Road to Adepticon- 39 Days and counting

As most people know I played at the Bay Area Open last weekend and I did well early on, but on day #2 I stumbled a bit.

Here was my list:

Coteaz
Draigo

10x Paladins - 4x Psycannons, Brotherhood Banner, Warding Stave, mix of weapons
1x Paladin - Hammer
3x Henchmen - 1x Banisher, 2x Warrior Acolytes

10x Interceptors - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo
10x Interceptors - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo

I took this list because it was so fast. I keep saying that mobility is very important in 6^th edition and this list let me put my money where my mouth is.

It performed very well and I managed to climb my way up to table #4 on day #2 where I lost to the eventual winner. Even the games that I lost were very close and I had a chance to win each of them. That is the sign that you are close to having a good list when you are not getting blown out, and the games that you lose are close.

Adepticon

So it is time to get ready for Adepticon and I have 39 days to do it.

Here is the list I am thinking about right now

1850 Points of Grey Knights:

Coteaz
Draigo

10x Paladins - 4x Psycannons, Brotherhood Banner
10x Strike Squad - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo
10x Interceptor Squad - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo

Dreadnaught 2x Autocannons, Psybolt Ammo

Dreadnaught 2x Autocannons, Psybolt Ammo


 

There you have it. It reminds me a lot of my Nova Open 2011 list.

 

Here is a list of items that I want, but I am not getting because I do not have the points:

Warding Staff:  I really like the 2++ save in assault. This is very good for tanking nasty creatures and thunderhammers.

Psybolt Ammo on the Paladins: Even though it is only 6 models, and less cost efficient than the power armored grey knights, it still comes in handy.

Cheap scoring units: I like the ability to keep scoring units in reserve and then walk on the board to an objective that you have placed behind a piece of LOS blocking terrain. Most of the time when you have combat troops you are wandering around killing and you are often out of position for objective holding, or they can be shot at or engaged and killed.

The problem is, where am I going to get the points to pay for them?

Back from the Dead

Alright, time to get going again.

Every year I play my last tournament in November and start up again in February.

So on the agenda for me this spring I have:

Slaughter in Space GT 2000 points and 6 rounds

Los Angeles Ca Feb. 16-17

 http://www.slaughterinspace.com/

Bay Area Open 1750 points 7 rounds

Antioch Ca. March 2^nd and 3^rd

http://www.frontlinegaming.org/community/bay-area-open/warhammer-40000-championships-rules-scenarios-and-prizes/

 

Adepticon 1850 Points 4-8 rounds

Chicago IL. April 18^th – 21^st

 ^{http://www.adepticon.org/}

 

Those are the big events and I should play in some RTTs in between.

Dakka Dakka Battle Report

I played against Jim who is JY2 on Dakka Dakka. He is a prolific batrep writer (I remember when I use to do that!) and you can read about our game here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/505250.page

Batrep thoughts:

This was my first game after my annual winter break from the game. I was a little rusty and I need to re-read the missions. I could have passed off the relic, and I did not know that heavy support choices gave 1 VP in big guns never tire.

I also am very lackadaisical about the victory points. I need to have a fast moving unit or two in my list for line-breaker (I think I will convert a strike squad to interceptors), and I ignored first blood. I could have killed his tervagon that only had 3 wounds left on turn #2, but I ignored it because it was out of gants. I also need to be more protective of my Warlord and it should have been Coteaz since he is more likely to be in the rear with the gear.

In this game you will notice that I took a Grey Knight Grandmaster instead of Draigo. I have a lot of people ask why I did that so this is the answer:

Draigo vs. Grandmaster

With Draigo he makes the Paladins scoring so he can use grand strategy for something else. He can also buy solodins if that is what you want for some cheap troops. He is still a beast in assault, and is very durable. His downsides though are points, lack of AP2 weaponry. He also tends to make you want to keep your paladins together instead of combat-squading to tank wounds (I prefer to combat squad, but sometimes due to mission, and opponent it makes more sense to keep them together).

You have to take a Grandmaster if you do not take Draigo because you have to use Grand Strategy to make them troops. The Grandmaster is a lot more customizable than Draigo is because you can give him grenades, servo skulls and you get to choose his weapons like a psycannon or even a warding staff.

There is a third option of course and that is to not take any type of grandmaster at all and save 250-275 points. That is a lot of points that you can spend on 10 Purifiers/some strikes/a storm raven/a dreadknight/ or a couple of dreadnaughts. The downside is that you will not be able to make your paladins scoring which means that your opponent is more likely to ignore them, and there have been many games where I have been left with only my paladins, and if they were not scoring I could not hold any objectives. 

Question in!

Would you drop dreadnoughts for Dreadknight+Draigo? Because I saw you mention intending to shift to Dreadknights. I am a new player, been playing quite a bit but oddly there's v little decent GK player in my country. So would appreciate your insight if you have a moment.

I currently run a striker spam list with 50 strikers, 2 Dreadknights, Coteaz and a cheap prescience inquisitor.

The Grey Knight build you are running is good one. Massed strikes with Coteaz and some Dreadknights for mobility and durability are quite formidable.Hulksmash runs a list like that and does well with it.

Adding Draigo and Dreadknights

Draigo is good, but he is not 275 points worth of good unless you are running paladins, and then he brings a lot to the table (making them troops and taking wounds).

Dreadnaughts on the other hand would add something to your army. They add anti-aircraft fire (twin-linked strength 8 shots), and with the amount of psychic powers that you see in 6^th edition their aegis is a great defense (anything targeting a unit within 12” makes a leadership check at -4). I did not realize until this game that they still have a role in my army with the amount of maledictions being thrown around these days. 

Dreadknights are good, durable, and they can be made fast for a ton of points. They are good in your strike list for counter assault (since strikes suck against a good assault unit). They also add some durability with their 2+ saves and toughness 6 that the strike squads don’t have. So I would keep them in your list if I was you.

 I am thinking about a GK build that has everything with a 2+ save in it and in that case I was thinking about dreadknights, but I am on the fence with them overall with paladins since they are rather redundant. In all honesty, I have never used them and I need to experiment with them a bit to get a better understanding of them.

I hope that helped.

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.