladins. I find that 2 squads with their combat and shooting are better than one massive unit. In the 11^th company podcast last week I talked a little bit about the weakness of the paladins being able to target/assault one unit, and you limit that weakness with combat squads. You need to keep them to a 10 man unit to have the apothecary be able to give FNP to the most models. If you have him in a 5-man squad you opponent will just shoot at the other combat squad.

#3. Fire magnet. Here is an idea for you: I want people to shoot at my paladins. Paladins are very hard to kill so they act as a fire magnet. Every shot headed at them is a shot not going at one of my weaker units. You do not want to make the paladin unit so strong that people will not be tempted to shoot at them. You need them to be able to lose a few wounds so that they will take some fire. 

Back from the Dead!

Sorry about the lack of updates, but my new job does not let me have a lot of free time to write my posts. I do have an hour lunch that I don't know what to do with so I will start writing then.

So I have a few things that I would like to post in the next couple of weeks.

#1. The first is a recap of my Adepticon adventure.

#2. Then I wanted to do a couple of posts on Draigowing (what you would expect from the foremost authority on Draigowing). I will compare Paul Murphy's Draigowing to mine and break them down, and then I will write about how you beat Draigowing.

#3. Then the last thing is since Adepticon was the last tournament for the Draigowing I will post my new army, and my thoughts about it. Also I would like to document how it changes through theoryhammer to trail and error. 

Blackmoor's Draigowing goes to the BAO

Grey Knight on Grey Knight action!

After 2 weeks I have the internet!

I ended up taking my Draigowing to the Bay Area Open. This is what I took:

HQ

Draigo

Troops

10 Paladins w/4 Psycannons, 2 Hammers, 4 Halberds, 3 Swords, Brotherhood Banner

10 Grey Knight Strike Squad w/2 Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo

Fast Attack

9 Grey Knight Interceptors w/2 Psycannons, Psybolt Ammunition

Justicar w/Demonhammer

Heavy Support

Dreadnought w/2 Twin-Linked Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition

Dreadnought w/2 Twin-Linked Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition

I was going to write up an article about what HQs to take with Draigowing. The reason why is that each HQ adds something different like Coteaz has his abilities and cheap troops, Inquisitors add stubborn and Grenades, etc. I have been taking a librarian because he seems to add a lot to the army like shrouding to add to their cover save, sanctuary to help in assault. But I struggled in low point games (below 2000 points). 

Since I am the foremost Draigowing expert I had to find an answer to why the army struggles at around 1750 points. What I came up with is that the Librarian is really only a support character. He is not killing anything with shooting or assault, but only supports what you already have. So I was paying around 200 points just for a little boost, and at 1750 points that was a lot of change for a model that was not kicking butt and taking names.

So for 200 points (plus 40) I could take a 10-man GK Strike Squad with 2 psycannons and psybolt ammo. 10 Strikes can do a lot of damage with 16 shots at strength 5, and 4-8 shots at strength 7. They can not only dish it out, but they are troops, and can hold 2 objectives etc. They are have a lot more use and utility than a librarian that may or may not help you.

So I think that choice helped me at the BAO.

And my camera jacked up my pictures so I only got a few to download. The picture on top was the beginning of round #1. And this is how the game ended:

 

Blackmoor goes to the BAO

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I am without internet access until next weekend.

So last weekend I took advantage of the player base in LA I went to the Game Empire RTT in Pasadena last Sat. and I went 1-1-1. I played my BAO list with some minor modifications since I could not get my printer to work. I was upset at it because the RTT was at 1850 points just like the Adepticon Championships and I want to try out my list for that. Oh well. But 1-1-1 bodes well that there will be some good competition here to keep my game play sharp. I was tempted to go to Thou Shalt Game in Temecula CA, but I was wiped out, and dead tired so I did not want to take the time for the long drive and 4 rounds. Also I just played 7 games with the BAO format (and 10 games overall last weekend) so I wanted to take it easy and check out the local talent.

So at the BAO I went 6-1. I lost to the winner Christian’s Euro Mech IG. I was winning on turns 5 and 6, but I could not shoot his stupid Vendetta down that I had been shooting at all game, and he contested my Capture and Control objective so he had his, he had the Objectives, and I had Kill Points. Oh well.

I ended up tying for 2^nd place but the tie breaker was strength of schedule and I guess he had a stronger schedule than I did (although he did not play the winner and highest score Christian), so that dropped me to 2^nd and I did not even win best grey knight!

Oh well. I might put up some batreps when I get the internet set up, but I am really busy right now with my move and everything. I joined a league here and I am playing my Eldar, but before I get to fancy I need to finish my Grey Knights for Adepticon.  

My tournament cup runneth over!

So many choices of where to play!

So I am use to not having any choices of where to play a tournament. There is a game store (Empire Games in Mesa AZ) that hold an RTT about every other month, and then there are the other game stores in AZ that do not tell you when they are having them because they do not want their regulars to attend anywhere else, and they do not want outsiders to come in. I will say that Empire Games started to recently get a good crowd at their tournaments. It use to be that they only had about 10 players who were all new players and now they are getting around 25 players and some of them are pretty good (where were they for the last 3 years?). 

So I am moving to LA on Feb 29^th (should be easy to remember that date) and I have all kinds of choices and opportunities to play in tournaments. I am not a stranger to LA since I was born and raised there, and played in my share of tournaments. The reason why is because where I was living did not have a local game store (this is pre-Game Empire Pasadena) so to play any games of Warhammer I had to drive a long ways to RTTs (that got me into the habit of driving/traveling far for tournaments). The reason why I started to drive to tournaments is that it guaranteed me a day of gaming, and the side effect was that I started to get really good at tournaments.

So now in LA I am driving up to the Bay Area this weekend to play in the BAO, then next weekend I have to choose between a tournament at Thou Shalt Game in Temecula, or an RTT at Game Empire Pasadena. I do know that I have to be at GE Pasadena the next day on March 11^th to sign up for a league. Then the Ironman in Las Vegas on March 24th and from there are a bunch of other RTTs and tournaments so I certainly will have my dance card full (I hope) whenever I want to game. This is going to be a nice change for me.
  

Something I thought was funny...

Blackmoor goes to the Broadside Bash

Well it is that time of the year again for the Broadside Bash. I did not attend it last year because I hate the comp system. Two years ago another player and I played foot eldar and we got hammered on player judged comp scoring. So I was not going this year, but because of my reporting for 40k UK I try to take in as many events as I can so I signed up for it.

So now I am in the middle of a move back to LA and I am really busy, but I bought my tickets a while ago before I accepted this new job. I did not have any time to work on my army so I just took Chaos that I had no interest in playing. So what happened was that I just had too much stuff going on and I had to drop out after the second game.

Now here is a slightly funny story

I was driving home from LA to Phoenix and my car broke down in Fontana CA. I was about 100 miles away from where I stay in LA, and 250 miles from my home in Phoenix. I have a hybrid and what happens is that my engine shuts off in the middle of the freeway and has a warning on the dashboard that says “please pull over immediately”, as if the engine shutting off did not achieve that result.  It did this a couple of times and I took it to the Ford dealer and I was waiting for 3 hours for them to see what was wrong with it. Well, they told me that it was a water pump that cools the electric engine. I knew that is what it was because the same thing happened to me on the way back from wargames con in July, and it is a known problem with Hybrid Escapes. Well he left me in the waiting room to long because I hatched a plan B if I did not like what he was going to tell me about the repairs. So when he told me that it would be $700 to fix it, and that they would need a day to get the part so I would have to spend the night in a hotel and miss a day of work, it was time to execute plan B! So I went to the closest Toyota dealer and bought a new car. I traded in my Escape and I got a good price for it. The $700 defect cannot be found until you are driving for a while on the freeway (like I always am) so I just saved the money that I would have spent on a car repair, and just got a new car. When I woke up in the morning I had no idea that I was going to end the night driving home in something other than the car I had driven for the last 5 years. The funny thing is that I bought the car late last night and I had no idea was color it even was until I saw it this morning. I thought it was a dark metallic blue and it was a dark metallic grey that is almost black.