Matt's Tactics: Cower and Camp

I had a 750pt game of Warhammer 40,000 in the Dudley store this afternoon with a young man called Sam. I played my Khorne Bezerker force against his Astra Militarum, or Imperial Guard as most of us know it. Here was my army list:

	Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
HQ	Chaos Lord	65	110	748
	Power Weapon	15
	Aura of Dark Glory	15
	Ichor Blood	5
	Mark of Khorne	10
Troops	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	219
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Melta Bombs	5
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	219
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Melta Bombs	5
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
Heavy Support	Chaos Defiler	195	200
	Havoc Launcher	5

Sam had a Vanquisher, two Sentinels, a unit of Rocket Launchers and two 10-man squads with a Command group. The scenario was Purge the Alien (1 victory point for each unit completely destroyed) and we rolled the diagonal deployment. The terrain was laid out quite densely for a 4x4 board, with buildings in every corner, but I was still going to have to run my Bezerkers at him before I did any damage, and running in to a gun line of Guard is a very dangerous game indeed…

Sam literally came out all guns blazing by firing the Vanquisher cannon at my Bezerkers who were taking cover behind the building. In but the first turn, he managed to wipe out five from the first squad, and – due to some rather fortunate scatter dice rolls – four from the second. That was over half my army and I hadn’t even made a move.

Hiding in the building was the best they could do? Really?

What I decided to do was move my remaining Berzerkers right in to the building where they were out of line of sight. There were now few enough of them that I managed to do this with all eight models that remained (My Chaos Lord was among them,) forcing Sam to move his models in order to wipe out my remaining troops. Curiously enough, Sam didn’t rise to the bait. I’m not sure what he thought I was going to do if he did, but not once during the remainder of the game – which would have lasted at least another four turns – did he attempt to take the fight to me.

On the third turn I bought on the Defiler. On the turn it arrived, I fired the Battle Cannon onto a unit of Guardsmen standing at the back of the board doing very little. I killed all but two of them, who promptly failed their leadership check and ran off the board, giving me two victory points – one for the squad, and a secondary one for first blood.

Sam directed his rocket launchers at my Defiler after that, immobilising it and eventually destroying it – but it was too late. With only one victory point, and no hope of getting another, the game was mine once I’d rolled for Random Game Length; I won 2-1.

Sam took the defeat well, fair play to him. And a win is a win, no matter how it comes about – but somehow I can’t help the feeling I didn’t really deserve this one. Khorne Bezerkers are supposed to be ferocious super-warriors who seek out battles and slaughter, and I won the battle by getting half of them killed and hiding the others out in a building like a bunch of frightened guinea-pigs. The shot with the Defiler was a gamble, and if it hadn’t worked I probably wouldn’t have won, but that literally was the only reason I did – by having the bigger gun and getting in the first kill.

The one positive thing I will say about it is that the Bezerkers at least did their job in being fearless. Had anybody else taken that many casualties in one turn, they would have needed a panic check – chances are they would have failed, run off the board and given the game to my opponent. So I guess it was a viable tactic, and one that probably wouldn’t have worked with any other unit. It’s just not what you envisage when you take Khorne Bezerkers to battle!

40K: Chaos Space Marines vs Dark Eldar 11/7/2013

Again behind a bit with the blogs...

So I had a game of 40K last week at Games Workshop Dudley, it didn't go so well for me! Here's why:

Sometimes I have managed to win games by insisting that my opponent uses a smaller army. This worked quite well in Warhammer 7th Edition, where I would tell opponents I could only go up to 1500 points which would mean that they couldn't use their Lord choices, which in turn would cost them the game.

However, insisting that people go from using a 1500pt 40K army to the 600pt army I had ready to roll is taking the piss a little bit, especially on Thursday nights where you get all the tournament-style play going on. Normally I would avoid situations like that but I go into Games Workshop as and when I can, and this particular night I found myself in on a Thursday. My opponent, Craig, was all ready to play 1500pts, and I only had 600... so I had to cobble together an army out of 2 different armies that were both Chaos. On the plus side this was the first time my Khorne Bezerkers had got an outing. On the down side, they never had a chance...

My army consisted of the following:

• Chaos Lord w/ twin lightning claws, a jump pack and the Mark of Slaanesh
• 2 squads of 6 Chaos Space Marines w/ the Mark of Slaanesh, plasma guns and twin lightening claws, and an Icon of Slaanesh which gives them Feel No Pain
• 6 Raptors with 2 Melta Guns, a Plasma Pistol and the Mark of Slaanesh
• 2 squads of 8 Khorne Bezerkers with a Power Axe and a Plasma Pistol.

This brought me up to roughly 1100pts, which Craig matched.

Craig's army was built around Venoms; squads of 5 Whyches riding in 4 venoms which I'm sure is making many of you who know what that means shaking your heads in sympathy.

Not much to say about the battle really; it was The Emperor's Will game which means that there is one objective on each side, Craig won the game 4-1.  I was completely unprepared for fighting this kind of army, and my army was not geared towards tournament play. To my credit I lasted 4 turns before I was tabled, but with far too many shots coming from the splinter cannons on the venoms, I'm astonished I lasted that long. The Bezerkers got wiped out to a man very quickly, and the Raptors didn't even make it into the game, having Deep Striked off the board.

The one victory point I did manage to earn came from having my CSM squads shooting that Craig's Archon and his Incubi. I didn't take them out; 3+ is a tough armour save to get through, but I did take enough of them out to force a panic check which they failed. They also failed the subsequent check to rally, and the game was all over before I'd managed that.

So, what to do next time?

Well, I probably won't be playing a tournament-geared army unless I'm prepared for it, because it made me feel like a nut being cracked with a sledgehammer. But, with that army, the only thing I could have done differently is take my Khorne Lord rather than my Slaanesh one. Reason is, that would make the Khorne Bezerkers count as Troops and therefore scoring units, so on the off chance any of them were still alive by the time they got to the top of the board, they could in theory have taken the objective. As it was, they were Elite, so they didn't have that option.

Can't say I enjoyed that game too much! Got some more work to do before I try taking Craig on again.

Warhammer World Invasion: April 2013

It took a while to get there but for me, the 2013 season is now on! Last week at Warhammer World I finally got to play some full games of the new edition of Warhammer 40K. It was an Invasion event that runs there from time to time, particularly in the school holidays, and it being a doubles event I partnered up with Dave and took the Iron Scars clan to their inaugral tournament. Here's how it all went down:

Because I wanted to use a new army for this, I designed a new Chaos Space Marine army around a god that is used far too little - Slaanesh. Granted, they lack the brutality of Khorne, or the reslience of Nurgle, but having cut my teeth on Dark Eldar way back when I first started the hobby, I am very well aware of how useful that extra initiative can be. Here's my army list:

	Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
HQ	Chaos Lord	65	120	600
	Jump Pack	15
	Lightning Claw (2)	30
	Mark of Slaanesh	10
Troops	Chaos Space Marines (6)	88	161
	Lightning Claw (2)	30
	Close Combat Weapon (5)	10
	Plasma Gun	15
	Veterans of the Long War (6)	6
	Mark of Slaanesh	12
	Chaos Space Marines (6)	88	155
	Lightning Claw (2)	30
	Close Combat Weapon (5)	10
	Plasma Gun	15
	Mark of Slaanesh	12
Fast Attack	Raptors (6)	112	164
	Meltagun (2)	20
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Melta Bombs	5
	Mark of Slaanesh (6)	12

Quite a lot going on there for a small army. What was supposed to happen was the Raptors deep-strike onto the battlefield either straight away or 1 turn in, use their Melta guns to destroy either the vehicles or whatever the enemy had sunk the most points on, and harrass the rest of the army until the end of the game, contesting objectives if at all possible. The rest of the force would support them by holding our objectives, firing plasma shots at hard targets, and in the case of the Chaos Space Marine Lord, jumping into any combat that needed supporting. Dave had taken a swarm of 75 Orks lead by a Big Mek, going on the assumption that whatever damage they took, there'd still be plenty more where they came from. We entered battle with all this in mind, and campaigned to aid the Dudley store in their victory...

A quick note about the games, as there were elements common to all of them:

• The games were all supposed to be Doubles games, with 600pts per player, using the standard force organisation chart. Now, the chart can be applied somewhat loosely in small-point games, but in this case the rules stood firm to stop people taking dirty, cheesey armies to what was supposed to be a friendly tournament.
• The games we played were all fast, dirty and scrappy, and with just the right balance between competitiveness and friendlyness; we couldn't have asked for a better set of opponents.
• Regular games of 40K can last for up to 7 turns, and more commonly 5, but because of the limited time constraints, none of our games lasted longer than 3 turns each.

Round One: Chaos/Orks vs Grey Knights/Blood Angels

When we found ourselves up against Grey Knights and Blood Angels, including some Death Company, I was convinced we were going do die a quick and horrible death. The scenario was Big Guns Never Tire (Objectives (in our case 4) with Heavy Support counting as scoring units as well as granting victory points) with Hammer and Anvil deployment, so we had a long way to go before we got into any kind of fighting. The Grey Knights, funnily enough, had a pinkish tint to them, their commander Ben attributing this to the time they spend fighting Slaanesh, and I was eager to continue the Rivalry!

They hadn't counted on the Raptors, and it was a good day for their Champion as he dispatched a Blood Angels Assualt Sergeant in Black Rage and a Grey Knight Justicar in single combat; not always a wise move to make but a necessary one since Chaos Champions have no choice in the matter. This cost our enemies the game, since the rest of the combat has no effect on the participants of the challenge, so by the end of the 3rd turn their objective was still contested as the Champion was still alive where his comrades had fallen. Elsewhere, the other objectives remained bitterly contested as the remaining forces of the Space Marines arrived via Deep Strike, but it was not enough firepower to move either the Orks or the Chaos Marines from their objectives. In the end, Dave and I won on Secondary victory points, and while it was not the decisive win we would have chosen, it was enough to get the day off to a promising start.

Final Score: Chaos/Orks win 2-0.

Round Two: Chaos/Orks vs Necrons/Tryanids

This was a battle we were dreading. The only thing worse than an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object is having to take on a combined strength of an unstoppable force (the Tryanids) AND an immovable object (the Necrons.) To make matters worse, we'd landed a 6-objective Scouring scenario (Objectives, with Fast Attack counting as scoring units and awarding victory points) and the 1 specialised unit that we had was Fast Attack (the Raptors.) This wasn't going to change my game plan, but we'd have to watch our step carefully...

Losing the first turn to a seize of initiative cost us dearly, as we found several large blast templates on top of us courtesy of the Necrons which wiped out a significant number of the Orks before we'd even got started. My Chaos Marines made an immediate grab for 2 of the objectives while we concentrated fire on the Gargoyles. We wiped the unit out, denying the enemy a fast scoring unit and earning us a couple of victory points.

Notwithstanding the arrival of the Raptors, it then became a war of attrition, which with so many guns supporting an onslaught of Tyranids was always going to be a struggle to win. However the balance of power literally came down to the last 10 minutes of the game where 1 of 3 things had to happen in order to win:

1. The skeletal wreck of one of my units of Chaos Marines needed to score a high enough Run roll to get to the objective on the left hand side of our deployment zone,
2. The Orks holding one of our objectives needed to pass a leadership test forced by the presence and attacks of a Zonathrope,
3. The Raptors needed to defeat a squad of 6 Necrons in close combat and force them to flee from the objective they were holding.

Sadly, none of these things happened, and Dave and I lost that battle right at the end.

Result: Necrons/Tryanids win 7-5.

Round Three: Chaos/Orks vs Dark Angels/Space Wolves

While we'd never be so arrogant as to suggest we had this one in the bag, we did approach this particular battle with a certain amount of confidence. I had the firepower to take out heavily armoured units, and Dave had the numbers to overwhelm them. So much so that, even with Vanguard deployment (imprecise and hard to strategise,) Emperor's Will objectives (1 objective each) and staring 2 Vindicators in the face right at the start of the game, we were confident that we'd do a good job with this one.

We could not have been more wrong. Due to some appalling deployment on my part, 1 of my squads of Chaos Marines was left out in the open and was shot to pieces in the first turn, giving our enemies first blood. My Chaos Lord was not long in following. Dave had mercifully granted Outflank to his leader during the Warlord Traits stage, and he seized the opportunity to wreak havoc on the left flank of the Space Marine forces, with it must be said some success. We also put up a fierce defence of our own objective. The Raptors arrived behind enemy lines as planned, but were rattled firstly by the squad of Space Wolves in a Razorback, and secondly by the Vindicator they were desperately trying to destroy blowing up in their face and wiping out the entire squad. Both sides managed to hold on to their objectives at the end of the game, but the secondary victory points meant that the Space Marines managed to win the day quite comfortably.

Result: Dark Angels/Space Wolves win 7-3.

Final Result

Well, even if there was more than 1 position of Store Champion, we were never going to get it with only 1 win out of 3, so well done to Chris and Mason for their well-deserved victories!

However, after a gruelling and even battle, the Dudley store eventually won. It was level-pegging up until the last 5 games, which swung it in Dudley's favour, so well done to those guys for covering the tracks of those who didn't do so well!

What have I learned?

Because it wouldn't be proper to write all this without taking something from it...

Given that it was the first time either me or Dave had played a full game of 6th edition 40K, we were caught out by the rules changes a surprisingly small number of times. There were occassions where we made some tactically poor decisions that we could learn from, so here's a few things that had a significant impact on what was eventually decided, and how we can learn from it:

1. Objectives give you points, Secondary Victory Points win games. What you have to do in order to collect these secondary points (be the first player/team to wipe out 1 unit, kill the enemy commander and finish the game with models in the enemy deployment zone) appear to favour aggressive tactics, and while my Raptors were conducive to this, the other squads weren't doing much more than hold on to the objectives. That's fine; everything was useful to one degree or another. Just keep in mind that the game now seems to favour agression. Use it!
2. It didn't always help but the Mark of Slaanesh was a real bonus against the Grey Knights and Blood Angels. The higher initiative gives you an edge; a way to tip the balance against two fundamentaly similar stat lines. Space Marine Armies are never going to be large, which means losing even 1 of them will hurt. If they're lost before they've even had a chance to fight back, it's worth the extra couple of points that the higher initiative will give you. You won't necessarily hit very hard - giving a Power Fist or such like to a model with the Mark of Slaanesh is meaningless - but power weapons and lightning claws should work well enough for most situations. Build on it!
3. One thing I didn't realise about my Raptors is that they cause Fear. While this doesn't cripple you in quite the same way that it does in Warhammer Fantasy, it can still be effective in reducing the weapon skill of your opponent. Given the opponents we faced, it would only really have helped in the Tyranids/Necrons battle, but it's worth remembering for the future, I think.
4. The next stage for the army is to add some more Raptors, which will come as no surprise given how much I've been banging on about them throughout this blog. I discussed my 'Tank Hunter' tactic above; it worked, but not well. I simply couldn't bring enough firepower to one squad to do enough damage to a vehicle to take it out in one turn. The solution? Another squad of Raptors. Arming them in the same way will double the firepower I can bring, and if one of them gets a mishap during Deep Strike, at least my tactic isn't totally lost. I'll also be taking their Melta Bombs away, as their firepower makes it less than necessary, and also I'm taking Veterans of the Long War away from the Chaos Space Marine squads. It's a useful rule against Space Marines, and brings your leadership up to 9/10, but it didn't make much difference in practice. I'm not saying they'll never have it again, but I want to see how the new Raptors work out first...

So, there you have it! My first few games of 2013. Looking forward to seeing how the next ones go!

Bitter Veterans

OK normally I'm not one for moaning about people on my blog. It's not something I've done since I used to do gig reviews; in all honesty I'm not a fan of receiving the backlash that comes with saying negative things about people. It rarely came up because I was never nasty about it, but the few times it did knocked my confidence quite a bit.

However, with the games I've been involved with in the last sort of year and a half, and some of the conversations I've had with people, there is a demographic with which I find my patience rapidly receding into the dark and spite-filled hole from whence it came. That demographic is what I've now come to recognise as 'Bitter Veterans,' and since there are quite a few of this sort of people around and I know many in person, I'm in quite a strong postition to say I'm not talking about anybody in particular here. When I refer to specific conversations I'm not going to use names, most of them ought to know who they are and if they've got a problem with what I'm saying, well, maybe they should think about the reasons why I'm saying it and be a bit more careful what they're saying in future.

So what is a 'Bitter Veteran?' Let's start with Veteran shall we - I don't really know what characteristics you need to be able to call yourself a veteran but I tend to find they're people who've been doing the hobbies for a long time and are particularly good at playing the game or painting the models where applicable, or both. Now I've been doing the Games Workshop hobby on and off for half my lifetime and I don't think I'm much good at either painting or gaming, and I don't consider myself a veteran for that reason. So it's a subjective matter as much as anything else.

I'm afraid that my attitude towards veterans isn't always kind, and this is largely to do with the time I spent working for Games Workshop. A lot of the reason it caused me so much anxiety was that I always had to make a terrific effort to go up to people and talk to them, and particularly if I knew those people didn't want me talking to them. With veterans, I'd say this was the case about 80% of the time. Understandable to a degree - I know the GW staff come on too strong sometimes, and it can put people off going in to the shop at all so it's not surprising that veterans don't always think too kindly of the GW staff either. But what I really didn't like when they would say things like "I've been doing this longer than you've been alive," as though I'm not going to find that the slightest bit condescending. The worst one I had was when I worked in the Walsall store, which at that time was packed with veterans who didn't think I had the right to be telling them anything at all and that I should just let them get on with it. Every single time I worked in that shop I closed up wishing I didn't work for the company, it was horrible. The specific incident I'm talking about was when one person I'd never seen before but was clearly a hobbyist - he knew everyone in the shop and had a certain 'look' about him - came into the shop to either buy a model or pick up a mail order, I can't quite remember which. When I handed over whatever it was I asked him if he'd got all his clippers, glue, paints etc, a perfectly reasonable question that I would have asked anyone who'd brought a model. He gave me a look of bitter amusement then looked back into the shop, saying to everyone something to the general effect of "He's asking me if I've got clippers and glue?" There's something about being treated like a pile of dog mess that still resonates with me, years later.

Now to avoid tarring everybody with the same brush, some veterans are actually really nice people when I get talking to them. Most of the ex-staffers I'd happily sit and talk to for hours. A lot of the regulars who went into the Dudley store when I worked there I have no problem with. Even one or two of the tournament players, with whom I usually entertain very little patience indeed, escaped my prejudice because they had no problem with talking to me and understood what needed to be considered in a shop environment. And it's those people whose names and company and remember as being the good bit about working for GW.

So, moving on. Bitter Veterans, what are they? Well, for a start, applying everything I've just said about veterans, bitter veterans are miserable buggers who don't really enjoy the hobby anymore and think that nobody else should either. Everybody's story is different, but the pattern rarely varies: At some point, the game company they have been following for years and years and years have done something, said something, or heaven forbid release a new version of their game, the bitter veteran isn't happy with it and on principle decides to boycott the game, the company and all who play it. The reason they annoy me so much is that they've somehow got the idea that just because they think that something is rubbish, that means that no one else is allowed to enjoy it either.

And what better time to see them cropping up like boils on a backside than after Games Workshop release 6th Edition of 40K? One particular conversation I saw on Facebook yesterday involved one person wanting to sell something like 27,000 points worth of Tau because the new rules didn't fit his tactics, and he'll never play the game again. Now I can understand that some of the new rules don't fit all the armies quite as well as they did before, but to be brutally honset this nothing more than a bitter veteran having a strop. A few holes in his comments to pick out straight away:

1. The Tau codex was designed for 4th edition. Of course it's not going to work as well with 6th; that shouldn't be news to anyone.
2. That being the case, Tau are probably going to get an update in the mid term future, where they'll be resdesigned to work just as well as they ever did, if not better.
3. In the meantime, if you have 27,000 points of an army and can't find SOMETHING that works in the new edition of the game then you probably shouldn't be playing it anyway. Be honest, when did you last play a game?

So yeah, go ahead and sell everything you've spent all that time and money building up just because you're not happy with a change in the rules that alters the way you use the army in the game. Really clever decision, that.

I saw this quite a lot with the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy as well, a lot of people who I knew from the shop - I'd not long left, at that point - wanting to sell their armies because they don't like the new edition of the game, their armies don't work, or whatever. Now, I'm not being funny, but if your current army doesn't work, it can't be that much of a tall order to find something that does? I shouldn't imagine that it would be much more of a job than coming up with an army list that will work better in the game, and buying another couple of units if you need to? I'm not sure how many Warhammer armies get an update in one gaming iteration - I've never really sat Warhammer out from one edition to the next so I don't actually know when a lot of the current army books were published - but chances are, if your army is that bad for the current edition of Warhammer, an update can't be far away? And GW have more freedom to do this with Warhammer than they do with 40K because they aren't restricted to lavishing so much attention on Space Marines...

Now I've seen a blog from FrontlineGamer - well worth a read - who is quite adamant about his dislike of the current edition of Warhammer Fantasy. Initial reading of his blog might make him come across as the kind of veteran that I wouldn't necessarily enjoy talking to while I worked for GW. But looking a little deeper and you discover that his opinions are formed not by taking the popular opinion, or by looking at the rulebook and deciding he hates it, but by road-testing it and actually playing some games. Reading his coverage on Warhammer, he did actually give the new edition a go and found that he didn't enjoy it because of the way the game plays. Now to me, that's fair enough, for two reasons:

1. He's formed an opinion on something more solid than arrogant wishful thinking
2. At no point during any of his reviews does he instuct that people do not play the game; he recognises that others have their own opinions and reviews are there to form and assist opinions, not instruct. So he's never said "None of you must ever play Warhammer 8th!"

I see it in other games as well, and if you want to see a spawning ground for bitter veterans look no further than Dungeons and Dragons. My word, that game divides opinion like no other. Spend 10 minutes on Youtube, guarantee you'll find someone's posted a rant to the general effect of (dorky scene kid voice) "Oh wow dude, like, no one can play D&D 4th because it's, like, totally retarded, and it's all about the combat and not about the roleplaying, and it's destroyed everything that Dungeons and Dragons is supposed to be about, and it's like, whoa..." and his mate standing next to him going "Schyeah, whoa..." No wonder I find it so hard to get a game in, if even its own demographic aren't prepared to take the game for what it is and give it a go.

I could go on, but... Basically, I find conversations with bitter veterans uncomfortable, claustrophobic and infuriating. It's ironic that they voice their opinions about games so strongly as they are the people I am least likely to listen to. Because at the end of the day, I can't help but think that most of them are moaning for it's own sake; they like to have a bit of a whinge, and because they're not enjoying something quite as much as they did before they think that none of the rest of us are allowed to enjoy it either.

Now, I'm not exactly rushing to Games Workshop or Wizards of the Coast's aid here. They're the more popular companies for roleplaying and wargames and are easy to pick on. I know GW has made some appalling decisions in the last few years that I don't agree with, but funnily enough I'm still coming back to them after 13 years... Because the plain fact is that with the popularity of their games still outstripping their competition by quite a long way, this is where the new hobbyists/gamers/roleplayers are going to come from. And by refusing to get involved in anything new, all they're doing is stifling themselves from the evolution of their own hobby. Change is going to happen - it has to. Otherwise the companies that make the games will stagnate, fold completely and you'll be left with all you've got now. It will never change, and you'll be stuck playing the same game for however long it takes you to get fed up with it.

In the spirit of this, I sometimes find myself in a position of responisbility when I'm running games; it's up to me to make sure that everybody's having a good time so that they'll come back and have another go; I'll talk about that another time.

So yeah. Not a fan of bitter veterans.

Now I've avoided saying what I think about the new edition of 40K because that's something for another blog I think. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get some new painting blogs and some commentary on my armies out. Until then, ciao, hope you've enjoyed my thankfully rare rant and I'll see y'all again soon.