Monday Musings

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Sid

Kevin the Knight that is...

So, the Grey Knights won Adepticon and yay, there was a great gnashing of teeth in the 40K community and wails that they are overpowered and/or underpriced. Are they? Personally, I can't see it. In some ways, they are better than other Marines - Storm Bolters, Power Weapons (with the potential to become S5 and/or I6), unshakeable/unstunable vehicles, S8 Autocannon Dreads and ker-azy grenades. However, they're not a perfect army by any standards - lack of AP1, lack of range (Autocannon Dreads apart), reliance on psychic powers.

Basically tho, if you can beat Marines, then you can beat Grey Knights and you don't hear anyone complaining about Marines. Will GK popularity be a fad like "Leafblower" was? Well, I guess that depends on what 6th edition and the next codex brings...

The Future - Random Psychic Powers

Zarjazz

So, the latest 6th ed rumours are that 40K will be brought into line with WFB with regards to psychic powers. In WFB, you randomly select magic spells prior to each game. What would this mean for your Rune Priest? Well, it could mean that you've wasted 100+ points. Imagine drawing Thunderclap and Fury of the Wolf Spirits. Or how about Jaws of the World Wolf against Dark Eldar? Useful. It could well be the death of the Rune Priest. However, that's exactly why GW might do it. Everyone already has at least one Rune Priest model, here's a chance to sell something different.

Personally, I'd rather see the GK mechanic expanded so that you get a power for free and can then buy as many extra ones as you like for 5 points a power.

Sorry, a rather short Monday Musings this week. What do you guys make of Grey Knights? Any little tricks you've picked up for beating them. What do you think of randomly selecting psychic powers? What would be the "lore spell" for the Space Wolves? Maybe Stormcaller, like in 3rd ed...

The Emperors Gift - World Exclusive Review???

On Claws and Fists we've had some good Exclusives (one of the benefits of living near Warhammer World), Battle for the Fang was our first and new new new new new Dave hit us with the last one with Know No Fear. Well here's another added to the record with The Emperor's Gift.

I'm going to start with a statement, Aaron Dembski-Bowden is Claws and Fists favourite Black Library author. I've never heard Darren say a bad word about him and if he meet The Barons seal of approval then its official.

His Night Lords series was excellent and his Horus Heresy book 'First Heretic' is still my favourite in the series. This time he ventures back into the Emperors good graces with a Grey Knights book with a healthy sprinkling of the blogs favourite chapter.

I've never made a secret that I was a reader before a gamer, the first 2 Black Library books I read were Wolfblade By William King and Dark Adeptus By Ben Counter which of course featured Space Wolves and Grey Knights respectively. The two chapters have remained my favourite and are the only armies I have that are of playable size.

As I was a reader before a gamer the way I have come to judge books is do they make me want to play 40k? Recently I have been in a lull in 40k having been busy with wedding preparations, work and developing a love of bloodbowl so the acid test is does this book make me want to pick up a wolf or knight?

The answer unreservedly is Yes.

ADB begins this book as he did the final Night Lords book with an explanation. During the Night Lords novel he makes it clear that fluff has changed the series he had written.In this book he explains that the release of Codex Grey Knights changed the book he was writing.

The book is written from the perspective of one young Grey Knight, Hyperion and through the course of the book we see glimpses of his indoctrination in the most secret of Chapters, through the first War of Armageddon and beyond. As ADB explains, its not a book of the War because the War doesn't belong to the Grey Knights it belongs to the Defenders of Armageddon, it is the book on the build up and the aftermath of the war.

So what did I love about this book?

Firstly, its grim-dark. No one does it better than ADB in my opinion. Abnett took the Wolves forward in this Universe from the foundation that William King laid and ADB has continued that with them and done it wholly with the Grey Knights. They aren't and in my opinion shouldn't be what others including McNeill, Counter and everyone's favourite Codex writer Mat Ward has made them out to be. They aren't as different from Astartes as Astartes are from Guardsman. They are specialists, they are called in to deal with a specific threat, perhaps the greatest one but still a specific threat. ADB reminds us of this.

It features flawed characters. I don't want perfection from a soldier, even a Astartes, I like the reminder of humanity that failure shows. While Justicar Alaric (Ben Counter's main Grey Knight character) was flawed it was a flaw in the same vein as Uriel Ventris, he didn't agree with standard tactics but in doing so he wins the battle. Not so with Hyperion he makes mistakes, they have repercussions.

He shows the relationships between The Inquisition and the Grey Knights in vivid detail and also goes into details of the hypocrisy of the Inquisition which I love. Inquisitors using heretics and Xenos weaponry shouldn't be allowed and yet it is. The inquisition was designed to save the Imperium and yet it slaughters more Humans than anyone. It always seems to be pushed to one side but not in here.

And finally (in this review although don't think that that's all the book is) the scale of the warfare is excellent, it moves from squad fighting to all out war against an enemy (who we all know) that shouldn't be defeated. It doesn't over do the battles, it does them perfectly.

Of course this wasn't a perfect book there were some things I wasn't particularly taken with.

One of them being the name checking of in game items or Units, it seems to be a common occurrence in Black Library books, in Know no fear we had a Contemptor chucked in for nothing, in this book it was the main character carrying a Nemesis Warding Stave. It didn't take up a lot of the book but I think I would have liked him a little more if he was carrying a Daemon Hammer or a Halberd.

My other gripe was the Inquisitor. I just wasn't taken with her. A native of Fenris she didn't characterise the idea of a Inquisitor in my mind. She broke too many rules (Radical I know) big ones as you come to see. She let her personal feelings dictate policy too much and she makes some serious errors. Now I know, hypocritical of me to say I loved the main character because he had flaws but dislike this one because of it however a young Grey Knight should be expected to be imperfect would a Inquisitor get to leading Grey Knights if it was the same for her?

Overall I loved this book, I shall certainly be reading it again and again.

Let me know what you think.

Arena Of Death - Castellan Crowe vs Duke Sliscus

That's "Duke" Sliscus, savvy?

Time to return to the Arena Of Death, to pit these two 150 point characters against each other...

Pre-fight: Rather than rolling three times for The Duke's Combat Drugs, I'm going to do it just the once and apply to all rounds. A 5 and a 3 give him the choice of +1S or +1A. Since he wounds on 2s anyway, I'll go with Adrenalight; +1 attack.

Round 1 - Crowe on the Charge

Garran snapped off two shots from his Storm Bolter as he charged at Sliscus. One hit but it failed to wound as Crowe prepared his Rapier Strike. A 3 on the D3 gave him 4 I10 attacks. Two hit and a rending wound was caused. However, The Serpent's Shadow Field was equal to it. Despite having 5 attacks, Sliscus failed to hit Crowe. The Brotherhood Champion of the Purifier Order again dropped into the Rapier Strike stance.With just two attacks this time, he still managed to hit twice. Again, thanks to his skill as a Master Swordsman the hit was a rending one and Sliscus's Shadow Field couldn't save him this time. Wounded and without his protective shield, The Duke struck back. However, three hits and two wounds just bounced straight off Crowe's Artificer Armour. Still in the Rapier Strike stance, Crowe scored three hits. These translated into two wounds, one of which was rending. Only Sliscus's Ghostplate Armour could save him now... The regular wound was saved but needing a 6 on the invulnerable, could only manage a 3, putting The Serpent down.

Round 2 - Sliscus on the Charge

Slowly, deliberately, The Duke pulled his Blast Pistol from the holster. His aim was true and Castellan Crowe's Iron Halo wasn't up to the task of saving him. The Serpent had just claimed the record for fastest kill in the Arena of Death.

Round 3 - No Charge Bonus

Dropping into his favoured Rapier Strike stance, Crowe struck first. Two attacks, two rending hits. Both saved by the Shadow Field. From three hits back, The Duke could only wound once but it got past Crowe's armour. The pain was clearly getting to Garran as he failed to wound with either of his two hits. The Duke managed two further wounds and again, Crowe's Artificer Armour let him down. With the last of his strength, he attempted an Heroic Sacrifice. He passed the Leadership test with ease and then, needing just a 3, rolled a 5 to give us the first ever draw in the Arena of Death 

A draw? How about that? Some incredible dice rolls in round 3 there, including thee 1s out of four rolls at one point. Maybe Mick is right about these C&F dice being cursed (I knew that we shouldn't have made them out of albatross bone) Round 2 was also a bit of a damp squib as we didn't get to see effects of The Blade of Antwyr. From what I've seen though, neither of these characters are out and out combat monsters. With Crowe, you'd need to get him into a decent sized squad in order to maximise attacks with Sword Storm for him to really do anything and them you just run the rick of him being dragged down by weight of numbers. It seems like he really is just a tax so that you can take Purifiers as troops. Sliscus on the other hand is pretty survivable with his 2++ save and he could tip a combat with his numerous poisoned attacks. However, he is going to need back-up. Much like Crowe, he's more about what he brings to the rest of the army; you can build a pretty good list around his Combat Drug bonus and having free Deep Strike options on your vehicles. Plus, he's a pirate and pirates are cool.

Crowe? The Serpent? Come and sit by the hearth-side and tell us tales of derring-do where you've used either of these characters...

Open War XVII - The Claws & Fists' Perspective

Tanks. Apparently they're not
so popular these days.

On Saturday, Andy, Dave Poolley and I headed to Open War XVII at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield, where we were met by fellow bloggers Alex and Matt (From the Fang) and John (McTicTac from Blood Claw). The tournament was oeganised very ably by our very own parent gaming club the First Company Veterans, who play at Warhammer World in Nottingham on a Thursday night (come along!).

I was using my now-typical Tyranid semi-Drop Spore list:

Flying Tyrant with Hive Commander

2 x Zoanthropes in Mycetic Spore

2 x Zoanthropes in Mycetic Spore 

Doom of Malan'Tai in Mycetic Spore

Tervigon

11 x Termagants

13 x Genestealers

13 x Genestealers

2 x Trygons

As Tyranid lists go, it's fairly compact but pretty effective against what is was designed to counter - that is, MSU Space Wolves / Marines. As it turns out, tanks are so passe. In fact in all three games, I only faced one tank! So obviously the meta-game has changed and I didn't get the memo. Ho-hum.

Before the first game, Team Claws & Fists & Chums joked that my worst match-up would be to face Grey Knights in all three tournament games. How prophetic that nearly was - in fact I faced the Gleaming Silver Cybermen in my first two games, and then faced Shooty Horde Orks in the final game.

Game One (5 Objectives) vs. Grey Knights

In my first game I faced a friendly chap called Jason from Doncaster (not a million miles from Notts) who was running Grey Knights. His list featured a large number of Terminators and a double-hard named character (though I forget which), along with more Terminators in a Land Raider and some plasma gun toting Storm Troopers. The first three turns went largely my way, as my monstrous creatures snuck through the generous cover which is such a feature of tournaments held at Maelstrom. On turns two and three my Genestealers, Trygons, Tyrant and Doom made short work of one big unit of Terminators, plus the Storm Troopers, with almost no casualties suffered on my side at all. In addition, I had covered three of the five objectives with spawned Termagant units. On turns four and five however, the game swung in Jason's favour as his Deathstar unit of tooled-up Termies munched through my monstrous creatures with unnerving ease - in particular, the Grey Knights' arsenal of grenades was used to devastating effect! In the end though, despite the loss of all my big bugs, the little gribblies won the game for me, and I held onto two objectives to claim a 18-7 victory in this first game.

And so it was with no small amount of confidence that I went into the afternoon's games with some confidence...

Game Two (Kill Points) vs. Grey Knights

In game two I faced up to another GK army, this time belonging to a youngish chap (it seems more and more folks seem young, but that may be more to do with my increasing years...) called Luke, who is a nice guy and someone I've played fun games against at previous tournaments. The game was Kill Points with Dawn of War set-up. Luke set up first, placing his Deathstar unit of Termies and special character (Draigo???) in the very centre of the table. For my set up, I decided to infiltrate my two units of Genestealers close to Luke's board edge. In fact, I had enough models to 'cock-block' (nice expression, John!) Luke's other units - that is, I could have placed a long line of 'stealers along the whole of the back edge of Luke's side, thus preventing his other units from coming on. This would almost certainly have won the game for me, as Luke's army totalled only 6 units in total, and this would have neutralised 4 of them without a shot being fired.

But I didn't.

Despite this being a tournament, I believe too much in fair play and having a good time to do anything so beardy - even though I would have placed in the top five at the end of the day, had I done so. And since Luke is a decent guy, I just couldn't have looked myself in the mirror if I had!

So I got tabled.

Ho-hum! That said, it was a fun game, but I was never going to win a kill points game with a Tyranid army numbering 13 units (plus more for spawned bugs) against an all-Terminator/Power Armour GK army totalling 6 units. It was a great learning experience for me though, and I do know now what to do (and what not to do) against the Emperor's Finest next time around!

Game Three (Victory Points & Secondary Objectives) vs Shooty Horde Orks  

For my final game I faced the best-looking army of the tournament - an Ork army featuring three Star Wars Pod-Racers made up to count as Deffcoptas! Hopefully some pics of these vehicles will surface shortly, cos they were fantastic!

For the game itself, both myself and my opponent agreed that we wanted a decent stand-up fight without too much sneaky pussyfooting around. So we set up on our respective 12" lines, raced forward and met in a tidal wave of, well, claws and fists on the halfway line (a bit like Leeds vs Millwall, once might imagine...). In the end we only managed three-and-a-half turns before time was up but it was enough. I was down to three Zoanthropes left, and the Orks still had a nearly-full strength Biker Nobz squad left plus the tattered remains of two Shoota Boyz units so game three ended in a slightly frantic loss.

In Summary

Well, I think my tournament experience hinged on game two. I could have played an uber-beardy trick on a nice guy and propelled myself into the top five or so of the weekend, but it would've just left a bad taste in my mouth. So would I change anything from that second game if I could?

Nah.

It's just not me!

Deep Thought - A Sense Of Dread

In the song Hey Ya by Outkast, Andre 3000 asks the question, "What's cooler than being cool?" To which the answer is, "Ice cold" Well, what's cooler than 8 foot tall genetically enginered super men? Well, 8 foot tall genetically enginered super men on giant wolves obviously. But what's nearly as cool as that? Genetically enginered super men who kick so much arse when they're alive that when they get badly injured they get put into a metalic shell so that they can keep killing in the name of the Emperor, that's what!

Deep Thought is our ironically titled series of "Wouldn't it be cool" army lists (although, I'm not sure if it's a series yet, since there has only been one previously) Anyway, today we are going to look at a list mainly made up of Dreadnoughts. Now, there are a couple of codexes that you can do this from. The Space Marine 'dex and the Grey Knight one both allow you to take up to 6 of the things. the Space Wolf codex lets you take one as HQ but you can only take 4 maximum. However, there is a codex that lets you take Dreadnoughts in the Elites, Troops and Heavy Support sections of the Force Org Chart - the Blood Angels...

The only thing  you have to do is take 5 Death Company before you can take any Death Company Dreads. Now, I reckon that you could fit in about 8 Dreads at 1750 but you'd probably have no scoring units. However, you'd have 8 Dreads! This leaves a questions about what types of Dreadnought to take, shooty? Assaulty? Physchic? As much as I love dual Autocannon Dreadnoughts, I love the idea of 8 Dreads running amok and smashing stuff up even more. With that in mind, we need a way for the Dreads to get into postition so I've gone for Drop Pods...

Heavy Support

Dreadnought, Multimelta, Blood Fist, Drop Pod
Dreadnought, Multimelta, Blood Fist, Drop Pod
Dreadnought, Multimelta, Blood Fist, Drop Pod

These are the heavy lifters, drop in, blow up something and then wade into combat if you survive the retaliation.

Elites

Furioso Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod 
Furioso Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod
Furioso Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod

Jazz hand Dreads. The enemy need to take care of these guys before they get into combat or they can be leathal.

Troops

5 Death Company, Infernus Pistol, Drop Pod
5 Death Company Infernus Pistol, Drop Pod
Death Company Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod
Death Company Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod

These guys would be part of the second wave. Ideally, you'll have killed all of the enemy vehicles so that these guys can drop down and not be led around, raging, after vehicles that they can never quite catch. Not 100% sure of whether the DCDs would be better keeping their Blood Fists or not...

That leaves 225 points left and we still need a HQ. A Librarian is cheap and can add to our anti-vehicle with Blood Lance and can give some of our Dreads 5+ saves with Shield of Sanguinious. Then 125 points is just enough to get us an Assault Squad in another Drop Pod, which is ideal as it gives us an odd number of Pods. So the list in full...

HQ
Librarian, Blood Lance, Shield of Sanguinious

Elites

Furioso Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod 
Furioso Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod
Furioso Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod

Troops
5 Death Company, Infernus Pistol, Drop Pod
5 Death Company Infernus Pistol, Drop Pod
Death Company Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod
Death Company Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Drop Pod
5 Assault Marines, Meltagun, Infernus Pistol, Drop Pod

Heavy Support
Dreadnought, Multimelta, Blood Fist, Drop Pod
Dreadnought, Multimelta, Blood Fist, Drop Pod
Dreadnought, Multimelta, Blood Fist, Drop Pod


Optimised? No. Rock/Scissors/Paper list? Yes. Fun? It's 8 giant robots of death falling from the sky to destroy everything in their path, of course it's fun!

What do you think? Is it viable at all or do you think that there are too many Meltaguns out there for this kind of list? I know that John has been keen to try some different ideas in these final days of 5th edition but would you try the Dread Drop List of Doom?

Thursday Thoughts

(think of it as a late Monday Musings)

Rumour Control - Percentages

I know this much is... True

We don't do rumours on this site, mainly because other people do it much better. However, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the rumours regarding 6th edition that are circulating around and to see how they might affect us. A lot of them seem to be wishing for a return to 2nd ed. Ah, 2nd ed where a 2000 point army was about 4 squads of Marines and it still took about 6 hours to play a game. It's true, nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

One of the things we used to have back then and is rumoured to be making a return is percentages instead of the FOC. Now, Warhammer Fantasy Battle already uses this system but what would it mean to 40K? Well, frankly for Space Wolves it would be awesome. Assuming that missions remain broadly similar and you need troops to capture objectives, it would do away with one of the main drawbacks of the Wolves, namely that you can only take 6 scoring units. The other thing that we'd see would be more Long Fangs (and to think, Graham already calls them Cheese Fangs) Let's look at the numbers - in a 1750 point list, 3 units of 6 Long Fangs with 5 Rocket Launchers comes to 24%. So, we can fire 15 Rockets at 6 targets. Or we could have 4 units of 4 Long Fangs with 3 Rocket Launchers and a unit of 3 Long Fangs with 2 Rocket Launchers. This comes to just over 24%. Okay, so we've lost 1 Rocket shot but we can now fire at 10 targets!

I'm not a huge fan of returning to percentages to be honest, I think the FOC works pretty well especially with the characters that swap around slots. It would be interesting if they built on this in 6th edition and had characters that allowed a bit more development with regard to the FOC. Rumours are the Chaos Legion codex may have something like this where you can take an Iron Warriors Captain and get an extra Heavy Support choice for the loss of a Fast Attack one for example.

We can rebuild him

So, as you might have noticed, still no pictures of completed Thunderwolves. Turns out my finger was slightly more broken that initially thought. It is getting better though, so hopefully some more modelling pics next week...

94 Not Out

I'm sure all bloggers have been through this before - slowly watching your Followers total move towards the magical three digits. Then you realise that BoLS has more than 2,000 and you realise that world domination is still a long way away...

Anyone else starting to get excited about the impending 6th Ed? Or is anyone worried that GW will balls it up? Has anyone seen any beautiful new TWC anywhere? And is there anything specific that our 94 loyal followers would like to see? Let us know below the line...

Jump!I

This man doesn't need a jump pack

So, I actually managed to play a game four weeks ago but I haven't actually written about it until now. To give you an idea of how long ago it was, Andy subsequently changed his list and then dropped out of playing last weekend's Indy GT altogether. No pictures unfortunately but here are some hazy recollections. First up, let's look at the two armies...

Space Wolves

Rune Priest, Chooser of the Slain, Living Lightning, Murderous Hurricane
10 Wolf Guard, 8 Combi-Meltas, Wolf Claw, 2x Cyclone Missile Launcher, Drop Pod
5 Wolf Scouts, Meltagun
5 Wolf Scouts, Meltagun
5 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino
5 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino
5 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino
5 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino
5 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino
5 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino
6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers
6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers
6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers

This seems to have evolved into my preferred 1750 point list now for Wolves.

Blood Angels

Mephiston
5 Sanguinary Guard
3 Sanguinary Priests, 1 Jump Pack
10 Assault Marines, 2 Meltaguns
10 Assault Marines, 2 Meltaguns
2 Multimelta Attack Bikes
2 Multimelta Attack Bikes
5 Devastators, 3 Missile Launchers, Lascannon
5 Devastators, 3 Missile Launchers, Lascannon

Looking at this army as Andy unpacks it from the case, there are a couple of things I'm really worried about - Mephy and the Nipple Guard. They are just going to shrug off all of my long range AP3 firepower and while that's happening, 20 Assault Marines are getting in my face.

The Game

So, we roll up Kill Points with Spearhead deployment and Andy wins the roll off to go first. Not good; that's  going to give me a turn less of shooting to deal with everything coming at me. Then he announces that the Assault Marines are going to Deep Strike in. Suddenly things are looking up. Then both Devastator squads get put into cover with their attached Priests. However, both of these pieces of terrain are a long way away from my deployment zone. In fact I can place two of my Long Fang packs out of range of the Devs, allowing me to shoot away at everything else without taking any long range reprisals.

As for my deployment, I decide that the 8 Wolf Guard with Combi-Meltas are going to sacrifice their lives to take out Mephiston. Some people will say that using two Kill Points to take out one is a quick route to defeat. However, I knew that if Mephy got into my lines then he'd carve his way through my 5 man squads and there would be very little that I could do to stop him. The two Scout packs went Behind Enemy Lines in an attempt to team up and mug one of the Devastator squads. I also reserved 5/6 of the Rhinos, reasoning that they and their squads would be more useful later on, once the Blood Angels were a bit closer.

Early Turns

On Andy's first turn, his Bikes Turbo-Boosted forward, Mephiston failed to cast "Wings" so he had to walk while the Sanguinary Guard made haste towards my lines. The Devastator squads opened fire on the only Long Fang pack in range and managed to take out a couple of them despite them being in cover.

The Wolf Guard did their job by killing Mephiston while their Drop Pod managed to block off the shooting of one of the Devastator squads following a fortuitous scatter. My Long Fangs also took out three of the four Attack Bikes.

The Sanguinary Guard turned round to deal with the Wolf Guard which they did with aplomb. The Drop Pod was also wrecked. On the other side of the board the two Assault Squads arrived.

Frag Missiles and Murderous Hurricane thinned out the Assault Marines while a Wolf Scout Pack kept one unit of Devastators tied up.

Middle & End Turns

The Assault Marines got held up in combat by the Long Fangs which stopped them getting shot but it did mean that they could be assaulted by my Rune Priest and a couple of units of Grey Hunters. By the time that the Sanguinary Guard arrived the battle was pretty much over and even they were finally put down (although 2+ save and FNP does require a lot of firepower!)

We totted up the Kill Points and I'd won by two. Let's have a quick look at what I did well and badly:

Deployment

Reserving half my army worked out amazingly well. I knew that I couldn't deploy the Rhinos too far forward because they'd get charged early in the game. I also knew that if I deployed them too far back in my quarter then I would be cutting down on LOS for the Long Fang Packs. I also did something else I never normally do - deployed two Long Fang Packs out of cover. After seeing where Andy has placed his Devastators I knew that I could put them out in the open and not face any long range reprisals. It also meant I had great firelanes over the areas that I thought Andy would be attacking from.

Actually, my overall play was pretty good and I managed to make the most of a couple of mistakes that Andy made (see below) However, I too made a couple of silly mistakes (yet again!)

Play The Mission

Behind Enemy Lines is a brilliant rule. It allows your Wolf Scouts to sneak up on your opponent's heavy weapons and wither keep them tied up for a couple of turns or wipe them out altogether. However, a 5-man unit with no special close combat weapons is really going to struggle against a Devastator squad with attached Sanguinary Priest. Yes, I managed to keep them locked in combat for a couple of turns but I was never going to be able to wipe them out due to that FNP. In a war of attrition I was onto a loser. Now, in a normal game this wouldn't be a problem. However, in this game it cost me a Kill Point and nearly cost me a second one in order to tie up a unit that didn't really have anything to shoot at anyway.

Split Fire

I hate to waste shots. It really annoys me when I fire five guns at two guys and do five wounds because I feel I've "wasted" three wounds. It caused me some issues last month against Graham and I went and did the same thing here. In turn 1, the only really viable target for my Long Fangs were the Attack Bikes. Instead of firing one Pack at one unit and a second Pack at the other, I tried to do some fancy fire splitting in the hope of firing some shots at a third target. Net result? One Bike still left alive. Of course I managed to finish it off later in the game but that could easily have cost me a Kill Point.

Turning my attention to the other side of the table, Andy made a big mistake in deployment and a smaller one in turn 2 that exacerbated it:

Deployment

As I said near the start of the article I was really worried by the thought of 20 Assault Marines, 5 Sanguinary Guard and Mephiston jumping towards my lines. Keeping the Assault Marines off the board limited my targets and hence limited the chances of me picking the wrong one. With the Guard and the Attack Bikes out front at least one of the units would have had cover from any long range shooting I sent there way. The Assault Marines could also have used the Sanguinary Priest that was attached to the Sanguinary Guard. As it was, most of the fire that went into the Guard would have ignored the FNP anyway while the Marines needed both that and Furious Charge to be more effective.

Playing The Mission

At the top of Turn 2, Andy turned around the scary Sanguinary Guard to go and deal with the Wolf Guard. They comfortably wiped them out but this meant that they were seriously delayed in getting to the business end of the game. When they got stuck in they did some serious damage but by then they were the only target that was left to deal with. If they'd turned up earlier, while there were some Assault Marines around, I would have had some serious problems. Yes, my Wolf Guard would probably have taken out a Devastator squad but I think the Sanguinary Guard  could have covered that spread.

I really like Andy's list and think he could have done pretty well with it at the Indy GT. The only change Id make would be maybe trying to get another Jump Pack for one of the Priests since I think it would be more useful having Priests with both Assault squads rather than both Devastator squads. As for my list, I was really happy with the way it played. I'm pretty tempted to stick with it through the dogs days of 5th edition but now I've got some Thunderwolves I'm going to damn well use them!