Power Armoured Beard

Hello folks,

A really short post adding a few of my initial opinions on a very big subject: the new 40k rules.

I’ve had a very brief skim read, I’ve chatted a lot with friends who have read in more detail than I have, and I have watched a couple of small games get played. Overall I am impressed and happy with the changes.

• I like the idea of glancing hits now stripping off “hull points” rather than rolling, albeit modified, on the same table as penetrating hits.
• I like flyers and how their “zooming” rules work.
• The random charge range is an interesting new addition to 40k which mixes things up a bit, and snap fire/overwatch makes you feel a little bit less useless when you get charged.

It might just be a “honeymoon” period where everything seems all sparkly and excellent (despite it being a Grimdark future), and in time we might find contradictions and mistakes, but so far all the rules changes or amendments seem to make sense, in a game-play sense but also from a dramatic point of view. If you, like me, tend to envision epic stories unfurling as you play rather than maths, dice rolls and plastic figure moving then the zooming rule helps conjure up images of devastating strafing runs, and the glancing/hull point thing is enemy gunfire slowly taking chucks out of armour, rather than precise critical shots that penetrating hits represent.

I am going to start gaming more soon, and 40k will be one of the main focuses so I will keep updating you with what my experiences reveal!

Hello everyone!

Today I have a few photos taken at the tournament we ran at the shop I work in. It was a fantastic day and I had great fun organising it. We had 22 players in total, and armies weren’t required to have been painted to take part, but many were to a high standard. 

Please enjoy the images.

Well hello there everyone!

Today I have some photos from the event we had yesterday at the shop. For a while now my gaming club have been planning a Warhammer 40k Apocalypse game using just Orks and my boss, the store owner thought that we could do it on Feb 6th which is also his birthday.

So we gathered and glued as many Orks as possible for this event. It was an impressive sight to behold.Just to add a sense of scale the first two pictures in the gallery of the Orks set out on some tables was just one side of the battle. Two units in the game were “Green Tides” which consists of 100 Orks in one single unit!

Please enjoy!

Just a quick photo update today.

1-2 : The extent of what I have painted so far.

3 : Chaplain.

4-5 : Sternguard Sgt with Lightning Claw.

6 : Tactical Marine

7-10 : Dreadnought 1.

11 : Tactical Squad Sgt with Power Sword.

12 : Assault squad glued and ready to go.

Pip pip and Tally Ho!

Welcome to the second part of my Raptor project. We’ll be taking a look at the army lists I’ve planned for the campaign so far. It’s useful for me to write these lists up now as this way I’ll be able to build and paint to a set goal. I won’t be buying stuff I’m not likely to use that way.

Okay, so the first list I have is a 1000pt “Boarding Action” list. The first few games of the campaign will be rather specialist and unique. They will represent the various marine chapters fighting each other on spaceships, sometimes within large dock areas, other times on the outside of the ships themselves! The special rules don’t allow most vehicles at all and any walkers (i.e. Dreadnoughts) or jump infantry are at a severe disadvantage. 1000pts on just foot sloggers will be an interesting build indeed and not something I’m used to. Here’s what I went for:

Lias Issodon The Grim, Raptors Chapter Master.
7 Assault Terminators. 3 with thunder hammers and storm shields for the invulnerable saves.
7 Sternguard. Sgt with Lightning Claw.
2 units of 10 Tactical Marines. Each unit has a Plasma Gun and Sgt with Power Weapon.

Think this list should deal with pesky power armoured enemies fairly well with all the plasma and power weapons kicking around.

Lias seems like a really cool character. Really cheap points wise, he has a high ballistic skill and a funky boltgun that has multiple firing options and the ability to use the specialist ammo that Sternguard are issued with. He confers the stealth special rule to the whole army and has a special attack that targets one enemy unit of choice at the start of the game, possibly killing them before they even get their first turn! As Forge World have gone to the trouble of producing rules for a special character for the Raptors and this is a story driven campaign, why wouldn’t I take him? I have my friend who is a wizard at doing cool conversions (he green stuffed the “fat neck” onto my Ogre Kingdoms Butcher) building me a version of Lias as no model exists so far.

The second list is more an all purpose build for typical 40k scenarios.

Lias Issodon The Grim, Raptors Chapter Master.
Chaplain.
8 Assault Marines in a Rhino (if you remove their jump packs you get their Rhino for free). 1 Flamer and Sgt with Power Fist and Storm Shield.
2 x 10 Tactical Marines. Armed with 1 Plasma Cannon, Meltagun and Sgt with Power Weapon and Teleport Homer. Both squads riding in Razorbacks fitted with Twin-linked Lascannons.
6 Assault Terminators. 2 armed with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields (Possibly 3. Still undecided about this).
2 Dreadnoughts fitted with Assault Cannons and Heavy Flamers.

Couple of notes about this build. I’ve shoved both Lias and the Chaplain with the assault squad in the rhino. Now this could possibly make this a rather tempting target for enemy fire, but the benefits are just too cool in my mind to pass up. The Chaplain allows the unit to reroll misses in the first round of combat and both he and Lias have power weapons. In total this unit will have 10 power weapon, 20 normal and 3 power fist attacks with rerolled misses on the charge. The storm shield should hopefully give the unit a bit more survivability as well.
The Teleport Homers on the Tactical Sgts means the Terminators can deep strike pretty much exactly where I want them.

Don’t know what else to say about these builds right now. I’ll probably have a few tester games with them soon and I’ll keep you updated with any changes I might make.

Until next time, take care, folks!

Bear with me on this post. I can’t recall if I’ve told you about any of this in previous posts, so apologies if I have.

 
My friends Rhys (owner of the local game shop where I spend a lot of my gaming time) and Tom are planning a big two weekend event in January based on the latest Imperial Armour book from Forge World. The book follows the Badab War which saw certain Space Marine chapters revolt against the Imperium. It seems I have also been roped into help organising the event, and the next few months with be very busy with building custom terrain for some hopefully cool looking boards, as well as a new army (or two!).

 
The campaign will be highly story driven using elements from the Imperial Armour book and we will even be recreating iconic battles. It won’t be as competitive as a tournament probably would be, but that’s not to say that people won’t be playing to win. We are hoping to attract a decent amount of players for either side and every battle will go towards influencing the campaign. For example, if the traitors win more games in a certain phase, they’ll have bonuses for the next phase Of course in the lore the winners have already been decided but this great setting offers us a lot of opportunity to stage exciting battles and re-imagine the Badab War. I’m hoping if we can pull it off, this could be a great event.

 
In the book we have a list of the Marine chapters involved and we are encouraging people that if they want to play in the campaign they choose to bring one of these named chapters. I will be building and painting a Raptor Marine Chapter which are on the loyalist side. I chose them for a couple of reasons.

Firstly their paint scheme is REALLY easy to make look good, and gives me the opportunity to do some weathering and battle damage because these guys have been through some real tough times in their history. If I am to build another marine army (on top of the huge one I already own, that sits mostly unpainted) I would like one that I can whack together quickly and with minimum fuss.

Secondly Games Workshop and Forge World both make chapter specific items for the Raptors. GW makes shoulder pads for the regular marines with the chapters emblem modelled on them (the Eagle head design is actually shared between the Raptor and Mentor Legion chapters). FW also makes Terminator shoulders and tank doors with the Raptor emblem. This will make the models look even better and recognisable with the minimal amount of effort from me!

 
Ok, enough babbling from me for now. I don’t have the best levels of concentration right now and I fear I may be very on incoherent soon. I’ll just show you some pictures.

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1. The Space Marine Battleforce. Now a lot of these battleforces work out to be quite good value. They’ll lump a bunch of various models from a particular force into one handy box and it’s generally a good starting block for an army. The marine box contains a 10 man tactical squad, 5 man combat squad, 5 assault marines, 5 scouts and Rhino transport vehicle. Out of interest I went to the GW website to work how much this £50 box would cost if you bought everything separately. Over £90!! I’ll have one of those then, ta very much!

2. I like to snip everything off the sprue straight away into a segmented bits box. It saves space and everything is easy to find.

3. Here are the shoulder pads I told you about. Don’t cost too much to make the army look that much better.

4. A closer detail shot though doesn’t show too well in this photo.

5-7 The first finished Tactical Marine with damaged armour and weathing. Can’t see the finished shoulder too clearly in the last picture but I’ll get some better shots when the whole unit is finished.

Hope you all enjoyed the first step in my Raptor Project. Take care, folks!