Tuesday, February 21

Gallery Of New Pics


Darragh Wrathe



The Withershadow Combine



General Gerlak Slaughterborn



Lich Lord Asphyxious



Beast 09



Nightmare



Played around with the camera this afternoon, taking a few shots of various models.

I still suck at taking good photos, but these will do for now :)

Reeve Hunter Pics

Some terrible camera fu here, he looks a lot better in real life I just dont seem to be able to take decent photos of my models... oh well. I guess I need to keep practicing, or get one of those fancy lightboxes I see other people using.

Reeve Hunter:

Monday, February 20

Tactica: Reeve Hunter

Looking over the stats and abilities of a newly acquired Reeve Hunter, I realised I had to think through his activation carefully to determine just how good he was. A bit of practice always helps, and since I went through the effort to do it I thought I would share it with the world in general.

This article is merely showing the "perfect storm" - 6 attacks and 6 kills with a Reeve Hunter + War Wolf.

Its Reeve Hunter + Warwolf vs 5 Winterguard grunts + Dismounted Drakhun.


Here we start - The Reeve Hunter is looking at a lot of troops, with a Warwolf who ran 14" previously to get to that position.



The Reeve charges the first Winterguard, at MAT8 and P+S11 boosted. He uses Quick Work at RAT7 and POW10 to kill the second Winterguard. (Black tokens mean dead)



Reeve Hunter uses Swift Hunter to move 2", then fires his Snap Fire shot - killing a third Winterguard.


The Reeve Hunter uses Swift Hunter to move 2" into melee range, and kills the Winterguard trooper with MAT6 and P+S9 - this is the hardest roll to make. He then uses Quick Work to shoot the last Winterguard.



The Reeve Hunter moves 2", and shoots the Dismounted Drakhun. He hits, but fails to damage the high Armour trooper. The Warwolf triggers Sic'em, and Charges out of activation - hitting at MAT6 boosted and P+S11 boosted - killing the Man of War.

So we can see that the Reeve Hunter is amazing versus light infantry, and with his last hit can put a charge from a Warwolf on an enemy that was 24.5" away from where the Warwolf started. That same enemy only needs to be within 25.5" from the Reeve Hunter as well, to get that triggering shot off.

At MAT6, without powerful charge, that second melee attack is really crucial, and should be a very easy target to ensure the other two shots. Also, Tough models would really screw this attack sequence up.

In conclusion, for 2 points, this is a very powerful model that can potentially take out a whole unit by himself. He hits pretty hard, and has some useful abilities and interactions with Warwolves. One bad roll will flub the whole plan though, so a redundancy is required it seems!

Luckily, they are FA:2, so now I will need to think about getting a second one!

Sunday, February 12

2 Games to report

Played two games just recently, one was my league game vs Luke and his Khador army led by eIrusk, and the second was a practice game vs Mike and his Merc army led by Durgen Madhammer.

Against Luke, it was all over very quickly, before the game really got going. I won by scenario when I popped eDenny's feat, giving me automatic scenario points and winning the game just based on that. He couldnt hurt most of my models, as they were all Incorporeal and he lacked magical weapons. It was good because it was quick though, less than an hour from setting up to end of the game.

Versus Mike, I played an Epic Vlad list with Drago, max Shocktroopers, max Demo Corp, and solos to flavour. Manhunters x 2 were my main feat targets, followed by any remaining Men 'O' War. What ended up happening was that I attempted to be cocky with eVlad, and moved him forward into range of at least a couple of his models, while camping enough focus to make him ARM20. I expected him to try a couple of shots, and buff Vlad up with Might of Kings and Blood Tokens.

What ended up happening, was Durgen popped feat and his entire army opened up on eVlad. (Of course, with some amazing synergy between Dougal, Sylys, Reinholdt and the feat there was a LOT of bombardment going on.) Unfortunately for Mike, he missed a couple of crucial steps and eVlad was brought down to 8 or 9 life remaining. He activated eEiryss too late, and she missed her Disruption shot anyway - otherwise I probably would have died from the extra damage.

eVlad's next turn, I had 10 focus with Transference up. A feated Manhunter with Transference ripped Durgen a new one, although I was quite suprised at ARM17 on the stumpy little fellow! I had just assumed he would be on ARM15 or so, and even feated I was rolling at -4. I only just made it, killing him right to his last box, and winning the game. I later realised I had forgotten Manhunters are Weaponmaster, so that would have made a big difference.

Anyway, was fun to pull eVlad out again, he got a good run and managed to survive something like 5 or 6 boosted shots at +2 to hit and +2" RNG from all his buffs. Durgen made himself vulnerable to a counter charge, and the Manhunter was in perfect position to seal the deal.

Friday, February 10

Ghetorix, Character Warbeast


Wow - Ghetorix looks awesome. Especially considering hes an upgrade kit off the Plastic Warpwolf set, so is only really a head and an axe, but this is an impressively cool look for it.

Monday, February 6

3rd Game - Cryx vs Menoth

My next, next game Im playing is versus Menoth, a tricksy feora army. With such low ARM troops, Im really worried about everyone bursting into flames. There are very few models in my army that wont die to one fire roll, so this is some serious business.

Feora, Priestess of the flame
Repenter
Repenter
Castigator
Choir of Menoth
Daughters of the flame (2)
Temple Flamegaurd (2)
Temple Flameguard Officer and Standard
Vassal Mechanik

First things first, who has magic attacks? This is an important question for me, since the majority of my army is incorporeal.

Obviously, Feora has Truth and Consequence - two pretty dangerous melee weapons. However, if she is close enough to kill my models in melee, Nightmare should be about to snap her up and spit her out.

Feora's feat is a tricky one, but I believe that incorporeal models are *effectively* immune to it. To quote prime:

"The model suffers damage and effects only from magical weapons, magic attacks, animi, spells, and feats and is immune to continuous effects. "

So, the incorporeal model would be affected by her feat, but be immune to the continuous effect: Fire part of it. Excellent!

Apart from that, the only spell to watch out for is Immolation - low cost long range magic attacks will rip Incorporeal models to bits, but luckily this is limited by Feora's low focus.

None of his Warjacks have magic weapons, OR arc-nodes, which means Im safe from them.

Flameguard and Daughters have no magic attacks, or ways to give them magic attacks - and the same goes for the Vassal Mechanik.

So, looks like, apart from Feora coming in and dealing to my ghosts herself, as long as I dont make attacks I am practically immune to her whole army - allowing me to run forwards indiscriminately!

This is going to be a fun game :D

Saturday, February 4

Thursday, February 2

Retribution vs Khador

I had a fun game versus Rowan's Retribution league army, using an Old Witch list I had been excited to try out.

Kaelyssa, Nights Whisper
>Phoenix
Dawnguard Sentinels
>Dawnguard Sentinel Officer and standard
>Soulless Escort
Lady Aiyana and Master Holt
Mage Hunter Strikeforce
>Mage Hunter Commander
Arcanist
Mage Hunter Assassin
Narn, Mage Hunter of Ios

Rowans list contains a lot of Mage Hunters, including the ever dangerous team of Narn and the Assassin. What really threw me for a loop though, was the Mage Hunter Strike Force. Without getting any cover bonuses, they hit easy and managed to take out a large portion of my army.

My list that I took was:

Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch of Khador
>Scrapjack
>Destroyer
>Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (Cylena and 9 Grunts)
>Koldun Kapitan Valachev
Great Bears of Gallowswood
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
Ogrun Bokur
Widowmaker Marksman

I used a mercenary heavy Old Witch list, which centered around the Nyss hunters with Valachev. I also had the ability to upkeep two spells for free, which ended up being Iron Flesh on the Nyss, (DEF18 lol) and Avatar of Slaughter on the Scrapjack.

We played "Incursion", which was the next scenario both of us were going to have to do for our next league game. (This is of course, the "place 3 flags, remove 1" scenario)

I had first turn, and made the first mistake - not advancing far enough. The Mage Hunter SF was already just about in the zone with their Advanced Deployment, and the Sentinels ran forward and swarmed the middle flag. Of course, the only flag that he was not defending happened to be the one where all my Nyss hunters were, and that was the flag that disappeared.

Not a great start to the scenario. The Great Bears were handily destroyed by the MHSF, with me fluffing all the tough rolls, and Rowan rolling high on damage to kill all 3 in one round of shooting. (Kiss of Lylyth didnt help) We traded a few models on the middle and left flanks, I lost the Bokur to Sentinels, and he lost the Arcanist and a Sentinel to Nyss, and two MHSF to free strikes from the Bears.

The next round was crucial, and I was forced to run both my WMMM and eEiryss to the flag near the MHSF in order to prevent him from scoring. (He still did, killing both models easily with MHSF crossbow fire). I popped my feat, and placed Murder of Crows over top of Kaelyssa, intending of forcing him to take some damage. Scrapjack, fuelled with 4 focus and AoS walked foward (couldnt charge due to Kaelyssa's feat) and proceeded to annihilate the Sentinels. (If you dont know, Scrapjack gets to move 1" and make a free attack for every model he kills)

Unfortunately, with 6 attacks each generating extra attacks, I managed to flub enough rolls (5's to hit, 6's and 4's to kill) that he only took out about 3/4 of the unit, and only just managed to get in melee range of Kaelyssa. This was not great, as I was really intending on winning the game with that move. Luckily, my feat was enough to stave off defeat for one more turn, as Rowan was not able to claim the other scenario piece. (He still got one from the other objective, putting him on 2 points)

He moved Kaelyssa out of danger, camping 4 focus. Scrapjack took a couple of hits from Sentinels, luckily Rowan rolled low and didnt really hurt him. Kaelyssa took a free strike (which I missed, booooo) and a POW14 from the feat, but it only took her down by 6 life.

My last turn, which Rowan would automatically win if I didnt get a caster kill (I couldnt contest the other objective, being guarded by MHSF) so I popped 4 focus on Scrapjack in order to get an Assassination run. However, before I could make said assassination run, I merely had to remove three models threatening a free strike. This proved to be far more difficult than I thought, with a ridiculous amount of misses and failure to kill models going on. I ended up being forced to fire everything I had at those three, and ended up putting 6 damage on the Old Witch from errant Destroyer shots, and a missed Gorman Acid Bomb. This still didnt clear away the models, so I had to move Sylys up, who failed to kill anyone with his POW7 staff. The Nyss and Valachev walked forwards, Valachev Frostbited through Sylys (almost killing him, but he survived with 1 hp lol) and that managed to clip all the enemy models, and took out two of them - freeing up Scrapjack.

Scrapjack went for the attack run - needing 9's to hit. Boost the first attack, miss. Boost the second attack, miss. Buy and boost a third, hit - and do 2 damage.

Good game Rowan, it came down to the wire but at the end of the day the MHSF outclassed my models and slaughtered them - securing the objective and winning on scenario.

*shakes fist* Roooooowaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!

At the end of the game however, it had been extremely enjoyable and only my second game vs Retribution. They certainly have some fantastic infantry options, effectively an 11 man unit of Mage Hunters was very hard to counter, and the Sentinels at ARM17 in B2B were suprisingly difficult to remove, they have an excellent defensive stat line at 13/17, and thats one thing that I noticed - almost all of their models have an optimal defensive stat line. Sure, a Myrmidon with DEF12 ARM18 is the same total as a Juggy, but that extra 2 DEF made a real difference with MAT and RAT6 troopers taking shots at him - putting my rolls right on the bell curve and I ended up with quite a few whiffed hits.