Blood Angels: Synchronise!

Some of Burkhardt's Blood Angels.
They're much nicer than yours. And mine.

As Duncan will tell you, this article is late. Like, really late. No, it isn't a crude reference to Blood Angels bleeding profusely and suffering from insanity for 5 days a month: nor is about the phenomenon of menstrual synchrony; its about a few blogs that have got together to throw up a few ideas about how 6th edition has affected how they build Blood Angel armies now and how they've changed compared to how they were in 5th. I've just had to deal with the fact that I've been too ill to post recently despite this article being almost entirely complete for two weeks already. I'll add a few ideas to how to build army ideas that the lads have suggested beforehand and things I think will work based on games I've played, such as Allies which the lads have given scant regard to.

Little Dave over at the Red Thirst and Caolán of the Skibb Wargamers and are my co-conspirators in this endeavour, although I hope that a few more heads will contribute their thoughts on how they've rebuilt their BA (or their own armies as is the case with Dan from Tzarkahn40k and his Guard), especially with a return to the scene of an ETC veteran (2007) in the shape of Big Rog (pronounced Roj) recently running a Blood Rodeo list and Burkhardt (such pretty, pretty models) overcoming his distaste for anything random and inefficient. How un-Germanic - it must be the case that he has been here for too long already.

Ultramarines live longer with Calgar

I wonder if Mat Ward sees this when
he looks in the mirror?

You know the jingle used at the end of Calgon ads? They have it here in German but not in English for some reason. Anyway, if you use the words in the title of this post in place of the ones actually used you'll have that jingle stuck in your head all day. Now that its in there, you can hum along while you're reading the rest of this post.

The reason for it being here is because of a thread on w-ired that reminded me to go back to something I'd been looking at for a while in 5th but abandoned because it wasn't very good - the Calgar wave. Basically the idea is to have a ton of Marines sprinting across the board and getting Hit-and-Run lite in order to hop in and out of combat and pump out as many shots as they can get like waves hitting a beach, or bogging units down in combat when they need to pin something in place like that annoying floater that sometimes decides not to go down the toilet when you flush. What does that floater want anyway?

It didn't work in 5th because the worst things in the Marine army were Marines but with 6th vehicles have taken a hit and infantry is better and you can now run a horde of guys and stand a decent chance against most armies. But there's something that really gives it a big boost: Guard Allies.

Typhus Ideas.

With the favoured disciples of the other three Chaos Gods dealt with (here, here and here) its finally time to move onto the most popular of all the characters in the new dex: Typhus. Why is he the most popular?

One reason. Well, there are a few but one reason stands out moreso than any other.

He gives you access to Zombies. Hordes of the mindless dead. 40k Grimdark Zombies. Resident Evil with Space Marines. The Walking Dead. 

I could go on and on making cultural references but I'll stop before I get completely sidetracked. What I will do is commend myself on the timing of this by having this blog post coincide with Hallowe'en.

Lucius Ideas

If only Lucius' rules were as awesome as this guy...

When the rumours of a new CSM dex started to surface I was hopeful that Lucius would get a handy boost to enable him to tackle all-comers and be a bit more survivable. I knew that getting a Celestine-style back from the dead effect would be out (because its maddeningly powerful) but I was hoping for something that would reflect the background that he takes over the body of the guy that killed him, rather than having his armour reflexively kick out after he gets a slap in the mouth.

What we did get was one of the items that wasn't improved massively from the previous 'dex. He is the only character to get a Doom Siren and he tends to get extra attacks in challenges, which you are doubly encouraged to partake in with the Boons table but there is one major drawback: Lucius is average in combat. In fact there's a song that reminds me of him (Emerge by Fischerspooner) for the repeated use of a single world: Hypermediocrity.

Kharn the Betrayer Ideas

Kharn. He's some man for the skulls.

I was in two minds about my next article but I reckoned that I'd run with more thoughts on Special Characters before moving onto units and army builds. Next up is another of my favourite feens and arguably most iconic of all Chaos Marines: Kharn the Betrayer. Or Betrayer the Betrayer if you are able to read Arabic, according to some.

I've been a fan since his short story by Bill King featured in Inferno Magazine #1 was included in White Dwarf (the one with the kill-count ticking away in his helmet's visor) although there's a resident gamer in my group that is an uber-fanboy of Kharn, but his blushes will be saved and he'll not be named, but you know who you Daire.

So how best do you help Kharn collect skulls for his perpetually angry patron?

Ahriman Ideas

I'll bet you he's really poring through a skin mag.

So like many of you reading this I've been digesting the Chaos Codex for the past week and seeing what silly combos are available and what units have been grossly undercosted/overpowered with the book. So far there's nothing that I've found that's quite that ridiculous as its been very balanced: if you want something then you have to pay for it or you have to mess around with your very limited HQ slots to get what you want (usually Fearless units as Troops) and things start to add up very quickly. I note that one of the playtesters over on the B&C forum (the jeske, iirc) reckoned that the army operates best at 2k points levels.

I'm going to go with 1850 though as that it what is usually played in tournaments over here. Aside from the general overview above I wanted to throw out some thoughts about Ahriman as he is one of the characters I've always liked and I've wanted to include him in a list for quite a while and now thankfully he might be worth including as he's got a few things going for him.

Daemons in 6th thoughts

So with the new rules changes brought about by the release of 6th and the subsequent White Dwarf update booklet the Daemons of Chaos have been given a nice boost and they're now no longer one of the unwanted step-children of the 40k family of armies. Even the Nids have been improved, but not to the degree of their Warp-spawned cousins, although rumblings have begun to suggest that they're due for a similar WD update that will allow Pyrovores to become an Anti-Aircraft unit. They might even appear in games if that were true.

Back to the Daemons: thanks to a large number of their HQs having Wings and with their Daemon Princes having access to them they are able to get a large number of Flying Monstrous Creatures (unlike their Chaos Marine counterparts) which has been dubbed the Flying Circus as this build relies on making their big guys hard to hit and also enables them to fly around torching units with Breath of Chaos before gliding down to assault units later on. As the lads over on the 11th Company Podcast said, when someone says a Flying Circus army is not that good he's a Nid player but when someone says they're really good they're a Daemon player.

What's not to like?

Sisters are doing it for themselves.

You'll need a bigger gun to keep me off you, Sister.

Well not quite doing it for themselves as they've a man overseeing everything to make sure things go right. As it should be. I've been hankering after trying out the Ecclesiarchy's finest for quite a while now and at a recent tournament (Itzacon, with a set of reports from Dispatches from the Front) one of the lads in our group (Nick at 4+ This!) tried the Paul Quigley challenge (set out in W-ired's 12.2 podcast available here) and was unlucky to finish just outside the 10th place cut-off point that would make Mr. Mandragoran look like a pussy, because he hasn't attempted to fulfil his own boastful challenge. Just because he writes an article for BOLS he thinks he can say anything and not have to back it up. For shame...

I've been playing Wolves at every tourney I've attended in the past 2 years (bar two) and I figured that a change is as good as a rest so I went looking for something else to have a crack off of. I looked at GK (too easy), Guard (taken), BA (lots of them down here already), Newcrons (no love for the models) and even Tau (taken) but after reading some of the lad's thoughts over on Sons of Sanguinius and Hive Mind Hangover (they're so purple!), along with getting the opportunity to wave my balls in Quigley's face if I did finish a tourney within the top 10 (but this time he would be awake and not in a foreign country...) I figured that for MooFool's (or Little Dave's Birthday Bash) I'd plumb for the WD dinner ladies: the Sisters that serve pain.

Or rock-hard food. Which is often the same thing.

Btw - apologies for the random nature of the text formatting in the article. I've tried formatting the shite out of it through deleting copypasta, Word and Notepad but nothing's worked so far because Blogger seems to have a mind of its own today and the paragraphs just jump around the page.

Lysander's Counter-Productivity

Now that's a Lysander. By Destrega.

Well, there's one of the lads in our group that's been wondering what to do with Lysander in his Ultramarine army for the past while.

There's been a few builds played upon to varying success: Sternguard in a Pod with the Big Fella dropping Turn 1; Riding dirty in a Land Raider with Termies; Loping behind vehicles ala Meph but nothing was consistently performing.

Things took a turn for the better when Shrike showed up to party by making everyone run faster: the Termies can get stuck in quicker while the Tac squads can run away from trouble.

Shrike's Fleet also means that you replace Lysander's Stubborn which I believe is actually a de-buff for Marines as a whole. Yes, Stubborn is a debuff. That goes for El Pedro too. ¿Qué?

Let me explain...

New Grey Knights

Bring out the gimp. Here's a side shot.

So I figure that its time I jump on the GK bandwagon with some army lists I've been messing about with. LOL @ Cian: we know you were the one that suffered on with the sub-par army for the past couple of years waiting for the update and now they're good everyone is interested in them so you're no longer the only gay in the village. Its ok, Eoin will probably feel the same when the Necrons get an update.

To make it worse, I'm doing counts-as, using my long-neglected Chaos Marines (Emperor's Children) to represent them. Thankfully I've still got a couple of Blastmasters and Sonic Blasters to use as Psycannons and my Lord is on a Terminator-sized base so is perfect as a stand-in Libby or Grand Master. I'm also thinking of using some Necromunda gangers as my Inquisitor and retinue. All of which will be painted in black and pink.

Deathwing changes

Assault Cannons. LOL.

So with the new FAQs released and the minor changes made to the Black Templars and the Dark Angels there's going to be people looking for how this affects their army. The Templars improvements have largely been confined (though not exclusively) to having better Terminator squads by making them more durable.

My interest is mainly with the Dark Angels, specifically the Deathwing formation, as I've always had a certain fondness for them as a unique build in the game. At least they were unique until Logan Grimnar showed up but even so Logan's best Wolf Guard build is a mix of Terminator and Power-armoured models within a unit instead of having them all in TDA because its simply too expensive - its 63 points for a Wolf Guard Terminator with Storm Shield and Thunder Hammer. Compare this to Vanilla Marines (200 for 5) or even BA (200 for 5 plus 5 per TH/SS) and you can see they are seriously overcosted.

But that's enough of that: back to the Deathwing.

Where's me Jumper? (Blood Angel DoA).

Assault Squad Sultans of Ping.

So continuing with the advice thrown out for Caolán which Dave took up I've been able to witness an all-DoA (Descent of Angels) army in action for the past few weeks and have been providing suggestions to tweak it after each game.

Its evolved from a toy-heavy to a boy-heavy (oh dear) list and the win ratio is starting to improve against a variety of opponents. It is of course early days but the signs are looking good at this should hopefully be putting in an appearance at Warpcon in a few weeks.

So what did he start with and what is he now running?

Caolán's Nipple Torture* (BA Jump list)

Caolán's Angels: Like Charlie's Angels but they're Furverts.

Angels are usually described as descending from heaven to save the favoured that are in peril or those that ask for their intervention. Seeing as Caolán doesn't reckon on the former I figured I'd come as the latter.

I'm not spouting mere gibberish - I'm referring to his Descent of Angels list and the fact he wants to bring 27 models in his 1750 point army that he'll take to the 40k tournament at Warpcon. Or at the very least is considering taking there. That's masochism for you.

So where do we start to correct this deviant behaviour?

And now, for something completely Dark Eld-I mean different...

I am Dark Eldar - I feel no pain!

While I'm waiting for the immersion to heat up (its an Irish thing) and I'm still chopping and changing my Gaelcon and Conclave Batreps (so many pics...) I've been thinking about the nouveau Dark Eldar and what I can do with them. Or more accurately, what I can do with other people's models while I'm painting up the Wolves to 3 colours, based *and* highlighted.

I have a few ideas I'd like to try out apart from the obvious Raiderspam: I'd like to see if Footdar can work with a horde of FNP things running at you shielding a guy with a Webway Portal before the Reserves arrive.

Decisions decisions.

I've been looking to change the list around for a while now as there was something nagging me for a while but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I think I've found out what it is: Melta. With 5th ed being the Mech is king edition anything that gives you a boost to damaging vehicles when you direct fire at them has got to be swarming all over the place. Its absence is one of the reasons why Orks are seen by many as crap.

My main problem has been how to get over Melta weaponry's relatively short range with the Wolves as people are already fairly hesitant to get into that short-to-mid ranges where the Sons of Fenris excel. There's also the issue of them not having the reliability that Marines with Vulkan do so I'll just have to get more of them to make up for this. So in short, I need to get them across the board quickly and have lots of them to wreck tanks so my men can either rush the occupants or get away.