Trying to move my list on

So I currently use a Thunderwolf list with big units of Grey Hunters, it does fine against Marine armies but against serious tournament players its just not there.
I think Open war is going to my last time using this list and I'm going to change to something a little like this after looking over some lists on yesthetruthhurts.

HQ	330
Rune Priest	100
Chooser of the slain	10
Living Lightning	0
Murderous Hurricane	0
Wolf Lord	100
Thunderwolf mount	45
Power Fist	25
Storm Shield	30
Fenrisian Wolf x 2	20
Elites	179
Wolf Scouts x 5	75
Melta Gun	10
Melta Bombs	25
Wolf Guard Pack x 3	54
Combi Melta x 3	15
Troops	705
Grey Hunters x 5	75
Flamer	0
Las plas Razorback	75
Grey Hunters x 5	75
Flamer	0
Las plas Razorback	75
Grey Hunters x 5	75
Melta Gun	5
Rhino	35
Grey Hunters x 7	105
Melta Gun	5
Rhino	35
Grey Hunters x 7	105
Melta Gun	5
Rhino	35
Fast Attack	255
Thunderwolf Cavalry x 4	200
Melta Bombs	5
Wolf Claw	20
Storm Shield	30
Heavy Support	280
Long Fangs x 6	90
Missile Launcher x 5	50
Long Fangs x 6	90
Missile Launcher x 5	50
Total	1749

Constructive criticism is always wanted, cheers.

Doubles Review...

Well I was meaning to get this up sooner. But I've been crazy busy this week to say the least...but finally here it is! It wont be a detailed account of all the games but a general over view, highlights and thoughts. So lets jump right in with:

The List


1 x Daemon Prince with Wings and Lash
1 x Great Unclean One with Instrument and Cloud of Flies

5 x Chosen with 3 x Melta Guns, 2 x Flamers in a Rhino with a Combi-Melta
4 x Fiends
3 x Flamers

10 x CSM with Power Fist, Lascannon, Plasma Gun, IoCG in a Rhino
5 x Plague Bearers
5 x Plague Bearers

8 x Flesh Hounds
5 x Seekers

1 x Oblit
1 x Oblit

Now as you can see it doesn't look terribly broken, and this was part of its strenght, people underestimated the elements combining to be greater that the sum of its parts. Normally if you think Daemons and Chaos, you think Lash Prince 4-6 Oblits, 12+ Fiends/Crushers, 5 Plague Marines, 5 Plague Bearers and not much else..so we took the Prince, and the Oblits as a distraction.

The general plan was for the Obliterators and las-cannon squad to de-mech what they could turn one and two, while the Prince took the brunt of the incoming fire and made the opponents set up and play differently. This was the psychological effect we wanted and achieved in pretty much all of our games. The real power in the list were the Daemons. The Hounds, Seekers and Fiends could drop outside of Rapid Fire range and then usually get a charge off in the next turn, the Flamers just ate a couple of squads and then died generally but were one of the best units we had.

The Games

We had a really good time over the weekend, and all the people we played against were great opponents who we'd never played against before which was good.

Game 1:

The first game was against a double foot marine list with two objectives. The enemy made the mistake here of bunching up with most of their units, and not using heroic intervention on their Vanguards. On top of this the list they were using is what our list plays best against. This resulted in us tabling them to net 1500 Vps

Highlight: the Flamers dropping in to get 17 hits on bunched up Sternguard...to cause only 4 wounds...

Game 2:

This was the only game we lost, down to something that became a common theme for the weekend, it ended on turn 5. We were against Orks and DE in a kill point mission. Their army had 3 Deff Dreads, a large mob of Boys and a KFF along with some Blood Brides and Warriors in Raiders and 2 units of Reavers. The game started with me having to explain to the opponent that you roll once on the drug table and apply it to the whole army, not roll for each unit...not a great start. The game ended after an unlucky combat which saw 10 CSMs charge 5 DE Warriors...and the Warriors won! The game ended on turn 5 with the oponents having a single DE warrior, an immobile raider and an immobile Deff dread left, we had the GUO and an Obliterator bearing down on them but the dice gods are fickle...

Highlight: The Prince lashing the Ork Boyz mob and spreading them out so that the Fiends on the other side of the board could charge one end, and the prince the other keeping the Nob and Klaw out of combat and stuck bridging the gap as it couldnt move up and pile in!

Game 3:

Game 3 was a multiple objective game against Foot Marines and BAs in Rhinos with some Scouts in Storms. Suffice to say our army rolled over them and netted us another 1500 Vps with Hounds tearing down speeders and the like..

Highlight: Chris having pin-point accuracy to tell me where to place the Prince so that he could last a squad at 23" away but leaving the Librarian just out with his hood of nerf...

Game 4:

Game 4 was against Wolves and Sisters in a kill point mission. The thing that won this game for us is that we held the Oblits in reserve to deep strike and the Chosen to outflank. Our opponents bunched up in one corner only for our reserves to show up in turn to in the right place. The Chosen in their rhino came on and blew up a rhino with a Rune Priest in only for them to be pinned, this then stopped the Sisters Immolator and Exorcist from moving anywhere. They focussed their fire on the the Daemon Prince and Obliterator which left the Flamers free to eat some Long Fangs and Sisters in one turn! The game ended on turn 5 again with the Cannoness stuck in combat with the GUO with no faith points...another 1300 Vps for the loss of 3 kill points!

Highlight: The Flamers were very impressive, but just the army in general played perfectly this game.

Game 5:

Back to the top tables...this time against Wolves and Guard, in a multi objective game. Some good shooting on the opponents side took out the Prince and Chosen early on, but it left them out of position and away from the objectives. If they'd have played differently the could have rolled over us to be honest but they just focused on the wrong things. The game ended again on turn 5 with the opponents only having 5 Guardsmen and an immobile Basilisk, we'd lost the Seekers, Chosen and Prince...with everything else ready to strike.

Highlight: The GUO eating a Land Raider, 9 Wolf Guard, 6 Grey Hunters a Rune Priest and a handful of Guardsmen

Game 6:

Last game of the weekend and on Table 3 against Eldar and Dark Eldar. An unlucky morale tests on our opponents part saw us in a strong possition early on and we capitalised on this, coupled with the Prince making some good Inv saves in combat with the Archon to finish him off in turn 3! The game ended again in turn 5 with us on one objective and moving to the other. We'd lost the Seekers and the GUO, the enemy had a Farseer, 1 Dire Avenger and a wounded Wraithlord left.

Highlight: The Daemon princed being charged in Turn one, but holding out with some lucky inv saves to kill the Archon in turn 3....roll enough dice and a one will turn up eventually...

Over all a good weekend. We came 4th due to table one drawing and someone on table two winning...any other result would have seen Chris and I come 2nd or 3rd...we did however win the Bloodthirster award with around 8200 Vps over the weekend out of a possible 9000!..the reason we didn't get the full 9000 was due in a large part to the dice gods ending all our games on turn 5! However, when you factor in that the Daemons don't do much in turn one appart from the Flamers thats a total of 24 Turns to kill stuff (about 330 Vps per turn)!

Final Thoughts

It wasn't until about a week later that I realised why we did so well. It wasn't that we took an over the top list, we didnt, we took a mix of Daemons from all the Gods, on top of that I don't play Chaos Marines and Chris doesn't play Daemons so its not like we knew the armies inside and out.

We do however know the rules, and other armies well enough to priorities targets and offer fake threats. On top of this, and ultimately the main reason was communication. Every move we made, and decision we came to was communicated so that we could support each others units to maximise their strenghts and limit their weaknesses. Other players did this to a degree but Chris and I played with 1 x 1500pt army, not 2 x 750pt forces put together.

TheBaron out!

I rolled: 6 (4/2)

Moar Powah!!!

Open War is coming up in early April which gives me about a month to sort out a list that I fancy throwing into the ring. I've been focused on Pedro, Lysander and Khan variations of a Vanilla Marine list because these guys are what I know best and I have a good amount of experience with them. I've also had some success in tournaments in the past with lists based on these Characters and finally because Special Characters are allowed this time at Open War it seems silly not to run one.

Yesterday I played Mick with a Blood Angels list featuring some jump packers. I've not done this sort of BA list before because I don't have the models and I've seen Gav's success with MSU Wolves and wanted to emulate it with a Blood Angels list. However I liked it and despite the fact I'd basically been tabled by the end of turn 5 I felt it could be competitive with a couple of tweaks and some practice.

So after a bit of mucking about on Army Builder here's what I've come up with and I'll talk through the changes I made and my reasoning below:

HQ
Astorath the Grim
I had a JP Reclusiarch on Saturday but as Open War is allowing special characters this time he looks like a great option to add.

ELITE
Sanguinary Priest
(2) 1x Jump Pack
I've dropped the Honour Guard Squad that I usually run so I need to add a JP Sanguinary Priest to support the Assault Squads. The one without the Jump Pack either drops with the Sternguard or hangs out in one of the Razorbacks

Sternguard Squad
(5) 3x Combi-Meltas; Drop Pod
These guys are the both a heavy armour solution and to get my opponent to compensate his deployment to avoid an alpha-strike. They are relatively cheap for what they bringand I'm not shy about using them as a speed bump.

TROOPS
Assault Squad
(10) 2x Flamer, Sgt w. Power Fist
Assault Squad
(10) 2x Flamer, Sgt w. Power Fist
Bouncing Assault Squads! Astorath and the JP Priest hang with these guys making them a formidable wedge of melee madness. I like the flamers for anti-infantry but there is a lack of melta in this list so I may need to make a few small tweaks to try and get a melta or two in these units just in case I come up against a multiple Land Raider list.

Assault Squad
(5) Razorback w. Lascannon & Twin-Linked Plasma Guns
Assault Squad
(5) Razorback w. Lascannon & Twin-Linked Plasma Guns
To be honest these are to add some armoured target saturation to take heat away from the Dreads and the Baals (not that I expect them to be too effective at that. They also lend some more fast moving scoring capability to the list and give me some mobile cover options fast enough to keep up with the jumpers.

FAST ATTACK
Baal Predator
Flamestorm Cannon
Baal Predator
Flamestorm Cannon
Scout move to threaten Power Armour at the back in cover on turn 1, or outflank and clog everything up in the middle ready for munching by the assault dudes. I do like these guys but have not had a lot of success with them yet. More practice needed.

HEAVY SUPPORT
Dreadnought
2x Twin-Linked Autocannons
Dreadnought
2x Twin-Linked Autocannons
Can openers extraordinaire! I love these guys, they eat up light armour and do well against troops and monstrous creatures as well.

So what's missing? The most notable unit that I took out of the list from Saturday is a 5-man Vanguard Unit. Perhaps I'm over-reacting to an exceptionally unlucky performance (they got the Heroic Intervention charge and lost the round of combat against a Long Fangs Pack and in 2 rounds of combat could not finish them before they were eaten by a Grey Hunter unit on the counter charge) but what this illustrated to me was the 5 guys are not enough to make an effective assault unit. This is also why I dropped the Honour Guard unit, even the inclusion of a hidden Sang Priest does not compensate for the fact there are only 5 of them.

As Gav's already mentioned “Go big or go home!”.

Storm Pelican

Sooo, it's been a while since my last post and, as has already been noted, that may largely be due to the re-emergence of the computer gaming black-tar heroine that is “World of Warcraft”. However I have not been completely neglecting the hobby and I have had two rather large boxes sitting on my painting desk for the last couple of weeks over which I'm now in a quandary.

The boxes in question contain Storm Ravens and the thing is that I am now wondering if I'll ever actually use them. I got all excited about the model (I actually think it looks pretty cool) and the shiny-newness of it all and actually pre-ordered two of them. After drafting up a couple of lists to see how they would work in a tournament-style list I am not as convinced that they would as I was before.

The up-shot of all this is that I'm strongly considering trading them back into GW for something else like some Assault Marines (which I think will work in BA list) and some more 'nid monstrous creatures (which may not work but will be fun).

Anyway, I'd like some opinions from “the cloud”, is the Storm Raven worth it? Should I trade them back? All opinions welcome!

Difference between a good and a great player

So me and Andy (yes that bloke who used to write on the blog before he got World of Warcraft) attended Warhammer world for a game. After the game we were chatting about how you think you move up from a slightly above average player to a good player (and unfortunately we used the baron as our example of a good player)

Between us we decided that the baron was very good because
a) he has a freaky ability to judge distances
b) he knows the rules inside and out, I still struggle with the intricacies of combat, who should go where etc. however Gav described a multi charge close combat by Darren where he somehow managed to keep half of the enemy out of assault range.

Now that I have finished inflating Darren's ego I would like you to tell me what you think is the difference between a good and a great player?

Gav will never get to light up that cigar

So as you saw here last night Gav and I descended on Warhammer World because tonight I shall be at the home of football.

As you can see Gav pondered how to deal with my Thunderwolves. His plan was to ignore them and for the first turn it went perfectly. I have never seen a turn of shooting like it, 10 long fangs, 6 las cannons and 2 rifleman dreads and the only thing that missed was 1 shot from a rifleman dread which he then got to reroll. I had lost 2 rhinos, 1 was immobilised, a long fang pack was walking, my rune priest unit was pinned and all in all I thought I was on for a third turn tabling.

In my turn of shooting I managed to take out a weapon on a razorback but it was looking bad. However at this point Gav stopped being a Hannibal and turned into Murdoch and decided that my Thunderwolves were getting too close. He fired everything at them and managed to take a couple of wounds off a couple and kill one of my thunderlords pet dogs which pissed him off.

From there I was able to snatch a win although it was a bit of to and fro. Its hard to play the list that Gav plays without a doubt and as we discussed I can certainly see why it is preferred by Americans at the bigger points level they play.

Arena of Death - Claws and Fists vs Games Workshop

On Friday, GW posted this article up on their website. Hmm, Special Character vs Special Character? Called the Arena of Death? Now, where have we seen that before...

Picked up by the big boys - we must be doing something right :o)