The Curse of the New

Why is it that you spend your hard earned cash on a model, spend good time putting it together, spend more time painting it (or in my case 5 minutes undercoating it) that when you finally get it onto the battlefield it fails completely? Vindicator that I thought would be a threat to anyone coming out of a Drop Pod killed about four men before it was blown up. My Land Speeder missed with a Multimelta shot and then was downed next turn. My Wolf Priest had his Rhino blown up and only made it into combat in around the 5th turn. My Rune Priest on a bike couldn't hit a barn door with either his psychic attacks or in combat (and while the others have got better, he still can't).

I think that the issue is two-fold. Firstly some of it is just bad luck. However, that's mitigated by the fact you don't really know the unit. In my mind the Vindi would take on all comers and survive by virtue of its AV13. Of course it only took a few good cover saves and one Meltagun hit to prove me wrong. Now when I use it, I'm not quite so blase about driving it forward and firing at whoever I can. I use it more as an area-denial tool and I use that S10 balst on things that need S10 and don't ahve cover saves. I admit I'm still getting used to using my 2 Speeders but I'm slowly getting better.

So what does this mean? Well, I'm planning on using my new Land Raider Crusader next Thursday. It's going to be full of Ragnar Blackmane and some Blood Claws and in my head I just need to drive it down the line of least resistance killing anything that gets in the way. I doubt it will be that easy and it will take me a couple of games to learn the finesse required to use the unit properly. I'll be really gutted when it doesn't work first time but as long as I learn from my mistakes, I'll be happy.