Fresh Colours

With the new guard codex I decided to repaint the army. The old colour scheme was honestly crap, literally 4 colours and a wash. Here is the first squad for the new scheme.

Simple squad of 10 melta vets. Nothing fancy but much better than before.

Here is Commander Mustache, AKA British Strakken. That coat is surprisingly detailed. So far he's only died in game but i'm hoping that's just new model curse breaking in.

And from the back, I'm quite proud of completing this guy using only a standard brush, even the Mustache and aquila's are only done with a standard.

And finally, my tester Scion. I've gone with blue+silver to make them stand out from the regular guys and give me a break from painting grey and red :P

Imperial Guard, My Thoughts Part 3 - Elites

So Elites now, got a few changes to this section including the replacement of Stormtroopers and loss of Marbo.

Militarum Tempestus Platoons: The new version of Stormtroopers. Pretty much the same but without spec ops and can Rank Fire. Only difference between these guys and their own book is that these guys are not scoring but use Guard orders instead. I've been running a unit of 10 with 2 Volyguns in a Taurox Prime with Missile and Autocannons for 250 points. They have been working well but they've only actually received orders once maybe twice so I'm thinking of sticking them in as allies from the Tempestus book so that they're scoring and using a basic Commissar for the mandatory HQ as they're exactly the same in both books. They won't be able to receive orders now but when they go charging up the board they'll get to hold enemy objectives instead.

Ogryns: A great, hulking wall of meaty stupid. The only thing that stopped me getting them in the old book was the fact that they were metal. They're a fun unit but a costly one. for 40 points per model someone with T5 and 3 wounds isn't bad but with that 5+ save they are simply not competitive. Would absolutely take them in friendly games though.

Bullgryns: Riot Ogryns. I would take these guys in competitive games as well as friendlies. With the Slabshields they're a walking Aegis line and if the enemy shoots them they're not shooting what they're protecting, so that's win win. However my ideal unit would probably be 5 with Brute Shield and Mauls and a Ministorum Priest tagging along. 335 points for something that will walk up the board and batter the ever living shit out of what ever is unfortunate enough to get in their way.

Ratlings: 10 BS4 Sniper Rifles for a measly 100 points but they can run after shooting? Yes please!!

Wyrdvane Psykers: IE Psyker battle squad. Can take anything except telepathy. Meh.

Second Guard Game

Today I played my second new codex game, 1500 points again and against a potential tournament Tau list. My list wasn't competitive but not a push over either. In the end though my lack of high strength shots meant that I couldn't reliably deal with the riptide. I also feel that loosing first turn was damaging to me as I lost a fair bit right off the bat including my heavy weapons squad and company commander (Yarrick was my Warlord). At the end of turn 5 I only had my Taurox Prime left while he still had about 1/4 of his army winning 3/0 on secondary objectives (neither of us had troops left).

What I learned was the a unit of 2 Wyverns are DEFINITELY WORTH IT. I could not stress that more, 130 points of awesome. They easily did more than anything else in my list. Also I need more high strength weapons, not just for Riptides but for vehicles too.

Imperial Guard, First Game

Today I had my first new Guard game. 1500 points VS another Guard player with their first game with the new dex too. 4x4 table down the local GW, simple kill points.

I was actually surprised at the size of the forces considering it was 1500, I know guard are cheap but we got a lot of models in. The lists were similar, mainly infantry back up by tanks of some variety. He'd taken Creed and got Guard traits 5 and 6 so Creed was knocking out 4 orders every turn at 18". My Company Command Squad got preferred enemy. What I learned from this game was a couple of things.

Tank Commanders are awesome. Pask was in a Vanquisher with an Eradicator near by, using the tank commander shoots first at something else order they destroyed a transport then tried to blast the squad apart (bad scatter saved them). Shoot then smoke was another annoying one as last thing I needed the Russ's I couldn't really hurt to have is cover as well.

Fixed size blast of Deathstrikes. With Deathstrikes now having a fixed, 10" blast and there being a 10" blast marker it's much easier to work out what exactly has been hit by the nuke. Also firing on a 3+ on turn 2 then 2+ on turn 3 means they are much more likely to fire, their job then is to drive up the board at full speed and burn stuff with heavy flamers and just generally be annoying.

Wyvern's are filth. I used a squadron of 2 for a mere 130 points. They are surprisingly accurate and put out a lot of wounds. "Oh but they're AP6, they wont kill anything" the internet says. Doesn't matter what the AP is, when your squad is taking 21 wounds on 10 guys you're going to be taking a lot of casualties.

First Rank Fire + Scions. I ran my Scion unit as 10 guys, 2 hot-shot vollyguns, Taurox Prime with Missiles and Autocannons for 250 points. They went up with my 2 chimeras and when the Scions jumped out they First Rank Fired at a unit of vets and just wiped them out with no problem. 21 lasgun rounds, a las pistol round and 4 vollygun rounds will do that :P

Orders on Command Squads. Specifically the Master of the Ordinance. An artillery round with tank hunters, ignores cover or even split fire is a powerful thing, especially for only 20 points.

Like I said in a different post, I'm going to enjoy using this book.

Imperial Guard, My Thoughts Part 2 - Troops

Troops today, it'll only be a quick one as it's late.

Platoons:
Pretty much same as before but without characters which means no "send in the next wave" or outflank everything. My typical loadout is a cheap command squad, some infantry squads with just a grenade launcher and some heavy weapon squads. Occasionally I'll also stick a wannabe-marbo unit in for fun too (special weapons squad with 3x demo packs). Cheap and easy to use, that's what guard are about.

Vets:
Veterans squads are 10 points cheaper base and the doctrines are also cheaper. Only Harker survived here and he lost infiltrate and stealth but gained relentless and Payback gained rending. I'll still use the same loadouts as before for my vets but at least they're cheaper now.

Chimera:
Gone up by 10 points and I can't work out why. It's not really gained anything, just lost 3 firepoints to be able to fire 6 lasguns. Better than the normal Taurox in my opinion.

Taurox:
Meh, take a chimera. For 15 points more you get +1 front armour, 2 more transport spaces, more guns, the turret weapon only has 1 less strength but 1 more shot and you can issue orders from it.

Taurox Prime:
Better. I like this one. It's got a second gun and it's fast with BS4 which means it can go 12" up the board and fire both weapons. Mine has Missiles and Autocannons for a neat 100 points. Expensive for a transport but it works well for Scions.

Star Trek Attack Wing

At Salute I picked up a copy of Star Trek Attack Wing. I like Star Trek and enjoy playing X-Wing but still had reservations about this. X-Wing simulates the fast paced dogfighting of fighters where this doesn't really happen in Star Trek, the Enterprise is certainly nothing to an X-Wing in terms of speed and manoeuvrability, but they use the same system with some minor tweaks.

The starter scenario is enough for 3 players with even points, so that's we did. Immediately we noticed some changes. In X-Wing you tend to roll about the same number of attack and defence dice, in Attack Wing you have a lot more attack dice. Also despite the same manoeuvre templates being similar the normal turns aren't as steep which gives the feeling that it takes ages for the ships to turn around. The ships also have a basic version (EG Galaxy Class) and a Unique version (EG Enterprise D). The unique one has a special ability and a slight stat tweek (+1 shield, things like that) for just a few more points then you put the captain on, whereas in X-Wing you get the pilot as part of the cost of the ship.

Anyway actual game play was about the same but went quicker and had a couple of hiccups from some of the tweaks. Overall though we enjoyed it and ended up going back to pick up another ship for each faction. Shame the Defiant was in stock otherwise I would have had one of those as well. Can't wait for Voyager and the Borg to turn up later this year either (Transphasic Torpedoes have an attack value of 10!!!!). If you can get a copy give it a go, or if you know me ask me for a game some time, i've got 2 Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Dominion ships.

Astra Militarum, My Thoughts Part 1 - HQ

So Astra Milit... sod this stupid name, Imperial Guard have now been out for a few days. I've been looking over the codex and overall I'm impressed. Some things I liked are gone (MARBO!!!! NNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!) and some other stuff has gotten better. I'll break it down section by section and give my views on it.

Grumpy Gamers

This one is a bit of a rant, feel free to read but I'm just venting.