Death Guard at the Grim Dice Tournament

Hello!

Been a little while since I've updated here, and since last time I wrote about my Death Guard toughing it out in tenth edition, I thought I'd continue with a brief overview of the Grim Dice Tournament, and maybe some bonus Death Guard content at the end!

The event itself was a pretty standard 2k one-dayer with about 12 players. I took a list featuring Mortarion running up the middle and a series of small units to try and play the missions, including three Blight-haulers, three units of mostly melee Plague Marines, two lots of Blightlords, a single Plagueburst Crawler (if I had more I would definitely have taken more), Rhino, Bloat Drone, Tallyman and a load of cultitst and poxwalker chaff. At time of writing the balance update has just come out so this list now would have an extra 250 odd points and a powerful new army rule, so I'm well aware I was playing as the underdogs!

First game was against Tim with Chaos Daemons. It was a high scoring win for the Death Guard, 93-89, only a few points in it. The army did what it was supposed to do, spreading out and hoovering up points, while the Daemons slowly murdered everything, but couldn't quite catch up.

Second game was against Robin and his Orks, started fairly even but Mortarion got beaten up badly by Mozrog Skragbad (which I wasn't too sad about too be honest, that guy should be pretty beefy!) and the game went drastically downhill from there. I think the final result was 93-53 to the Orks. My opponent here was a younger member of the community, and I think it's worth saying in case he reads this, I was impressed with both his tactical ability and his Orky spirit!

Last game was against CJ and his Necrons. This one went downhill pretty quickly, Mortation got stuck on the terrain then died fast, while the rest of my army was unable to compete with the 'crons either in their damage or their defences. This game above the others really highlighted the flaws in the index for me - they just can't deal with heavy firepower or really tough targets. Or at least they couldn't - the balance pass might have given them a big boost there. I don't remember the exact score but it was 90-40 ish.

In the end I managed to get roughly in the middle with the highest score of the one-winners. A little disappointing to have the games get progressively more unbalanced as the day went on, but I was ultimately happy to have won a game here. Looking back now on the day of the balance update it does throw it somewhat starkly into focus, the list I would have taken now would have been significantly larger and dramatically more dangerous. Regardless of results, I still had fun, it's always nice to have a day throwing dice!

And as for that Death Guard bonus content - I had a bit of a desire to have a big stupid tank to go with the collection, so I dipped into the Heresy range for this one:

The Typhon Heavy Siege Tank! Kind of like a big Plagueburst Crawler right? In any case, it was a lot of fun to paint up a big dirty rust bucket of a warmachine, using all the weathering techniques I've picked up over the years.

The Lord of Virulence approves! Now I need to play a game with legends allowed. Luckily most of my opponents seem to be pretty cool. Legends let legends use legends! Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there!

10th Edition 40K - First Game, First Thoughts, Reflections on 9th and Blog Update

Hello!

Apologies for the mouthful of a title, this one is going to be a bit of a disjointed collection of thoughts, but hey, here we are. Kicking off with my first game of the new 10th edition 40k: Orks vs Daemons!

This was a 1500 point game playing the standard Only War mission at the end of the free Core Rules. I was bringing the Orks, as is only right and proper for a first game, against Tony aka the Narrative Wargamer with his primarily Khorne based Chaos Daemons.

I took a mix of unit types, but keeping it fairly simple in terms of numbers of extra rules, with no enhancements. Three units of 20 choppa Boyz, two units each of three Killa Kans and Deff Koptas, a Battlewagon and a selection of characters: Weirdboy, Painboy, Warboss and Waaagh! Banner Nob (represented by the Goff Rokker!). The Boss and Banner went together with a unit in the Wagon.

The Daemons were a mix of infantry and big scary monsters. Two units of Bloodletters and a squad of Plaguebearers with a couple of support characters were backed up by a Skullcannon, a Daemon Prince, a Soulgrinder and the Bloodthirster.

Orks got turn one, surged forward to touch the middle objectives while leaving some Kans to guard the home one, did a bit of light shooting, and that was it, turn one of 10th edition completed!

Daemons responded in kind, leading to a couple of charges onto the objectives. Bloodletters cut into the 20 Boyz with Painboy, killing ten, but were stomped out by the return attacks. On the other flank the Soulgrinder went in to stomp a number of the Weirdboy's Boyz but took no damage in return.

Ork turn two meant WAAAGH! time, and the Weirdboy and friends sneakily jumped out of combat in order to charge the Skullcannon and take the daemon home objective! I'm pretty sure I didn't get Da Jump to work out this well for me in the entirety of 9th edition!

I plugged the gap they left with Killa Kans and the Warboss unit. Extra attack Kans punched some holes in the Soulgrinder before the WAAAGH!-boosted Warboss finished it off with nine strength eleven powerklaw attacks! Elsewhere the Painboy unit got a model back and then charged the Plaguebearers to ensure they didn't wander onto an objective - this mean the daemons were scoring no points on their turn!

The counter attack came in hot, with the angry Bloodthirster jumping over to mess with the Kans on my objective. The second Bloodletter squad turned around to go back for the Weirdboy/Boyz, and the Prince helped out the Plaguebearers. The big lad obviously did his thing, murdering the Kans and then killing a nearby Kopter with bonus mortal wounds, however the other two combats went a bit differently. 

Bloodletters cut down a load of Orks, but in the WAAAGH! turn the remainder fought back hard and killed the entire unit! This scrap would eventually result in the Skullcannon killing off the remaining Boyz and the weirdboy, and only just suriving the resulting deadly demise! The Daemon Prince had it go a bit differently - he used a big 14 attack sweep, but between the new 5+ save and 5+ Feel No Pain, he was unable to make a real dent in the Boyz, though was essentially immune to most of their attacks with a FNP of his own added to high toughness and 2+ save. At the end of the game the Plaguebearers were all gone but the Prince had still not managed to completely wipe the unit!

In turn three most of my remaining forces swarmed the Bloodthirster, including a second WAAAGH! being called for the Warboss/Banner unit. The 'thirster took his toll but eventually the Warboss smashed him down, leaving the daemons with not much, just the remnants in the ongoing combats around the objectives mentioned above. As a result Tony picked up his first victory point in turn four (as a Boyz mob failed battleshock) and the eventual score was, I think, 11-3 to da Boyz. WAAAGH!

So, my thoughts? Overall I really enjoyed it. It certainly felt like it will be a generally smoother and slightly quicker game once we've all learned the rules properly, and though there were a few weird rules interactions we weren't sure about, it seemed like a lot of the fiddly little details had been taken out. Simplified but not simple, as they say. My big takeaway however was that most of the units seemed to do more or less what they were supposed to, in a way that 9th tried to achieve but didn't quite. The big tough daemons took a lot of killing with T11, decent saves and loads of wounds. Rokkits were bouncing off them and buckets of dice from choppa attacks were only chipping off the odd wound occasionally. Similarly a mob of 20 Boyz with a character was a bit of a wall, taking a serious sustained effort to remove. Anti-elite Bloodletters were cutting down around 10 a time and then getting battered by the return attacks, and all the characters were adding powerful abilities. I could see myself running quite a lot of them!

Aside from the specifics of this game, I am excited to play more 10th and experiment with more stuff, though it's not all perfect. Balance is clearly going to be way off initially - and it always was going to be with a reset regardless of play testers, but I think the decision to 'power level' the points didn't help. I certainly don't hate it, it is nice and easy to just pay single costs for units, but I don't love it either. There's a lot of stuff that's just a no brainer, like the Deffrolla on the Battlewagon, that just hurts you for not modelling it that way (or alternatively encourages breaking WYSIWYG). I'm fairly confident that these sort of issues will be sorted in time though, through points updates and the full books.

Looking back over 9th edition, I can honestly say that I really enjoyed it, though it was clearly flawed. Once the complexity and power started ramping up it became very hard to keep up with and it clearly was not designed with the 'casual' player in mind. It had moments of actually being very well balanced and interesting from a veteran 40k player's perspective, but it must have been an absolute nightmare to have tried to get back into the game after a break of several years, only to come up against peak Drukhari or Tyranids and be wiped off the board in a slew of badly costed units and stacked special rules.

I think 9th had a bit of a reputation for being a tournament focused edition, but that's not strictly true. 9th brought is Crusade, and many, supplements with narrative rules - a lot of which I've spoken about at length! I'm glad GW decided to refine the Crusade format however, it seems like it will be much more balanced for random games between mismatched Crusades, and it also looks like the narrative element is kind of baked into the system a bit more. 

I feel like 9th will be remembered as a bad edition by many, but I think it was quietly important. This was the edition where GW decided to allow themselves to change decades-old rules and try to make units play like they are actually supposed to. Orks are supposed to be really hard to kill, so they got toughness 5 after having T4 since the early 90s. Same with regular (and chaos, eventually) marines getting two wounds, and multi-meltas having two shots, and Eldar covered head to toe in armour getting a 4+ save. So many changes to rules and stats that were almost set in stone before, so that the models in the game felt just a little bit more like they 'should' do. They didn't always get it right of course, but I think that will be the positive legacy of 9th, being carried forward into 10th and beyond.

Now, with all that said, for me personally the shift to 9th also signified a shift to not recording every battle on this blog. Some get summarised as part of a larger post, some just get posted to Instagram. I don't always have the time or energy to do big write ups anymore, and though I did beat myself up about 'missing' a few, it is ultimately something I've decided I'm perfectly happy with. As I've always said, this blog is mostly for my own benefit, so I make no apologies for not getting out content regularly or to a specific standard. So what this means for the future is... not a lot really. I will continue with sporadic posting with no intent to cover everything, just a general overview of what I've been up to. I hope that if you are reading this you will find it entirely reasonable on my part, but even if you don't, thanks for reading and please stay safe out there.

Tempest of War Battle Report - Orks vs Daemons

Hello!

Recently I played another Tempest game against Sharpy, this time with my Orks against his new Chaos Daemon codex. This was nearly my first game against the new Daemons, though I did in fact get a bit of a shortened game in the night before, and I had learned that Flamers = Ouch.

Tempest of war is always a good close game so I took a list with a bit of punch but also a bit of fun - plenty of Boyz but also a load of big chunky models, including the new Kill Rig. It was a Snakebite Battalion and Super Heavy Auxiliary. 

HQ: Mozrog Skragbad (Warlord, Surly as a Squiggoth), Weirdboy (Da Jump, Fists of Gork, Super Cybork Body)

Troops: 10 Beast Snagga Boyz, 2x 20 Boyz (Powerklaw), 20 Boyz (Shootas, Powerklaw)

Elites: 10 Tankbusta Boyz

Fast Attack: 5 Squighog Boyz (Bomb Squig)

Heavy Support: Battlewagon (Deathroller), Kill Rig (Frazzle, Squiggly Curse), Squiggoth

Lord of War: Gorkanaut

Sharpy's force was a nice mix of various Daemons from various Gods. Led by a couple of Greater Daemons, a Great Unclean One that was regenerating wounds and a Bloodthirster that can only take 8 wounds a phase. There were units of Plaguebearers, Bloodletters, Pink Horrors, Daemonettes, Nurglings, Drones, Flamers and Flesh Hounds, supported by a Chariot of Tzeentch and a Soulgrinder. A bit of everything to cover for whatever orders come from the warp aka the Tempest of War deck.

Deployment and mission: We were playing Vital Ground, which gives 3, 4 and 5 points for holding a home, no-man's land and enemy objective respectively. There were also bonus points on offer for killing enemy units but we did forget about this almost all game so when we got to the end we chose to ignore it. The mission rule was Pall of Dread, meaning the Insane Bravery strat could not be used, bit rough for the Boyz!

Deploying in corners, we both had some units off the board. The Bloodletters, Daemonettes, Flamers and Chariot were all in the warp, while I had the Beast Snaggas, Tankbustas and Shoota Boyz embarked and the Gorkanaut placed in the Tellyporta. We rolled off and I got first turn.

Orks moved up and did a bit of shooting, with little success. My secondary objectives were to get behind enemy lines, to hold three objectives and to hold both my home objective and one in the middle, the last of which was achieved. I tried to jump some Boyz over to harass the Plaguebearers on the Daemon home objective but the power failed - something that was to become a theme.

Daemon turn one and they also moved up to claim a middle objective and close the gap. The Bloodthirster showed no subtlety in leaping over the central bridge and charging into the Squiggoth.

The War God's chosen made short work of Nipper Jr, causing the Tankbustas to bail out. Only one hit his head in the fall, but thanks to the Bloodthirster's daemonic aura the morale test was a disaster and only two of the ten remained at the end. 

Ork turn two and time for the WAAAGH! The Kill Rig looked to cause problems around the flank while a unit of Boyz, heavily diminished by the Bloodthirster's roar and whip, got Jumped over to the far edge of the board. Squighogs eyed up the Soulgrinder and the Gorkanaut tellyported in to lend fire to downing the Bloodthirster. Shooting was operation reduce it to 8 wounds or less, but after firing literally every gun in range at it, including the Gorkanaut's wall of lead, the monster was still stuck on 9 wounds. This meant if I were to kill it this turn I had to use the Ramming Speed stratagem on the Battlewagon to get some mortals in the charge phase - this left the Gorkanaut hanging with a very long charge into the Soulgrinder.

Unsurprisingly the 'naut failed to get in, but the Squighogs managed to do the job unaided! This also grabbed me a third objective to complete a secondary.

The Battlewagon did manage to get the wounds onto the Bloodthirster to give me a chance to kill it. Mozrog Skragbad charged in on his great white squig, powered up by Fists of Gork, and did something like seven or eight damage three wounds on the monster. Sharpy promptly saved all but one of them. Git.

The Bloodthirster opted to lash out at the Battlewagon, destroying it and securing Grind Them Down. The duel continued...

Daemons turn two saw the reinforcements arrive across the board and hit back hard.

Fast Tzeentch and Nurgle units appeared on the flank to cause some problems for the Squighogs. Shooting reduced them to two models, but in melee they did manage to interrupt and kill the Chariot, before the Screamers and Drones took them out.

The Great Unclean One charged into the Kill Rig to engage in a grinding melee that was only ever going to go one way (the way of the big guy who kept regenerating wounds.)

Elsewhere the Daemonettes and Bloodletters dropped in. The Daemonettes became a roadblock for the Plaguebearers on the Daemon home objective, charging in the cause some pain for the Boyz there but taking some heavy losses in return. The Bloodletters appeared in my back lines to deploy a teleport homer - which I assume for Khorne is basically a big pile of skulls?

In the middle of the board the battle raged on with the Bloodthirster unable to kill Mozrog on it's reduced profile, but getting hot saves once again to stick around.

Orks turn three, with the second part of the WAAAGH! still active, we tried to get stuck in where possible.

The mob at the back charged backwards and made very short work of the Bloodletters. The Wierdboy failed to Jump any of their friends though.

The Gorkanaut went on a bit of a rampage, pasting the Flamers with it's shooting and then crushing the Screamers and one of the Drones with it's claw.

The Kill Rig did eventually fall but it's cargo of Beast Snagga Boyz had already gotten out and got stuck in to making a load of blue and brimstone Horrors appear.

While finally the Bloodthirster was brought down by Mozrog, and scoring me some secondary points for No Prisoners. The Orks were fighting back hard!

Daemons turn three saw them work on clearing the Boyz from their lines. The Plaguebearers got their blades wet while the Nurglings doubled up on the objective. They had the No Retreat, No Surrender secondary active so in the middle the few remaining Horrors had to sit and wait for help from the Flesh Hounds and Great Unclean One - luckily for them a super smite cleared most of the Beast Snaggas and the Hounds were able to clear up. It also meant the Plague Drones were stuck in melee with the Gorkanaut and they were reduced to one.

Turn four and we were pretty much even - both scored 7 points on the primary every turn and that was unlikely to change. We were pretty much getting 5 points each on the secondary each turn as well.

I attempted to get the Gorkanaut into the opponent's deployment zone to finally score Behind Enemy Lines but the advance wasn't long enough, and Da Jump failed again. At the end of the turn I gave up and discarded it. I also had Blood and Guts and was looking to kill off the one Drone, the couple of Flesh Hounds and the few remaining Flamers in melee, but the Boyz failed their charge and Mozrog whiffed against the Drone, so that one was a bit of a bust, putting me behind on the Secondary scores.

Daemon turn four saw them consolidating their position by drawing weakened units back and doubling up on the objectives, and the Plague Marines finally killing my invasive Boyz mob. They scored a secondary (I think for holding home and No Man's Land objectives) to go ahead.

Orks turn five and not much to do apart from claiming those objectives. I got a slightly favourable draw and had to Raise a Banner and Hold the Line.

It eventually fell to Daemons turn five, and a 58 point draw unless the Daemons could break the Ork lines and deny the secondary points. The only model with the speed to do so charged the shoota Boyz mob to get the distance, but was unable to survive the overwatch and return attacks, nailing on that draw. Even Stevens.

With the Squig watching on, and excellent game came to it's tight conclusion. Tempest with two mixed, not optimised armies is always a close affair, and that was definitely the case here. It felt like it swung back and forth, and my only disappointment is that we didn't get the Great Unclean One vs Gorkanaut Sumo bout! If you're looking for something a bit less intense than the GT mission packs but a bit more balanced than Crusade or Open War, Tempest really does fill that niche. The Tempest and Open War card packs really should be pushed more by GW IMO because they both go some way to covering the biggest issues with current 40k being allegedly too tournament focused.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the report. There will be plenty more Orks in action soon as well, so check back for that! Stay safe out there.