On Beating Grey Knights, Broodlords and Harpies

I've been hearing continuous doom and gloom out of the usual suspects of late. Grey Knights beat Tyranids without even trying, right?

Back In the Saddle!

Been mentally churning since my thrashing on Saturday. I kind of feel like a punk for getting so sullen about it. It's been a while since I've succumbed to that kind of attitude.

But since then I've been thinking about the games. I see my mistakes. I see other options. Choices I could have made differently.

I could have chosen to believe a thousand things. That my opponent was a WAAC jerk. That his army was overpowered. That the dice had gone against me.

No, I made mistakes. I had the tools, I failed to use them properly. My opponent outplayed me, but in the recognition and understanding of his tactics, I can improve and, I hope, one day beat him.

My list does need to change a bit. I need to get the Stalker into my 35 point list. His anti-infantry abilities are too good to give up. But I also realized what a tremendous opportunity I lost in not using Kaya herself to drop a ton of those infantry. The opportunity was RIGHT there. I could have charged her in, used her reach weapon to clear out three to five infantry, and then used Laris' animus to teleport her back to safety.

I still think I need Stalker.

Anyways, I'm thinking a lot about this game, and have been painting a lot.

Worst. Game. Night. Evar.

Got my ass handed to me twice in Warmahordes.

Just a thoroughly frustrating experience.

I just felt like everything I tried to do, failed. Not like, "I missed you" or "I didn't do enough damage to you" kind of failed, or like my strategy was not successful and so I lost kind of failed, but like the 'this model is 1 millimeter in the way of your movement, so you can't do that, and now your entire turn is fucked,' kind of failed.

My first game he took out two of my heavy warbeasts with one of his warjacks on the start of his second turn. So 20 points or so of my army, splat, just like that. I thought I was safe in a forest and like 14 inches away, but he popped his feat and suddenly the Beast 09 had a 13" charge range, Pathfinder, and of course he has reach. So he took down two of my heavies just like it was nothing.

I'm not even going to write it all up. I'm just thoroughly not in a good place right now.

Hopefully I'll feel better in the morning.

Beer, Bratwurst and Genestealers

It's Friday bitches.

Summer seems to have FINALLY arrived in beautiful Washington state. About friggin' time. Too many clouds, too much rain. A man can only take so much gray.

Anyways, listening to my metal Pandora station while I grill up some Brats and drink an Elysian Bete Blanche Triple Belgian. Going to watch the 5th Harry Potter movie with the girls tonight (we are doing a marathon this month) and then going to check out the Green Hornet later tonight while I get some painting done.

The goal for tonight is to have all of the Genestealer's base colors laid down and then washed. That should get the army looking good enough that I wouldn't be totally ashamed to take them to an RTT while I keep working on getting them finished and all 'perty.

Hope you guys are enjoying your weekends!

Pete Asks... Is My Army Cheesy?

Pete was kind enough to follow up with a photo, an email and a list.

I'm t

Hi Purgatus,

Here's my list - happy to share it. I've enclosed a snap of my display board too, so you can see I haven't modelled it for in game advantage etc. Ironically, my third round game against speed freaks was against a player using tiny old edition trucks to get cover saves behind buggies and nob bikers, which failed as a strategy when he got into range of my hive guard.

The only mildly contentious thing is that I attach a tyranid prime to my Carnifex to get it a cover save behind screening gaunts - as I understand it that's acceptable going by the rule book and certainly no players challenged it with judges while I was using it. I use lots of bubble wrap from tervigon generated gaunts and my devilgaunts to mitigate shooting damage and castle up if the enemy is coming to me. The list is optimised for medium range 18"-24" shooting power to knock out light transports and heavy infantry before it hits my lines and have a nasty close combat punch or two to clean up anything left over.

As you can see, it's actually a "rainbow" list more than a true competive list with duplicated units for redundancy - I'm a big sculptor/converter and didn't want to paint up more than one of any kind of unit. The only exception is the hive guard, as I think any foot slogging tyranid player would fall flat without two units of those guys and I like to run 2x2.

Tourney Theory Deep Dive - On Sportsmanship and Comp Scoring

Pete said: 

Statistically speaking, 3 is a very small sample size. Sure you'll get a bell shaped curve, but you'll also get some people who get screwed by the system. With 60 battle points and 30 comp and sportsmanship points what happens in the games is almost secondary to the popularity contest.


Anyway - my story is I scored second in the tourney on battle points, got bumped down to 10th on comp and sportsmanship, and that I don't much like player graded comp now I know how it works. I'd be happy to discuss whether or not I'm a good sportsman over a friendly game of 40k - until then I'd hope you'll give me benefit of the doubt.

Oh, I have no doubt you are a fine player Pete, and probably a nice guy. I will certainly give you the benefit of the doubt because that shit happens all the time to competitive players, even if they are perfectly sportsmanlike.

Some Tyranids WIP Photos

So I think it was Karvala who was asking me to, you know, get off my ass and post some WIP pics. Well, here you go. You will see the Primes after I assembled them, and then the Zoanthropes and Primes after I laid the basic colors on them. I did some testing on my Object Source Lighting but it's not final. The carapace will not be black when it's all done. The models have basically been primed bone, had the carapace painted black, the killy bits painted foundation red, and then washed. Still lots of work to do.