Finally Finished my Khorne Bezerker Army...

One of the ways I manage to keep myself engaged with hobby games after well over half my lifetime is the variety of models that I get to paint. I rarely stick with one army or faction, preferring to flit between one system, or army, and another. That way, I get a different challenge each time I paint; I get to paint different models, different scales, and different colours. It keeps me interested, but it also means that I rarely have a so-called ‘full-sized’ army.

This is something of an abstract concept, so for those of you who don’t know: Each game has a ‘standard’ size, usually measured in points or the system’s equivalent. With Warhammer 40K, that’s usually 1500 points. With Warhammer, it’s 2000, though that has changed with the advent of Age of Sigmar, not sure what the standard size is here. With Lord of the Rings, it’s something like 700 points, and with Batman Miniatures Game I think it’s 300.

The Red Fury, in its full glory.

So it’s no surprise to anybody who knows my approach to hobby gaming that even though I’m well into my 17^th year of doing it, I’ve only managed to create a full-sized army 3 times.

This is the third: The Red Fury.

An army of Khorne Bezerkers, why not? I came up with the idea for the army around halfway through 2011, when I wanted to build up a force to take to every Games Workshop in the country and play a game with it. I intended to build it up a lot more quickly than I did, and it really was my first army where I’d planned it out from the start; I knew where I was going with it, what models I wanted, and what strategies I wanted the army to achieve. Here’s the army list:

	Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
HQ	Chaos Lord	65	130	1496
	Aura of Dark Glory	15
	Axe of Blind Fury	35
	Veterans of the Long War	5
	Mark of Khorne	10
Troops	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
Heavy Support	Chaos Defiler	195	200
	Havoc Launcher	5
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15

 

The heavy vehicles pound the enemy from a distance...

So the concept was simple: Pound the opponent from a distance with three 5-inch blast templates per turn, and destroy whatever was left in close combat afterwards. The Rhinos add to the firepower with their Havoc Launchers, and the Daemonic Possession on the tanks protected them from being stun-locked out of combat.

Unfortunately, I designed the army while 5^th Edition 40K was still in full swing, and while upgrades to the Bezerkers sorted out the discrepancy in points, I still completed it four years and two editions after the fact. It’s got no way of dealing with Fliers, for example, and since most armies these days have at least some form of flier it can cause problems. With the introduction of Hull Points in 6^th edition, tanks became much easier to destroy. And of course the idea of relying on blast templates and close combat weapons is something of a departure from the fact that the most damage I ever do to anything in 40K is with small-arms fire.

While the Bezerkers wait to eviscerate anything that gets too close.

Nonetheless, the Defilers and Vindicators do their jobs well as destruction machines and are absolute magnets for bullets. Oddly for an army that relies on close combat, I play a defensive game and allow the opponent to take the fight to me. I enjoy hiding my Bezerkers in ruins, out of line of sight. This forces my opponents to approach me if they want to win, because if they don’t, I can use the tanks to blast them from a distance.

This isn’t a strong army, by any stretch of the imagination. A hardcore tournament player would take me to pieces in moments. But it does what it does well enough, and hopefully proves a beyond-beginner level of challenge for most people. If Chaos are getting a new codex for 7^th edition, I’ll be interested to see what changes it will bring and how it will affect the dynamic of an army like this. Until then, I’ll try and get some games in, and see what happens when an unstoppable force whoops an immovable object’s ass.

Lead by this beast of a warrior (Games Day 2009 model)

You may also notice a difference in the painting of some of the models; this is again due to the changing editions of the paints. The Bezerkers started off being painted Mechrite Red, but by the time I got around to painting the last squad, two of the Rhinos and the two Vindicators, that colour had been replaced by Mephiston Red which is a little brighter. I was a bit miffed about that, but I wanted to see this army through to the end so I tried not to worry about it too much.

5/1/2014: Warhammer 40K: Chaos Space Marines vs Space Marines.

This match took place in Titan Games in Stourbridge between me and my opponent who is also called Matt. I had Chaos Space Marines, Matt had Space Marines, and we played a 1500 point game.

Now I'm going to say straight off the bat that this one ended in a draw due to time-out after the 3rd turn out of potentially 7 (the shop was closing.) Matt had the advantage on victory points and the game had the potential to turn into a complete bloodbath, but he's a really nice guy and was gracious enough to call it a draw. As the game did not have time to reach its conclusion, it won't be the usual blow-by-blow account. Instead, I'm going to comment on some of the new 6th edition codex rules that we came across, and how they affected the game.

This might just get even more nerdy than usual...

First of all, here was my army:

	Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
HQ	Chaos Lord	65	130	1498
	Aura of Dark Glory	15
	Axe of Blind Fury	35
	Veterans of the Long War	5
	Mark of Khorne	10
	Chaos Lord	65	135
	Aura of Dark Glory	15
	Jump Pack	15
	Lightning Claw (2)	30
	Mark of Slaanesh	10
Troops	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	237
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Space Marines (6)	88	191
	Lightning Claw (2)	30
	Close Combat Weapon (5)	10
	Plasma Gun	15
	Veterans of the Long War	6
	Icon of Excess	30
	Mark of Slaanesh	12
Fast Attack	Raptors (6)	112	164
	Meltagun (2)	20
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Melta Bombs	5
	Mark of Slaanesh (6)	12
Heavy Support	Chaos Defiler	195	200
	Havoc Launcher	5
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15

A curious amalgamation of Khorne and Slaanesh, but there is a reason for this: I don't really have one big army (or at least, not one that's any good,) so instead of that I have about 8 different small armies across Games Workshop's games. This is because I get fed up with painting the same thing over and over again, and want to move on to something new. This means I could start an army every 10 minutes, and about half of them would be Chaos. Having painted a few new pieces for my Khorne army, I found that I actually had enough of each army to form a reasonable force, so that's how I got it up to 1500 points.

So here's what we came across:

Space Marines: Combat Squads

The rule in the Space Marines Codex that allows full-strength Space Marine squads to split in to two squads was first introduced in 5th edition. It's still fundamentally the same rule but with one difference: You can now only do this at the start of the game before rolling for your Warlord Traits. This means you can now no longer do it once the game is underway.

If I remember rightly, this was more or less the case before anyway (A note here: When I played Space Marines in 5th Edition, I used Salamanders, who couldn't use the Combat Squad rules because it came under Ultramarines Chapter Tactics.) But the difference here is that now that the Warlord Traits can sometimes affect the way the army is deployed, the squads have to be split first if they are going to divide into combat squads. Which is fair enough. Matt actually forgot to do it, but I let him have it anyway; there's no point being a dick when we're just getting used to the new rules. But by the same token, I forgot to roll for my Gifts of Mutation at the start of the game and he let me have that. It's amazing what you can do with a kind word!

Chaos Space Marines: Daemonic Possession

This rule in the Chaos Space Marines Codex affects vehicles, and is nothing new, being in operation at least as far back as the 4th edition Codex. However, it now works slightly differently for the new edition of the game: You now have to roll 2+ on a dice to ignore Crew Shaken and Crew Stunned on the Vehicle Damage Table. As the table is now only applied on a penetrating hit, this will come up a lot less, which I'm presuming is the reason for the reduction in points from 20 to 15. It still reduces the Ballistic Skill of the relevant vehicle to 3.

There is also another nasty twist: If the vehicle is a transport unit, then you have to roll 1D6 when the unit embarks. If you get a 1, it eats one of the passengers that embarks on it. It can recover a hull point if it does this, but given the cost of even the most basic Chaos Space Marine, losing even one of them will hurt.

As you can see from my army list, Daemonic Possession affected both the Vindicator and the Defiler (the latter by default.) Did it help? No. Quite the reverse, actually. My Vindicator got shot a lot but the most Matt was able to do was glance it, so the benefit of the rule never actually applied. On the other hand, it did make my scatter launches less accurate, and I remember at least one occasion where the target Dreadnought was missed by 1 inch - the inch I wouldn't have lost if I hadn't put Daemonic Possession on it.

Ironically, the rule would have been better employed on the Rhino. This did get a Crew Stunned result, which wouldn't have bothered me except that the squad within can't then charge into combat. Removing the passengers from the Rhino would have left them in open ground with nowhere to go because the Rhino couldn't get out of their way (it was rather dense terrain!)

Chaos Space Marines: Champion of Chaos

The Challenge rule has been in Warhammer for some time and was bought to 40K in the 6th edition. It's quite a nice addition to the game and can make for some thematic battles. It's also a pretty good way of making sure your squad sticks around to take the combat in to multiple rounds; the challenge has no affect on the rest of the combat so assuming your guy survives and passes his leadership check, he can force the combat to carry on into the next turn. This is a good tactic when contesting an objective!

Of course, Chaos have their own spin on this: The Champion must issue and accept a challenge wherever possible, and if he wins, gets to roll on the Chaos Boon table (which I won't go in to for this game as it never came up.) Of course, there's nothing the Dark Gods like better than watching their champions go at it in single combat.

It's a good thematic rule but one that can lead to some trouble if you're not careful. Apart from anything else, the champion may very well end up entirely out of his depth if he happens to challenge, say, a Librarian, or an Eldar Exarch, or even an Ork Warboss. Also, even if he wins, it might not help matters all that much, because the efforts of the Champion would have been better spent on the actual combat.

In this particular case, my squad of 6 Chaos Space Marines was charged by a 5-strong squad of Vanguard Veterans armed to the teeth. I took one out in Overwatch - another good new rule, by the way - and then issued the challenge. As the squad was only 5 men strong, the Veteran Sergeant couldn't have refused even if he'd wanted to, and because my Champion had both the Mark of Slaanesh and a pair of Lightning Claws, he took the Sergeant out very quickly. The remaining Chaos Space Marines took out another Vanguard Veteran... and then the two remaining Vanguard Veterans killed 4 Chaos Space Marines, causing them to lose combat.

And no matter what happened in the challenge, surviving it won't protect you from Sweeping Advance...

Which brings me on to the final rule, which should have come up, but didn't:

The Icon of Excess

This is a new rule that you can only give to squads who have the Mark of Slaanesh. It gives the unit Feel No Pain, which isn't quite as good in 6th edition as it was in 5th, but still useful.

You'll see on the army list that I gave The Icon of Excess to the unit of Chaos Space Marines with the mark of Slaanesh, which was involved in the close combat mentioned above. Unfortunately I forgot to do it, which meant that some of the Chaos Marines who died could potentially have survived the onslaught of the two Vanguard Veterans. I'd still have failed the leadership check if I'd lost (I rolled 11) but if I'd made a couple of saves it wouldn't necessarily have come to that.

So, that's what I think of the new rules that came up in the game. As it's technically a draw but the match didn't reach the conclusion we were looking for, a re-match is on the cards, but some scheduling issues means that I have no idea when this is going to happen.

See you all next time!