The man that walks his own road, walks alone.

First outing for the Blood Ravens.

[Forewarning: This blog entry is definitely going to fall into TL;DR territory, proceed at your own risk.]

It’s days like this that make me remember why I enjoy this hobby so much.

The weekend really started on Thursday when my order finally turned up from Total Wargamer and I got to spend my morning putting together the rest of my Paladins, though in truth most of it was spent applying liquid greenstuff. Thursday night and Friday morning were spent priming and base coating, before we had to head off to Nottingham to meet with fellow brewer Anthony over at Lincoln Green Brewery before heading up to Doncaster to have a catch up and play some Gears of War 3 with The Big O. Once we got back to the hotel I decided I wanted to get the shoulder pads of my Terminators painted, but having done that I decided what I really wanted was to get the base colours finished on one mini so I could ink it and show people the scheme I was going to, which meant staying up till stupid o’clock painting. A good way to spend a Friday I think.

 Saturday started early, with us reaching Warhammer World just before 10am, with everyone else setting up for their big 7k battle (my brother’s 7k of Dark Angels vs a combined force of Imperial Guard, Codex Marines, Chaos Marines and Tyranids, a truly strange combination, but one I’m sure Mat Ward could justify in his fluff ;) haha.) [Ant was taking pictures during the game, so I’m assuming they’ll make their way on to his blog at some point.] I, on the other hand, had to wait just a short while for Al to arrive before I could get my first game of the day under way. 

So the first game of the day, and the first of two I’d play against Al, was against his Emperor’s Children.
Scenario: Annihilation, Deployment: Dawn of War.
I actually asked Al if he wanted to roll for another mission, as kill points verses DraigoWing (with it’s mighty 5 kill points) doesn’t seem fair, but he said no so on we went. That said, this match up wasn’t as one sided as you’d think, as Al had two Vindicators in his list, and nothing kills Paladins like a strength 10, AP2, large blast weapon. So aside from the Vindi’s wiping out most of my force, other highlights included his Daemon Prince taking 4 turns to destroy one of my Dreadnoughts. As the first game with this army it meant I made a bunch of mistakes, but I also learned alot; the Dreadnoughts are invaluable in this list. Not only do they provide you with some serious long range fire power (who will happily pop open transports all day) but the Reinforced Aegis. Wound allocation was also taking alot of getting used to. Also, I learnt that Draigo really needs to not go running off on his own in Annihilation games (or else he’ll get splatted.) Game ended 8 KPs to 4.

Another thing I found out was the fact that games using Draigowing tend to be over fairly quickly, so by the time me and Al finished our first game the mega game was only on the start of their turn 3, so we decided to play a 2nd.
Scenario: Capture and Control, Deployment: Spearhead. Army: Iron Hands (counts as Space Wolves.)
Paladins struggle with Land Raiders. This is a fact. Even charging with strength 10 hammers didn’t work. The game ended with me wiping out Al on turn 6 or 7, with the Land Raider finally going down to a bit of lucky Psycannon shooting. Not as close as the first game, but it gave me a chance to try combat squading the large squad, and it worked pretty well I think.

After a quick break for everyone else to get lunch in Bugman’s, the third game of the day was against Chris using his new Word Bearers force.
Scenario: Seize Ground (3 objectives) , Deployment: Dawn of War.
Another game, another Daemon Prince and more proof that DPs just aren’t what they used to be. One of the strength of Chris’s list was the two units of Obliterators, one of which managed to take out my scoring Dreadnought on turn two, which was a pretty big blow. Tried out deep striking in this game, which worked well, getting two Psycannons behind enemy lines can make a real difference. I think care would be needed about which armies you DS against, but when there’s nothing that can pie plate you with strength 8, it’s fairly safe. Chris played well tactically and his Possessed with Lord managed to take down a whole squad of Paladins. Having had my forces on the far side of the table wiped out, without enough turn to get back over there, the game ended in a draw. A really fun match that taught me that deep striking can be useful, and that whilst Draigo should stay with his unit in Kill Points, I should have detached him in this game. 

By the time me and Chris had finished, Al was still hammering away at James’s Imperial Guard and my brother and Anthony were still battling against Matt’s Tyranids. So I decided to go grab some grub in Bugman’s and watch the last half of the Ireland v Scotland match before heading back in and convincing Anthony to play one last game of the day. 

Game 4 vs Codex Marines (Bikes and Speeders). Scenario: Capture and Control. Deployment: Dawn of War (yes, again!)
Anthony was not overly confident going into this match, and after a couple of turns it was fairly plain to see why. He had a Librarian, which gave him a better chance as he’d get try and nullify my attempts to Hammerhand. I again decided to try combat squads and deep striking, both of which worked well. Bikers and speeders dislike strength 7 and 8 guns. Hammerhand also goes a long way to negating the toughness increase you get from the bikes. By the end of my turn 3 Anthony decided there was no way he could win the match and decided to concede, rather than dragging it out.

And so the first outing for my Blood Ravens ended with 3 wins and a draw. 4 good, fun games and I managed to learn alot about the army. Will try and get some painting done this week and start posting images of the army.

A quick update.

Whilst I’m sitting here waiting for the liquor tank to heat up so I can start brewing, I figured I’d post a quick entry to keep y’all up to date on the (lack) or progress with the Blood Ravens.

Still waiting for the order from Total Wargamer. I suspect I shall have to spend the whole of tomorrow building and painting. I’m kinda hoping it might show up later today so that I can get the liquid greenstuff on tonight and give it a chance to set over night.

I popped into Wolverhampton on Sunday to get myself a Draigo to convert, after deciding that to play at 1750 I’d need a Librarian and as such changed my plans to convert the one I’ve ordered.

I could spend a good half an hour ranting to you about how awful Finecast is, but by now I doubt I need to. Needless to say that Draigo was as bad as anything else I’ve bought in Failcast (really hoping the Librarian won’t be as bad.) The one good thing about Failcast is how easy it is to chop up. I doubt I’m the only one who abhors Draigo’s pose (as bad as the body posing is, the arms really don’t help) so I decided to hack off his Storm Shield and replaced his right arm completely. With a Halberd. Yes, that’s right kids! To quote my good friend Al: “When is a sword not a sword? When it’s a Titansword.” Reading the wargear entry for the Titansword it clearly states that it is a “master-crafted force weapon” not sword (‘cause.. ya know.. they didn’t want Draigo to have a 2++ in combat.) I’ll make sure I get some photos up tomorrow night once he’s had a bit of painting done.

On the subject of painting, the Dreadnoughts are coming along nicely, they’ve both had their base colours and washes, so I suspect that’s all they’ll get for this weekend.

And on that note, the water’s ready so I’m off to brew some of my soon to be famous beer. Skol! 

Caveat emptor, or why I have a love/hate relationship with internet shopping.

First, a quick update on the Blood Ravens project; Having bought an extra box of Grey Knight Terminators (following a conversation with Al where I realised that in order to have enough models to be able to swap options in and out, I’d actually need 4 boxes, not 3) I spent yesterday building. I say building, what I actually did was spend several hours getting to grips with GW’s liquid greenstuff. 

It was my first time using it and seeing as every post I’d found online was vague and unhelpful I just dived in head first. My brother had warned me that it had a tendency to sink in, so I knew I’d have to apply more than one coat. Having realised that I wouldn’t be able to build the models till I had filled in all the writing on the various bits of armour. So followed several hours of applying 3 or 4 coats of liquid greenstuff. *yawn* Well, after letting it dry for a few hours, despite the fact that it was getting late I decided I needed to get atleast one model built before I called it a night. Sadly the bases haven’t turned up yet, so couldn’t get him on a base to photograph him.

Which leads quite nicely in to the second part of the blog; ordering from the internet. I would really like to believe that internet ordering is the future of shopping, it’s just so convenient and, usually, cheaper as internet traders do not have the overheads of bricks-and-mortar traders. The problem comes with a lack of consistency. For the Blood Raven project I ordered various items from a variety of different online shops, on the Thursday and Friday of last week, expecting that everything would have turned up by the time I returned from Hereford this Thursday.

So let’s take a look at what actually happened:
My orders from Bitz Box, Model Bits and the ForgeCraft bases I ordered from eBay were all waiting for me when I got back. Excellent service, as I’ve always received from the bits sites (which is why I use them, and not Let The Dice Decide, who I’ve had issues with in the past.)
I received an e-mail from Wayland Games on Thursday evening saying that they had cancelled my order and refunded me. Apparently it took them a whole week to decide they weren’t going to fulfil my order. Safe to say I won’t be placing any orders with them in the future.
Which leaves us with the bulk of my project, which was an order to Total Wargamer last Friday, for a Librarian and 3 boxes of Grey Knight Terminators. Placed because they were having a 25% off sale to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Warhammer 40,000. It was actually this sale (combined with the horrid new Space Wolf models) that led me to start this project. Well, it’s now Saturday and I still haven’t had the goods, or even an e-mail to let me know they’ve been dispatched. Now, I know their site says 5 to 10 days for delivery, but is it really too much to ask for a bit of contact?

So herein lies my problem with internet ordering, the lack of communication. If I go into a shop I can pick up an item and purchase it. If they don’t have it in stock, they’ll order it for me while I’m there and then phone me when it’s ready for collection. Why is it so hard for internet traders to keep their customers upto date with their orders?

Well, that’s my little rant done for today. Going to hopefully get 4 more Blood Ravens built tonight, then tomorrow I’m popping to town to buy a Lord Draigo model, as I’ve decided to keep the Librarian (if he ever turns up) as a Librarian incase I ever get the chance to play at 1,750 points.

Will try and get some pictures posted up by the end of the weekend, so until then remember:  Knowledge is power, guard it well.


UPDATE: Ok, so I just got a reply from Total Wargamer. They’ve not yet posted my order, but apparently it will arrive with me before the 10 working days is up. Honestly, I’m not overly happy with this. If the items were out of stock and needed ordering, they could have sent me an e-mail when they got my order just to let me know. Again, this goes back to my issue with lack of communication. Ah well, what can you do? 

Knowledge is power, guard it well.

Right then, so I said I was setting aside my Space Wolves in order to start a HeroHammer army using the Grey Knights codex.

I say “using the Grey Knights codex” as I won’t actually be playing the 666th chapter. Ever since the Grey Knights came out I’ve wanted to use the codex to make a Blood Ravens army. Based on a piece of fluff I read saying that the Blood Ravens are known to occasionally field whole squads of Librarians, I thought that the GK ‘dex would be a cool way to enact that. Originally I was going to run a Crowe/Purifier list, but as I’m on a tight budget at the moment and my desire to play a HeroHammer list, I’ve decided to build a Draigo-Wing army. A decision helped by the fact that I had a couple of twin Autocannon Dreadnoughts from my Space Wolves army that haven’t seen play in over a year that can be repainted and Total Wargamer were having a 25% sale on Games Workshop boxed products, meaning that boxes of Grey Knight Terminators are only £21 each. Bargain!

In addition to buying 3 boxes of GK Termies and a Finecast Librarian (who’ll be converted to be my counts-as Draigo) I’ve also acquired a couple of extra Psycannons, as well as some standard Terminator heads and shoulder pads to use on the models. I’ll be using green stuff to fill in writing on the armour. That, combined with the regular pads should hopefully make them look more like Librarians and less like Grey Knights.

Painting wise, the Paladins are going to be blue, bone shoulders and a red right arm (like in this picture), the Dreadnoughts will be red with bone shoulders and the Draigo conversion I’m thinking will be standard Blood Raven colours, as he’s supposed to represent Azariah Vidya (who was Chapter Master as well as Chief Librarian)

So then, on to the army list. The army needs to be ready for Throne of Skulls at the end of April, and seeing as that tournament is 1500 points, that’s what I’m working to. Everything I’ve read says Draigo-Wing doesn’t really work at 1500, but I’m going to try it anyway!

 HQ:
Lord Kaldor Draigo
points: 275

Troops:

Heavy Support:
Dreadnought
- 2x Twin Linked Auto-cannon, Pysbolt Ammo
points: 135

Dreadnought
- 2x Twin Linked Auto-cannon, Pysbolt Ammo
points: 135

Total points: 1500

The big squad doesn’t have as many wound allocation shenanigans as I’d like, but I was really limited by my points. Still not sure whether or not to swap the Warding Stave for a 4th Psycannon.

So, what do people think?

A mini-report and taking a break from Space Wolves.

Not had much chance to play alot of games this year, but I did get the chance to go up to Stafford to pay a visit to the guys at the Powerfist Gaming Club where I had the chance to check out my latest SW list against Jackson’s Dark Eldar.

It was a good experience, as I got a chance to play the one scenario I thought the list would struggle with: Seize Ground.

My list consisted of a Rune Priest, Lone Wolf, Wolf Scouts, Wolf Guard, 2 large Grey Hunter Packs in Rhinos, a 2-man Thunderwolf Cavalry Pack, 2 Land Speeder Typhoons and 3 packs of Long Fangs with Missile Launchers in Bolterbacks.

Jackson was running something along the lines of: Baron Sathonyx, 3 squads of BlasterBorn in Venoms, 4 Squads of Warriors in Venoms, a large pack of Beast Masters (Flocks and Dogs) and 2 Ravagers. 

Mission was Seize Ground (4 objectives), set up was Dawn of War. Jackson won the roll (that +1 from the Baron is definitely worth the 105 points you pay for him) 

I was always concerned going into the match as I only have 2 scoring units but I figured I should have the fire power to make it work. I’m still convinced that in Capture & Control and Annihilation this list would be really strong.

The game progressed pretty much as you’d expect, with Jackson focusing fire on my Long Fangs and me trying to pop his transports. The Fangs got decimated fairly quickly but the Grey Hunters were left fairly untouched. The Wolf Scouts came on on turn 3 and popped a Ravager, while the Lone Wolf died a glorious death to the Beast Masters. 

The Rune Priest was definitely one of the stars of the show, with Tempest’s Wrath making the Dark Eldar think before they moved each turn. 

It was definitely a very close, back-and-forth game which, in all honesty should have been a draw, but in the end I lost 1-0.  I lost for two reasons, the first being that one of the Grey Hunters squads failed a morale test on turn 5 and rolled an 8” retreat whilst only 7” from the edge of the board. A shorter run and they would have rallied the next turn and moved onto an objective. The second reason was that over the course of 2 turns I just couldn’t manage to destroy a Ravager that decided to fly onto the objective I had secured. 

An enjoyable game, against a good opponent, that the dice Gods cursed me to lose.


Which brings me on to the next subject. For a while I’ve really wanted to play a HeroHammer* list, and having tried to do it a couple of times using my Space Wolves, I’ve decided to do it with the Grey Knight codex. I’ll go into in my next post. As well as that, I’m really disappointed with the second wave of releases for Space Wolves. The Thunderwolves look worse than my conversions, the marines riding them look horrid, the Cyberwolf is possibly the most ridiculous model ever released, Arjac is just plain boring and even the Wolf Banner Bearer is a lame duck. The release that’s anywhere near alright is the Fenrisian Wolves, but even those are in horrid poses (not to mention the fact that the tails are wrong, Wolves when aggressive have their tails either straight or pointed down.) 

So based on those two facts I’ve decided to take a break from playing my beloved Space Wolves. It’s not a permanent thing, but I can’t imagine they’ll see any play till the end of the year.


*HeroHammer - a way of playing the game wherein you have one or more named/overpowered characters and then a few powerful supporting models. Low model count is a key feature.

I assure you, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

I am alive, I promise you! To be honest, I’ve not done much in the way of 40k lately.

I’ve not even played that many games. I’ve still got a few projects on the go, the Wolf Scouts are still unpainted and the new Thunderwolf Cavalry are still only half built. I just don’t seem to have the motivation to do anything with my Space Wolves lately.

I’ve started slowly building up an Empire force for Fantasy over the last couple of months, Middenheim (City of the White Wolf, are you surprised? haha.) 

To be honest, it’d be nice to get a second wave release of Space Wolves at some point, but GW seem to have abandoned us.

Got the first FailFest of the year this weekend, but I’ll only be there for half of it, as I’m attending the Magic pre-release tomorrow (another hobby that has been distracting me from my Space Wolves.) So will try and get in atleast one game with my SW, if I remember to take my camera, I’ll post up some pics and a report.

I may start posting about my Empire army on here, what do people think? 

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back [or Why Games Workshop Pisses Me Off Atleast Once A Week.]

I’m not sure how many of your that read this blog are from the UK, and of those who are, I assume only a small number of you attend the 40k tournaments that Games Workshop hosts over at Warhammer World in Nottingham. Well, I do. Alot. Went to my first tournament a couple of years ago, when they first switched from the Grand Tournaments to Throne of Skulls. It’s been good fun, there’s been room for improvement, but generally speaking the event staff listen to feedback and each tournament is (generally) better than the last.

These tournaments have been held at 1,500 points up until now, which is fine, it’s a fairly standard points limit, but it’s not where most codices really shine these days. So imagine how happy I was when earlier this year the events team announced that. Throne of Skulls would be moving up to 1,750 points. I was really confident that my Space Wolves would perform to a much higher standard with the options that extra 250 points allowed (it may not seem like alot of points, but it really does help.)

So here’s me, spending the last 4 or so months working on the best possible 1,750 list I could come up with, getting my army ready for the 2012 tournament season, all was going to plan, testing started and I was finally becoming happy with the list I had. And then Games Workshop did what they do best: Piss me off, but try not to tell me about it.

The other week, I was browsing on the GW site, trying to make a list of the upcoming tournaments so that Team Two Many Plasma Guns could decide which ones we wanted to attend, when I noticed that the info page was up for the January Throne of Skulls event. A rather puzzled expression crossed my face when I saw it said the points limit for the tournament would be 1,500 points. Not to worry I feared, GW are a company that are (sadly) famous for their lack of proof reading, they must have just typed the wrong amount. So I messaged the guys with this anomaly and Al decided he’d throw them an e-mail, see if it was indeed a typo.

Well, today we got a reply:

“Hallo Alastair,

For October we raised the points, but for 2012 it’s going back to 1500

as that is how Throne of Skulls works in all of the countries where It

takes place - so we would be in line with every other event and avoid

confusion.”

So, it wasn’t a mistake, they are infact going back to 1,500 points. Which really does beg the question… why?! They’ll be running two tournament this Autumn at 1,750 points, then just swapping back. It doesn’t make any sense, they’ve had no feedback from the players on the subject, so why change it? It’s the silly, unthoughtful things like this that really winds me up about Games Workshop.

So, let’s do something about it. I’m going to type up an e-mail, and I’ll present it here in this blog, along with the relevant e-mail address and if everyone of you can send a copy of it, and ask your friends to send a copy of it, then maybe… just maybe, we can get  Games Workshop to run Throne of Skulls at 1,750 for atleast a year, so I won’t have wasted 4 months of my time.

Battle Report Part Two… or not.

I was going to post up a report of the second battle I played yesterday against my brother’s Deathwing army, but having re-read my notes and thought over the game, I’ve decided not to. The main being reason it’s pretty dull reading, mostly because I feel my brother completely misplaced the game. As soon as he read my new army list, and saw me deploy my force, he decided he couldn’t win the game and as such spent most of the game hanging back and getting shot at. For my part, I feel I played my army as it should be, the Grey Hunters moving forward to the mid-field, backed up by the Thunderwolf Cavalry, Iron Priest and Lone Wolf, with the fire support of the two Long Fang packs.

Where do I think my brother went wrong? Simple, he wasn’t aggressive enough. I honestly feel that with a Deathwing army you need to use it like it’s namesake. It’s a rock army. How do you hurt people with rocks? You throw them at them! Instead of hanging back, he should of pushed forward and taken the fight to me, instead of allowing me to shoot him half to death before assaulting.

In the end the game (a 3 objective match) ended on turn 5 with me holding 2 objectives, and him holding one, with just Belial, a Chaplain and one lonely Deathwing Terminator remaining, whilst I had lost less than a dozen models. He’s come along way over the last year and hopefully this crushing defeat will teach him not to be timid. I’m not saying that there aren’t going to be times when holding back a unit won’t be beneficial, but never the whole army.

Since playing those two games yesterday I’ve had time to reflect on the list I used and the way I played and I have to say I think the list is fairly solid. (You can find it here.) Certainly the only, perceived, under-performance that needs looking at is the LasPlas Razorbacks. Only having that single shot at range feels weak, and I felt I was missing with it alot of the time. Once they were within 24 inches of a Terminator and stationary, the 2 shots worked out much better, which makes me wonder if I should swap them out for Twin-Linked Lascannons? I suspect the list will need much more testing though, and I’m going to have to learn the best way of using my tanks to block LoS to my support units.

Reblog: A Shadow In The Warp.

This is an article my friend Ant just posted on his blog Geneseed. You can find the original here. I feel it does a good job at summing up the main failure of Games Workshop at the moment.

“More of an editorial this one, so my apologies in advance.

The Shadow In The Warp or The Great Rumour Blackout

It’s no secret that I am not as opposed to Games Workshop as most of the veterans.  I still love their product and can ignore their failings as long as the general spirit remains alive.  I enjoy collecting, painting and playing with their products and I don’t see this changing any time soon.  However, they’ve recently been costing themselves some of my disposable income that was rightly theirs. 

First, some background:

Games Workshop, upon noticing that sales for given miniatures dropped off once the ‘tubes had leaked that a model was being redone or changed, decided that such a situation was bad for business.  They needed to avoid this lull in sales whenever they were about to release a new kit.  So, they decided that the best way to combat this was to lockdown on those who were leaking this information - stem the flow and the consumer base would continue to buy the soon-obsolete kits in ignorance.

I think this was a poor decision.  I’ll overlook the view of consumers as herds to be carefully shepherded into purchasing soon-to-be-useless kits and focus on the way it affects my purchasing decisions.  I want to build my Necron army.  I have for ages.  However, they are being redone (maybe) some time soon.  So whenever I had a spare £25 or £50 I would pop into Games Workshop, ponder over some metal men and then remember that the model could be useless very soon.  Games Workshop are hoping I will purchase something else, or be too blind to notice the independents reducing stock of Necrons and keep purchasing.

It doesn’t work that way for me.  I want to buy Necrons.  I didn’t walk in there for another Rhino, or a Space Marine Captain.  I wanted Necrons.  So, when my impulse purchase is blocked, I go elsewhere.  I’ve dropped most of my impulse money on Nomands for Infinity recently.  I wanted to buy Necrons, but I’m not disciplined enough to save, so I bought something that would instantly gratify.

What do I think Games Workshop should have done?  Let me know the Necrons are being redone, and drip-feed me information.  Give me a unit preview a month for 3/4 months before the release - they have a magazine they could use for exactly this purpose.  Show me that Immortals are now going to be a pretty solid army core, so I should save up £X for them.  Show me that there’s new vehicle options, so I’m probably going to want to put aside a few quid to pick up one or two of those.  Build my anticipation, but give me a thing to lust after rather than just hoping I’ll save money on the off chance Necrons come out.  Whip up some hype, and then reap it at the right moment, and watch me drop £100’s on the new shiny plastic in one go.  Or don’t, and watch that money go to other companies while I wait for a solid rumour to escape the blackout.

Right now, they’re just costing themselves my impulse-purchase money.  Give me something to look at, give me something to save for, Games Workshop, and it’s yours again.  Just don’t expect me to wait on you for something you won’t even announce.”

Those damn dirty apes! - A Spaces Wolves Battle Report.

So today Chris and I came over to my brother’s for a couple of games of 40k after the England/Scotland match (awful match in my opinion, England really did not deserve to win.) I was keen to get some games played, as I’ve not played any since Doubles, and my first time playing up at 1750 points.


Game One – vs Chris – Grey Knights [Jokaero army, themed as Planet of the Apes]

Chris is playing his new army, based off a conversation that Al started about the idea of of an all Jokaero army based on Planet of the Apes, with Inquisitor Coteaz playing the roll of Charlton Heston’s character. 

We rolled for mission and set up and ended up with the dreaded combination of Annihilation/Dawn of War. Luckily for me, I’ve had so many bad experiences with DoW that the list I’m using today is designed to cope with it, though I was offering 17 kill points to his 13.

Chris won the roll off and decided to go first, setting up 2 squads of his apes and Coteaz. I opted to not deploy anything.

Turn one didn’t see much action. Chris moved his force on to the board and popped smokes. I moved my forced on, disembarked the Long Fangs in to position and managed to immobilize one of his Chimeras (never under estimate Acute Senses!)

The second turn saw Chris unleashing an ungodly amount of Lascannon, Multi-Laser and Heavy Bolter shots, managing to kill one of the Rune Priests, nearly wipe out his Long Fang Pack and wounding two of the Thunderwolf Cavalry. This wasn’t the start I’d hoped for. In return I exploded a Chimera and killed it’s contents (those 5++ saves on the apes make them really fragile out of their tanks) and immobilized another tank, this really wasn’t much help considering that Chris wasn’t really planning on moving much anyway.

Turn three was just as successful for Chris, immobilizing a BolterBack, killing two TWC, two Cyberwolves and the rest of the Long Fang Pack. As much as that hurt, I managed to respond by blowing up a Chimera with Living Lightning from the remaining Rune Priest, then charging another two Chimeras with the TWC, who managed to wreck their target, and the Iron Priest, who flailed around like a wet fish.

Turn four was fairly matched, with Chris killing the Iron Priest, but watching aghast as the last remaining TWC passed 5 saves, my only response was to finish off another squad of apes.

As it would have it, turn five was the last turn of the game, with Chris managing to kill off the last of the TWC and the Lone Wolf’s Fenrisian Wolves, but managed to leave the Lone Wolf alive, winning himself another kill point for not killing him. My turn five saw another dead ape squad, Coteaz get executed by the Rune Priest’s Living Lightning, whilst the Lone Wolf managed to roll two 1’s and a 2 on the damage table against a stationary Chimera.

After all that it ended up an 8 point to 6 victory for the Space Wolves. A close game, with a good mix of good and awful rolling on both sides of the table.

All in all I’m happy with the way the new list is working, even in a kill points game (which I generally detest), there’s a good mix of fire power and combat prowess. The only thing I’m unsure of in the list is the LasPlas Razorbacks, not being twin-linked means that a lot of the time it felt like I was missing with them. I may try out Twin-Linked Lascannons instead.

As for Chris’s army, it’s got promise but needs some tweaks, he dumped a lot of points into upgrades on the Chimeras, which if he takes out mean he can add in a couple of Psyflemen Dreads, which apparently are going to be LotR Modor Trolls, green stuffed to look like giant Gorillas carrying Auto Cannons. Personally, I can’t wait to see this force finished!