Battle Report - Necrons v Grey Knights

Today my mate Ben came over for a quick 750 point game of 40k. He was bringing his Grey Knights, and was trying out the list he's going to use in a doubles game tomorrow. Since I'm currently trying to finish all the painting on my Necron army I thought I'd give them a go.

We set up a 4'x4' board in the Warrior Lodge and rolled the Crusade mission and the Vanguard Strike deployment type. After the five objectives were placed we rolled off and I got to deploy first.

The Armies
My Necrons were led by an Overlord with warscythe and resurrection orb. He was put in with a large squad of 20 Warriors. My other troops choice was a nine man unit of Immortals with Gauss Blasters.
The fun stuff was one Canoptek Spyder with five Scarab bases, and 2 wraiths, one with whip coils.

Ben took a Librarian, two 5 man Strike Squads, each armed with 2 force Halberds and a Psycannon. A unit of 5 terminators all armed with halberds and psybolt ammo. To round it off the was a Dreadknight carrying a Nemesis Force Sword.

Turn One
Starting off, my Spyder rolled well and out popped another Scarab base and they moved over the difficult terrain towards one of the objectives to contest it if needs be. The Immortals also advanced and fired at one of the Strike Squads, taking one of them out in the process.
The Strike Squad then returned fire and knocked one of mine down in return. The other Strike Squad took aim at the Wraiths but they passed all their saves which was a relief. Next it was the turn of the Terminators to fire at the Immortals, they had better luck and two more fell to the floor. They took their morale check and passed, but only a single Necron was reanimated.

Turn Two
Like clockwork the Spyder had another Canoptek baby, and carried on advancing. The Wraiths leapt forward, skirting around the board to try and meet a squad of marines. The Warriors who were camping on an objective opened fire at the terminators, but the Librarian was at the front of the unit and passed all of his saves. The Immortals, wanting revenge shot at the Strike Squad again, and once again blew one up. They failed their morale check and were about an inch from leaving the board completely.
The Strike Squad rallies and all units move forward towards me. The Dreadknight moves frighteningly fast towards the Immortals while the Terminators finally take out one of the Wraiths. One Strike Squad fails to destroy any more Immortals and the other one starts running around the bastion to redeploy and to move away from the remaining whip coil Wraith. The Dreadknight charges into the Immortals, none of their overwatch shots find their mark. He takes out five of them, they fail to wound him back so fail their morale check and get caught in a sweeping advance, bummer!

Turn Three
22 shots from the Warriors fail to wound the Dreadknight and this is the beginning of the end. The Wraith chases the Strike Squad but can't catch them up in time. The Spyder made another Scarab then they scuttled off to engage the Terminators in close combat. No overwatch wounds were dealt, but they activated force weapons and hammerhanded the whole unit to death, that didn't go to plan!
The Librarian and his unit moved up onto an objective, and he attempts to smite the Spyder, but his high toughness saves him. The Strike Squad stop moving long enough to blast the final Wraith off the table, and the Dreadknight crashes into the Warriors and the Overlord. He takes 4 down straight away, and I was building up for three strikes with the warscythe, except I rolled three 1's! The Warriors did manage to take one wound off the Knight before he once again swept the whole squad off the board in it's advance.

Thoughts and shit
So, it sounds like a total wipeout, and it was! But it was a hell of a lot of fun to play, short but sweet (short for me, sweet for Ben) and I learnt quite a bit from it. Things like I should've taken Tesla on the Immortals instead of the Gauss. The other major mistake I made was shooting the Warriors at the Dreadknight and using the Scarabs to assault the Terminators. I should've done that the other way round really, things might've lasted a bit longer.

Cheers for reading, I know it's not the usual narrative battle rep but thought I'd get it written up promptly as it was a great game. Let me know if you've got any more thoughts on where I went so very wrong!

Farsight Enclave Supplement for the Tau Empire Codex

Following hot on the heels of the Iyanden review I took a look at the far more recent Farsight supplement. I'd been waiting for this book for what felt like months, I'm still not prepared to splash out on a digital book when a physical copy could be in my librarium instead!

Just like the Eldar one it's a great read, a lot of fun, and adds a nice twist to the Tau army. The use of XV8 Crisis suits as troops is something us Tau players have been wanting for ages, and it's finally here. Just a shame Farsight doesn't have access the the Puretide Engram Neurochip without allies!

So here's the video, let me know if you've had any experience playing an Enclave list, I'm going to be putting up a couple of test lists shortly. Cheers!

ps sorry if the thumbnail looks like i'm flipping you the bird, i'm not!

Iyanden Supplement for the Eldar 5th ed codex

I've had this supplement floating around for a while now, and occasionally dip into it for a quick read, but hadn't really read it, so thought I'd better get on the case and put together a brief overview of it.

It's a great book, and does exactly what it says on the tin, it supplements the main codex with a huge amount of great background and a load of new missions to play.

Let me know what you think of the supplements if you've picked one up, either the digital or hardback ones, cheers!

Games Day UK 2013 Part Two - Forge World

Welcome to part 2 of my Games Day coverage. Once again Forge World really showed mainline GW up with the amount of cool previews they had on show. There's going to be a huge amount of photos I took on the day along with snippets of information I got from the seminar. Enjoy...

Horus Heresy -

First off we have the Myrmidons. Part of the Mechanicum force, these come in ranged and CC varieties. There's loads of different options, just like with the Magos kit.

There's also Mechanicum Thralls on the way in a few months. They'll be compatible with Imperial Guard Plastic Kits.

This is the Land Laider Achilles MkIIB. It's still very much a WIP but looks great already. No plans to do an all FW Phobos pattern Land Raider from what I could tell.

The Sicaran Venator! Should be out within a month. The model on show was an actual production cast.

The Vidicator that everyone should have seen already.

 Word Bearers Ashen Circle. These look amazing with the variant helmets.

Night Lords Raptor squad. These are expected in a couple of months.

Lorgar. He'll also be out in a couple of months. Sculpted by Edgar Skomorowski and looking very nice.

World Eaters Red Butchers. Way better than the Rampager squad.

Iron Hands Medusan Immortals which should be out 'shortly'.

Death Guard Grave Wardens. Almost done except for the heads.

Kharybdis Assault Claw. Zooms sideways, then hovers to land. Should have a capacity of 20-30 models. Will was trying to design the smaller Assault pod but it turned out too big!

The Legion Basalisk is almost finished. There will be a Marine Medusa soon too.

In other heresy news...
The next Primarch is going to be Horus Lupercal. He's about half finished. The top half, hence the small photo! Sculpted by Simon Egan.

Book three, titled Extermination is due in March/Easter. It will cover the battles of Phall, Paramar and Isstvan. There will be more Titan Legions, the Legio Gryphonicus (War Griffons) and Legio Fureans (Tiger Eyes).

The next trilogy will cover 1. Prospero, including Custodes and Sisters of Silence. 2. Signus, including Blood Angels, Demons, and Dark Angels. 3. Calth, including traitor Imperial Army. This should be released towards the end of 2014 with the following 2 the year after.

Salamanders models are on the to-do list but not started yet.

Mortarian also hasn't been started yet. They'll probably start him soon, maybe he'll be primarch 6 or 7.

There will be another Horus Heresy Weekender, but the alternate Fulgrim sculpt won't get released.

The other weapon options for the Thallax will be out early next year.

Someone asked about doing xenos as part of the Heresy. Tony was fairly blunt in his response, stating it's a civil war, and if you want aliens go and play 40k. I whole heartedly agree!

Imperial Fists should be getting a Breacher type unit and some Templar style ones.

Iron Warriors are in playtesting at the moment. Things like heavy support terminators with cyclone missile launchers. They should also get a heavy support siege squad.

Warhammer 40k -

No photos taken but got some information.
Imperial Armour Volume 2 second edition is almost ready. It'll update all FW Space Marine rules to 6th edition. Andy Hoarre is writing it. It'll be subtitled War Machines of the Adeptus Astartes.
It should include a relic version of the Sicaran Battle Tank. Expected around Christmas.

From speaking to Talima, the Badab Wars books are next to be updated to 6th.

I had a really long chat to Daren Parrwood, the genius behind a lot of the FW Tau line. He said rules should be out for the XV107 soon, in a week or so. And that he'd brought another variant riptide with him on the day but Tony had said not to show it. It's apparently got a huge shield and performs more of a protective role than an offensive one.
He also mentioned that he's had another variant suit hanging around half-finished for a few years. Somewhere between the XV2 and XV7 class. Hopefully in a few years they'll be doing another Tau Imperial Armour.

Bran Redmaw is still a WIP. Mark Bedford is responsible!

Warhammer Forge -

Battle for Black Fire Pass is pretty much on hold indefinitely. But Trish had brought a WIP of the Dread Saurian, it's huge!

There was a WIP of the K'Daii Destroyer. May be out in 2-3 months. Although Jan/Feb were also mentioned.

And there you have it. Tons of amazing info, and lots of lovely sculpts to look forward to. Cheers!

Games Day UK 2013 Part One - Overview

Hey guys, just like I did last year I'm splitting my Games Day coverage into 2 parts. This post will cover the general stuff, the tale of my day out, some mainline GW stuff and the Armies on Parade along with plenty of photos. Part 2 will cover all of the Forge World goodness, although by now most of it has already been seen. So on with the day...

My mate Dean picked me up before 6am and we drove up the the Birmingham NEC, managed to find the car park and got to the south entrance of the NIA by 8! There were only 10 people in the queue in front of us, but apparently a lot more round on the north side. Eventually they let us in to join the queue on the inside, and by half 9 the doors were opened properly, ahead of time.

We made a dash straight for the Forge World sales area, and got separated, me being quite a way ahead. I picked up all the bits I was after, the second HH book, the Fire Raptor, a X107 R'Varna battlesuit and the event only Lodge Priest. Dean caught me up after buying his goodies and we set off to get tickets for the FW and BL seminars.

There was time to kill before the first seminar so we had a good look around the FW design studio area, this will all be covered in the other post later along with what was in the seminar. After that we grabbed some lunch, went to the Black Library seminar. Nick Kyme, Guy Haley and John French were answering questions about writing about battlefields although some of the questions went way off topic.

After that it was a quick wander around the GW studio bits. Plenty more minis on show this year compared to last year but nothing mindblowing or previewing like the FW guys. One stand out for me was on the Limited Edition stand. They had all of the new LE books out on display, and tucked at the bottom of a cabinet were some models of what looked like a Warhammer Quest tile set. I asked about it and they were made by Tammy Nicholls. Those of you who read last years GD post will know she had some wonderful Blanche style models on show there, and had her Deathwing in a recent White Dwarf that I had shown. These tiles weren't for anything in particular, just a hobby exercise for fun that she'd thrown together out of bits. We had a great chat, and was one of the highlights of my day.

Later on we hit the Armies on Parade which was very underwhelming. There were a handful of stand out boards but most were shit, to be frank. A few models on a flocked tile a display piece does not make!

I was meant to meet up with my friend Jamie for a demo game of Netrunner but unfortunately our schedules never synced, therre's always next time! I did bump into my mate Lee again and had a good chat about the day, had a photo in out matching #Warmonger tshirts, awesome to hook up again!

That's about it for the overview. Stay tuned for the FW bit, cheers!