Random Thoughts 2099 (Change is good - or - Why the Negativity?)

Today I represented an individual that ended up going to JAIL ( incarcerated - locked up - put away - slammer - sing sing).  For those who may not know I'm a criminal defence lawyer.  Presure was on I was living my life like I was in a movie.  At the end of the day I return home to a family and life far removed from the toils of everyday life.  One of the things that makes this possible is my multi-decade long love of 40k.  I've seen this system of rules change ever since the late 1989's.  One thing that has kept me interested all these long years is my love of change.  5 editions of rules...  Hopefuly June of this year a 6th edition of rules.  This game has inspired my imagination since I was a young teenager.  I for one cannot waitv for the new rule system to drop.

With this background I pose the following question:

Why the Negativity?

We live in democratic society.  Why the hate for capitalism.  GW raises their price every year.  I continue to pay GW yearly to support my desire for a good life.  A good life to me is having a 40k army to play games and occupy my mind with.  40k occupies my mind.  I love thinking of tactics, strategies, fluff, and story driven fun to distract me from my every day toil.  

I proactively spend gobs of hard earned money (though not in the past 10 months) on this hobby of ours.  And I don't regret it: I wish I did.  It brings me peace of mind.  With this in mind I have trouble understanding the general negative vibe I've been picking up waiting for 6th edition to drop.  Pay the nominal fee to engage your mind and look forward to a new age of this great game we all play.  

Change is good.  I my self look forward to change.  This is a general call out to all the Bloggers and friends of mine out there; change is good.  

Random Thoughts 2099

Kaughnor

Back on track

Well, its been nearly two months since I worked on any models.  Life work family et cetera...  Glad to be back on track though with the lizardmen.  All these 6th edition rumors have left me a little drained.  Not that I'm not excited for 6th edition, its just that I have no desire to play 40k until the new rule set is released.  I do like change though so when 6th edition does drop I will be all over it.  As it stands I've got my lizardmen to work on.  I had a great spurt of productivity early March.  Hoping to reignite my creative juices.  It helps that I have a painting plan for the rest of the army.  Just got to keep on keeping on.

Picked up some new GW paints

Picked up three paint pots from the new GW line today.  The textured undergrowth for my lizardmen bases, the lahmian medium to apply some of the forgeworld transfers I picked up ages ago for my flesh tearers and the imperial primer to fix up damaged/chiped spots on my metal models.  Looking forward to see how they turn out.

Stacking Runes of Warding

I was reading ELDAR ONLINE the other day looking for some insights into other peoples experience running corsairs when I came across a rules interpretation that left me scratching my head.  It has to do with the relatively recent FAQ update for the Eldar.  In particular it involves an Errata for Runes of Warding which reads as follows:


ERRATA
Page 26 – Runes of Warding
Change the last sentence to “All enemy Psykers must
roll an extra dice when taking Psychic tests, suffering
Perils of the Warp on any roll of 12 or above.”

It was the general consensus that with this new errata that Runes of Warding would stack.  In other words, taking two Farseers with runes of warding would force the opponent to roll 4 dice and anything over 12 would count as a peril of the warp.  If this is the case does it change the face of how Eldar are to build lists, or at the minimum give their 4th edition codex a well needed boost?

If an accurate interpretation of the rules then I would suggest that the Eldar have received a boost against Grey Knights for one.  With Grey Knights accounting for a large segment of armies played over all it would appear that the boost to the codex is more than just trivial.

As it stands, if this were the case, I would be looking to tailor an Eldar list then to include Eldrad and a Farseer with RoW, Stones, Guide and Fortune.  Three DAVU Falcons then with holo-fields, stones and EML's to form the core of my army.  A possible 4th troop choice of storm guardians with warlock, embolden, fusion guns and spear to boost Eldrads powers.  Fill the list out then with Fire Dragons in wave serpents and perhaps a seer council.

Then again, perhaps this is an erroneous interpretation of the RoW rule and that only 3d6 dice are to be rolled when taking the test.

First Game with Eldar Corsairs

I managed to get a game in last Friday using the new Corsair list out of IA 11.  Man it was a lot of fun.  My list was as follows:

HQ:
Prince

Troops:
5 x 5 Corsairs - fusion gun, Falcon, EML, Holo-Field, Stone
3 Wasps - EML's

Heavy:
2 Warp Hunters - Holo-Field, Stone, Under Slung Cannon

I went up against Guard that had a list as follows (roughly from memory):

HQ:
Command Squad - Chimera

Elite:
Psycher Battle Squad - Chimera (not sure how many models in unit)

Troops:
4 or 5 Vet Squads - Melta Guns, Chimeras

Fast Attack:
Vindicator
Devil Dog

Heavy
2 Lemun Russ's (two different guns battle cannon and demolisher I believe)
1 Manticore

The game was standard deployment and kill points.  I won by 1 kill point at the end of the game that proved to be very fun.  Throughout the game it could have gone either way as it felt both armies were evenly matched.  The main reason I took the list that I did is that it included models I currently own.  I have a grand total of 7 tanks for my Eldar and three war walkers (4 wave serpents, 2 Fire Prisms and a Falcon).  The wave serpents I proxied as falcons by throwing on a bright lance and EML to act as the pulse laser and EML and used my fire prisms as warp hunters.

Playing the corsair list was a very tactical experience.  The game was a duel between two tank lists.  I used my mobility to keep as much range between myself and his tanks as he hemmed me into a corner.  I've got to say it was great to have BS 4 across the board.  The Falcons were hardy little devils that could reach out across the board and produce results.  Having holo-fields across all my tanks was great as well as they proved very durable.  I believe they saved me from immobilized/wreaked/destroyed results at least 5 times.  

Against the Guard the warp hunters paid for themselves in spades.  The large blast D-Cannon template wreaked havoc on his congested tank lines.  Because of the the way the weapon works you don't care about getting the center of the blast on a tank as there is no strength value.  Very first turn - first shot in fact - saw a warphunter place a large blast that partially covered 2 lemun russes and the manticore.  The result being one wreaked lemun russ, another lemun russ with the demolisher blown off and a stunned manticore.  Pure gold.  Thing is it almost seemed too good.  The warp hunter may be a bit overpowered as it currently stands in the list.

As for the wasps, I only took them as I lacked a 8th tank to act as a falcon.  They did ok at best.  The jump movement in the shooting phase did work out well though allowing them to avoid the oncoming rush of guardsmen.  They proved very fragile at the end of the day and I felt just acted to give my opponent free kill points when faced with the durability of the rest of my list.

Overall it was refreshing to play a game where the Eldar proved to be an elite force that had the tools to back up their fluff.  If I were to play the list again I think I would drop the wasps and use those points to add star-engines across the board.  Also I think I would upgrade my corsair squads to carry shuriken cannons as well and switch the fusion guns out for flamers.  I did not realize until after that the shuriken cannon is an assault weapon.  With this kit out the 5 man squads could do some damage to infantry should the opportunity arise.  One glaring weakness to the list is the vulnerability to melta.  I was able to absorb all sorts of long range firepower but once my opponent was able to get his melta guns into range I began to sweat.  Equipping my infantry with anti-infantry weapons would help out in this department I suspect.  I did forget about my prince's ability to call down a bombardment that I think would have proved handy in this situation as well.  Once his troops are exposed and clumped together to get some melta-shots, the anti-infintry shot would have done a good number on them while having no fear that the shot could hurt my tanks.

So final thoughts: I'm now on a mission to pick up some used falcon's to turn this list into a reality.  It was a blast to play.

Paint Supplies

I popped into my local GW store this morning and received my first encounter with the new painting line.  One of the gaming tables had been cleared to set up 6 painting stations along with a bucket of plastic space marines free for the public to test out the new line.  Now, I did not actually paint up a mini with the new paints but I took a close look at what some people had done.

Over all I'm excited for the new range to hit the shelves.  The foundation and basic (layers) paint selection has been expanded which is always nice.  In particular, I tend to paint out of the pot (watered down) and try to avoid mixing colours.  Time being my enemy, I've found I spend too much of it trying to recreate past tones or hues.  With an expanded range, that gives me more tools that require less time to use.  A win win situation for me.

Another big win, as far as I can tell, is the new class of base paints.  No more basing with sand and elmers glue.  The new process if pretty slick, the sand is already mixed into the paint and provides a nice texture for your bases allowing for a finial dry brush and flock.  Speaking of drybrushing, another new line of paints is tailored just for this purpose.  I did not get a look at how effective this new style of highlight paint is but I did peer into the pot.  Its not really paint at all but rather almost a solid state chalky substance.  I'm interested to see how it pans out.  Also I peered into a glaze class paint and it looks like a watered down ink.  A couple of final thoughts: white foundation colour, ohh, I really want to see how this works.  Then there is another class of paints to be used for utility functions (such as liquid green stuff).  I take it there will be a paintable primer that I'm thinking would be quit handy.

So over all I can honestly say I'm actually really excited to get my hands on these new paints.

Eldar Hybrid List Viable?

So this is my 1k Eldar list that I plan to finish painting when I switch back.

HQ:
Farseer - Doom, Singing Spear, RoW

Elite:
4 Dragons + 1 Exarch - Heavy Flamer, Wave Serpent, Stone, Shuriken Cannons

Troops:
10 Avengers - Wave Serpent, Stone, Shuriken Cannons
10 Storm Guardians - flamer, fusion gun, warlock, singing spear, destructor, Wave Serpent, Stone, Shuriken Cannons

Heavy:
2 Fire Prism's

I put the farseer in with the Avengers so they have an anti-tank shot.  I like the list from when I played it and want to stick to it because it is the fastest road to finishing 1000 points painted.  I still want to use scorpions and rangers when I expand and have been thinking about building my second 1000 points as footdar.  the 11th company pod cast had a good recap of the codex just recently and ultimately they concluded footdar is the way to go in the twilight of 5th edition.  Over on the Spirit Chamber Yriel has had great success with running a hybrid list (though I'm sure most of the credit goes to his experience as a player).

At any rate I've been thinking of adding a unit of wraithguard as troops, and a unit of pathfinders.  An infiltrating Scorpion unit and Eldrad leaves me with some points to beef up my avenger squad with an exarch and add another dragon with a few points to spare on some star engines for so of my vehicles.  I really want to include a unit of scorpions and figured they could support the unit of wraithguard in assaults should they need it.  Eldrad would be attached to the wraithguard fortuning both the scorpions and wraithguard and doing what he does best.  It seems harlies are the way to go but I want to finish painting up my unit of scorpions.

Any thoughts or ideas of developing my army this way?