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.

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?

New Daemon rules in WD

Now Partybuses come in Cavalcades.

By now most of the interwebs will be aware of the newly-released units for Codex: Chaos Daemons that will be coming out in the update in this month's White Dwarf as shown here, here, here and here. To sum it up, there are new rules for Screamers, Flamers and a couple of Slaanesh Chariots. There are rules for Fantasy too but since no-one really cares about that we'll move swiftly along.

The big questions are how much are they and how good are they? €46, which is a bit steep for them, but I'll probably end up getting one for all of the parts that I can use for my Emperor's Children army. Now for the latter part: how useful they are in a list?

B&W Pics of SoB WIP

Celestine: the best Character in the game?

All of those TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) were just for you Keaveney. Well they might not look very Ecclesiarchy-y but it's what I'm going for: using Chaos models (all lovely and plastic) as opposed to the expensive (and metal or Finecast?) Sisters models that costs €50+ for a unit of 10 while they pump out those 10 CSM & Rhino boxes for €45 sounds like a plan.

Here's a few pics of what I've been up to for the past few weeks at any rate in getting my army off the ground. I spray them black and then give them a dusting of white paint because it creates an easy way to spot how natural shading and highlighting should work, which will look lovely until I obliterate it all with pink and black. Here's another shot of her.

There are a few tanks lying around already completed but I have to give one of my Rhinos a redo as it is way too red for my liking thanks to slathering on the Baal Red. Which now needs to be replaced.

Warpcon Game 5 - Chivite's Daemons of Chaos

Fateweaver: He's a decrepit monkey-skeleton.

After scraping through game 5 by completely gypsying my opponent and stealing 4 BP at the end thanks to a Rhino's tank shock I was in a big pack of people on about 51 points after 4 games and there were a few I was hoping to avoid. Luckily, I got to play an army I didn't want: Daemons. Despite their fall from grace post-Warp Quake they're actually a good foil to mech-based armies as many of their units don't go down to single shots so require enemies to focus fire to remove each target (no shaken/stunned shenanigans) and their units can tear through most units with either the sheer number of attacks (Fiends) or the amount of power weapons attacks they possess (Princes, MC's and Bloodanythings).

Then Chivite told me his list and I knew that this would be one of those games where I would either win big or lose big as Fateweaver surviving for a long period of time would decide how this game went. I have had a decent run against him, as Angry Merl will testify, as he has a nasty habit of being killed off early whenever he's showed up beforehand. I was hoping that my luck against him would hold this time and I'd be able make a game of it.

Where's me Jumper? Part 2: BA DoA vs Daemons

The Fatebubble - it grows.

So are there enough abbreviations in the title for you? Little Dave (there's 7 Dave's in our group and each has a moniker to ID them) is hell-bent on taking his DoA list to Warpcon to face all and sundry. His list of 40 grunts and 5 Vanguard is here and this is the one he's running with (take that Kirby) and I've been breaking him in over the past few weeks (yeah). We played KP/Dawn of War.

I gave him a run out with a list I figured he'd have trouble with: non-Mech. The all-Jumpers weakness is their lack of multiple shot weapons apart from Plasma and the usual cap of 2 Special weapons per squad. Nids and Daemons will cause him problems for the simple reason that you can't take out their units with a single salvo - they must be ground down through firepower dedicated solely to destroying it, which also brings mobility problems. If you want to shoot at something til it dies you have to castle allowing the enemy to surround you but if you spread out you risk not doing sufficient damage to bring big beasties down before they lay into the army.

Merl's Daemons. Again.

Next up in long overdue batreps is Angry Merl's Daemons. Again.

I'd played him already and managed to bag Fateweaver in turn 1 before the rest of his army managed to get stuck into my stuff and beat it up and swing the game in his favour. I was still chopping and changing things in my list to get it ready for the upcoming Gaelcon tournament (reports of which will arrive later).

Our mission was 5 objectives (1 in the centre of each quarter, 1 in the middle of the board) and Spearhead deployment.