Beast Pack Classes – Late Registration

Hide you kids, hide your wives, cause the Beast Pack is hitting tourney scenes around the world big time – and you need to know how to deal with it!

Oliver here, once again on the school bench, this time learning lessons about the Big Boy on the tourney scene – the Deldar Beast Pack.

Since moving to England, I have become more and more familiar with the till now almost completely British phenomenon known has the “Beast Pack list”. England’s own Josh Roberts is winning tournaments left and right with this list, and in the recent LVO over in the US, 2 out of the top 8 finalists were running the BP. Ergo anyone on the tournament scene will need to know how to deal with it..

So first things first, let’s have a look at what I’m actually talking about. Just like any Death Star list, there are quite a few versions of the Beast Pack list. The Beast Pack itself though, usually looks the same:

Eldrad

Farseer, Jetbike, Shard of Anaris, Runes of Witnessing

Baron Sathonyx

5 Beastmasters, 25 Khymera

The idea here is that Eldrad and the Farseer primarily go for Fortune, and thereafter Invisibility, getting lots of other juicy powers in the process. In order to maximize durability and size, most players are now going for the 25 Khymera, rather than a few Razorwing flocks. The unit has a HUGE footprint (32 models, all on terminator bases), and with fortune (and maybe invisibilty) it can be a real PITA to kill.

The Death Star itself clocks in at 840 points. Let’s put this into perspective by comparing it to some of the other Death Stars on the scene:

·         QuadHerald Screamerstar: 790 points  + 300 point Fatey “tax” = 1090

·         O’vesa Star = 850 – 900 points

·         Farsight Bomb w. Loth = 1150 points

·         Jetseer Council = 850-900 points

As you can see, it is right in there pointswise with the other big Death Stars. However, compared to the other units described above, the Beast Pack’s gigantic size allows it to basically hit any part of the board it wants to, moving 12" a turn and charging with Fleet. But more on that later....

Alternative Warp Spider Conversions

I love Warp Spiders and am always disappointed when I get mine out in public (not talking about my cock...stop sniggering you child!), so this weekend whilst I was waiting for the polycement to dry nice and firm on my reposed and repaired War Walkers I was fiddling around with some spare parts and browsing for inspiration.

I actually found this method on Warseer. It's been years since I used Warseer, but it's good for Project Logs and general geekery.. awful for army building and tactics, but then so is most of the internet haha!

The challenge is of course making the Warp Jump Generator and the Deathspinner.

WJG:
Firstly, we grab the Wave Serpent Crystal accessory - think it's just the representation of a Crystal Targeting Matrix or some such bollocks.

To this we glue the smooth, relatively large spirit stone thing.

Then using the antennae and general pointy-ness from the guardian sprue and dire avenger bits, we can create a sort of spider looking backpack/unit thing.

This is our WJG - it may look small here, but it is wonderfully sized for the back of either plastic guardians or dire avengers..I'd suggest Avengers as they have the slightly bulkier torso and shoulder pieces... or they appear to anyway..

We then trim and file the back of the DA upper body and simply glue this fucker to it. Very easy.

It's pretty deep from the side and from the rear it does look pretty wide.. but then, so does the WJG on the actual models.

Basically just then glue together the rest of the model as normal..

I like to use the plain bubble-heads from the DE range wherever possible and I think it looks cracking here.
The weapon is the other difficult one. The Warseer project log I used as inspiration had quite a sweet

looking Deathspinner converted from about half a dozen parts, but to be honest, I couldn't be arsed and I wanted something that looked reasonably compact and streamlined like most of the new Eldar range.. after all, the fusion guns and D-weapons are not particularly large or bulbous - so why should the Deathspinner be SO huge? It seems silly to me when the Fire Dragons S8 AP1 melta weapon is small and compact that the S7 Deathspinner be so much larger.

The perfect solution for me was using the Shredder weapon. It has the pointy 'claw' bits at the end and the overall look and feel of the model keeps it inline with what I wanted.

I think ideally, I'd use the legs from DE Scourges to represent the movement of the models, but I also like the regular Kabalite Warrior legs.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the result and am building up a few more from my bitz box. This is the delightful result of collecting Eldar and 40K in general, off and on, for about 2 decades - you find all kinds of goodness in your bitz box...

Look what else I found lying in pieces in my Eldar bitz box:

Bit of repositioning and they look pretty damn agile now..

Just need to dig around and see if I can find the proper weapons mounts...

I think I want to run a list with maxed out War Walkers and Spiders... lots of mobile firepower..

Toy soldiering is such fun!

Dark Eldar Challenge Army - 1850

My DE back in 2011 - The Kabal of the Pink Fuckers!

Morning all,
Local gaming is fun. Or at least it's supposed to be isn't it?
But so often it is not when the expectations of the two players are misaligned.
I often fall into this trap and even when, as a competitive player, I am spouting crap like the Tau Triumvirate I feel I am building an army that will not provide fun to both parties.
There are, of course, players that share my competitive philosophy at the club...but when you are not playing those guys it would be nice to have an army to hand which isn't hardcore.

Just as a quick background, I have a lot of my 40k stuff packed away for this year as I'm working on a property project and have little room spare...I'm limited this year to Nids, Tau, Eldar and Bike or Foot Marines inc my beloved Space Wolves.

What I'd like to do is pick an army that hasn't seen the light of day at the club for some time.. Now, this could be my Nids... or it could be Dark Eldar. Other armies we see at the club with reasonable regularity - even Sisters. Following this year and the ETC, I am not quite ready to pick up the Nids again (when the new book hits, I'll ask the Hive Mind to respawn the Swarmlord and we'll go to war once again...but not before) so it looks like Dark Eldar will see some play time..

A clinical raid on the Nids invading a pirate outpost in 2011 ...forging the narrative FTW lol!

Let the raids begin! Question is... in the current meta what should the Dark Eldar be running?
Night Shields for sure! Enjoy that maximum range dance with their mobility and NS should produce some sort of a safety net for DE.

Think about that.. Eldar have a limited range for Twin Linking with their Scatter Lasers on Serpents...although the Shield can reach far and are of course strong enough to smash through the paper thin armour of DE :(
Tau are generally a 36" to 42" effective army. Of course the Riptide operates at longer ranges as does the Skyray... but these are typically unsupported over the mentioned ranges. This is bad in the case of the Skyrays...they'll utterly mess you up! As well the Riptides with slightly less accuracy. I played a Dark Eldar vehicle flotilla/fleet at the October Battlefield Birmingham and getting into range of my weaponry was an awful decision! On the otherhand, I had 2 Riptides and 2 Skyrays.. so he was gonna get it in the face at some point... Most armies lack the speed and mobility. The problem is, as highlighted by my "Obnoxious Armies" series of posts (EDIT: more this week loyal reader!) - many Tau and Eldar armies can combine both mobility with longer range firepower.

The DE player in this day and age needs to be able to alpha strike the shit out of appropriate targets FIRST. This is of course, not a possibility in every game and for the most part includes using Baron for his +1 to 'goes first' roll.. a bargain for 105 points.

Best 105 points in the game? Maybe. 2 units of Eldar Jetbikes come damn close to that though for game winning.

But what about the "Seize Machine"? Vect! 200+ points of "4+ to seize" goodness! Combine with the Baron and you have a VERY good chance of going first. Consider... you roll a '1', 83% chance the enemy is going first, remove 16% from the Baron.. down to just 66% likely the enemy goes first.. .then you Seize 50% of the time.. 33% the enemy goes first... in this case, when you roll the worst possible dice result... you will still go first in  2/3 games! This gets stronger to you for every value above '1' you roll... I fail at the maths where we get to the point where we roll a '6' and force a reroll... surely Baron doesn't give it a '7'? lol... so we reroll and the same results apply again except having come through the probability filter of 1/6 followed by... a whatever..if you roll a 5 or 6 you are basically going first. The maths is wonderful for this and it only costs so 345 points! Sweet mother of God!

More dastardly, daring and downright dodgy plans after the cut..

Obnoxious List 6 - Jetseer Council Eldar w Dark Eldar

We all know this one don't we?
It's been around since the last edition of the Eldar codex and the Seer Council was made utterly internet famous years ago by Fritz over at Way of Saim Hann (or Fritz40k or Warmaster 40K or whatever it is now..the brother loves a rebrand lol) - well, for me it was Fritz... I have been reading his blog for something like 5 years now..

Before the new codex, Gaz Jones, fellow ETC player and all round top lad, was running it to great effect maximising use of fortune, invisibility etcetera...

More recently its enjoyed a limited resurgence - primarily Stateside. In the UK, we've not been using it that much - a lot of scepticism regarding its reliance on rolling Fortune...with just 6 rolls. But I like it and have toyed with it a few times now.
The "Deer Council" concept has been pushed to its limits by "GTA" part of Team Zero Comp at Frontline Gaming and there are numerous batreps and walkthroughs on their blog - check it out if you haven't already.

It's a simple concept - join us after the jump for a cheeky look at it and how it all works:

Deer Council - The next project!

Hi guys, So this weekend is the Death or Glory tournament in Ashtead, Surrey (I think it's Surrey lol) - an 1850, 40 man, 5 game bad boy and MY FIRST tournament since much earlier in the year where I HAVEN'T had to run Tyranids!

I ran the Nids cause I wanted a good performance at the ETC and was, well.. distinctly average. But I'm free now to have a good look at what I want to run over the next year and

 I'm running ...... Tau.

Allied with more Tau.

Yup. I'm a boring bastard - I love S7 and the shooting phase...always have, always will lol.

But as those super early battle reports, the first few posts on the Sons of Sanguinius will attest, it's an army I've run for years and I love suits.

It's sad when you have to justify your choice of army cause it's a bit good in the current meta. I read a post from Luke Nurser over at the Death or Glory blog and he opened his post with something like "I've run eldar forever, they were my second ever army and I love them" like you have to apologise for running something strong, relevant and current.

  Fuck that.

  I'm running Tau with Farsight Tau Allied in. Fuck y'all haha!

HOWEVER... I do also flit around and change what I want to run and I've dived AWAY from the Screamer Council as something that I'll be running (depsite loving the broken ass craziness of it... I mean LOVING it too BTW, loving it.) and I'd quite like to try and get the Eldar up and running in a NON-SERPENT SPAM kinda fashion.

  I love the mobility and antics that Eldar can bring to the table and one of my absolute favourite blogs ever was Way of Saim Hann - Fritz40k as it is now.

It is a wonderful site, run by a great guy and it was my first source of information on the blogosphere back in the day - when I first started playing again at the start of 5th ed and I was running Eldar myself. I principally loved his anti-meta jetbike mobility and 'Eldar Turn 5' shenanigans and that is what I'd like to bring back to my gaming.

Now, I appreciate I can do that with Allied Eldar into my Tau or vice versa, but I think I'd like to bring in the Dark Kin. Dark Eldar - yeah, for sure bitch! They are gorgeous models. You'll remember oh long time Sons fan, that I ran Dark Eldar to my first ever tournament win at the first Blog Wars tournament a few years ago and realy, the models have been shelved since. So, I'd really love it if I could bring them back to the table.

I'm thinking Deer Council.

Caledonian Game 1: Invisi-Council of DOOOM!

So as I posted at the end of last week, Caledonian 1850, 5 game, 84 player 40k tournament was last weekend.
I came 9th and was playing for the tournament on top table in the last game.
This week I am going to throw up all my Battle Reports, which will be brief but informative and have well detailed photos for almost every turn, most certainly for key moments.
(This paragraph will be the same all week lol, so don't read it again tomorrow!)

Game 1: 
Opponent: Gaz Jones - Eldar w. Dark Eldar 
Deployment: Vanguard 
Mission: Scouring - the 5 objectives are the blue discs you can see above

Gaz Jones: 

Eldrad

Farseer - Jetbike, Fortune, Doom, Mind War, Eldritch Storm, Stones

Baron

Seer Council x 7 (enhance, embolden, 5 destructors)

5 Fire Dragons - Exarch, Crack Shot, Tank Hunter

5 Pathfinders

3 Guardian Jetbikes

3 Guardian Jetbikes

5 DE Warriors

3 War Walkers - 6 Missiles

3 War Walkers - 6 Missiles

Bastion - Quad Gun

He won the roll off due to the Baron's +1 ability and went first - he needed to get the Council Fortuned, Guide some War Walkers and try for First Blood. Which he got on an Annihilation Barge.

Eldrad redeployed the Eldar as shown from their original strung out position across the hypotenuse of the table to the huddle in the corner.
Whilst I was aware of the Eldrad redeploy shenanigans, it didn't effect me too much as I felt that this game had a certain "feel" to it. I wanted to keep my Wraiths back as in my planning they do not come into the 'anti-Council' plan until after the Baron is dead so they can't hit and run. However, with Eldrad keeping his powers and the secondary Farseer going for Invisibility I felt the Council would be far less aggressive. Gaz and I were open and frank about the ideas and the way the game was going to be played as we could both see a lot of the key points from the off.

Ignore my flier, it's just sat there out the way.. 

With the Council in a far more defensive role, primarily due to the attaching of Eldrad on foot as an anchor point, I viewed the Council as some sort of wushu bamboo tree - waving all over the place, bending, but never breaking. I'd need to stick to my original planning for the overall game, but largely ignore the Council through steady and calculated range manipulation - whilst the Council could cover a very good distance, they could not be everywhere at once if I pushed on multiple, disparate fronts.

The objectives were spread across the board, with a couple in great position for me, most notably behind the large blocking fantasy piece on the left. My Veil Immortals could sit here all game, denying enemy attempts to claim that or engage them, then teleport to a more valuable objective or contest one of Gaz's late in the game to swing the match up in my favour.



Turn 1: There is very little action on Turn 1 save for the Council getting Invisibility off, Fortune off, Guide off on both units of War Walkers - this leads to a dead Barge after a scout and move gives them a good position which denies my cover. My bad. Meh. Warming up lol.

My 1, I kill 3 Fire Dragons. Meh. Warming up lol. I also turbo boost my Overlord down to the fantasy house you can see in the top of the above left picture. This is an extremely long charge for the Council by the time they are in a position to see the target unit (me) - the Overlord is aiming to smash the Bastion next turn.

Necrons Vs Seer Council Eldar w. Dark Eldar

The draw has been made for Caledonian Uprising 2013, this weekend in Mansfield, UK.
Its a 100 player (ish, not sure final number) tournament at 1850.
5 games over the 2 days.
Draws some very high calibre players.
Gaz Jones is one of them.

He is who I am playing in Game One.
Now, I do not know what the mission or deployment is, but I do know the army...I can hope regarding the deployment and mission..
I also don't know the player.
On Gaz, Killswitch/Alex knows him and he tells me he is a very, very good player.

I can find out from Rankings (not that I didn't know already as someone who has kept his eye on these things) that he is a top player and ranked 2nd in the UK at the minute and has been for a long time.

I can only hope that he is a top bloke as well (I'm sure he is) and we will have a good game.

So, he plays Eldar with Dark Eldar allies.

Let's look.
NOTE: To be honest, this process is more for me than it is for you guys as readers, but I hope its interesting anyway.. It's DEEP analysis..

Eldrad

Farseer - Jetbike, Fortune, Doom, Mind War, Eldritch Storm, Stones

Baron

Seer Council x 7 (enhance, embolden, 5 destructors)

5 Fire Dragons - Exarch, Crack Shot, Tank Hunter
5 Pathfinders
3 Guardian Jetbikes
3 Guardian Jetbikes
5 DE Warriors
3 War Walkers - 6 Missiles
3 War Walkers - 6 Missiles
Bastion - Quad Gun

Hmmmm... let's think about it..

Plateau'ing -When you hit it. Pt.1

I feel like I'm having an issue lately. My gaming seems to has plateau'd, not peaked but hit a ceiling of sorts. I'm at a point where I'm a decent player but I don't feel like my gaming is progressing, so I'm going to try to analyse why and see what I can do to change it.

I'll start with where I feel I'm at game play wise. In the last tournament I played in, I placed in the top 1/3 out of 60+ players.
 I ended up just below my goal.
I find my way to top tables but can't hold on once I get there.
I can't overcome my counter lists and get into that top tier of players.

 I've also noticed that when I'm playing against someone I tend to have a "go to" strategy for each army/build. And without spending a minute or so before the game planning a strategy according to the mission and the opponents weaknesses and strengths, I deploy.

And it ends up being either that strategy crushes like it should or it completely falls on its face without a chance to adapt. But even with my biggest counter, GK. I tend to do the same thing every time. Deploy forward to get as many lance shots early as I can, pray to the dice gods and hold on for dear life. And its not working, and I do it over and over and over with different versions of the same list.

Change is needed. So I've looked at my play and lists and there are a few things that need to change. The list, the strategy, the mentality.

The Return, Again...!

Hey there, long time no see....No,I wasn't avoiding you I promise.....No, its just that li- life gets in the way sometimes...No I prom- I said it was'n- Would you stop interrupting?! Thank you.

So, I originally had a post written about 2 months ago on New Years resolutions in life and gaming, blah. My computer burnt up and I've been without it for the past 2 months without anywhere to rant, rage and sometimes stumble across something genuinely awesome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B36Lr0Unp4&feature=relmfu).
But hey, I'm backs, and in the past few months I had a lil fun (DE Gaming Wise), watched Caledonian and an unsporting/lame attempt at using DE speed and size of vehicles to TRY to block an opponent from coming on the board while he reserved. And more recently played in the Jolly Toys Outing.

We have another tournament on the horizon, as usual.
Brighton Warlords!
 In April I believe, so I'm starting to play with lists to see what I want to take, its an 1850 standard missions tourney. I have 2 options of my regualar tournament lists made to fit 1850 and debating a third type to try a new unit and wargear Beastmasters/Webway.

2K Practice - How is it going? DE at 2K...a hard game to play?

Well, there are a lot of dice to roll at 2K!
Monday night we have a little hobby evening at mine, Kabalite and Bringer are at mine and we play short games to get deployment and opening moves right through to mid game.
A lot of the time, these components are critical to getting the game off to the right start..plus with just three of us, it means we all get a game in!
The third wheel to our "dice date" paints, models, listens to a podcast (we listen to 40KUK after meeting the guys at Blog Wars - which the 3rd date has been announced for btw) or just watches and coaches/provides insight or alternatives to both sides.

2k Nova Comp Ideas

So. There is a 2k Nova style tourney early next year. Yes I know I'm early, yes it's a miracle (See last Kabalite post). And I'm tossing ideas around to actually paint an army completely by then. But mostly making rediculous 2k lists. So I'm gonna toss out a few lists, some based off the ones from my first two tourneys (Baron,Duke), and the ones I want to play. Huskblade, Soul Trap Archon turning MCs to dust. Just once I want to kill a Sanq priest, then kill Mephy and cut every Autolas pred in half w/S10 Melee attacks. Is that too much to ask?

Heres my first go, off the Baron list I played at Brighton.

Baron-105

Haemon w/SS-65

5x Incubi in Venom-175

5x Incubi in Venom-175

3x Wracks w/Liq in Venom-85

5x Wracks w/Liq in Venom-125

5x Wracks w/Liq in Venom-125

5x Wracks w/Liq in Venom-125

16x Hellions w/Helliarch, Agon-281

5x Scourges w/HWB-130

5x Scourges w/HWB-130

5x Scourges w/HWB-130

Ravager w/FF-115

Ravager w/FF-115

Ravager w/FF-115

Pretty standard looking competitive list. With more Wracks over Wyches, Scourges over Blasterborn. When building comp lists you should be thinking of what you will be facing, not just taking what you like. Its been a pretty good mix of armies towards the top at the last two tourneys the Sons attended. So I tried to build this list for all eventualities. Should be pretty solid against Mech BA, Wolves, Vanilla's, DW, other DE, Eldar. Few worrying armies as always for us Dark Eldar are GK, Guard, Orks could give some trouble if let too close. Haven't played necrons enough to tell but the Mobility and Night Vision should help. Just have to hope HWG stuns roll high and can immobilize barges.

Kiss my Haywire Balls AV13!......

No Sleep Till Blog Wars

So with Blog Wars coming up I thought I'd throw up a post about the list I'll be taking. If you don't know Blog Wars has a few special rules and one is that you must have a special character in your list. I was tempted to take Baron again as he is probably the best HQ in the dex IMO. But I just played him a couple weeks ago at a tournament and want to give another character a try. Duke "Motherfucking" Sliscus. Heres the list

Duke-150
4x Trueborn w/Splinter Cannon x2, Shardcarbine x2-78
Venom w/SCannon-65
5x Wyches w/HWG, Hek, Agon in Venom w/SCannon-155
5x Wyches w/HWG, Hek, Agon in Venom w/SCannon-155
5x Wyches w/HWG, Hek, Agon in Venom w/SCannon-155
5x Wyches w/HWG, Hek, Agon in Venom w/SCannon-155
9x Reavers w/HLx3, CCx3-294
6x Reavers w/HLx2, CCx2-196
Ravager w/DLx3, FF, -115
Ravager w/DLx3, FF, -115
Ravager w/DLx3, FF, -115

Heres the catch. My army isn't finished. And nowhere close. So tonight, I will not get sleep. But you. Will get updates. I am currently short 2 Venoms, 2 Ravagers, a trueborn unit and none of my reavers are painted. Trying to move into a new place and deal with work/holiday/club and an unhealthy fixation on Battlefield 3 (mostly) has left me way behind. I'm aiming to have everything assembled and primed tonight(if I can find my glue). Here is the current state of my desk.



So as tonight and tomorrow goes I will come back to this post and edit/update it to show my progress. And if there is no sleep till Blog Wars, so be it. Didn't sleep the night before Brighton and I did alright! Lets do this!

UPDATE: Got all my models cut off sprues and both Venoms and Reavers shaved. Buddy brought me a Red Bull so now I'm in Rambo MODE!


And Table V2!



Cut Cut CUT!

Sooo any thoughts on the list?

The Darkness Returns.

Well, after a lovely 4 month absense and a bit of being burnt out on 40k. I re realized why I love 40k. Great fluff, great models, and debasing spesh mahreens.

After being home for a few weeks I finally made it into a GW. I originally wanted to grab a couple paiints and maybe a book, but I managed to squeeze past the crowds of kids and harassy blue shirted fellas (who followed me) to the tiny row of Dark Eldar on the shelf.

After checking out some of the shiny new finecast boxes I actually bought something. I wanted to see some of the new models and see if I could rekindle my love. Theres nothing like 5 mishapen, surgically enhanced, sadomachicist torture machines to get the love juices flowing!

Wracks sure are lovely.

As I made my way back past the 4-5 tables of spesh mareens fighting other just as boring marines, it dawned on me.
Not only do I want to beat every marine list out there into the blood soaked dust.
 I want my army to look better doing it.
 So I'm starting a long term project to slowly build and paint an competitive, interesting list with a strong base that can be switched around depending on whats needed.

Blog Wars Game 3: Dark Eldar Vs Blood Angels

The Kabal of the Pink Fuckers

Mission: Seize ground Deployment: Pitched Battle

Having come off the back of a beastly war with Bully in Game 2 (here) and drawn, I find myself ready to play…Bully. Normally, I’d be happy to play him again, but it was only a 3 game tournament so we asked to switch around. A Grey Knight Paladin army, run by Marc from Grey Knights of Titan and Jamie’s Blood Angels from Index Astartes were more than happy to switch around with us as they were on the next table. Marc fancied taking on Bully and Jamie was happy to play me. We of course cleared all this with the tournament organiser and it had no bearing on the outcome of the day, the other 2 lads were on 2 wins, so if they beat us they would still win.

Lets take a second here. I needed a lot of things to go my way to win this tourney. I needed Bully to beat or draw with Marc…no offense to Mark, but I was confident he could do this, on the otherhand this was put into doubt when I overhead Adam from the SpaceWolvesGrey blog talking about Marc being very familiar with Deathwing and had worked out ways to beat them etc etc.. still I had faith in my brother Son… I also needed Atreides to draw with Firewasp on table one. Not win of course, because then he’d win…lol Firewasp had smashed in his previous opponents and Atreides was on decent form so I was not sure how that’d go.

I had no choice in this one but to go for the throat and tear it out. Anything less and I would not stand a chance. If I did this I could win through merit of VP margin, with only 3 games played there would be quite a few dudes on 2W-1D…But there were potential 4 dudes playing for 3 straight wins…they had to be stopped, no matter the cost.

So, sorry Jamie.

Blog Wars Game 2: Dark Eldar Vs Deathwing

Mission: Annihilation Deploment: Dawn of War

Top table after an almost perfect round 1, met Bully from umm… the Sons’ obviously, on top table.
Bully’s Round 1 is here.
My round 1 Vs Nids is here.

I go first after the Baron helped me force Bully to reroll his ‘6’…muwhahaha.
Drugs roll is +1 Attack. Very useful to force a lot of saves vs Deathwing from my Wyches and Hellions.

Deployment:
DoW so its quick. The Haemonculi and Hellions set up on a Hill and behind a central ruin to get good position Turn 2. The Haemo can also detach comfortably into LOS-blocking terrain and hang out waiting to lash out with the Shattershard.
Everything else rolls on Turn 1. Wracks are in reserve on foot.

Deathwing hold everything off table to roll on turn 1, except the 2 squads of melta Ravenwing, who have opted to outflank.

Blog Wars Game 1 Dark Eldar Vs Tyranids

Mission: Capture and Control Deployment: Spearhead

Nid Army – The 6th Degree from Weemen:
Prime- Boneswords, Deathspitter (attached to Venomthropes)
Doom of Malantai –Pod
3 x Hive Guard
2 x Venomthropes
8 Genestealers
21 Termagants
Tervigon – Catalyst, Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs
22 Hormagants
2 x Carnifex Brood with 2 TL Brainleech Devourers
Trygon Prime

That’s from memory, I’m sure Degree can put me right if I’ve ballsed up.

Dark Eldar can be found here.

He wins roll off to go first, despite the Baron’s +1. Drugs Roll is +1 Pain Token.

Dark Eldar for Blog Wars...no one else was going to!!?

 Hi guys, here is the Blog Wars list for the mighty Venerable Brother... no BroLo, the Blood Hunters are not coming to play, nor are Space Wolves.

There are far too many SW players attending anyway and the Blood Hunters, well...they are ready to roll but with 2 weeks to go, Alex from From the Fang announced that there are no Dark Eldar players going.. even the Sons' very own Kabalite was not going due to being umm..in Korea. Military hey, no respect.

I have played around with the Dark Kin somewhat and I thought I could step up to the plate and run them. After all, someone has to!!

Of Dark Eldar, Target Priority and ‘Discount 20’…

I read a useful line somewhere on the blogosphere relating to the learning and use of Dark Eldar:

“Discount your first 20 games. Count to twenty and don’t even worry about winning until then”

This is paraphrased of course as I have no idea where it came from – perhaps the Thor or DashofPepper tactica’s (both of which are worth a read…and no, I don’t want to get into the ‘DashGate’ drama on the net…no drama here at Sons’…we just play)
I am struggling with this training method. Normally, I would play 5 -6 games with a new army and make a couple of little tweaks, then play a few more and make a few tweaks.

With the DE training principal, there are to be no tweaks. I will play the same force over and over again until I can face off against the most competitive forces I am likely to face with confidence.

Confidence in knowing what pressure to apply where and when. Confidence in knowing that in ‘Situation x’ I should react with ‘Response Y’.
This should result in a decent knowledge base from which to operate. But the question is, ‘Do I need this? Is it new information I am gathering or merely a new interpretation on information I already possess?’

Rethinking Dark Eldar

Building 1750 from the ground up and coming at the Dark Kin with fresh eyes.

This is what this post is about.

I am desperately trying to work these guys out and get experienced enough with them to do well consistently.

I read the Dash of Pepper guide to DE over on Dakka Dakka today during work (love it when the sixth form and GCSE kids piss off on study leave...almost no work!) and got at least 2 ideas from it that I had not thought of.

Combine that with a post from Stelek at YTTH a fortnight ago (ish?) on the Raider/Wych/Haywires alpha strike (such that it is) and I'm gaining a few ideas here and there all the time...

Watching Kabalite get his ass handed to him on a number of occasions from my Wolves, Templars and  Grey Knights and I learn from watching this too...

What have I learnt?

Lots of things work in the DE book, lots don't too IMHO.

Razorwing Pics, New DE, Ven writes a list...for a change

   So today is a Killswitch day (so this may disappear quickly...or not if he is still recovering from the Emmure show or whatever the fuck it was), but I thought it'd be remiss of me if we didn't throw up a quick salute to the new Dark Eldar models that have come out on pre-release today... 

Now, Sons' doesn't typically get stuck into rumour shit or pics of new releases....except when we saw those awesome Eldar skimmers at Games Day last year and the new aspect warriors...that went up! 

but today I saw the new venoms and scourges and love them... 

Then I saw a link to a pic of the Razorwings... holy shit. These are the coolest fucking things I have ever seen...I think I said that the first time I got to play with big fake titties...anyway... I can't wait for these to be released as I will snap one up like lightning man...they are so sexy... 

And I here the best bit of all....the VoidRaven is to be a seperate kit... shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit (in the words of Senator Clay Davis) 

Current DE ist thoughts (got a test run last night versus a GK list - worked well...):