Ministrategery

Here is the list that I’ll be bringing to the ‘Ard Boyz Finals tomorrow in Baltimore. 

2500 point Daemonhunters Army:

HQ: Grey Knight Grand Master /w nemesis force weapon, incinerator, psychic hood, sacred incense; 6 Grey Knight Terminators (2 /w thunder hammers) /w incinerator

HQ: Brother-Captain Stern

E: Inquisitor /w psycannon, Emperor’s Tarot, terminator armor

E: Inquisitor /w psycannon, terminator armor

E: Callidus Assassin

T: 5 Stormtroopers /w 2 plasma guns; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

T: 5 Stormtroopers /w 2 plasma guns; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

T: Armored Fist Squad /w lascannon, veteran sergeant; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

T: Armored Fist Squad /w lascannon, veteran sergeant; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

T: Armored Fist Squad /w lascannon, veteran sergeant; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

T: Armored Fist Squad /w lascannon, veteran sergeant; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

FA: 3 Sentinels /w 2 lascannons, 1 autocannon

HS: Grey Knight Land Raider Crusader /w smoke launchers, searchlight

HS: Leman Russ /w improved comms

Wish me luck!

The last game of the day was against Paul Steiner and his Space Marines.  The mission was basically a cleanse mission, with escalation in effect.  Since escalation was in effect, I started out with nothing on the table.  Paul’s Marines had only two squads starting on the table, so deployment went extremely quickly.

Since I went second, word in your ear proved entirely useless, as I moved a tactical squad six inches back, which it covered handily in the two turns that he had before I brought anything onto the table.  His initial reserve rolls brought on about half of his force, including a pair of tactical squads in rhinos, another tactical squad in a razorback, and both of his predators.  They advanced onto the table, and sought the best cover they could find. 

My first units to arrive were one of my hellhounds, the basilisk, the FA sentinel, and my HQ platoon.  I used improved comms to ensure that my basilisk arrived early, so it could get as much firing as possible. The Inquisitor Lord and his retinue zoomed onto the table and deployed into a ruined building, while most of the HQ platoon came on together, using the terrain to screen themselves from all but one of the Space Marine Rhinos.  The sentinels both elected to deep strike, angling for side armor shots on one of the predators, while the hellhound zoomed up my left flank to try and hit an assault squad taking cover in the building.  The assault squad took enough casualties from the hellhound to force a break test, and they ended up running back off the table.  After shooting every multilaser I had at the Rhino, I managed to kill it as well.  My callidus had arrived as well, and took down one of the tactical squads by herself through a combination of neural shredder fire and her phase sword.

On his next turn, Paul brought in most of the remainder of his forces.  His landspeeder came up behind my sentinels and gunned one of them down with its weaponry, while a dreadnought made short work of the Chimera of one of my special weapons teams.  The other Sentinel was immobilized by one of the predators.  Most of the rest of his shooting was rather ineffective, as cover saves helped keep the casualties in my Inquistor Lord’s squad down, but the Hellhound was stunned from the incoming fire.  The callidus was gunned down in a hail of bolter fire, but she died knowing that she’d reduced the number of lascannons firing at the rest of my army by one. 

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Okay, this mission was the one that everyone complained about.  Basically, everything started on the board, regardless of any special deployment rules that you may have had.  The normal deployment order was chucked out the window, and you could deploy units in any order you chose.  And there were no deployment zones - you just had to be 6″ away from an enemy unit.  Additionally, you couldn’t assault on turn 1, no matter what.

Lots of people complained.

I thought it was an interesting challenge. 

My opponent in this round was Jon Blowers and his Chaos army.  My first game against a Chaos army using the new Codex - woo-hoo!  He had plague marines as his troops, a lash sorcerer and a winds daemon prince, terminators in a landraider, lots of obliterators, and 4 squads of 6 lesser demons. 

Deployment took…well, nearly forever.  I decided to deploy my mechanized platoon first, followed by the headquarters unit.  That gave me 13 units to deploy in the time that he could deploy 2, which I used to essentially start blocking off half the table.  My units were spread out all across one half of the table, with the intention of limiting the places where he could deploy.  After placing those two units, I used my remaining units to fill in holes on my half of the table.

While the plan didn’t work perfectly, Jon only managed to get a very limited number of units on my half of the table.  In one pocket enclave, he created a circle of plague marines, with a squad of obliterators inside.  A squad of lesser daemons formed a second enclave, which he used to place his sorcerer, a daemon prince, and another squad of obliterators.  And a last squad of lesser daemons were wedged into the back corner of my half of the table. 

Here’s what the table looked like as the turn started:

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Okay, so it was a week, but I’m really going to try and pound out the full Semi’s report.  For those who don’t know, I ended up qualifying for the Nationals, so I figured I should finish this before the weekend.

First round saw me up against a footslogger Ork army.  To be honest, my opponent must have had a ridiculously easy qualifier or had some extremely favorable matchups, because once I saw the army list, I knew this game was going to be an exercise in clubbing a baby seal.  First, the army had only one Trukk, and a large squad of warbikes.  Second, the mission had only one real condition: possessing an objective, with bonus points for the getting the objective back to your lines.  Third - all of my guardsmen were fearless in this mission.  While that would normally be a negative (because you want guardsmen to break and run from assault), since I didn’t plan on the orks getting to assault in the first place, that would guarantee me maximum shooting from my guardsmen, and allow me to tie up orks in assault. 

My opponent chose a table edge which gave her orks the best cover to start out with - which left me with the table edge that had a nice building right in the center of my deployment zone.  So I made the best use of it, and put two squads of guardsmen plus my inquisitor lord inside.  All of my armor flanked the building, ready to move forward and form speedbumps. 

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Okay, so I decided to change it up for the ‘Ard Boyz Semi-finals, since my Night Lords were no longer possible under the new codex.  So I decided to bring my Imperial Guard.  Here’s what I brought:

Doctrines:

Mechanized

Drop Troops

Special Weapons Teams

Iron Discipline

Close Order Drill

HQ: Junior Officer /w iron discipline, Standard Bearer, Mortar; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

Special Weapons Team /w demo charge, 2 flamers; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy flamer

Special Weapons Team /w demo charge, 2 flamers; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy flamer

Sentinel /w lascannon

HQ: Inquisitor Lord /w psycannon, null rod, psychic hood, emperor’s tarot; 3 warriors /w 2 heavy bolters, plasma cannon; 3 mystics; 2 sages; 2 familiars; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

E: Callidus Assassin

T: Junior Officer, 4 meltaguns; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy flamer

Infantry squad /w lascannon, plasma gun; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

Infantry squad /w lascannon, plasma gun; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

T: Armored Fist squad /w lascannon, plasma gun, veteran sergeant; Chimera /w multilaser & heavy bolter

FA: Hellhound

FA: Hellhound

FA: Sentinel /w lascannon

HS: Leman Russ Demolisher /w lascannon, plasma cannon

HS: Leman Russ Demolisher /w lascannon, plasma cannon

HS: Basilisk /w indirect fire, improved comms

Coming up…battle reports from the event. 

To my readers, my apologies.  Been a bit too busy to update this blog.  The good news is that I’ve got a lot of news. 

So lets finish up with round 3 of the Ard Boyz qualifiers.  This mission I played against Eric Gibbs and his Necron army.  Two monliths, lots of destroyers, and the obligatory two lords, along with warriors and immortals. 

The mission was about as straight up as it gets - bonus victory points for having table quarters and for having scoring units close to the center.  Deployment zones were the “L”s, which meant there was going to be an awful lot of ground to cover between our two forces.  I front-loaded my deployment into the corner of my long “L” to put the minimum amount of distance between our two forces.  Since his only long-ranged guns were on the destroyers, I figured he would deploy his warriors and immortals as close to me as possible and have the destroyers hang back…which is pretty much what he did.  My tactical squads started out behind a woods template, with the intention of moving forward in turn one and getting some decent fields of fire for their lascannons. 

Infiltrating my havocs into an adjacent table quarter gave them good cover, a dominating field of view, and enfilading fire down his long L.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think that I had the range reach all the way into his backfield, which turned out to be true.  But they were positioned well for fire support and quarter-claiming, since they were equally difficult for my opponent to reach.  Oblits, terminators, and of course, furies, were all in reserve.

Winning the roll to go first, I moved my tactical squads into the aforementioned woods template, turbo-boosted my bikes straight at his immortals, and moved my raptors and lord up behind the woods that my tactical chaos marines were now occupying.  The havocs opened fire, knocking down three destroyers, which promptly stood back up.  Woo-hoo.  Exciting. 

His turn one consisted of moving towards me, with the destroyers attempting to gun down my bikes.  2+ saves kept all but one of the bikes alive, and it was time for turn 2. 

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Well, at Round 2 I found myself across the table from Norm Davis, a buddy of mine with a sweet Ultramarine army.  His army was well constructed, with pairs of nearly every unit - a trick I’ve taught him over the years.  Two vindicators, two terminator squads, two assault squads, backed up by three tactical squads, a devastator squad, an Inquisitor with his retinue, and led by a Force Commander and Chief Librarian Tigurius. 

The mission had two objectives.  Victory points would determine the winner, with table quarters and scoring unit within 6″ of the center of the table giving bonus points.  All units except troops would be deployed at the start of the game, and reserves could march on from any table edge. 

My basic plan was to hit him hard in his own deployment zone and force him to reinforce his home quadrant.  With only three 6-man squads as troops, and the speed of my units, I figured that my chances of closing the distance rapidly were good. 

I won the roll to determine who went first, and elected to go second.  I chose that for two reasons.  First, with the bonus VPs from the objectives I wanted to be able to seize objectives at the end of turn 6.  Second, the units he had deployed had formed a strong firebase, ready to move out, but by using terrain I had deployed most of my units out of sight, as well as holding my terminators and obliterators in reserve.  With those units plus my furies and the tactical squads, I wanted to be able to react to his reserve rolls as much as possible. 

Turn 1 was relatively uneventful, as he moved his vindicators forward and waited for my units to close the distance.  I pushed forward across the line, turbo-boosting with my bikes to put them within charge range of the enemy, and moving my raptors and daemon prince up behind cover.  My havocs took shots at the enemy assault squads and killed off three of them, but the Marines passed their leadership test. 

On Turn 2, Norm only had a single squad of tactical marines and one squad of terminators arrive from reserve.  The tactical Marines moved on in the adjacent table quarter next to my havocs and charged in, easily overwhelming in them in assault. 

His Terminators deep struck into my home quadrant, directing their assualt cannon fire at my Daemon Prince, but only inflicting a single wound.  His vindicators, devastators, and inquisitor’s retinue fired at my Chosen bikers, but the 2+ invulnerable save from turbo-boosting kept all but one of my bikes alive. 

On my turn, one tactical squad, one fury squad, and my terminators and obliterators all arrived.  I moved my tactical squad on behind his main firebase, while the furies jumped up next to one of his vindicators.  I used the teleport homer on my chosen bikers to bring in the terminators, while the obliterators used the teleport homer on my Daemon Prince to appear next to the Ultramarine’s terminators.  My bikes moved up to assault range of the devastators, while my Raptors diverted from their initial thrust at his firebase to take care of Norm’s tactical marines. 

Only a few of my units shot, but their fires had great effect, as the second vindicator was immobilized and had its vindicator cannon blown off by my terminator’s Reaper autocannons.  The obliterators poured plasma gun fire into the terminators, reducing their numbers by half, while my Raptors used their flamers to whittle down the tactical marines before they charged. 

In the assault phase, my bikers charged the devastators while my tactical squad charged his inquisitor.  The raptors wiped out the lone Ultramarine’s tactical squad, and my Daemon Prince got stuck in as well.  I gutted the devastators and inquisitor’s retinue, but both managed to make their break tests, and my Furies got the glancing 6 they needed to kill the Vindicator.

Only my Daemon Prince really whiffed, killing only a single Terminator. 

All of Norm’s remaining tactical squads came on in the Turn 3, and he moved them to attack my Raptors.  His assault marines and Force Commander jumped out from behind the assault and prepared to get stuck in.  The Terminators deep struck to face off against my Terminators, and killed two of them with their assault cannons. 

Both of my raptor squads survived his tactical marines, but one squad had been reduced to a non-scoring unit.  The assaults in his home quadrant were largely inconclusive, as he killed off more models than I did, but the Icon of Chaos Undivided made my units fearless.  My Daemon prince continued to whiff his attacks, and took a wound from the terminators in return.  Then he failed his Morale check and ran away…almost to the table edge, but thankfully not quite. 

In my turn I brought on all my remaining reserves.  The tactical marines moved up to support the Raptors, while my furies came in to join the massive assault happening in the Ultramarine’s home quadrant.  My obliterators killed off the surviving terminators from the previous turn, while my own Terminators proved why lighting claws are better than powerfists for dealing with infantry. 

My furies assaulted in such a way that the separate assaults in the Ultramarine’s home quadrant became one big assault, and that assault would continue through most  of the rest of the game.  Eventually I emerged triumphant, but at the cost of every unit being reduced to a non-scoring status.  All of the units had a model or two alive, though, which preserved some victory points for my side.

At the end of the game, Norm had only a single tactical squad alive and contesting one of the adjacent quadrants.  I moved the obliterators into that table quadrant to contest it while also claiming center of the table VPs, and moved my remaining scoring unit of Raptors into his home table quadrant to claim the bonus VPs, as well as the center of the table VPs.  My terminators claimed the other adjacent table quarter. 

Totalling up victory points, my totals were something in excess of 4200 points more than Norm, due to all the bonus VPs I earned.   Along the way, I also managed to sweep the bonus victory conditions as well, for a full 24 points.

Okay, so here’s my reports from the Ard Boyz Tournament.  I played at Fortress Games and Comics in Lansing, and the turnout was a bit- anemic.  The store is under new management (a great guy, Jeff Crawley, now owns the store) and in the changeover, apparently the wrong date was publicized for the tournament.  So about seven or eight people had made plans to attend a tournament on Sunday, as opposed to Saturday, and couldn’t change their plans.

Anyways, in round 1 I faced off aginst a guy name Joe and his Mechanized Tau army.  A relatively strong army list, with lots of crisis suits and the like.  I wasn’t too worried about this first game, because the usual Mech Tau tactic is “Fish of Fury” where the fire warriors disembark behind their skimmers and unload, with the skimmers keeping them protected from assault.  I figured that my relatively small squad sizes would play to my advantage, because even though he could probably wipe out some of them, he’d end up having to leave other squads untouched.  And my units were generally fast enough that they could still make it into assault, even if my opponent pulled a fish of fury. 

The mission involved getting scoring units into the enemy deployment zone. That was it - no victory points, etc.  There were some bonus conditions, but I decided not to worry about those until later in the game. 

Deployment also went out of order, with fast attack choices deploying first.  In addition, anything that scattered would add an extra d6″, and every player turn a S5 ordance marker would be placed by the player of that turn.

I deployed both my raptor squads on my extreme right flank, as the terrain over there seemed conducive to giving them cover as they advanced.  My opponent placed his pathfinders near the center of his line, giving them a commanding view of the field.  My elite choices, the terminators and the obliterators, went on my left flank, opposite his crisis suits.  I wanted to force my opponent to concentrate his crisis suits, and the best way to do that was to give him a target that only his crisis suits could realisticly engage. 

My troop squads were placed to cover the field with their fire support, but mostly on the left flank, as that’s where my opponent began placing his devilfish, and my Daemon Prince deployed to support the terminators and obliterators, as well as give that side one speedy unit.  The Chosen bikers were deployed to support the Raptors, and I infiltrated my havocs into a building in the center of the table.  After deploying, the table looked like this:

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Just got back, and am happy to announce that I won 1st place at the ‘Ard Boyz tournament at the Fortress in East Lansing, MI.  Had some good games, even though the competition wasn’t that deep (since there were a goodly number of players who for some reason thought that the tournament was Sunday instead of Saturday due to a mixup at the store.) 

Looks like I’ll be heading to Pandemonium on 13 October. 

Pics and reports to follow.

Well, after working on the list, here’s what I’m going to be taking.  Since the old Chaos Codex is still in effect for this tournament, I figure its my last chance to take my Night Lords out for a spin before I sell my Night Lords army.

HQ: Chaos Lord /w Dread axe, close combat weapon, daemonic aura, daemonic essence, daemonic flight, daemonic resilience, daemonic stature, frag grenades, teleport homer, mark of chaos undivided

HQ: Chaos Lieutenant /w power weapon, daemonic armor, daemonic strength, chaos space marine bike /w/ plasma gun, frag grenades, mark of chaos undivided; 4 Chosen aspiring champions /w 4 daemonic armors, 4 chaos space marine bikes (2 /w plasma guns), 2 power fists, 1 teleport homer, mark of chaos undivided, icon of chaos undivided

E: Terminator Sorcerer /w paired lightning claws, winds of chaos; 5 Terminators /w 2 Reaper autocannons, 2 combi-meltas, 2 chainfists, 2 lightning claws, tank hunters, mark of chaos undivided

E: 3 Obliterators

T: 5 Chaos Space Marines /w lascannon, plasma gun, stealth adept, mark of chaos undivided

T: 5 Chaos Space Marines /w lascannon, plasma gun, stealth adept, mark of chaos undivided

T: 5 Chaos Space Marines /w lascannon, plasma gun, stealth adept, mark of chaos undivided

FA: 10 Furies

FA: 10 Furies

FA: Raptor aspiring champion /w power weapon, daemonic strength, daemonic mutation; 5 Raptors /w 2 flamers, furious charge, mark of chaos undivided

FA: Raptor aspiring champion /w power weapon, daemonic strength, daemonic mutation; 5 Raptors /w 2 flamers, furious charge, mark of chaos undivided

HS: 5 Havocs /w autocannon, 2 missile launchers, infiltrate, stealth adept, tank hunters

Comes out to exactly 2500 points.  Adding the terminators is something of a gamble, but hopefully it will work out, and I would rather use them than paint up any additional models.  I’ve played one test game with a version of this army, and it seemed to work the way I wanted it to, so hopefully I’ll be able to place in the top 3. 

Anybody have any comments?

Well, the GW Ard Boyz Tournaments are this weekend, so I decided to sign up for one that’s relatively local and head out that way.  Created my army list last night, and decided to take my Night Lords out for one last spin, since the old Chaos SM Codex is in effect. 

Not sure exactly what I’m bringing, but I’m expecting it not to be as optimized as you’d expect, since my Night Lords have always been more about having a ridiculously fast army then anything else. 

I should have the army list posted here shortly.

First, let me preface this by talking about the armies that I have.  Currently, I have four Warhammer 40K armies: Tyranids, Imperial Guard, Daemonhunters, and Night Lords (which will be going up for sale after the ‘Ard Boyz tournament this weekend).  With all of them, my armies have strong themes, as well as serious theoryhammer and math-hammer to make them effective, game-winning armies.

Good theme is NOT incompatible with a strong army.  But if you all knew the number of times I’ve had people claim that my Tanith IG (whose only heavy weapons are missile launchers and heavy bolters, with a command squad tooled up for assault, and including a Priest, for pete’s sake) or my Daemonhunters (with some of the most expensive basic troop types in the game) or my Night Lords (I’ve got four fast attack choices - and I spend almost 400 points on five models!!! just to make sure my army is fast) are “cheesy” or “against the fluff”, you’d all share my frustration with so called “fluff-bunnies.”

Everybody has their own opinion about the fluff and backstory behind an army.  For me, its what makes the game fun to play.  Some people care more, others care less.   But don’t confuse fluff with rules.  Games Designers use the fluff as guidelines, not as regulations.  Their primary concern isn’t to come up with rules that accurate reflect the backstory, its to come up with rules that are balanced and make for a fun game.

So let the fluff be what it is…an inspiration, not a straight-jacket. 

In some ways, it may seem to be - seriously, I’m not kidding. 

Two people agree to get together to have fun, ideally they’re both closely matched and equal, and both people are trying to bring their best side to show off. 

I told you I was serious.

That intrinsic balance between two sides (at least in theory) is what a good player has to overcome through tactics, operational art, and strategy.  One way to play a wargame is to simply send your forces straight at your opponent’s forces, clashing head to head, mano e mano. 

Congratulations!  You are now replicating the tactics used so…successfully…in World War I.  Attrition warfare - strength on strength, where the objective was to grind the enemy into dust.  In other words, you’re practicing attrition warfare. 

Unfortunately, given evenly matched armies, the end result of that is generally a strategic draw, as both sides are ground away into dust.

Your other option is trickier, but if you can learn how to do it, will greatly improve your ability to win games.  That is to eschew attrition warfare, and instead practice maneuver warfare.  Manuever warfare emphasizes maneuver (obviously), but the real point of maneuver warfare is to set up those “situational mismatches” that I talked about last time.

To tie this in to what I’ve been writing about, what you want to accomplish is to create many situations where you have a temporary, situational mismatch in your favor, and then exploit the hell out of it.  The best part of that is that often this can start a chain reaction. 

For example, in Game 2 of the Chicago GT, I managed to set up a situation where I could throw large numbers of genestealers into assault against Brian’s Carnifexes.  Because genestealers are so superior in assault, I knew that I would be likely to win those assaults, but because carnifexes are resilient, it would likely take me two assault phases to do so.  That would effectively negate his armies superior firepower, at least for a turn. 

The best part, though, was that once I “cracked the shell” so to speak with my initial assaults, my genestealers effectively spent the rest of the game in one assault or another.  Brian’s force lacked the speed to disengage from my genestealers, whose fleet move and massacre rolls allowed them to blithely charge from carnifex to carnifex until his force was effectively crippled.

The key to that situation was in knowing what my force was and wasn’t capable of, knowing what Brian’s army was and wasn’t capable of, and then working to create the situation most advantageous to myself or most detrimental to him.  It requires a slightly different way of looking at playing the game…but it can be an extremely powerful one. 

Last time I wrote about Sun Tzu, I brought up his rule of knowing yourself and knowing your opponent.  The question then becomes, how do you measure your units and those of your opponents?

There’s a lot of different ways to measure the usefulness or capability of a unit.  There are three areas in any wargame, from Warhammer 40K to chess, that you can use to measure a unit’s capabilities.  Those areas are lethality, maneuverability, and resilience. 

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Sorry for the my absense…been a bit busy recently, with Labor Day, work and other projects. 

Anyways, last Sunday I got a chance to play against Josh Bos and his Dark Angels.  The mission involved escalation, which made for a relatively interesting game. 

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When we’re playing a miniature wargame, whether its Warhammer 40K, Aeronautica Imperialis, or Mechwarrior, the game is based on the results of cubical random number generators - dice.  This puts it into the realm of probability.  Unfortunately, many players don’t understand how probability works, which means that they’re operating at a disadvantage.

Probability is a complex subject, and one subject to a lot of misunderstanding.   

Take your basic six-sided die.  There are six possible options from those dice - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.  If you roll the die, the chances of any one number coming up are equal.  Additionally, once you get one result - say a six - your chances of getting a six on the next result are…exactly the same.  Thus we come to Wargamer’s Dice Principle #1:

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