+ Tau Beatdown / Chaos Suckfest +

On the heels of a 3000 point ogre victory on Friday, played 1500 point rematch against my favorite Tau opponent. My list was the standard 1500, except with 3 plasma termies in place of the dread or noise champ. Yep, first game of chaos with no dreadnought - I shoulda seen this coming ...

Undivided vs Tau [1500] - He brought shas'o + 2 crisis (fusion / missiles / targeting array), 3 deep strike crisis (fusion / plasma), 2x 12 fire warriors in warfish, railhead, ionhead, 3x sniper teams. We used the 5th ed LoS rules, so all real LoS + cover saves are extended to the target if LoS crosses the terrain. Vehicles get cover saves too, no more hull down.

I bunkered into one tall ruin center of my zone, with havoks on top floors, then noise marines mid-level and fisty CSM on the bottom floor. Then I stuck the shooty CSM + lord into a small ruin to the left of the main bunker (Mistake #1). 1k Sons deployed to the right of the bunker, in the open as usual. Tau deployed warfish, railhead (behind left building), snipers (in left building), warfish (behind mid ruins), snipers (in mid ruins), ionhead (behind trees), snipers (in right ruins). Chaos took first turn, and the suck began.

My heavy weapons let me down hard, though admittedly all of my dice were really not feeling it today. My armor saves were abysmal, particularly the invincible ones - 1k Sons were hit with 5 plasma/fusion wounds in Turn 3, and made 1 of their 4+ saves, for example. Horrible, but not as bad as the track record for my few tank breakers:

Obliterator - Turn 1, couldn't see snipers. 2, missed railhead. 3, missed railhead. 4, missed warfish. 5, missed warfish TWICE with twin meltagun. 6, hit and killed the fish with meltagun.
CSM Lascannon - Turn 1, moved up. 2, missed ionhead. 3, hit railhead but rolled 1 for pen. 4, hit ionhead but rolled 1 for pen. 5, hit ionhead but rolled 2 for pen. 6, missed railhead.
Blastmaster - Turn 1, couldn't see snipers. 2, couldn't see snipers. 3, missed railhead. 4, missed crisis team. 5, hit crisis team and killed 0. 6, hit crisis team and killed 1.

Another low point was my drop termies ripping the sniper team apart with plasma (90 points, w00t), then assaulting the railhead nearby. 9 fist attaks = 0 hits. Yuck, and I think I should have gone for the big payoff and struck near the Tau HQ hiding behind a building and JSJ-ing with missile pods all game, instead of mid-board where they could die to tanks (Mistake #2).

Add to this that I summoned the girls right in front of the railhead (Mistake #3) with nothing to charge and nothing to do but die. So they did, to the railhead next turn.

And during the game I managed to break 4 models by knocking them off my central tower. Blerg.

Chaos Loss

Bringing me to 2-1-2 vs the blue/white Tau.

Painting: Biker Lord
Building: Dread 2?? Shockingly FW may have sent the rest of the dread my way!

+ 2000 FTW +

With the FW parts I need for dread #2 nowhere in sight, I've had to change a few things in the 2k list. Thing is, I think it gets better with the extra lesser demonette bodies to accompany the termi / biker forward icons or save somebodies bacon with a counter-summon-charge.

HQ
Chaos Lord - MoCU, demon weapon, bike, icon
Chaos Lord - MoT, deathscreamer, icon

ELITES
3 Terminators - IoCU, 3 combi-plasmas, 2 powerfists, AC w/ chainfist
Dreadnought - Plasma cannon, heavy flamer, extra armor

TROOPS
10 CSM - IoCU, lascannon, flamer, AC w/ powerfist, combi-flamer
10 CSM - IoCU, autocannon, plasma gun, AC w/ power weapon
6 Noise Marines - Blastmaster, sonic blaster
6 1k Sons - AS w/ doombolt
10 Lesser Demons

HEAVY SUPPORT
Land Raider - Demonic possession
6 Havoks - IoCU, 3 missile launchers
1 Obliterator

TOTAL
2000 points

That drops my painting load a bit too, leaving just the biker lord and land raider to make it happen. Ha, "just" and "land raider" in the same sentence ...

Painting: Biker Lord
Building: N/A

+ APOC III +

Last Saturday we held our third APOC game, and this was a much more sane affair with limited points and players. 12 players, 2500 points each, hypothetical cap on superheavies but since they came from your total points we only saw 1 baneblade per side. Game was run for 6 turns, with the winning side being the one with the most of 3 objectives.

Undivided & Death Guard & Undivided & 1k Sons & Iron Warriors & Black Legion vs Crimson Fists & Black Templars & Witch Hunters & Ultramarines & Black Templars & Armored Company [15000] Game more or less started as a series of face offs across 3 boards arranged in a giant L shape: Death Guard vs Crimsons Fists, Undivided vs Templars, my Undivided vs Witch Hunters, Black Legion vs Witch Hunter / Ultras, Iron Warriors vs Ultras / Armored Co. The 1k Sons awaited in orbit to dreadclaw in, and the other Templars did likewise in their drop pods.

The Sons ended up slamming down by the Fists / Templars, reinforcing the beleagured Undivided marines being ground up by the mechanized Templars and ultimately claiming an objective with a mass of horrors, dread and greater demon.

The podding Templars hit the IW, which was unfortunate as he had his hands full with all the tanks already. The FW GUO popped in over there and wrecked everything he touched though, so that was something but not enough as the Armored Co. baneblade destroyed the IW baneblade and claimed the objective.

My boys in the corner pounded the Sisters in a massive 4+ bunker across from them, eventually butchering them with the help of 8 lesser demonettes and a rampaging demon princess. Of note here was the effort that the Sons and my lads put into silencing the 2 hoods on the enemy team - only after these were down could we get anything through, which worked out for me as the demosaurus could start warptiming herself through stuff (but not through the Sisters' 3+ inv saves). The biker lord made his first appearance, getting a first turn charge against 5 GK terminators and claiming 3-4 of them before falling, and my drop termies likewise showed up, striking in and plasma-ing an Ultra bike squad apart before being dismembered. But back to the corner, my dread took a powerful stand on the objective turn 4, only to be killed by seraphim in combat for his bravado / anger. The girls were blasted away and in the last turn my raider powered over and claimed the objective for the dark gods.

With 2 objectives to the Imperium's 1, it looked like another ...

Chaos Win

... though at the end of the game Chaos had secured one wing of the L - only a few Templar characters left vs hordes of Tizz demons and plague marines - and the Armored Co & remnants of the Ultras had locked down the other wing (aside from Fatty rampaging towards them). With my lads in the middle, we would have had a serious shelling to look forward too.

Painting: Biker Lord
Building: Ogre Tyrant

+ Bored: 2k Caveat +

Last night was pounded by a different set of wood elves, which finally punched me out of fantasy mode and back into wanting to kill things with chaos in the grimdark future again. Also want to build something, but the boys have most everything I've got for them, except that biker lord I started ...

HQ
Chaos Lord - MoCU, demon weapon, bike
Chaos Lord - MoT, deathscreamer

ELITES
3 Terminators - IoCU, 3 combi-plasmas, 2 powerfists, chainfist
Dreadnought - Plasma cannon, heavy flamer, extra armor
Dreadnought - Missile launcher, heavy flamer, extra armor

TROOPS
10 CSM - IoCU, lascannon, flamer, AC w/ powerfist, combi-flamer
10 CSM - IoCU, autocannon, plasma gun, AC w/ power weapon
6 Noise Marines - Blastmaster, sonic blaster, NC w/ power weapon
6 1k Sons - AS w/ doombolt

HEAVY SUPPORT
Land Raider - Demonic possession
6 Havoks - IoCU, 3 missile launchers
1 Obliterator

TOTAL
2000 points

Poor DP, she hasn't even seen a real game and she's already getting swapped out! She may be tough (4 T5 wounds with 3/5+ save) but walking bites, and she ain't getting wings with the model I want to use for her. Biker lord can be way faster, particularly on the counter-charge, and the demon weapon makes for a mean assault - 6 to 10 S5 attaks on the charge (or 1 auto-wound and then stupidity). Wish I could get him an icon to bring up the termies or a meltabomb to go hunt tank, but there really isn't 5 points to cut in this list.

Painting: Terminator #2
Building: Biker Lord

+ A Tiny Taste +

After pounding tree spirits with my ogres on Saturday, I jumped in for a quick 3v3 marine throwdown. Chaos vs Imperium, a nice taste of APOC III in a mere 12 days from now ...

Undivided & Death Guard & Iron Warriors vs Ultramarines & Black Templars & Grey Knights [8000] - Just 1500 from me, with the knowledge that I'd only be there for 1.5 hours before I had to jet. Deployed 1k sons in the open, dread in some rocks, fisty CSM, noise marines and havoks in a building, oblit behind a building for walk-and-zap, and lord + shooty CSM in some ruins across from grey knights. Mechanized Black Templars were across from the bulk of my army, about dead center of the 4x12 table.

After weathering Templar fire with very minimal casaulties, my boys accounted for one stunned tornado, 1 dead dread (mine was stunned first turn), and a bunch of dead GK.

Loyalist second turn fire cost me 1 havok bolter, 4 noise marines, 4 1k sons and 2 shooty CSM. In return the blastmaster exploded 5 clumped up deepstruck assault marines and 1k sons reduced the squad to just the fist - which killed 2 1k sons when assaulted and lived on. More GK died and an autocannon/lascannons pred was kraked. And my dread went apeshit and shot up plague marine allies, accounting for none of them after FNP.

Then my boys had to evac. Chaos would go on to lose the game, largely to the 5000 points of Grey Knights (including Stern + Grand Master) and the mysterious loss of 1500 points in allies o_O

Chaos Loss

Painting: 3 Terminators
Building: Giant Troll