Saturday, November 5, 2011

New Necron blog up at Craftworld Lansing

Go over to craftworldlansing.blogspot.com and check out my first impressions of the new Necron Codex.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

New Necron post

View my (very short) article over on Craftworld Lansing about the upcoming Necron release.
More to come when I get my hands on a Codex!

Monday, October 17, 2011

Midterms are cruel and unusual punishment.

Ugh school is kicking my ass... and it's only getting worse. Two massive research papers to do this term, and my hobby table is collecting dust and cobwebs.

I finally made it over to DFG to take a look at the new Necrons... and I must say I am impressed. Imotekh will be by army leader... Seeing as he is my namesake.

All of it just makes me realize how much I miss doing all this. I talked before about trying my best to devote 1/2 hour a week to hobbying, but as we can all see that hasn't gone so well.  Any suggestions from anyone out there in the blogosphere on how to create more hours in the day?

Updates to follow, hopefully soon.


-Stormlord

Friday, August 19, 2011

Falling off the hobby horse.... and getting back on.

I'll admit it. From time to time, we all take on too much.
I think I may have burned myself out a bit with my massive painting challenge, then coupled with a summer semester at school and a complete lack of fundage, I've completely fell off the hobby horse.  Sure, I still have done some hobby stuff... I've so far painted 1 Night Goblin Spider Rider. 1. Oh, and I played one game of 40K against SeerK's Eldar. Which I might add, he totally spanked me from one of the field to the other. Moral victory though, no phase out!

Falling out of the hobby isn't the hard part, it's getting back in. I've pretty much determined that I need to set aside some time each week to devote to hobbying, even if it is only a 1/2 hour. That's still some progress.  Especially with a few of the 40K gamers moving away soon, it is even more important to dust off the cobwebs and make an effort to get back into the swing of things.

Thoughts about some recent releases:

Storm of Magic? Maybe it's because I haven't sat down to read the rulebook (or because I don't have a spare $70 bucks to drop on another book...) but it seems to be fairly pointless. Sure, let's add big monsters to the game. All these new models are dropping, Vampire Counts, Chaos, Dark Elves... but not Bretonnia love. From my understanding, some of the monsters can be added to any army. For that I say cool, but I'd still like to see some Bretonnia specific new models, likewhat the Vampire Counts are getting.

New Vampire Counts models look sweet. I look forward to getting my hands on the Zombie Dragon and the Garden of  Morr. If Games Workshop screws the pooch on the Garden like they did with Witchfate Tor, I'm totally done buying any of their scenery. We will see how this one goes.

From Forge World:

This is a thing of beauty.
The Praetor Armored Assault Launcher. This is SO screaming to become part of the Krieg army.

Now that my brain is back into the game, I think it is time to rededicate myself and push forth to finish some of these projects I have yet to finish. I've been working of a scenery piece for my Bretonnian army, a "Lady in the Lake" piece with a sword being raised from the water, so look for a tutorial on working with water soon. Hound me. Keep on me. I need the motivation. I also NEED to start assembling the Krieg army, as the Necrons are just getting spanked too hard recently. They will be competitive soon with the new Codex, I know, but until that drops, I still can't hold objective missions... and that needs to be fixed.

All right, that's it for now. Let's do this.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

... which I talk about the end of an era.

Well folks, sadly I will be bringing the 40K portion of this blog to a close. SeerK has invited me to become part of his Seer Council.

But do not despair! I am not going anywhere! All of my 40 related posts will now be located over on Craftworld Lansing.  Whenever I post a blog over there, I will post a link here to help direct people.
 

Chaos Kingdoms will still remain, as the primary focus of this blog has always been modeling, painting, and war gaming as a hobby. Fantasy Battle will still be at the forefront, as well as my personal thoughts about the hobby.

Hope to see all of you on Craftworld Lansing, and hopefully see all of Craftworld Lansing here!

Friday, June 3, 2011

... in which the Necrons give SeerK a run for his money!

Damn! So close to victory, yet so far away.

Yesterday I took on SeerK's Dark Eldar Webway list out at the FLGS. I ran the exact configuration that I talked about in my last post, but let me recap it real quick:

10 Warriors (Reserve)
10 Warriors (Reserve)
2 Monoliths
5 Pariahs
2 Heavy Destroyers
5 Immortals w/ Necron Lord, loaded with a Res Orb and VoD
The Nightbringer

Where things went wrong for me, was the mission type... Capture and Control, coupled with a deployment of Dawn of War.

SeerK had Initiative, so let's delve into the game:

I chose to keep all my troops off the board, and walk them on during turn 1.

Turn 1: SeerK moves his 2 Raiders across the board and deploys a squad of Wracks, and opens the webway portal close to my edge of the board.

I move my army onto the board, leaving my 2 units of Warriors in reserve. Directly in front the Raider that deployed the Wracks, the Nightbringer and the squad of Pariahs come on and open fire, wiping out most of the squad and sending them fleeing. Monoliths flank them to the right, while the other Raider gets to deal with the Lord and his Bodyguard of Immortals and 2 Heavy Destroyers. The Heavy Destroyers open up on the Raider and wreck it.

Necrons move on the board

Wracks get the warscythe welcome


Ohhh.... where did all your fiends go? So sad.

Turn 2:
SeerK gets 2 squads of Wytches and his Beastmaster and pack to come thru the center webway. One squad of Wytches goes into the difficult terrain to control the objective. I found this a little lame, because, yes they were within 3 inches of the object, but there was a wall of impassable terrain inbetween them! Oh well, rules are rules. The Beastmaster pack runs for my Lord/Immortal squad. The other squad of Wytches opens fire on the Nightbringer, landing 3 wounds with their poisoned weapons.... The remaining squad of Wracks forgets to open the second webway... Assaults!: The Beastmaster pack hits my Lord/Immortals, taking down 4 immortals. The Wytches assault the Nightbringer and Pariahs failing to even inflict 1 wound. In return, they cut down 5 Wytches, Insta-death style. Now, the Soulless Pariahs do their thing. Wytches leadership is reduced to 7, minus the five casualties... SeerK needs snake eyes to stay in the fight. The Wytches break, and the Nightbringer cuts them down.


Beast pack attack!

What Wytches?
My Turn 2:
Move the Pariahs closer to the remaining Wytch squad and open fire, killing 2. 2 Immortals get back up, and the Lord uses the VoD to warp away to his objective, opening fire on the Wrack squad that has only 2 men remaining. The Heavy Destroyers bug out (Turbo Boost) to the other side of the Raider. Monoliths drop particle whips on the Beastpack, inflicting only a couple of wounds. Nightbringer makes a beeline for the Beastpack. The Pariahs assault the Wytches in difficult terrain, and thier powered/poisoned weapons take out the 5 Pariahs.

 
Whats left after the Nightbringer's demise
Turn 3:
 The last squad of Wytches and the Talos pain engine emerge from the webway. The beastpack turn on the Nightbringer. The Wytches also move in on the Nightbringer, laying in some heavy fire. The Nightbringer takes his last two wounds and explodes with a S6 AP2 5" radius, taking the bulk of the 3 squads that were surrounding him. The squad of two wracks fire on and then assault the Lord/Immortals with no effect, but losing another Wrack. The Wytches assault and take down one of the Monoliths.

Bottom of 3:
Reserves unit of 10 warriors come in, entering from the edge of the board. The Heavy Destroyers lob some fire at the Raider with no effect. The warriors fire on the Wytches, taking one or two out. The monolith continues to move toward the other objective, dropping a particle whip on the Talos pain engine. The Lord/Immortals finish off the remaining Wrack.

Turn 4:
The pain engine lays into the Warriors. The full squad of Wracks move in on the Heavy Destoryers, firing, but not doing any damage. The Raider moves in on the 2nd objective, blocking the Monolith's path. The Wytches move in with the remainder of the beast pack to secure the 1st objective. The Wracks assault the Heavy Destroyers, killing both. The Talos pain engine assaults the warriors, taking 5 down.

The monolith continues around the Raider. Three warriors rise, and they remain locked in combat with the Talos, making no progress. The Immortals fire into the Wracks.

Turn 5:
SeerK's Wracks consolidate and move towards the 2nd objective. The raider parks in front of the 2nd objective. The Talos takes 2 warriors down during the assault phase, while the rest of his troops hold.

And here is how I lost:

At this point, I honestly thought I had SeerK. It was a gamble, but I thought for sure I could pull it off. Alas, the dice disagreed.

The last reserve of 10 Warriors emerge from the portal on the Monolith, surrounding the 2nd objective, contesting it. They open fire on the Raider with 20 shots, getting only 2 glances by the time everything is said and done. I needed that Raider gone to not contest the objective, so the Monolith unleashes a particle whip on it. Direct hit. Pens. Flicker Fields reject the hit. Damn. 21 shots into the Raider, and it is still there. That is where victory died.  The best I could hope for now is  tie. The Lord/Immortals use the VoD to teleport over to the 1st objective. Unfortunately, I could not get close enough to the objective because of the 1" rule. I literally was 3 1/8" away. They fire are the beastpack, but I don't remember if they did anything, as I had mentally conceded at this point.

SeerK rolled to see if we go to turn 6, and no. Game Over.

So close! I learned a lot during this game. I feel pretty good that I didn't phase out, and I wiped out more than 50% of his army while keeping more than 50% of his. I believe I would have been ahead in kill points, but I can't say for sure, since we weren't really paying attention because it was a capture/control. SeerK has put a lot of time and play testing into his webway list, and I feel like my Necrons went the distance against it.

If this is any indicator, I think my list will hold up well at the tourney on Saturday. I have no illusions of winning (I am running Necrons after all), but I think I have a solid and competitive team that will be fun to play.

That's it for now, kids. Report on Saturday's tourney to come next!

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

... in which I am defeated by the holiday weekend, and I prepare for a tournament this upcoming weekend.

I was right to throw in the towel. Power for us came back on shortly after it went out, but some of the other outlaying areas of Lansing are still without power, and not due to be restored until Thursday.

I found myself getting sloppy toward the end anyway. My normal attention to detail got really distorted when painting 20+ miniatures in a sitting.

The biggest lesson I can take away from this is enjoy what you are doing. It doesn't pay to rush, and it also doesn't do you any good to sit on tons of minis either.

So here's some photos of what I've done:






Forgive the quality, I had to take the pictures with my phone, as my camera was left in the car. I will take better close ups this upcoming week, now that I can put this behind me and get back to what this blog is about: Gaming.

So, this upcoming weekend is OST's tourney out at Fowlerville. Click HERE for details.

I have settled on running my Necrons for the 1850. I'm going to keep it simple, and focus on refining my tactics, seeing as Necrons are not exactly a competitive army.

Here's my list:

10 Necron Warriors

10 Necron Warriors

5 Immortals
Necron Lord
-Veil of Darkness
-Resurrection Orb

2 Heavy Destroyers

5 Pariahs

2 Monoliths

The Nightbringer

Here's the skinny on my strategy:

Keep everyone behind the monoliths.
Keep the Warriors in reserve, and hopefully keep them off the board as long as possible. I know I'm losing some firepower, but I refuse to be phased out. 
The Lord and his bodyguard of Immortals use the Veil of Darkness to warp around the board, hitting weak units in the rear or flank.
The Nightbringer is pretty self explanatory... Keep him behind the monolith to get him close and then let the carnage begin.
The 2 Heavy Destroyers lay down supporting fire, focusing on tanks and snipers. Run the Pariahs behind the Monoliths until they are close enough to use those Warscythes of theirs like can openers.

Hopefully by the time the monoliths collide into the opposing army is when the warriors would flood out of the portals. And, if anyone gets dinged a little too hard, pull them thru the monolith to keep the numbers up.

I'm planning on trying out the list at out FLGS tomorrow night, hopefully against OST, Vogrin, or anyone else in the DFG crew. I'll post results and pics after.