Cheesing it up with Draigowing?

Hey all,

After rummaging around in the various gaming bits my dad brought over to Bratislava when he visited, I found my batch of metal Grey Knight Terminators that I got in trade before leaving the US. As I counted up how many bodies, arms and weapons I had, a thought struck me....Draigowing. While I don't have that many terminators, using Draigowing means I can make a 1500pt army with perhaps 15 figures all in all.

For those who aren't familiar with the term, Draigowing is named after Deathwing and is another all terminator force that can be played, this time with the Grey Knight Codex (the other one is Loganwing with Space Wolves). It involves using the special character Kaldor Draigo to unlock Paladins (2 wound terminator dudes) as troops and having a nasty, deathstar-type army list.

To sum up the list:

- Draigo
- Librarian
- 10 Paladins with 4 psycannons
- 5 Paladins with 2 incinerators

Add a few upgrades and it makes 1500 on the nose. Compact and deadly, I hope.

Here's what I have to start working with.

Sterm with a Storm Shield will be Draigo and the brother captain will be the librarian.

My long range firepower component.

The rest of the big squad.

My incinerator squad, still short a few arms unfortunately.


So here is the next project that I'll be working on alongside the Deathwing painting and Dreadfleet, though my girlfriend has expressed interest in helping with the latter. She played two games against me last night (winning both) and is quite a fan of the ship-based boardgame vibe.

I am a little short of weapons and other bits for these guys. You'll notice that I have an extra four bodies in the first picture with no arms for them. It's a bit of a bummer but I might just use regular plastic terminator arms for them and then paint them up as another Deathwing squad if I need to expand the army.

Of course, if any readers have spare Grey Knight terminator weapons they might be willing to part with, please get in touch ;-)

Also, any tactical thoughts or advice for this compact army is much appreciated.

All the best,

Pete

PS: Next post is about me getting my butt kicked at Dreadfleet by my girlfriend.

Gosh darn you GW and your temptuous ways.

Hey everyone,

So despite winding down on my time here in America (leaving April 13th) and trying to sell off the vast majority of my wargaming collection.....I am getting tempted to collect a new army.

How is it that we can be hooked so powerfully by these pieces of plastic, pewter and resin that sensible ideas like dropping the hobby for a while due to impending travel drift out of our minds and are replaced by the urge to create a new army of tiny toy warriors?

However it happened....I want to get and play a Deathwing army

I trace this particular new urge to a few factors:
- I don't want to stop the hobby, despite planning on country hopping.
- I can make an army of all terminators and only have to transport 25-30 figures.
- The new FAQ makes them better on the tabletop.
- I like the idea of having mixed armament squads
- I read the original story of the Deathwing in the novel compilation Deathwing when I first got into the GW hobby at age 10 or so.

So let's bring on the Deathwing.



Games Workshop has managed to create a rather awesome collection of plastic terminators for various armies and I like them all.....so I want to create a fun mishmash army. I will use various boxed sets and enjoy the mix of armaments that playing deathwing will allow me to take advantage of. I also have a great love for plastic models and will use it whenever possible since metal and resin don't click with me. I swear my skin exudes chemicals that prevent superglue from working on anything I'm holding, no matter what it's made from.

Army 'List'

To start with, the army needs to be led by Belial, the master of the deathwing. He allows Deathwing to be taken as troops as well as Elites, giving you 9 slots to fill with terminator goodness. There is no model for Belial so I'm thinking of using the Chaos Terminator lord as a base for him with lightning claws or converting using spare bits from the other sets I'll get.

Here's a good example of a Chaos lord Belial Conversion from Dakka



I cleary need to have some regular terminator boxes, for the cyclone launchers if nothing else but with the other sets on offer I can make some beastly combinations and fun models.

So I will start with two boxes of regular terminators and one box of assault terminators to give me some good models and basic options.

Who doesn't love hammers, claws and missiles?



Next up for me is the extremely cool Space Wolf Terminator set. This comes with a great selection of ranged and melee weapons (love the belt-fed assault cannon) and as long as I cover up some of the more obvious wolf imagery, I think it will add character.




By adding Belial to the mix, one Deathwing squad can be upgraded to have a banner and an apothecary. That's right, feel no pain on fearless terminators. Until today there was no obvious way to get a terminator-armoured apothecary and so conversion was the only option.

......then the new Grey Knight terminators set was released, including a sweet banner, apothecary, multiple great weapons and some fantastically ornate armour pieces. Clearly I'll have to fiddle around with the parts and perhaps use some green stuff to edit the many Inquisition symbols but I think they will make for great Deathwing models. Also, if I spread the Grey Knight pieces out over the whole army and add some robes with Green Stuff then the army as a whole will be coherent.




Last on the list for now is to add some Dark Angels' bits from the conversion sprue to help maintain a theme of Deathwing, particularly given the multiple sources of models I'll be using.




So there we have it. Games Workshop has tempted me back in again and I'm thinking about this quite strongly. It'll make for a good longer-term project too that I can take with me to whatever new country I'm living in and will give me a nice creative outlet for when I want to just nerd out :-)

Pete

Tactica tactical marines.

Some nice looking marines from coolminiornot.com by Ed209b

I was inspired on this post by Jake over on his blog Holy Cathedral when he posted a general tactica on tactical marines, the cornerstone of my marine forces. I wrote some lengthy comments on his post to add specifics on how to best use these humble troops and figured that it would be a useful way to add a post to my blog (as well as send some traffic his way).

So tactical marines. I generally will run a list with 20 tactical marines if I'm playing with the Grey Knight Deathstar (plus 5 scouts) but without that unit I might bump it up to 30. It's quite something to bring a wall of power armoured bodies to the field and see your opponents recoil as they see the sheer number of tough, armoured, well-armed, ridiculously morale resistant superhuman warriors. Of course, you need to know what to best do with Tactical marines to make the most of them and let them work well with the powerful killing sections (Elites, Heavy support) of your army.

I'm going to be lazy and just post my comments from Jake's blog here since I'm tired of typing :-)

That's a pretty good overall tactica Jake but it could do with some more specifics and detailing on the aspects of tactica marines.

E.g.
- Heavy weapons. When a squad gets to 10 marines they get a free Missile launcher, Heavy bolter or Multi-melta (or pay a bit more for a Plasma/lascannon). These weapons add such versatility that it's almost never worth leaving home without them (with 10 marine squad size). You only lose a single bolter shot at range if you don't move and gain a heavy weapon attack. If you do move, then the bolt pistol can shoot out to 12" in any case. The flexibility that these weapons add are really important.

- Special weapons. A flamer for free, meltagun for 5pts or plasma gun for 10 can add some more punch to the squad. The flamer is great for those times you're close to getting assaulted by a big squad as it can land plenty of hits, or can burn out orks/guard/termagents from cover. The meltagun is commonly taken with the shift to mechanised forces in 5th edition and can always be turned on a regular enemy if need be. The plasma gun and melta are also well suited for knocking out well armoured troops. Adding a few AP 1/2 wounds to terminators will really help your marines do the damage to these foes.

- Grenades. I don't find too much use for the frag grenades in general but remember that they can be used to stop your opponent gaining initiative on you when you charge them in cover. Krak grenades are winners when you remember that every marine has them, they hit at S6 on vehicles, and most vehicles are rear armour 10. I've taken out hammerheads, rhinos and vindicators with this technique. Scouts also have this and it is one way for them to really pay your opponent back for ignoring them.

- Combat squads. Tactical marines can be divived into two 5 man squads at the start of the game (or when the disembark in the case of drop pods). This can be a liability in annihilation missions as they become 2 kill points but it adds lots of flexibility. You can now keep the heavy weapon static, with 4 bolter marines for ablative wounds or fire support, and send sarge (for the CC ability) and the special weapon in close where they can take the fight forwards. Also, this will let you hold two objectives with one troop choice. The weakness is that the squads can be dropped relatively easily because they are small. Still, if just one survives then the opponent must waste lots of fire to bring that last one down, or risk a single model contesting/claiming a vital objective.

- Dedicated transports. The humble rhino gives you an armoured box to take your marines to their obejective and protect them from fire. If it survives after they have been dropped off then it's time to use that vehicle to block assaults to your marines or box in enemy vehicles by denying them movement.
The razorback is somewhat similar but can only carry 6 marines. In this case you'd probably send the close-range combat squad up forwards and then use the razorback as mobile fire support and blocking, like with the rhino. Some do add TL-lascannons to their razorbacks though and leave these on the rear lines with the other heavy weapons. At 75pts for a TL-LC shot, this can be nasty, though expensive. Alternatively you can give them TL-assault cannons and turn them into Baal Predator wannabes that can shred light (and sometimes heavy if your rending rolls well) armour or troops.
I don't use drop pods but there could be great utility in sending a wave of dreads in on turn 1 to mess up the enemy while your main force advances. After they foe is knocked around and has moved to counter your attack, your tactical marines in pods come in and land on the enemy objectives at full strength.
Another nasty trick is to stick a combat squad in a Land Raider and have it sit on a home objective. You can still blaze away with the big guns and your enormous brick of a tank is now scoring. Nasty...

- And They Shall Know No Fear. This is a real key for marines. They automatically regroup even under half strength (as long as there are no enemies within 6") and can move normally or fire. Note also that they don't count as moving when they rally, which means you could stand still and unleash the heavy weapons if you need to. This is a great ability as you can almost always count on your marines getting back in the fight. I found out in a recent game that there is a 3" move allowed when you rally too so you can even set up your heavy weapon shots without counting as moving.

- Combat tactics. This is underutilised in my view, perhaps because of the popular special characters that replace it with other army buffs. It allows you to choose to fail a morale test. This is great if an assaulting enemy shoots you and causes 25% casualties as you can run out of assault range, auto-rally and then hit them up next turn. Or you can run after combat if you lose in the enemy's turn. As long as you roll higher on the initiative test, you will get away, auto rally again and can shoot them next turn.

- Assaulting. I would generally not assault with my marines unless I'm facing something that will outshoot me or gains a boost from assaulting. If there was a smallish squad of orks, I would probably move in, bolt pistol them and then assault as you deprive the orks of their furious charge (now only 33% of hits will wound you rather than %50) and the bonus attack for charging. I play against tau a lot and they can be quite easily tied up with tactical marines, even if you don't win. Broadsides are great for this as you can lock them in combat for the rest of the game sometimes (2+ saves keep them alive though) and stop the railguns from messing up the rest of your army.

- Special characters. While I don't like to use the special characters in the codices, you should be aware that they bring some great changes to the way tactical marines play.
Pedro Kantor changes your marines to have stubborn rather than combat tactics. This doesn't do so much for me but then his key point is making sternguard scoring so he has less of a focus on tactical marines. He does give a +1 attack bubble within 12" though so your tactical marines holding the objective are now that much tougher to assault off it.
Kayvan Shrike. Makes your marines fleet instead of combat tactics. This doesn't really work for my use of tacs but then his boost is for other troops (like assault terminators).
Vulkan He'Stan. Makes your flamers, heavy flamers, meltaguns and multimeltas count as twin linked. This can be fairly potent as your tactical marine firepower with these weapons just went up a serious notch. Even if the tactical marines are moving, the threat of TL melta on the next turn will be a good deterrent for the enemy.
Khossaro Khan. Outflanking marines. Give them rhinos/razorbacks and let that mech madness roll into the enemy's backfield at high speed.


Those are just some extra thoughts on the core unit for marines that you might consider adding to the tactica (and future ones). It's much more of a specific use guide rather than an overall descriptor and hopefully it will give some good help to newer marine players.


So there are some thoughts. Comments are welcome as always and I reserve the right to change my opinions after playing tomorrow night. I think I'll be matching up against Ravenwing so we'll see how my hybrid list handles fast moving bikers.

Deathstar Battle Report

Well, the deathstar got its outing last night against Old Shatter Hands' Tau Cadre. I was trying out a big assaulty unit as a spearhead and OSH was giving pathfinders and firestorms a go.

We played a 1330 points game because I grabbed models in a hurry took more than 1250. My list was:

- Captain with powerfist leading 10 Grey Knights (2 Incinerators)
- MM Dread
- TL-AC Dread
- 10 Tactical Marines (Missile launcher and flamer)
- 10 Tactical Marines (Missile launcher and meltagun)
- Land Raider

And OSH brought:

- Old Shatter hands (Fireknife) with two gun drones
- 3 Fireknives
- 3 Firestorms + 2 Gun drones
- 12 Fire warriors with a devilfish
- 12 Fire warriors
- 8 Pathfinders with a devilfish
- 3 Broadsides with Targetting arrays and 2 shield drones.

The table setup was an urban board and we set it up so that basically I was going to head for OSH's gunline. There was one roadway space for the Land Raider to deploy in and the Tau had plenty of barricades. I was aiming to get as many troops as possible inside OSH's deployment zone. He chose to hold back his crisis suits to deepstrike while OSH and the Broadsides anchored the central barricade. I was nervous setting up my LR in front of the broadsides but there was no choice and I figured that fear was not becoming for marines :-)

So how did it go?

....in short, aggressive movement and poor rolling for OSH meant it was a slaughter of the Tau.

Slightly longer:

I was lucky in my first turn as I moved forwards on all fronts (LR with deathstar in the middle, one combat squad on the right, one in the middle, dreads and full tac squad on the left) and didn't do much firing. OSH used his pathfinders to boost the broadsides and take away my smoke cover save but the railguns only managed to stun the raider. Turn 2 I dropped my deathstar and moved them up. Two incinerators (S5,AP4,no cover or invuln. saves) later and the pathfinders were gone. My other forces carried on sweeping around.

OSH gets both crisis teams in but they both scatter into buildings. He rolls three 1s on the dangerous terrain for the fireknives and loses and wound on the other squad too. One set of fire warriors jump out of the devilfish to rapid fire the deathstar. They are joined by OSH, the broadsides firing SMS and the fireknives. By putting as many plasma shots as possible on the captain, having cover and good rolling, I lose 4 Grey Knights and a wound on the captain. The firestorms don't have much luck on the flanking combat squad either.

What follows is basically a series of nasty assaults from the Captain, Grey Knights and Dreadnoughts to wipe out the centre of OSH's lines. The Land Raider keeps popping shots into the devilfish and Fire warriors, and my full tactical squad sweeps into the deployment zone of OSH. We end the game after 4 turns. I lose 6-7 Grey Knights, my captain and 5 marines. OSH loses himself (bizarre but true), 4 crisis suits, 3 broadsides, a devilfish and a few fire warriors.


Lessons from the match:

- A basic MEQ deathstar is actually quite vulnerable. If OSH had rolled better, or I rolled worse (passed 7 saves on the captain in one turn) then the Grey Knights would have been badly thinned out. Also, their combat success was against Tau forces. A real assault opponent would have been tougher, though striking at S6, I4 is still powerful.
- Land Raiders can be really mean once you have taken out threats to them. By the end of the game it was literally invulnerable to OSH's shots.
- Railguns are not as powerful against AV14 as you might first think. We talked about their effect (or lack of) and then decided that they were possibly better used against Rhinos as they will always glance at the worst. Still, bad luck on this unit was the problem for this game.
- Pinning can sneak up on you. OSH's devilfish popped a tactical marine with a gun drone and the squad then hit the deck, giving me one fewer missile shots during the game.
- Markerlight support is a really key element for many units in the Tau codex. OSH was unlucky to get roasted by the heavy flamer equivalents that Grey Knights have as just boosting his shooting by a little might have spelled the end for my deathstar.
- OSH is one of the most gracious and fun guys to play against, win or lose. We had a fun time and it was so easy to play with someone who knows the rules, doesn't argue over awkward points and just wants to enjoy a game of toy soldiers.

Thanks for the game OSH.


PS: I may have unintentionally cheated at one point. My fearless Grey Knights were joined by the captain when they got shot up. I believe that the addition of such a character removes their fearless status and so I should have taken a leadership check when they got shot up. My bad.

Trying out a Deathstar unit for the first time. Will Grey Knights fit the bill?

Well good morning folks.

I've had a busy last week so sorry for no updates. My wife and I will be moving to a new apartment next month and so things have been busy at IKEA (getting model kits for grownups) and desperately working every extra shift at starbucks to help save up.

Good news though:
- The Krylon primer I got went on a dream and I really like it.
- I've been painting a whole bunch in my free time and the pile of 'to-do' miniatures is slowly shrinking
- All of my orders from Ramshackle Games have arrived (yay Curtis) and I have loads of new models to play with.
- I managed to get free tickets to a Muse concert last night and the show was incredible. You have to love working at a radio station!


Anyway, the point of the post is about using a Deathstar unit as I'm playing Old Shatter Hands tonight. For those who don't know, a Deathstar is a unit that is incredibly powerful, hard-hitting and usually very expensive. It works by forcing the opponent to concentrate on it entirely because left unchecked, it can usually smash apart their forces and swing the battle. Examples include:

- Marine maxed out TH/SS assault terminators led by a chaplain, in a Land Raider. This will hurt when it hits you and takes so much to kill.
- Ork Nob bikers kitted out to abuse wound allocation with a painbody to add FNP. This moves fast, eats almost anything and has to take a huge number of wounds before even one dies.
- Eldar Jetbike Seer Council. Fast moving unit that hits so hard and can benefit from all sorts of deadly farseer powers.

There are many others but that all share the same principles of focusing your opponent's attention and forcing them to react to you rather than follow their own plan.


Now I don't go for the big power plays (like above) but I do want to try out a nasty assaulting unit since I'm normally a shooty kinda guy. Luckily I got two boxes of Grey Knights when I was making my army (loved the Ben Counter Grey Knight novels) and so a lightbulb went off.

I'm planning to run the following:

- Captain with a powerfist.
- 10 Grey Knights with Justicar, 2 have incinerators.
- Land Raider

Now mine don't look quite this good but you get the idea :-)

Having a squad like this that can put out 16 storm bolter shots and 2 heavy flamer equivalents per turn is nasty. They can keep moving and firing too which is great in the current game setup. Then when they charge into combat you have 14 S6 attacks, 4 S4 attacks, 3 S6 power weapon hits and 4 S8 powerfist attacks. Given that all but the captain will strike at initiative, that is some pain right there. Vehicles will largely go down against this many high strength attacks as well (they are basically krak grenades) and the captain allows for some real hitting strength. Bringing them up the Land Raider stops them getting shot so much and allows me to control line of sight to them via an AV14 mobile bunker. Any real threats to the GK will face lascannons from the LR too.

Still, this is an expensive unit at ~670 points as I have it kitted out, but I'm hoping that OSH's Tau will not be able to deal with it in time to prevent their lines getting overwhelmed by scary assaulting marines. They are fearless too, which helps me to avoid morale checks or pinning. Of coures, I'd need to detach the captain for that but they can still charge the same target if need be.

What are people's thoughts? Deathstar units any good?