Militarum Tempestus

This is just going to be a quick rundown on my thoughts for Mini-Dex: Stormtroopers.

Models:
The Scions are fantastic. Definitely going to get some of these and with something like 17 heads in the box for 5 guys there will be spares to put on my existing, badly painted guardsmen.

The Taurox next. Almost everyone has said "it's crap" or some variation of that. I disagree. I think the overuse of heraldry and horrible colour scheme GW chose make it look worse than it is. With very minor work these things could look much better (just look at my stormraven for example, very simple conversion).

Rules:
Only had a quick glance at the rules in White Dwarf but I like them. Basically they are Stormtroopers but in small platoons and without the spec ops rule (but have deepstrike and move through cover, 2/3 spec ops options, as standard). Most importantly though is that they may First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire with their HOTSHOT LASGUNS!!!!! ABOUT TIME!!!!

Taurox is not bad for the points. 50 base with the option to take different weapons. 11/10/10 so not very tough but a razorback is only 5 points less base and can only carry 6 people compared to the Taurox's 10. I can see my command squad's one of these being my AT-AT quite easily.

Future:
So what does this mean for the IG themselves? I can easily see Stormtroopers coming out of the main book and slotted in as allies specifically from this book. It would be a shame but it makes sense not only for profit but for fluff too. Stormtroopers are not part of the main IG army, they are placed in as-needed. Just like (with very few exceptions) Valkyries are not part of a guard army, they are part of the Navy and loaned to the Guard.

APOCALYPSE!!!!!!!!

The Champions of the Apocalypse

As promised, the pics from Sundays apocalyptic Tale of Many Gamers battle. Despite the long waits during the enemies turn, having to take it in turns to fire and me having to leave early (god damn relatives and their birthdays! :P ) it was a great game. Shame I couldn't use my Strategic Asset card, firing one of those apocalyptic barrage templates instead of overwatching would have been funny as hell to see it go off!

The Enemy Returns

Yesterday my Iron Hands got to have a 1750 point game against a friends Death Guard now he's back in town. Our games are usually quite close so it's always fun to play each other and we both tried some new things out.

His list was a nurgle lord on bike, 4 units of 7 plague marines, 7 bikers, defence line with quad gun, hellbrute with lascannon and daemon prince of nurgle. Mine was a chaplain, master of the forge, 10 assault marines, 3 units of tac marines in pods, assault centurions, venerable dread, ironclad dread and a unit of 3 rapier laser destroyers.

Over all it was pretty even, that damned prince managed to get enfeeble and iron arm because that's what nurgle needs. Like I said though it was pretty even, then his bikers got into my assault centurions and chaplain (which were enfeebled) and it started going down hill for him right there. The cents took out all of the bikers while the lord knocked out the chaplain. The lord then beat the crap out the cents too (god damn enfeeble!!) while I slowly whittled his army down with numbers.

In the end it came down to his lord against my master of the forge with conversion beamer and shield eternal. Eventually though I managed get through his T6 and 3+ armour to kill the bastard.

Since then I've tweaked the list to make it more effective. Changed some wargear around, taken out the conversion beamer completely and upgrading the assault marines to vanguard vets being the main ones. HOPEFULLY I can get a battle report done with the list on saturday, keep meaning to do one. There will be pictures going up sunday though, got the tales apoc game so it should be a good one!

Clan Assemble!!

So I've recently done some working out on excel to found out just how many points my Clan comes to. As it currently stands, WYSIWYG (Contemptor counting as an Ironclad) with no allies, buildings or lords of war my Clan comes in at 3500 points dead. Damn, that's quite a bit! I started these guys with a few scattered marines I had lying around back when the 6th ed codex came out, now it's over half way to full Clan strength. Currently it breaks down like this:

HQ: 1280 Points, 9 Units, 17 Models
Troops: 915 Points, 5 Units, 50 Models
Elites: 630 Points, 4 Units, 10 Models
Fast Attack: 380 Points, 3 Units, 16 Models
Heavy Support: 295 Points, 2 Units, 4 Models
Total: 3500 Points, 23 Units, 97 Models

All of the upgrades I've used are how I would field the unit actually in game. Of course if I spammed upgrades like a mad man to get it up to the most number of points I could it would be much higher, but what's the point in that? It wouldn't give an accurate representation of my force. Also transports are counted as part of the squad they are attached to for units and the HQ section includes the units in my army that count as HQ's but don't take up a slot. I could tweak it slightly (swap Vaylund Cal out for a normal Techmarine) to have a legal army with duel force org.

First Playtests

So the initial playtests have been done and things are good. The power diversion is a truly powerful thing but the massive downsides make it risky, just as I'd hoped. During one of the games someone decided to full power to engines on everything and ended up getting annihilated thanks to the drop in defensive power.

What was a problem though was the high Crew values. They worked but were way to high so I'm going to bring them down a bit. Scoring damage before you even roll because of high crew vs low countermeasures was ridiculous.

Grandpa Smashy

Here is Grandpa Smashy, my contemptor dreadnought.

He's not quite done yet, just got his base to sort out and to paint the banner the goes across his chest. I'm going to have a chaos marine that is missing about 90% of his torso and his right arm from where he tried to stand up to Smashy Senior but just got a powerfist to the face instead. In fact it's this chaos marine right here.

The Grand Alliance of Humanity

The first faction for Void Assault to get rules.

The Alliance was formed in 2351 as a way to unite the human colonies scattered around the galaxy. Initially this was a good thing, all the Alliance planets prospered from it, but eventually the Alliance Council and the inner worlds got greedy. They increased taxes on the poorer outer worlds, began using slave labor camps and calling them "temporary oportunity centers" and eventually began making people who disagreed with them vanish. This eventually split the galaxy into a civil war between the Grand Alliance and the Republic of the Galactic Fringe.

Alliance ships are usually well equipped with well trained crews. They favour a streamlined shaped hull and are highly offensive in combat thanks to having many powerful weapons. The most notorious of their weapons is the Magna-Cannon. Only a single ship currently has access to it but threat of unleashing it is enough to send whole fleets scattering.

Main Strength: Extreme firepower.

Main Weakness: Mostly forward facing weapons, relatively slow compared to other ships.