Moving Blog

I've recently started using Tumblr to post images from my games, which I'm a lot more active with than my articles here and on my WHFB blog, Warhamsters.

Because of this I've decided to move all my focus to my Tumblr blog, which will be a mix of photos from my games and the occasional article like those posted here.

My blog on Tumblr is also named Path of the Seer and can be found at http://pathoftheseer.tumblr.com

Horus Defeated

Played a game of the Horus Heresy board game from Fantasy Flight with my girlfriend tonight. She's not a 40k player and also hadn't played this before, but occasionally humours me by pretending to be interested in the 40k universe. Which is quite sweet of her really.

Sadly she must have learned a thing or two from listening to me, because she managed to halt the advance of Horus and his forces of Chaos for long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

It's a good game, though I don't often get a chance to play it so remain pretty rusty on the rules. Like other Fantasy Flight games I've played the rules can be a bit convoluted and not always presented in the most understandable manner. This meant a fair bit of flicking back and forward in the rulebook, and even a couple of mid-game revelations. And like other Fantasy Flight games it's a great piece of kit, lots of little plastic models, thick card tokens, "gazillions" of cards (as described by Jenny) and a great board to play on.

All in all it's a game I really like, and will hopefully get more chances to play soon!

Death Worlds

Got a game in last night with the new Death Worlds missions from White Dwarf 388, which was a nice change from the standard 40k scenarios. We rolled for the Breakthrough mission, which had each side trying to break through the opponent's line in a doubles game where my Ulthwe allied with Chaos against Black Templar and Necrons.

The random tables for environmental effects were cool, though lack of familiarity slowed things down a bit as we searched the tables and tried to figure out how to use our shiny new effects, but I think with a few more games of practice we'd be able to fire through quick enough. 

Looking at some of the tables I'm pretty keen to fire down my Necrons with this at some time, since several of the rolls will provide good synergy with my Writhing Worldscape C'tan, but even with my Eldar we had some good results, mostly damage to enemy units coming across the field.

And in true Eldar style I managed to grab us a last minute win with a quick turbo-boost into the enemy deployment zone for a win of 14-11. Hurrah for fast skimmers and jetbikes!

The main thing I took from that game was just that it's nice to be playing something other than the standard 3 missions. Anything to shake up the game in these dying days of 5th Edition is good in my books, and I look forward to seeing what GW offer us in the way of missions for 6th.

Further Reading

Blood of Kittens: I bought a White Dwarf and I like it

Way of Saim Hann: Mission Burnout

Path of the Seer: Combat Patrol

Combat Patrol, now that's what I call Ulthwe Strike Force!

Yeah, Combat Patrol. Now there's a game type I hadn't played in a long time.

I was round visiting a friend the other day and he suggested we play a game of Combat Patrol. After giving us a refresher on the rules we set about it, a three-player game where my Eldar took on Space Marines and Orks.

As a game type it's a lot of fun taking such a small force, you're severely restricted when it come to choosing your list (only 400 pts, limits on multi-wound models and models with armour values, etc) which means you're not just on a scaled down version of your full size list. I was glad I'd brought my Eldar along, as this was the perfect opportunity to put down something themed on the Ulthwe Strike Force from the old Eye of Terror codex.

11 Guardians - Scatter Laser
Warlock - Singing Spear, Conceal

3 Jetbikes - Shuriken Cannon
Warlock - Singing Spear, Destructor

1 Vyper - Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holo-Field, Spirit Stones

The Vyper was definitely a good choice for this game. It started the game by obliterating the Space Marine Razorback and ended the game by blowing up the Ork Trukk, and that's not even mentioning the number of infantry it helped mow down in the intervening turns. Guardians were reasonable, though I think if I were rewriting this list I'd look at replacing them with my Swooping Hawks, sticking with the mobility the rest of my army offered. Jetbikes also performed well, the Warlock only got to use Destructor once before dieing to wound allocation late in the game, but used it to kill off the majority of a unit of Ork Boyz.

Lists aside, I enjoyed having to consider every model I was using; in most games losing a handful of Guardians in a turn is no bother, but in this case I was then forced to hold them further back than I would have liked the rest of the game after taking casualties to Space Marine shooting in turn 1.

I'm definitely hoping to get in some more Combat Patrol in future as a welcome break from the same old 40k missions. 

It's a FAQ!

Necron FAQ (and others, but who cares about them?) is now online, so what will this mean for aspiring Overlords?

Well most of the decisions seem like common sense answers to cover gaps in the original writing of the rules, so no big surprises in there.

The internet-favourite conga line of Scarabs has been killed off, forcing new swarms to be placed in coherency with models that existed at the start of the turn. Well, thank goodness for that! I understand why people wanted to stretch their unit across the board like that but it really was a bit silly.

I was slightly surprised that Lychguard dispersion shields will only bounce hits of AP3 or better. True enough that's how we've been playing it locally, but I anticipated GW allowing the deflection rule to work with their normal save too.

I'd also expected to see the ability to have 2 Royal Courts assign members to the same squad. I've never experimented with that option, partly as I expected it to be FAQ'd out, but I'm now starting to wonder if there are places I could make use of that.

There's still one or two things from the Codex that I feel could do with clarification, but overall this should help clear up a few points of confusion. I'll have to take a few more reads through, but for the moment I don't imagine it's going to change much in my list. 

What The Cryptek?

Are we really more than two months past the Necron release already? Time flies when you're having fun!

I'm still running most of my Crypteks as Transmogrification, using the Tremorstaves in conjunction with my C'tan's Writhing Worldscape. These guys hang out in 5-man Warrior squads and try and spam out as much dangerous terrain as they can. Of course it's most effective against bigger squads, though a few lucky rolls can make a solid dent in a smaller unit. On top of damaging units and immobilising vehicles there's the added bonus of slowing enemy movement as they struggle through difficult terrain, making it a good way to break up the solid line of an enemy advance.

Fun as that all is, I've been starting to wonder about the potential for different setups. Most of these would require a pretty major change in tactics, moving my Warrior units from the back of the board to the front lines where they could make use of the 12" range and Template range staves. Of course I could turn some/all into Destruction Crypteks for good tank-busting and heavy infantry killing joy, but that would have them spending a lot of the game targeting only tanks when my actual Warriors want to be gunning down infantry. On the other hand it wouldn't be a total loss as Gauss weapons have the potential to add that little bit extra help on the anti-tank front.

Of course Crypteks don't just go in Warrior squads. I've got a Veil of Darkness Harbringer of Despair chilling with my Deathstrikes so they can hop about the board doing cheeky multi-marking. I've also experimented before with taking the Destruction Crypteks as a single Royal Court and obliterating any armour that gets into range. If I did try that tactic again I'd want to consider taking fewer squads of Warriors, but in groups of 10 or more with Res Orb Lords to make them uber resilient.

So what does your Royal Court get up to?

Send in the Warriors

I'm just back from my first game with 5th Edition Necrons (or should I say 6th Edition?), and I'm totally convinced that this is a fun army to play.

The game was 6000 points each side, Necrons took on Grey Knights, Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines in an Annihilate mission. I don't think a single turn went by without some special rule or another ruining our opponents' plans, and by the end of turn 4 the Necrons were ahead 14 kill points to 7.

Because all three of us with Necron armies were building on forces we already had there was in excess of 100 Necron Warriors on the table. I was the only one to put Crypteks (or any Royal Court members, for that matter) into mine, but was glad of it. The combination of Transmogrification Crypteks and a Writhing Worldscape C'tan is absolutely phenomenal. I spent a good part of the game taking pot-shots at a unit of 20 Khorne Bezerkers, killing a couple of guys to dangerous terrain each turn, and even took a wound off of Abaddon when his unit of Terminators was forced to test.

One of the Necron armys included Imotekh, and his night fighting rule meant we could engage the enemy right at the range we wanted. The extra chances for lightning strikes in a game this size helped out too!

Most Necron units are still vulnerable to combat though, as you would expect. I managed to avoid this for the most part, but several squads of Warriors further down the table were removed in the assault phases. Fortunately the new codex has tricks and units that meant we were almost always in a position to offer some kind of counter-attack in our own turn, typically wiping out the offending unit.

And let's talk about Deathmarks briefly. Mine spent the first few turns hanging back, as I didn't want to be over-eager and throw them away just for one round of shooting. Instead they waited until the enemy reached our line, then combined Veil of Darkness, Hunters from Hyperspace, and some rending that I was reminded of to really tear into a unit of Terminators. The next turn they were able to use the same trick to warp half way across the field and hit a different terminator unit.