Tournament Report

I went to an 1875 point 40k tournament on saturday with my Mechanicus War Convocation. All games were Maelstrom with points for winning which were then modified by how much you killed/lost during the game. I won with 3 victories, 2 of which were tables as well. (images from Black Dragon Miniatures Facebook page).

My first game was against Seb and his Grey Knights / Imperial Knight. This game was perfect for me, not so much for Seb. With Grey Knights being the small, elite army and Mechanicus hitting like a crap tonne of bricks it was only 3 turns before he took the last model off.

Servitors were not yet deployed when this was taken.

Game 2 was against Dave, manager of Games Workshop Coventry. This was the one I didn't table, but wasn't far off. The scenario was against Dave from the off, you get to draw 1 objective for each objective you are holding at the beginning of your turn and Dave had everything start in reserve. Every time he got onto an objective I just poured fire onto it until either he was off of it or simply gone. It also helped me that Dave had not played Mechanicus before so when I had things like the Taser Assassins going in at strength stupid can drowning things in wounds/glances it took him by surprise. But he deserves it when he tries pulling "Force gives all my guys instant death in combat", my arse does it!!

Final round was against Phil and his ... list. He had a Teseract Vault, 2 Monoliths and a Lord of Skulls. Not sure why he didn't bring his usual Heretics and Traitors list but that's what he brought. He drove forwards and then went down to my ridiculous amount of firepower. Apart from the Skulldozer, he got tasered back into the warp (whoop go Canticles for 9 taser dudes!!!). My Knight then kicked the last monolith off of the table.

Turn 3....

Well one of my opponents might not have had fun but everyone else seemed too. It was a good event with a decent variety in armies and play styles. I think my MVP would easily have been the Taser Assassins, they took out a Venerable Dreadnought, Paladins, Centurions, a Librarian, some TH/SS Terminators AND a Skulldozer!!

Also all those people who say that the Cognis relic for the Cult Mechanicus is the only one to take is just plain stupid. The Skryerskull is easily much better with the ability to just go "tank hunters against that with EVERYONE" is so much better than "my plasma hits your flyer on a 5 instead of just 6's". I think I'll be taking it every time.

Fight for Desperation: Game 1

Our local GW is currently running a campaign called the Fight for Desperation. Pretty simple and they are using a mix of Eternal War, Maelstrom of War and Altar of War missions as well so there is a lot of variety in the scenarios. Also we must stick with our main codex throughout the whole thing, so I chose Cult Mechanicus as I just love the Tech Priest Dominus model and it's probably my best painted model to date.

The blurry picture doesn't do him justice.

My first campaign game was again Adam and his Imperial Fists. I got to choose the scenario so chose a Tau one from the Alter of War book. The idea behind the scenario is that they are testing out a new piece of tech so I thought it'd be ideal for the Mechanicus. I got to choose a unit (in this case my assassins) and they roll on the Tau Tech Toy Table for an upgrade, in this case a single ranged weapon in the unit gains Large Blast. Holy shit the 5 shot burst pistol just got stupid! After that it was just one fuck up after another to the point where we both did stupid stuff because why not. Adam thunderfired his own drop pod because it couldn't do anything and was annoying him, my Techpriest hugged Lysander and the Servitors zapped him and to top it off my last model, a lone Skitarii Ranger, attempted to jump off the roof of a building to commit suicide and survived to be gunned down by a Heavy Bolter. So yeah I got tabled but I learnt some things that'll be useful in the future. Don't keep rolling 1's to wound is probably a good place to start.

The Mechanicus Prepare for War

One of the local games shops is having a tournament in a little over a months time using the Throne of Skulls format (so 1875 points, bound or unbound, tactical objectives). I'll be attending with the Mechanicus. As I've decided that if I get the rest of the Skitarii painted in time I'll buy on of those big War Cohort bundles I'll have plenty of units to choose from. I'll then either take a War Convocation (the white dwarf formation) or a War Cohort formation (the bundle one) depending on what the bundle one does/needs. For now though I'll plan using the War Convocation as I have the rules for that. The initial list I've come up with is this:

Skitarii Battle Maniple (1030)

10 Vanguard - 100
- 3x Plasma Calvier
- Conversion Field
- Phospher Blaster
- Power Sword
- Digital Weapons
- Data Tether
- Pater Radium

10 Rangers - 120
- 3x Arc Rifles
- Arc Pistol
- Arc Maul
- Conversion Field
- Digital Weapons
- Omnispex
- The Skull of Elder Nikola

6 Ruststalkers - 190
- Conversion Field
- Data Spike
- Omniscient Mask
- Digital Weapons

5 Infiltrators - 185
- Flechette Blaster and Taser Goads
- Infoslave Skull
- Conversion Field
- Digital Weapons
- The Phase Taser

3 Ironstriders - 165
- 3x Lascannons

3x Dunecrawlers - 270
- 1x Icarus Array
- 2x Neutron Lasers
- 3x Cognis Stubbers
- 2x Smoke Launchers
- 3x Mindscanner Probes
- 3x Cognis Manipulators

Imperial Knight Oathsworn Detachment (425)

Knight Crusader - 425
- Rapid Fire Battle Cannon
- Stormspear Rocket Pod

Cult Mechanicus Battle Congregation (420)

Tech Priest Dominus - 105
- Eradication Ray
- Infoslave Skull
- Digital Weapons
- Conversion Field
- Raiment of the Technomartyr

3 Kataphron Destroyers - 165
- 3x Heavy Grav Cannon
- 3x Cognis Flamers

3 Kataphron Breachers - 150
- 3x Torsion Cannons
- 3x Hydraulic Claws

All I have done here is take the basics that I want/need and then fill in the gaps. All wargear, weapons and relics are free thank to the formation so I am only paying for the base cost of the models (hence the Dunecrawlers having ALL OF THE TOYS!!). I might not have much in the way of Strength D (as in, none at all) but I do have a lot of high strength weaponry at both long and close range to deal with anything big and more than enough guns and blasts to knock hordes down to size. I've also got the boost from Imperatives and Canticles so I can dominate both the shooting and assault phases with ease. Most importantly though, it's going to look totally bad ass all together on the table!!

The only problem I'm going to have is my complete and total lack of any psychic defence. I'm not going to be stopping any psychic powers at all, but if they're dead they can't cast powers :P

The Omnissiah's Wrath

Today the legions of the Omnissiah went into battle against the foul traitors of Khorne and their Daemonic allies. Due to the scale of the daemonic incursion a mighty War Convocation was mustered for battle.

The followers of Khorne prepare for battle

The Chaos had 2 units of Raptors, a unit of Warp Talons, a unit of Cultists, 2 units of Bloodletters, a unit of Possessed, a Helldrake, a Chaos Lord and a Bloodthirster with the S:D axe taken from the Daemonkin book.

My Mechanicus was built using the War Convocation formation from White Dwarf. The Skitarii consisted of 10 Rangers, 10 Vanguard, 5 Ruststalkers, 5 Infiltrators, an Ironstrider and a Dunecrawler. The Cult Mechanicus consisted of 1 unit of Kataphron Breachers, 1 unit of Destroyers and lead by a Tech Priest Dominus with the army backed up by a Knight Errant.

The Mechanicus stand ready

Playing with tactical objectives, we got the mission where you get a number of objectives equal to the turn number (not that it mattered in the end).

Turn 1 - Khorne: Khorne moved forwards. Then ran forwards.
Turn 1 - Mechanicus: Moved up with most units. Activated the +3 WS Doctrina for the Skitarii and then Canticle for +3 Strength. Despite my hindered shooting from the Doctrina I still managed to put some hurt into many of the chaos units. My assassins then charged into the Bloodthirster and annihilated it completely before it could even think about retaliating. Well the ones with the mini-uzi's and cattle prods did at least. The butter knives and DA CLLAAAAAWWWW's failed the charge. Still didn't stop me just 1 shotting the only threat to my Knight though :)

After that things kept going down hill for the Chaos. Yes 2 additional Bloodthirsters were able to be summoned but at the end of the game all that was left was a Helldrake on a single hull point that wasn't even on the table at this point.

As for how the Mechanicus played the 3 smaller forces work fantastically together, especially in the formation which makes them both affordable (points wise) and allows rules to cross over. The combination of Canticles and Imperatives is also extremely brutal, especially in combat. When the tasers went into that Bloodthirster they went in at WS7 and S9 with 4 attacks each (5 on the sarge). That's just crazy! I can't wait for more games using Skitarii and Cult together, although I doubt I'll get to use this formation for a while as I still need a Knight of my own as well as most of the Skitarii units (about 2/3 of the units I used were borrowed from my local store manager).

Cult Mechanicus Thoughts - Initial Game(s)

So the Cult Mechanicus are almost here. I've managed to use the White Dwarf rules to give the new battle Servitors a go and the Tech Priest Dominus as well and I'm pretty impressed.

The first game was 1k points and I allied them into my Skitarii against a BAngles Archangels Strike Force (exterminatus supplement), consisting of a level 2 libby in termie armour, 2x 5 man termie squads with claws and 1x 10 man unit with Hammers and Shields. Librarian got invisibility, no prizes for guessing which unit he went in.

I had 5 Rangers with 2x Arquebus, 5 more Rangers with Arc weapons, 10 Vanguard with 2 plasma, a Dunecrawler, Tech Priest Dominus and 1x unit of 3 Kataphron Destroyers (the heavy weapons one) as well as a bunch of Skitarii relics I didn't particularly want to fill in the points a bit.

The Mission: Relic, 4x4 table.

As soon as I knew that Libby got invisibility I knew where this game was going. That power is ridiculous (although reading the rules I did play this wrong with my Cognis weapons) and every time I play someone they seem to get this one god damn power. I decided to have the Servitors take on one unit of Claws, the Dunecrawler the other with the Sniper Squad giving some help. I then have the Vanguard take on the termies with the other guys giving support after finishing off the smaller units. By the end of the game all he had left were 3 Hammer Termies and that was it. I have the Dominus, 1 Servitor and the Snipers but most importantly he had the Relic. He said he enjoyed the game and that it was a fairly balanced list (mine). He changed his mind next game.

ROUND 2! FIGHT!!

Upped to 1500 for this one. I took the same list as before but added 10 Scions with 2x Hot Shot Vollyguns, a Lord Commissar with Carapace and Plasma Pistol, a Vindicare and a Level 2 Librarian with Biomancy and Force Thunder Hammer (clan raukaan relic). Considering the Librarian, Commissar and Vindicare did the sum total of fuck all over the course of the whole game the list suddenly became "broken beyond repair".

This time he took the same force org chart but had the 2x 5 man termie units, no 10 man unit, 2 librarians and Mephiston with several Sternguard units.

The Mission: Crusade (4 objectives), 6x4 table, Dawn of War deployment.

So what was the major change since the last game that made my list so broken? Was it the Vindicare and his super special ammo? Can't have been. He fired one shot that failed to wound and then died. Perhaps it was the Librarian and his Psychic powers? Nope. He never successfully cast a power nor could he be arsed to deny them. Must have been the Scions then. Wrong again they only took out half a Sternguard unit all game. Would you like to know what made my list so broken? My opponent did not get invisibility this time round. I then opened up with some serious first and second turn vollys of fire and killed off most of his units through sheer weight of fire. I then began picking off everything 1 at a time, slowly securing objectives as I went. Mephiston didn't stand much of a chance either. He was in a unit of 5 Claw termies that walked up the middle of the board only to be blasted by Vanguard and Kataphrons. Needless to say I felt a bit better after that game (had a bad day at work) but my opponent wasn't too happy prompting him to leave without helping to pack up (something that has really pissed me off recently).

Back on topic though. The new units actually performed really well. The plasma servitor let the side down a bit (he likes to lick the barrel of his gun) (I built the unit as 2x Grav 1x Plasma) but the other 2 did amazing no matter the target and the Dominus is just a marine killing, difficult to shift dick head, and that's without the relics/canticles!

Can't wait to use some more of these units, the battle robots in particular. Will get to try some stuff out tomorrow when the Mechanicus War Convocation goes into battle against the foul traitors of Khorne and their daemonic allies.

Trek Updates

So for my first post back I thought I'd start things off with some news on the Trek front. The Collective scenario set is now over. In the final tournament I came 2nd for the individual tournament but 1st over the set of 3. This snagged me the Assimiltion Target Prime (assimilated galaxy class). However as I don't play Borg or Mirror Universe I traded it with a Borg player for the Stargazer, a nifty little ship and Picards first command. Not a bad little ship for the points and some nice upgrades too including the Picard Maneuver. I also picked up the new USS Pegasus today, Rikers first ship out of the academy. It's not the best ship, fairly weak, no stopping power, no weapon upgrades and can't move faster than 3. But it is very maneuverable, cheap (20 points for the named) and being a science vessel can take a fair few tech upgrades. Speaking of Tech it comes with some Specialized Shields, a Phased Cloaking Device and (at last) an Escape Pod! For 1 point and a Tech slot you can save your captain and 2 crew members from death by pinging them out at the last second. Hopefully they'll be picked up before they're blown up.

Long Time, No Post

Been a while since I last made a post, but that's thanks to me finally getting a job. Now I've actually got to get up in the morning! I'm still getting used to my new routine and getting my training done but now I've got less time for the hobby but I'll have more money to spend on it. Already got some big plans. There may be a Stormblade sized treat for me in the near future :)