A Dash of Ork

Greetings one and all!

While I haven't picked up a model or played a game since 2012 in the prime of 5th Edition, I haven't forgotten about the hobby.  To the contrary, I put down models and the competitive aspect of Warhammer to immerse myself in the universe.  I own every Horus Heresy novel from the Black Library, quite a few Omnibuses...I've always enjoyed reading Codices, but this deep immersion into the 31st Millenium has been quite nice.

So....Daemons.....Yeah, They're Awesome

Now this goes the other way!

Well I picked up the Daemon codex this weekend while I was at the Indy Open but didn't get to much of a chance to really dig into it. But we had quite a bit of discussion on the way home last night about it and I've spent a fair amount of today reading and playing with it in my mind so I figured I'd share my initial thoughts.

Vehicles and Transports in 6th Edition

I mentioned last week in my I’m back article how I thought that people had overreacted and that vehicles and transports still had a place in armies in 6th. Well I’m about to share with you my reasoning! Prepare to be amazed! (Or not, I won’t be offendedJ).

6th Edition Theory – Boots on the Ground

Some of you will remember that in my recent I’m back post I mentioned I’d be delving deeper into some of my thoughts on 6^th edition. One of those thoughts was that there were going to be an increased number of models on a per army basis for successful armies in 6^th edition. Well here are some of my expanded thoughts on the subject J

Something Fun to Come out of the FAQ’s – Space Wolf Allies

Everyone and their mother is talking about the FAQ’s and there are quite a few things that either clarify some waffly rules or change things pretty significantly but I wanted to focus on this one, single thing because it brought a little joy to my eyes and made my brain a start to working.

Dark Angels – A Starting Point

Well the codex is out. People are excited or pissed in varying degrees. We’ve got quite a few typos some people out there are trying to build armies around and some people lamenting Chaos Space Marines already. Oh what a time to be in love with 40k.

Chaos – Where I’m Starting

Well I’ve spent the weekend playing with my airbrush but since I still suck with that thing so far I figured I’d put up where I plan on starting my lists for now with Iron Warriors.

Really Understanding 6th – List Building

 A certain blue blog is exploding lately because the owner just got back from Nova and finished pretty low. Said author is blaming dice and terrain so far for his losses though that may change as he puts up more batreps but all of it did get me thinking and I decided I was going to put up some of my list building thoughts after playing 13 games in a weekend J Oh, and you’ll be able to read about the mistakes I made that caused my losses on Monday when that article goes live so keep an eye out.

Daemons Thoughts – After Playing Some Games

Last weekend we had a tournament at 2,200 points that I participated in. It was one force org only but otherwise followed all the rules for 6th. I’d been playing my walking GK’s pretty darn hard lately and since there wasn’t a painting requirement I said to hell with it and brought out my Daemons. If you haven’t been following my blog for long I have a bit of a love/hate thing with Daemons. I love them because they are just plain fun to play 90% of the time. And I hate them because that 10% is normally so bad the army goes back in the box for a few months J

Logan – Friend to the Little People

As most of you might have guessed I have a wee-bit of a crush on Logan. He’s just an all-star! That being said I recently went all in on a plastic daemon army that I’m going to be slowly painting up. But while I’m painting that up I have my Iron Warriors that I started and those need paint and I truly love all the conversion opportunities I’ve got in that army. And since Iron Warriors still hold the record for longest hold on my attention span in a row (1.5 years with no interruptions!!!!!) and there is a new codex coming I’ve gotten even more excited.

Welcome to 6th: Daemons

This is the first in a series on armies and the changes 6^th has brought to them. We’re starting with Daemons because I think they got an enormous boost in this edition and will be a ton of fun to play.

Nova and 6th Edition, I’m Totally Torn!

Oh I'm not torn on using 6th edition but on my army. As a fair few of you who read here have probably heard by now Nova is going to be the first national level GT event (i.e. over 100 players) to run 6^th edition. Which is awesome! But since I’m playing in the Invitational as well as the Open and have less than 2 months to build, paint, and practice with an army I have to get started pretty much now. Which leads to the point of this post; I’m torn between 3 different armies right now with a sound idea list as I get familiar with the rules for all of them. Oddly, all Xenos J

All Terminator Lists Part 3: Grey Knights!

Well I’m finally finishing this out from back in July. There have been one or two people who bring it up regularly and I felt like I should complete this especially since I’ve been on such a Terminator kick this last year. You can see the other two articles here:

http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2011/07/all-terminator-lists-part-2-wolfwing.html

http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2011/07/all-terminator-lists-part-1-deathwing.html

Grey Knights are the third book that can take terminators as troops. Grey Knights are unique though in that they can take two different kinds of terminators as troops. Paladins and standard GKT’s. I’m going to split the two because I don’t think they mesh well in a single list. So we’ll start with the Paladins J

Tyranids & Me & List Design in the Age of SW, DE, & GK

First I’d say buckle in. This is going to be a long one.

Second, I have to send a damn you out to L'Etat C'Est Moi for re-sparking my interest in Nids. I fell away from them a bit after running them for most of the early part of the year last year in favor of other armies. Not because I didn’t find them competitive but because I was getting burnt out.

Nids are a funny army for me. It’s one that I tried to build back in 3^rd edition with a friend but we never finished it and the models disappeared. Neither one of us to this day knows where they went. Fast forward almost about 6ish years and I build a list for early 5^th edition using the last book. Loved it. Played it pretty heavy for quite a bit and then put it down. The new book comes out and I make a few conversions and poof, new army. I play that off and on for a bit but my Admech Daemons pull me away. Later I decide I really wanna run me some Nids so last year I played them almost exclusively for 6 months before putting them down again in favor of Space Wolves and Deathwing.

List Building Help: Tyranid's 1,850

So I was reading Dakka on Friday and I headed into a section I rarely head into anymore for fear of my sanity. The Army List section. I know most of you are thinking WHY? Well it kinda worked out. L'Etat C'Est Moi, who comments on here, had put up a Tyranid list for review for the upcoming Darkstar GT which I’ll also be attending. I read it and asked permission to post my response and thoughts on the blog and was given permission. Here is the list complete with the builders comments:

What is Anti-Tank?

This is something that has been getting to me for a while. Forgive the intrusion into what is going to be quite a bit of necron posting but this is something I feel might need to be put out there. It is mostly geared toward non-imperial armies but I think it has something most people can take away.

So what is Anti-Tank? Well if you listen to the internet anti-tank is melta. That’s it. Nothing else counts or is considered. It’s an unfortunate but true tale. I’m going to cover the different aspects of anti-tank in this post hopefully to give people a different view that shows them that anti-tank can exist without the big “M”.

I Pity the Guard! - Thoughts on Guard in the Current Environment

Well I said I was working on a few random articles and this is one of them. I’ve recently closed out the summer “season” of tournaments which included 3 GT’s that totaled 27 games, several RTT’s, and the Ard Boy Prelims/Semi’s. Oddly I’m not burned out on the hobby. I will say I’ve been looking at Fantasy as a way to change things up a bit but that’s beside the point.

The point of this article is that I’m starting to feel a little pity in my heart for the Guard players out there. Bear in mind this is purely off what I’ve run into and seen in events in Virginia, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Texas as well as lists I see being written up online on blogs and several forum communities. Some guard players still do very well for themselves but in general also aren’t posting their lists and aren’t taking the top spots in tournaments anymore(I said in general Mike since you’ve got 2 events coming upJ). Why aren’t we seeing IG in the top spots anymore? Why has their representation dropped (not back to pre-5^th ed. codex levels but pretty close) so much?

Dark Eldar for the Nova Events!

Hey folks!

The Nova Invitational and the Nova Open approach, and with army lists coming due, I decided it was time to think about what to do. The Nova Invitational is a one day, 5 round event at 1750 points, followed by two more days of the Nova Open at 2,000 points.

My traditional Dark Eldar army doesn’t much change – my 2,000 point army roughly looks like this:

HQ: Baron Sathonyx
HQ: Haemonculi
Troop1-5: 5x Warriors, Blaster, Dual Splinter Cannon Venom
Troop6: 9x Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Raider
Elite1-3: 4x Trueborn with blasters, Dual Splinter Cannon Venom
Fast: Beast Unit
Heavy 1-3: Ravagers

Dashofpepper Strategeries: On Changing Point Levels

One of the great things about co-authoring with Hulksmash is that we bring such different perspectives to the table on so many issues. This particular issue is something we’ve chatted about from time to time, and our opinions differ.

In short, if I pick an army…take Orks for example, my 1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, and 2500 lists all follow the same theme. I might even call them modular. If I want to bump from 1850 to 2000, I can add another unit of XXX. If I need to drop from 1850 to 1500, I can cut a unit of YYY. I play Battlewagon Orks led by Ghazghkull Thraka – and at every point level…that theme is readily apparent - a solid army core of my theme with modular additions and subtractions based on point level.

Hulksmash on the other hand subscribes to the theory that an army’s playstyle changes at point levels. Tyranids at 1500 are different than Tyranids at 2000. To some extent, I agree…my Necron theme works at 2,000 points – but I can’t keep the theme below 2,000 points, so I would have to change it. So I don’t play Necrons below 2,000 points. =p

All Terminator Lists Part 2: Wolfwing

We’re now onto the second portion of the three part article on all Terminator armies. I chose to do Wolf Guard second since I was toying last night with the list for the Invitational (yes, the Invitational is 1,750 and the articles are based around 2k, sue me) and so it’s fresh in my mind. Plus I wanted to close out the series with GK’s J

Anywho, onto the article.

The second of the three armies that can take an all terminator army is Space Wolves. In fact, if you remember, until the FAQ came out for DA’s most people playing Deathwing and slightly shifted to play Wolfwing as it provided a better and more competitive Terminator army. So let’s look first at some of the differences between Wolfwing and Deathwing as they currently stand.