The Stalking Krakens

I'm going to start collecting yet another faction, and as you could probably guess, they're the loyalist marines. Now, I'm not saying that I've grown bored with my Orks or lost all faith in my Iron Warriors successors, but I want a break from being the 'bad guy' and want to get some more practice on my painting skills over my conversion skills which have improved massively since taking on the Orks.
As you all know, Iron Warriors aren't truly difficult to paint until you get to the hazard stripes, and even then that's only a couple of flare points on an otherwise all silver model. Orks, while having more to them than silver and a little yellow with black, can become more of a chore than anything because their large and blocky model facings don't offer much in fun detail work that needs to be applied.
Marines on the other hand, especially with the vertical split scheme and the levels of organization and uniformity gives me almost a hobby crush on them, because there is simply so many small details that can used to designate a model over the others... Aww yiss...
Anyway, just wanted to throw that up here bith to let all five of you followers to know about it, and also to try to jump myself back into this part of the hobby.
A sample picture is attached, but keep in mind the teal is going to be much darker than shown and the pauldrons aren't up to date with how I've organized the chapter.
Thanks for reading, and have a great day.

Stormboyz

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on some stormboyz. The manager at my local GW thought itd be crazy awesome and unique to have stormboyz represented by some boyz chined to some 'nid gargoyles.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

The results are posted below. My favorite dudes are the ones hanging upside down.

However, the process to make basic scrubs that can kill themselves pretty handily took quite a bit of time and love, so for my next batch, I decided to use my previously unused collection of tau gun drones as hoverboards for some of the boyz.
Significantly less time later, 10 more stormboyz enter the world.
For my last 8 (i needed 28 and 2 nobz before my next game), i used the actual stormboyz box, with some of the extra rokkit bitz spread out over some regular boyz which I've taken to calling 'stormboy juniors'.
For the nobs of both mobs, i took a pair of tau commander iridium suit jet pack bits from the local bits box and straddled a nob over each one and BAM problem solved. The nobs are mirrors of each other and have taken on the personalities of a pair of orks grown from the same spore clump; the closest thing to brothers Orks can be.
Now to name them... I could use some help in that department! I was thinking if calling them something where one.is the inverse of the other lkke taking 'killdakka' and making it 'dakkakill' or something like that. The other, almost requirement, is the presence of a pun in the names. All other named characters in my Waaagh have their names painted in their base. Even my runtherder named 'Feeldwacha' because all he does is stand around looking at explosions on the battlefield...
Anyway, enjoy the pics, and I'll see you next time.

Looted Monolith

Been working up a project for my escalation league.
We're approaching the 2k points mark and when we do, everyone gets to bring a LoW to the fight.
Naturally, i don't want to pay a hundred bucks for a stock model, even if it does come with some really great bits.
So I found a monolith, went to a hobby shop and found a cheap tank model, and have started contemplating one of the largest single model projects I've worked on. On top of that, I want it modular so I can turn it from stompa to Killbursta for when I need a much cheaper option for bringing the strength D.
Here's the very basic design with some of my starting work onaking the monolith battle worn.

Running a small local event!

This Saturday I'm running a small even with the League group to decide my new warlord.
Kon Kushin has taken a couple injuries in recent battles and now appears weak in the eyes of his followers, so the biggest Orks in the Waaagh gather to decide who's replacing him.
The event is a 6 player free for all, each running a 335 point HQ choice with a unit of followers.
The last remaining boss then faces Kushin in single combat and if they win, they earn the privilege of being the new Boss for my Waaagh.
Updates to follow, expect some pictures!

Mister J Modeling and Painting

Today, I started a Facebook page to wrangle up some people to allow me to do commission work for them. Fingers crossed that I'll reach a decent amount of people and get some jobs!

Check me out on Facebook at Facebook.com/MrJ5829

Ork army update!

Keeping with the escalation league, we're now approaching the 1500 point benchmark.
Kon Kushin has really helped pull off some amazing stunts, and has annihilated anything he's made contact with.
My total Ork force has swelled in the ranks since I last posted, now at 13 bikes, 30 boyz, 3 meganobs, 4 trukks, some mek gunz, and last but not least, an Orktide!
My many games with Papabear has given da boyz of Kon Kushin enough scrap to piece together some orky constructs, including some suits of 'Krisis Armor' which the Orks understand to be the equivalent of mega armor with a rokkit pack.
All said and done, if I include all the Krisis Orks and the Orktide with my main force, I have just over a 2000 point force, bringing them close to being the highest valued army I own.
Here's hoping to at least another thousand points!

Escalation 500 game 2

Alright, this is my game against Papabear. Sorry i don't have pictures of this one either, I'll make sure to start doing that more in the future. I also apologize because it's been too long since I've updated this and so I've forgotten a few details.

My list:
Warboss "Kon Kushin "
-Bike
-Power klaw
-Finkin' Kap

Gretchin
No upgrades

Boyz
-Nob
--Power klaw
--Boss pole

Deffkopta
-Rokkit

Bikes
- +3 bikers
-Nob
--big choppa
--boss pole

Looted Wagon
-Kill kannon 
-X3 Rokkit launchas
-Ram

His list:
Again, not sure of the specifics or points, but weapons and such are accurate.

Commander
-Twin linked Missile pod
-X2 shield drones

X2 units of Fire warriors
-missile turret thing

Pathfinders
-x3 rail rifles

Piranha
-no upgrades

Boradside
-regular missile pods
-high yield missile pods
-X2 missile drones

The battlefield:
both sides had trees everywhere in the deployment zones, in the middle band of the table there was one centralized group of trees, but that was it. One side had a tree smack in the middle.and up front of the deployment zone with a few difficult terrain rivers and creeks strewn about. The other side had a couple smaller bundles of trees in the corner on the right and another to the left in the front of the zone.

The game type:
We played the tactical escalation mission from the maelstrom of war missions

Deployment:
He won the roll to go first and set up his forces in a line on the side with the central tree and the riverbeds. Significantly, he place his broadside on one side if the tree itself and left his commander way at the table edge on my left and his piranha on the right.
For myself, i placed my grots and kopta behind the little tree on the left side of my zone and the wagon on the right, angled to give my bikes a wall of sorts. I placed Kushin and his unit behind the side of the wagon right at the edge of my deployment zone, hoping to use it as a mobile wall to defend against the bulk of his army.

I failed to seize the initiative, so we go onto his turn.

His turn 1:
Being gunline tau, he doesn't moveanything except his piranha, which shoots up the board, hugging the right table edge. In his shooting phase, He spends his entire army to take down my looted wagon and just barely nails it with glances (his missile-side did absolutely nothing to it!), scoring first blood. His piranha was just out of range to take a shot at Kushin and my bikes.
End of the turn, he scored only first blood.

My turn 1:
My boyz move up to yhe centralized tree and barely get into cover status, my grots do their thing and start a congo-line between two objectives, deffkopta moves up with the boyz into the central terrain patch (which also has an objective). Kushin and bikes move full speed towards the piranha, which conveniently moves them out of line of sight for the broadside. In the shooting phase, grots run, boyz run, and bikes shoot. I hadn't realised, at this point, just how ludicrous ork bike shooting is and was pleasantly surprised when out of the 21 shots, I made about a dozen or so, and scored 3 glances and 2 penetrating hits taking it out soundly, even after jinking.
End of the turn, I managed to score an objective for the one my grots were already holding.

His turn 2:
The only movement he did was his commander up a little bit. In shooting: unable to get a full line of sight on my bikes with his broadside, he fires anyway with the one missile drone that could see them and followed up with both units of fire warriors killing only 2 of my bikes. His Pathfinders blew up my deffkopta with rail rifles.
End of the turn he scored two more points (I don't remember what for though).

My turn 2:
Looking at the board, and measuring just how far away my boys were from reaching the closest unit of fire warriors and decided to call a WAAAGH! My grots continued to stretch out towards the center objective, my bikes moved up onto the fires warriors that my boyz were squaring off on. Boyz, moving through cover, only rolled a 2... However, in my shooting phase, they rolled a full on 6! Hell yeah! Now they were all out of terrain and 10 inches away from the fire warriors. Since my bikes have actual armor, I declared an assault on them first to absorb all the overwatch, and lost another 2 of them, leaving me with my Nob, Kushin, and one scrub biker. Rolling horribly and then thanking Gork and Mork for the 'ere we go rule, my bikes made it into combat. My boyz, however, were vert motivated to krump the gitz that broke, as Papabear's kid calls it, "da party bus", and rolled an 11 to get into da fightin'. Not wanting to waste time, Papabear just sighed and picked up his warriors and had me roll for consolidation. My bikes took a more defensive position behind da boyz (hiding my klaw nob in the back, of course), and Kushin moved around back to hide.from the broadside around the tree.
End of the turn, I believe I scored nothing, with a total of 3-1 in his favor.

His turn 3:
Panicking, he moved his remaining fire warriors closer to my small mob and moved the commander to the side.to try to pincer me. Fortunately for me, i had put my boyz in an arc around my bikes giving papabear the choice of either shooting my 6+ save boyz, or my 3+ jink bikes. So he decided to kill 8 of my boyz and put a wound on my bike nob and ignoring Kushin.
He managed to somehow score all 3 of his cards, pulling him ahead futher.

My turn 3:
Down to one boy with a klaw nob, a couple of bikes and Kushin, i did the only thing any self respecting ork would do: I charged. Kushin rushed the solo broadside, and butchered it and the drones with his Klaw, and i had what was left of my boyz declare a multi charge on the Pathfinders and fire warriors. Thanks to overwatch, none of them survived. However, through the gore and bodies, my 2 bikes charged through and managed to make contact with bothe the fire warriors and the pathfinders. Miraculously, the 5 Pathfinders managed to kill my boy bike, losing one of their own in the resulting death throws of the boy. The Nob, on the other hand, managed to take out 2 of the warriors with his big choppa. Both units managed to pass their leadership checks and stayrd locked in. Kushin consolidated with the intent to turbo boost towards the objective, in the next turn, that was guarded by the commander, which was one of my cards.
End of my turn, I scored one more card, bringing the game closer within my reach, at 6-2

His turn 4: at this point, all the other games have finished and everyone was surrounding our table, and it was decided that this would be the last turn due to time constraints.
Feeling brave, the tau commander decided to shoot and charge Kushin, to deny him the charge bonuses, scoring a wound in the shooting phase. When the charge was declared, Kushin got some overwatch revenge and killed one of the shield drones! Never again will I doubt the power of Orky dakka. The commander made the distance, and got to strike first, hitting twice, wounding twice... With a 4+ save, i realized how squishy Kushin was at this point. In my moment of hesitation to roll the saves, Crispy Crusader and General Baites started chanting "Kon Kushin!" over and over until the whole table was saying it, and i rolled my saves: a six and a four, and the crowd went absolutely insane! In returning attacks, Kushin scored 2 wounds and thw shield drone attempted to tank both... But failed the first one with a 3, leaving the last wound to allocate and instant death the commander, Kon Kushin wins again! Meanwhile, my wounded bike Nob continues to clean house, switching his ap5 attacks to the Pathfinders to kill them dead and clear out some clutter leaving Papabear with 2 Pathfinders and 3 fire warriors.
End of his turn, he stayed put at 6 points, with his solid, 4 point lead.

My turn 4:
At this point, all i have to do is finish off his models for a tabling win, so Kushin moves up and charges into the melee, killing a firewarrior on the hammer of wrath, and ripped the others to shreds. Nob, on the other hand, killed another pathfinder, and neither of my models took any damage. End of the assault, he was left with one pathfinder. All Papabear had to do to win was stay on the field to secure a win. He failed his moral check just barely with a 1 and a 2 on the dice, but managed to bead Kushin on the initiative check, NOPE-ing away. Unfortunately, he NOPE'd off the table, giving me victory by tabling, and the crowd just lost their minds, chanting "Kon Kushin!" again and just overwhelming me with feelings of confidence in my little Ork warband.

Escalation 500 game 1

I should mention that my opponent at this game was very new. As in: literally his first game ever.

My list:
Warboss "Kon Kushin "
-Bike
-Power klaw
-Finkin' Kap

Gretchin
No upgrades

Boyz
-Nob
--Power klaw
--Boss pole

Deffkopta
-Rokkit

Bikes
- +3 bikers
-Nob
--big choppa
--boss pole

Looted Wagon
-Kill kannon
-X3 Rokkit launchas
-Ram

His list:
Wolf Lord
-Wolf claw
-Combi melta

Grey hunters
-Power fist

Grey hunters
-no upgrades (Wolf Lord goes here)

Thunderwolf cavalry
-no upgrades

The game was tactical escalation.
I forgot to use da Finkin Kap completely
He deployed both units of hunters in some tall ruins in the right corner of his zone and his cavalry in the on the left.
I deployed my boyz in the wagon on the left of my map (facing the thundercav) then the rest of my stuff at the maximum distance forward on my right (facing grey hunters).

He goes first, moves the cavalry up and ends the turn.

I move up my kopta to an objective to score for the turn, shimmy my bikes up 12 inches, and start a congo line of grots between two objectives. I completely forgot to move my wagon and in the shooting phase was reminded of that when some git inside pushed the big red button and caused the wagon to lurch forward over terrain for 6 inches. The ram helped not get stuck, definitely worth the 5 points. For the rest of my shooting phase, I turbo my bikes up, and ran the grots, keeping the kopta next to the objective and in cover.
I score the objective my kopta was sitting on.

His turn 2, he shuffled the hunter squad with the Lord around the corner of his ruin and took a couple of bolter shots at my bikes with both units, killing one bike. The thundercav moved forward, sticking to some trees for cover, but couldn't quite get close enough to charge. He ends the turn without scoring.

My turn 2, i pull two objective cards, one is currently controlled by grots, the other is within reach of the wagon. I mistakenly disembark my boys from the wagon, thinking i had enough range to charge this turn, and then move my bikes closer to the grey hunter squad that's on the ground. I forgo shooting with my bikes so i can make my charge distance easier (only one grey hunter was visible, the others were wrapped around the corner of the ruin). i took a shot with my killkannon at the thundercav, expecting to completely miss and scatter horribly but instead got 3 hits! Scored 2 wounds and nuked one if the cav right off the table. In the assault, i charged.with my bikes, taking no loses in overwatch, and killing a hunter with my hammers of wrath. Now, something i had forgotten, was that his Wolf Lord with a wolf claw was in the unit... The Lord rolled like a god, hitting and killing 4 of my bikers and putting a wound on my nob, the grey hunters put another 2 wounds on Kushin because i didn't want to lose more attacks... Swinging back, i wiff with my boy bikers and nob, and Kushin knocks the hunters unit down to the wolf lord and one hunter thanks to his klaw. Passing leadership, we stay stuck in. End of turn, i capture both my objectives.

His turn 3, he moves his cav up towards my boys to charge them, and moves his other unit of grey hunters off the ruin to get closer to our close combat. He skips his shooting and goes right for the assault phase.
Now, at this point, i realize how stupid of me it was to charge the grey hunter unit with the lord in there. I was kicking myself because i knew i should've just kited them and shot them every turn. But i didn't, so now i have to deal with the real possibility of his lord tickling Kushin to death with his wolf claw, and then taking out the rest of my boys with what's left and his fresh grey hunter unit thats just about to charge.
Back to the game: he fails the charge distance for his other unit of hunters! (Sigh of relief) and makes the distance to get in with my boys with his thundercav. Overwatch gives me nothing, and the cav with all their attacks wipe my unit down to a single boy and the nob at full health. The nob strikes with his klaw and takes a eound off of each rider. End of combat, i pass morale! Thanks mob rule! (Probably never going to say that again.)
Now, at the important combat, the wolf Lord completely misses with every single attack, even after master crafted (unsure of how he got this, but it didn't help!) and the grey hunter did the same! Kushin cracked his knuckles and slaughtered the hunter and the Lord while laughing his ass off, winning the assault, and consolidating back away from the other hunter squad (they have a power fist in there, afterall.) he ends the turn without scoring anything again.

My turn 3: i pull 3 objectives for markers i can grab (one is held by my grots, the other my wagon again, and the third can be grabbed by my kopter). I move and turbo boost the kopter to the objective, and move my bikes around the grey hunters to get a good angle on them to snipe the sargent out, which i do, taking another hunter with him. In the assault phase, i just charge them since there's nothing to worry about anymore and sweep them off the table. As for my nob with the thundercav, i guess the cav felt the Lord dying and just felt such grief that they only succeeded in killing the boy and taking a wound off the nob (whew, that's close! Another time i fully expected to die outright.) and the nob swept through the cav, WINNING assault, and giving me a win for the game by tabling Gauntlets.

Pretty crazy game, and a great one to start learning Orks with! I definitely made mistakes, but Lady Luck forgave them.

Escalation League: 500 point level introduction

Whew! Crazy weekend, finally getting the chance to write it all down.
Before I get into the meat of the stuff, i want to shout out to Papabear for hosting the event and for opening house to everyone.
About ten minutes before leaving, General Baites suggested I alter my list a touch. I took his advice and dropped a deffkopta and the boyz' trukk in exchange for a Looted wagon with a kill kannon.
I got the chance to play two games on Saturday, one against a new member of the group (and new to wargmaing as a whole) who I shall dub Gauntlet. Gauntlet was starting out completely new and was starting out with Space Wolves.
The other game I played was aginst Papabear himself bringing his Tau.
Im going to post each game separately as a battle report, so I'm not going to give anything away here.
Enjoy the reports!

Paint update!

Due to the "no paint, no play" rule instigated by Papabear for the escalation league. I've had to finish Kon Kushin.
Can't wait to crush some gitz on the table on Saturday!

DeffKoptas

Just finished these guys up tonight. I had a lot of fun painting them (I know, ME of all people painting, right?) and genuinely enjoy the freedom Orks bring to the table when it comes to conversions and painting.
As you can see, these guys are not stanfard issue by any means. I followed the same basic construction for both:
The starting point was finding the base for the thing to glue everything else to. Deadbolt threw an old pewter killa kan into the deal when I bought the bulk of my Orks from him, and I had little intention of using them, so I figured why not?
The pilot is the driver model from a Trukk that weren't in use yet, and the tail fins are also from Trukks: they're one of the cross beams from the bed of the trukk cut in half and put at the back end. Then I put a vehicle gun mount at the end and so it works. Even has some rivets in the piece i painted as yellow lights. The rotor engine is one of the killa kan's legs tured upside down with some pieces of sprue glued in for the rotor blades
I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I had making the things, can't wait to use em and i hope i gave you an idea or two how to spruce up your own stuff.

Great Unclean One:

This is my Great Unclean One (or Winged Daemon Prince). Built him the day after Christmas out of a Tree Man from Sigmar's Wood Elves. The wings are from a Flamespyre Phoenix. The scythe head is made from plastic mould stuff that my wonderful sister gave me for Christmas as well. Currently thinking for paint that he'll just be rotting wood and the wings will be white on the top and tips and fade into greens, browns and some dark greys as the wonderful gifts of Nurgle seep and coat it.

In my fluff, he represents the GUO that is the patriarch of the particular strain of spores responsible for the marines of the Iron Host to become wgat they are now.

Cypher

This guy is straight up one of my favorite characters in the setting.
Not only do zero people actually know who he is, he is constantly giving the Dark Angels the middle finger, and he's on some mysterious quest involving a sword that no body recognizes.
His statline is pretty sweet too, and even matches his fluff!
For those of you who don't know, Cypher has his own dataslate which gives all his stats and wargear, as well as the means to field him: either as a slotless HQ for any human faction (Chaos or Loyalist, Guard or Marine). Except the Dark Angels, or as part of his own formation where he grabs up to three units of Chaos Chosen to represent some of The Fallen he has gathered.
He has an extended range bolt pistol, and a plasma pistol which lacks the 'gets hot!' rule and even comes with BS10 and a nifty rule that lets him shoot each gun twice in The same shooting round.
He has infiltrate, eternal warrior, ATSKNF, hit and run, and his sword (which is not a melee weapon) gives him shrouded.
Instead of the sword strapped to his back, Cypher instead prefers to use his pistols in close combat: half of his three attacks (four because of two pistols) are at the same profile of a bolt pistol, and the remainder as a plasma pistol... At I8, WS7 with another fun rule that lets him overwatch at full ballistic skill, which again, is 10 for the effect full on twin-linked at BS5 goodness. One does not simply mess with the Lord of The Fallen when he has a decent chance to drop 3 terminators before they can even blink
Now then, I've used Cypher in a number of games, each time he acts like a massive thorn in my opponent's side all game long.
In my last game, against Space Wolves (he had 2 units of thunderwolf cavalry), Cypher and his lone unit of 6 Chosen (who all had a melta gun), infiltrated and gunned down half a unit of thunder cav (3 of them) in the first wave of shooting, taking down another when charged on the next turn, but in return losing all but Cypher and one Chosen. Hit and Run helped me here, and on my next turn, all the stormshield saves were made. It wasn't until my opponent's turn 3 where he charged Cypher again with his now lonely thunder cav rider, and lost it in overwatch, which freed me to shoot up his terminators that dropped down next to Cypher just that turn. 3 termie deaths later, and in turn 4, I make the bone headed mistake of charging into the terminators with Cypher, thinking ill be able to hit better than I did, and ended up losing him.
Anyway, moral of the story: Cypher can be a massive pain in the butt for anyone hoping to get a unit of heavy infantry into the frey. Cypher simply won't allow it, and is rather cost effective for everything he does and allows, he's a great distraction unit that packs a very big punch.
On another note, when building my Cypher model, I chose to go the route of him being lost in The Warp for a bit, so upon exiting he grew a pair of feathered wings.
The wings on the model are from the Blood Angels Sanguinor kit, the sword and backpack are off the Lord from the Dark Vengeance set. Bolt pistol is from the Chaos Raptors kit, and the body, head, plasma pistol and pauldrons are all from the Dark Angels Veteran kit. Very fun project that has been worth every penny.
So gawk and enjoy my friends.

Escalation list, week 1: 500 points

The Escalation League is supposed to be for friendly, fluffy gameplay, so I'm using it as an opportunity to use Kon Kushin as my warlord as much as possible.

HQ:
Warboss 60
Bike
Power Klaw
Da Finkin' Kap
120p

Troops:
Gretchin 35
No Upgrades
35p

Boyz 60
+1 boy
Nob
-Boss Pole
-Power Klaw
-Shoota
Trukk
136p

Fast Attack:
Deffkopta 30
Twin-Linked Rokkit Launcha
30p

Deffkopta 30
Twin-Linked Rokkit Launcha
30p

Warbikers: 54
+3
Nob
-Boss Pole
-Power Klaw
148

Total: 499

The gist of this army is to have the Grots stay back and hold some objectives, the Koptas split off and grab objectives on the flanks which hopefully causing enough of a distraction for my Bikes and Trukk full of boyz to run up and hit stuff. My Bikes will try to get rear armor on vehicles, or Kushin can break off and use the Ork universal can opener: the Power Klaw, to do the same thing. My Boyz will rush up and try to tie something down for a bit, hopefully whatever my opponent has that's fast moving. With any luck, my Trukk will survive and will tank shock whatever it can while blocking line of sight to what needs to be blocked.
As for my warlord trait that's locked in, starting with this game, I've decided to take the Bellowing Tyrant trait that gives my any friendly model within a foot of Kushin a reroll to failed morale checks, which, as I've learned, is a simply massive boon in this army. Plus, the finkin' kap will definitely give me even more options to play with, so hopefully things go pretty well. Here's hoping!

Escalation League week 1

So, Crispy and I have joined a league. First game is this Saturday starting all the way at 500 points. He's using this as an excuse to play with units he hasn't before, and I'm building up my Orks for this. Deep down though, I feel the both of us have needed someone fresh to play, and boy does this little group have that.
I found a meetup group in my area, the first meeting was last month. Crispy, myself, and one other kid, just starting out in the game, were the only ones that showed up.
We sat and talked and made sure none of us were serial killers. Having established that, we broke into 2v2 teams and broke out the models.
Our leader, Papabear, has been teaching his 9 year old son how to play and openly admitted to being out of practice. He's gonna be running his Tau, so he shouldn't have too much difficulty getting back into the swing of things.
The other kid, who's name escapes me, plays'Crons. But before you rage, he also has made his army out of legos, so he has a coolness factor to tone down the emotions.
I feel this is going to be a grwat experience, having never before been in a league, and having very little experience in games smaller than the 1000 point mark, means the first few rounds will certainly be a challenge for me.
Papabear, upon gawking at my unpainted models, has issued a decree that all models must have at least 3 colors of paint to them to be eligible for play... Naturally, this has been a bit of a hurdle as I've had very little experience in that, I spend my hobby time building my models and thinking about their stories, not their color schemes, so it's been a nice addition to the hobby to be thinking of what color goes where. Luckily, I got some great tips from Deadbolt, who sold me quite a bit of his Orks for a very decent price.
Another feature of our league, though still up for debate, is the warlord traits. The idea is that each player's warlord is the same character throughout the campaign unless they permanently die (upon losing their last wound, roll a d6, on a 5 or 6 they are gone and cannot be used anymore). The benefit of this, is that the players get to pick, not roll, our warlord traits. This, and going with the theme of having a recurring character, means that the trait will stay with that character until death, so armies can be planned accordingly.
I have gone through many drafts of my list, and my warlord trait choices and have decided on where to go. Since I haven't had any gameplay experience as or even against Orks, I have found gauging the power of units to be pretty hard, so here's hoping things go well. I've spent a lot of time on dakkadakka.com hoping for advice and have gotten some decent feedback, and as always, Crispy and now Deadbolt, have offered much as well, which means I now hope that I don't get paired with Crispy in the first round. with him knowing my whole strategy, it would be quite an uphill fight.
Anyway, that's it for this post, I'll be back with more, stay tuned.

Lost in the Warp, Communications: reestablished

Apologies, everyone. Things have been crazy over here and writing here had slipped my mind, but I'm back and ready to roll.
In the time that's passed, I have picked up quite a few Orks from my new friend, Deadbolt, who was introduced to my by Crispy Crusader. I've also experimented a bit in running my Chaos Marines from the Space Wolf codex, more on that later.
Crispy and I have also since joined an escalation league, so be expecting to hear about that in the coming weeks.
Anyway, welcome back and thanks for sticking with me.
-Voidraven

No Plasma

As I've said before, I have very bad luck when it comes to plasma weapons. Too many times. I've had a game, where every single plasma gunner I had, killed themselves from gets hot in the first couple turns of the game. Which came to 4 bikers, 4 plague marines, a total of 4 champions of chaos, and my lord on a bike took 2 wounds from a misfiring combi-plas. I was not happy.
Bad games aside, I also don't like running plasma because i feel they are the middle ground for special weapons. Flamers are template weapons that are excellent for taking hordes down.
Melta is the king of anti-tank guns, ignores every armor save and causes instant death on T4 or worse.
Granted, both of the above have very short ranges to be effective, but they are VERY effective at what they do, and they do it for cheap. They also have the advantage of being assault weapons so you can charge whatever your target was to finish it up or tie up that massive tarpit for the rest if the game.
Plasma is overcosted, can kill your own guys, and generally serves 1 purpose: killing terminators.
Okay so the first point I make can be disputed with combi weapons, but then whoeve paid for those combis aren't going to shoot them until at least 12 inches close to the enemy to make sure they get all their points worth. It just so happens that the plasma's effective range is the same as a melta guns max range. Both can nuke terminators the same way, and even better, melta has the benefit of instant death-ing those terminators if they're,
say, Paladins with an apothecary. No Feel no Pain, no sticking around for the next round.
Yes, plasma gets that extra shot and thus theoretically hits twice as often as a melta team.
Plasma also has the advantage of being able to pop most enemy transport options at a further range than melta, but is not as reliable at it. The way i think if that is that they're half range Autocannons that have a better chance of making the tank explode. But Autocannons always have that second shot, some are even twin linked, and shot density will beat out better explosion chance every time. After all: why penetrate a tank once when you can glance it to death for a lot cheaper.
Going over the gets hot rule, there is a 1 in 6 chance of wounding the gunner and then they have to make an armor save and a feel no pain save if they have one. That's a lot of checks to make sure your guy keeps firing away, but the one time he fails everything you will feel it. All the guys around him you bought as ablative wounds serve no purpose anymore. Or maybe your warlord takes his final wound off with his own pistol. Gets hot makes (at least me) you doubt your decision to fire. It throws doubt in your face because what if the gun beats the odds and kills your guy? He could've been that one wound you needed to keep that deathstar tied up in combat for another round, or maybe hes the laat member of his unit and he's valiantly holding that objective you need to push yourself to victory? Do you risk all that just to have a gun that may or may not the intended target? After all, whatever you shoot with plasma probably has an invulnerable save of some kind.
I just choose not to even play that particular Russian roulette anymore.
As for killing terminators, they are great at that: AP2 so they have to try their 5++, and being S7, they wound on 2s even if those terminators are marked with Nurgle. You can even shoot those terminators at 24 inches away just to keep them at bay another turn. But what if they're a paladin squad? If you shot 2 plasma guns at rapid fire range thats 4 shots, maybe 3 hits, about 2.5 wounds, which can get invulnerable saved and then FNP'ed away anyway. 2 melta guns gives you about 1.5 hits, a solid 1 wound, which bypasses armor and FNP severely dropping their survivability that they paid so much for.
At least in my army, dedicated anti tank is essential to give my artillery more targets to satirate, and melta gets the job done quickly and efficiently.
All that said, It comes down to preference: are you a cautious player that doesn't want to lose your expensive guns by accident? Or do you want a gun that can do everything to a degree and damn the possible consequences?
The choice is yours, this is simply my two cents worth.

1250 points of Renegades, Daemons, and Cypher VS Astra Militarum

General Baites challenged me to a game last week. I happily obliged. This is the first game I've had in about half a year that didn't include a whiteboard, so I was a bit nervous.

The armies:
R&H, Daemons, and Cyper:
Purge detachment. (No required troops, instead I'm required 2 elites)
HQ: 
Renegade command squad 45
Ordnance tyrant 30 (allows me to have field artillery as non-required troops)
Autocannon team 10
85 for unit
Elites:
Disciples 35
Autocannon team 10
45X2=90 for two units
Troop:
2 units of 3 field artillery batteries each with a heavy quad mortar (thudd gun) and 3 crewmen
90X2=180
Heavy:
Renegade support squads 25
Autocannon upgrades on each team 30(10 each)
Militia traing (upgrades BS to 3) 10
65X2=130 for 2 units of 3 weapons teams

Daemons:
HQ:
Herald or Tzeentch: 45
Mastery level 3 50
Disc of Tzeentch 25
2X115=230 for two of the same Heralds
Troops:
Nurglings 45

Cypher's Formation:
Cypher 190
Chosen 90
X4 melta guns 40
Combi-Melta gun on champion 10
2X140=280 for 2 units of 5 marines

Asrra Militarum:
Now, i don't exactly remember what he had and he didn't write it down, so please bear with me.
HQ:
Company command squad in a chimera
3 commissars
Troops:
2 platoons wity the following:
Platoon command squad in a chimera
2 units of regular guardsmen
In separate units there were 3 units of 3 heavy weapons teams. 2 units had heavy bolters and the other unit had mortars.
Heavy support:
1 manticore

We rolled to be playing the maelstrom mission: contact lost and objectives were placed with two in my deployment, one in his and the other three scatrered in the midfield. Night fighting was in place.
I won the roll off to go first and I chose to deploy first.
Artillery squads were deployed in corners behind what cover existed. The Autocannon support units were placed on the inward side of the artillery and desciple teams were scattered around as well.
For his deployment, he set up a line of chimeras. His company command Chimera was directly in front of the manticore (side armor facing me) and his infantry blobs were behind the chimeras with heavy weapons teams bubble wrapped by the basic infantry.
Infiltrators:
Cypher and both chosen squads went into reserves and the Nurglings took an objective in the midfield.
Renegades turn 1:
Movement/psychic:
Everything stayed put except the heralds of Tzeentch. They moved up to center field and attempted to summon stuff in the psychic phase. One succeeded in bringing out some horrors but that was it.
Shooting phase: my first unit of Autocannons fired at the company command Chimera and popped it. The other unit tried to take out the manticore, only took one hull point off BUT managed to shake the crew so it wouldn't fire on me next turn. My Desciples plinked a hull point off of one of the platoon command chimeras, but nothing else.
Now the thudd guns:
The first cannkn dropped its template over one of the heavy weapons teams unit. When the dust settled and all 3 guns had shot, half of Baites' army was gone. An entire weapons unit, an infantry unit and the platoon command chimera took a couple hull points.
He looked up to me and extended a hand with a "good game, I lose."
I felt bad that he didn't even get to move his models or even have a turn, but he explained his position: that at best, if the manticore hadn't been shaken that it would've only been able to take out maybe one unit of my artillery, which left another one, which hadn't even shot at this point. But my artillery wasn't his only concern, he also had daemons spawning and breathing down his neck and a possible Cypher attack the next turn which would definitely take out the manticore leaving him with one Chimera and a handful of guardsmen against pretty much an entire army that would just keep getting bigger.

One of the big reasons I accepted his request to play, ither than just to play, was to prove myself to myself. For months, I have been scared to play against Crispy Crusader for fear of continuing my losing streak to him. I told myself i would play against Baites to see if I had really grown. He assures me that I have.

How my army works

This analysis is going off of my previous list with a few tweaks. Here, I'll be going over my general mindset when playing this list and what strategies I roll out with it.
The list involves Renegades from Imperial armor 5. Siege of Vraks reprint, Orks, Chaos Daemons, and Cypher's dataslate.

Okay, to start this off, I'm using The Purge detachment which forces me take elites instead of compulsory troops, i have no fast atrack slots, 4 heavy, 6 elite and 8 troop. This particular detachment also affects all of my barrage weapons with the blast special rule, and makes it so the blast templates stay on the field for a turn and count as dangerous terrain. I also took the Ordnance Tyrant devotion on my Arch Demagogue to allow me to take Renegade field artillery as non-compulsory troops and a whole bunch of other options from my heavy section gets moved to elites. As an additional bonus, my field artillery can fire onto my own dudes as long as the hole in the blast marker is in an enemy. AND i can fire into close combat (so it says. Im unsure if that means I can target enemy units in close combat, or it just means I can graze my own guys even if they are in combat.)
For HQs I have:
Renegade command squad with the ordnance tyrant upgrade and an Autocannon. Pretty strait forward on this part.
Elites:
Two units of Desciples, each with just an Autocannon leaving 3 bodies to just sit in front and soak bullets for the gunners, also not unusual.
In troops I have five units of field artillery with two guns ,each being the heavy quad mortars. Giving me a total of 10 of my favorite guns ever. The reason being is that even though I "can" fire into my own guys in close combat, I don't want a large group of my guns tied up in combat, getting slaughtered, when I can just spread them out in smaller chunks and keep everyone else shooting, thus, negating what I call the back line cascade, where all the important stuff is tied in close combat getting mulched, with the rest of my army just watching in horror unable to do anything because a key asset was in that assaulted squad.
That about sums it up for my Primary detachment, now onto Daemons:
For HQ I have Two heralds of Tzeentch on discs at mastery level 3. Their entire purpose in life is to cruise around the midfield summoning a bunch of dudes to just flood that area, give me support where needed, and grabbing midfield objectives.
For the mandatory troops, i just bring a unit of Nurglings. They're cheap, and with their infiltrate and shrouded rules, i just park them in a pices of terrain near an objective and just have them glom onto it and never let go.
This brings me to orks. I bring two ork detachments that are exactly alike so ill just go over what is brought and just apply things to both.
For HQ, I just bring the cheap little mek boy. He doesn't do much, but he doesn't need to.
Orky Troops get me a unit of minimum grots. Surprisingly, they actually help me out. They give me more bodies to flood the field with, block shots into my more important stuff, and can speed bump a unit for a turn or two.
The main reason I brought orks, however, is for tue lootas. I bring in a squad of 6.
Why go to all the troubke of bringing orks just for the lootas? Because with 6 lootas I'm having the same amount of shots from a support squad, 1/3 of the time and more often than not, twice or three times as many shots for roughly the same price as 6 guaranteed Autocannon shots. Plus the grots give me more wounds on the table that my opponent has to mop up.
Cypher's dataslate gives me my infiltrating chosen that have worked so well for me. I load them up with 4 Meltaguns and a combi melta on the champion, and have them go to town popping heavy transports and critical tanks that my Autocannons or lootas can't touch easily. Anything to slow the roll of my opponent.
To put it all together:
When placing objectives, I will generally place two, if not all three of them somewhere inside my deployment area, with maybe the one I don't, being put somewhere in cover for the Nurglings to grab and hold forever. This gives me the pesce of mind to know that half of the objectives are already secured by me and I won't have to worry too much about them going anywhere.
I deploy all of my artillery units kind of spaced out, with some of the spare crew bodies covering my Desciples in case my opponent is going first or steals the initiative. They are generally placed next to my backfield objectives because T7 makes it very hard for them to go away from anything other than close combat or Destroyer weapons. Desciple heavy weapons teams and my renegade command squad, are put where you would expect them to be: in cover with line of sight to something on the enemy side of the board.
The Arch Demagogue joins a unit of artillery that is in the middle of my field, so he benefits from majority toughness 7 and because his special rule that lets me fire with the template covering my own guys, is a bubble of 12 inches all around him, this positioning gives him the most bang for his buck and goes that extra mile.
Lootas set up in cover and fire away at light transports or high toughness models that pose a threat. I usually like to keep them on some kind of leveled ruin or something similar so they have the clearest line of sight. The gretchin mobs are set up directly in front of my artillery lines so they actually have a save of some sort in the form of shooting through a unit for a 5+. Mek boys just hang out in front of the lootas for an extra wound.
The heralds of Tzeentch deploy on either side of my board side, to maximize coverage, and roll every power possible on Maelific Daemonology. On my first psychic phase, they usually try to bring iut a unit of horrors, who also roll on maelific, to add to the warp charge pool, and in very lucky cases, turn into a keeper of secrets. If one of my heralds was lucky enough to roll the "sacrifice" power, which lets me bring out another herald for the price of a wound, I will either plbring iut another herald of Tzeentch with a mastery level 2 upgrade, Iraq a herald of Slaanesh for the charriot that does d6 hammer of wrath hits for each hull point left. Summoning daemons is all about using them like a proverbial scalpel: to precisely use this tool to carry out a specific purpose. If you try to use them just to make more things without an end goal in mind, then you're just wasting everyone's time, including your own.
Cypher and his chosen buddies infiltrate as close as possible to key vehicles, so when they pop the metal boxes, my artillery has more targets to shoot at. Sometimes it's best to not infiltrate everything and to maybe leave a squad of chosen in reserves because of imminent drop pods or something similar. In that case, if my opponent has at least something on their side of the field, I will infiltrate cypher with a unit if chosen into some kind of cover because he gives them all shrouded. As an added bonus, if the chosen and Cypher get tarpitted before being able to bring anything down, hit and run with initiative 8 helps my guys run away to take care of more important stuff.

(It's been mentioned to me that I should consider taking out a few the field artillery units and see how the rest of my army performs without them. I feel that that would probably be good, so i can actually see how my army does in late game since, every time I field this, the battle is over before the end of turn 2.)

Basically, my army three has pieces to itself: the backfield gunline, the midfield reinforcements, and the infiltrating tank murderers. In the few games ive played with this flavor of list, I have found that my opponents get tunnel vision on my artillery and forget about literally everything else I have on the board.
To that effect, I chew up my opponent as much as possible on my turns to make their resistance as futile as possible, which actually turns out fairly well with all the shelling going on. The heralds dump out more models, and in the case of a large assault unit making its way towards my back lines, I make some new daemons to bubble wrap my opponent. For this, I usually summon some daemonettes because of their running d6+3 inches to get into place. This one time, I had an ork warboss with a bunch of bikers barreling down onto me. I summoned two units of daemonettes, and each unit ran and spread out completely encircling the orks so in their turn, they could only shoot at one unit and be forced to charge it instead of going anywhere near my back lines, buying me an extra turn to retaliate. All the while my horrors were sitting on an objective scoring me some points, my gunline finished off the other orks, and my heralds kept summoning out more tarpit.