Wargames Trenches

There is something iconic about the image of rank after rank of Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum to our younger readers) fighting the enemy from a large trench network. After reading the fantastic "Straight Silver" Gaunt's Ghosts novel, I was inspired to create a trench network for my own guard army to fight over and defend.

 

The idea was to create a modular trench network, made up of 1 foot square sections. This would help both with storage and with variety, as I could re-arrange the battlefield to save me fighting over the same layout over and over. I decided to make eight sections, as this would allow me to deploy the trenches in a 6' x 1' arrangement for a long board edge or in a 4' x 2' arrangement for short board edge fighting.

The complete trench network.

Age of Sigmar- Battle Report and First Impressions

I know, I know, I'm a little late to the party with the Age of Sigmar, I've just been enjoying the new Space Marine and Dark Angels codex too much to get in to it. I finally got round to playing my first game of Age of Sigmar at the club last week against Matt's Orcs and Goblins.

 

My army consisted of:

Vampire Lord

Necromancer

9 Black Knights

3 Crypt Horrors

30 Zombies- standard bearer

20 Skeletons- Champion, Standard bearer, Musician

Corpse Cart

 

I took a nice mix of troops and heros from the war scrolls to try and have a bit of variety for my first game.

 

Matt's army consisted of:

Orc Warboss

Orc Shaman

18 Boarboyz

27 Wolf Riders

2 Stonethrowers

Doom Diver

Spear Chukka

Giant

 

Some fast moving units and a lot of shooting to go up against.



Battlefield

Battle Report 13- 1500 pts Dark Angels Ravenwing vs Orks

This week's battle report was 1500 pts of my Dark Angels Ravenwing army facing off against Sebastian's Orks. When I arrived at Dundee Wargames club, I found that our 6'x4' board had been laid out with the foamboard cityfight terrain that I had recently brought to the club, providing plenty of cover for the Orks and some lovely dangerous terrain for all my bikers. We rolled up The Relic as the mission we were going to play.

 

My army consisted of:

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE-

Sammael (in CS)
Librarian- Mastery level 2, Bike (in RB1)

6 Command squad- Champion, Apothecary, Ravenwing standard (CS)

5 Ravenwing bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant with meltabombs (RB1)
5 Ravenwing bikers- 2 meltaguns, sergeant with meltabombs (RB3)
5 Ravenwing bikers- Flamer, sergeant with meltabombs (RB2)
5 Ravenwing bikers- Plasma gun, sergeant with meltabombs (RB4)

RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON (RSS)-
Darkshroud- Assault Cannon
3 Ravenwing Landspeeders- Heavy bolters, assault cannons

For this battle, I decided to field an all Ravenwing force. The Ravenwing strike force consisted of Sammael leading a full Ravenwing command squad. I took a Librarian on a bike to lead one of the other bike squad and was keen to see what his powers could do against the Orks (technically not a legal choice in the strike force, but my opponent was kind enough to let me field him). I took 4 bike squads to fill out the strike force, each squad with different special weapons to face whatever the Orks could throw at me. The last choice in the army was a formation I was wanting to test out, the Ravenwing support squadron. I was keen to see how the Ravenshield ability would work out and thought that this was a great chance to test it (the Ravenshield allows the support squadron to fire overwatch at a friendly Ravenwing unit being charged within 24").

My psychic powers were; Mindworm, Seed of Fear and Righteous Repugnance. Seed of Fear would be great against the Orks, forcing them to fail more morale checks would mean more casualties for the mobs. Righteous repugnance would also be very useful for giving the command squad the extra attacks to deal with any large mobs I may come up against.

Astra Militarum Army (Picture heavy)

I blame Dan Abnett.

 

I was re-reading the Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels (a series that I would highly recommend) and his description of the battles of the Imperial Guard were so fantastic that it made me want to collect an Imperial Guard army (back when they were still the Imperial Guard).

My guard army in full.

I hit ebay to pick up the beginnings of an army and one of my first purchases was the Gaunt's Ghosts squad and some Tanith troopers. When I started the army, these were no longer available from GW directly, so I probably paid more than I should have for them, but I had to own the models that got me collecting them in the first place. My initial plan was to use them as the command squad for my army; Gaunt as the commander and his unit as the command squad. In games these days they tend to be used as a veterans squad with sniper rifles. I would love to have collected an entire Tanith First and Only army, but my modelling skills are insufficient to kit out an entire guard army with camo cloaks.

Hobby Sunday 19/07/15

This week I managed to get some work done on my Ravenwing and White Scars armies.

 

The grav gun arms that I had previously undercoated were painted and attached to my Ravenwing bikers. The paint scheme on guns was kept simple, in line with my other bikers. The grav gun was given a drybrush of boltgun metal and then painted blood red.

Battle Report 12- 2000 pts Dark Angels vs Sons of Horus

This week's fully written battle report is 2000 pts between my Dark Angels and Josh's Sons of Horus army. The battle was The Crusade with 3 objectives on a 6'x4' board.

This was my first battle with the new Dark Angels Codex and I was looking forward to testing it out.

 

My initial plan was to take an all Ravenwing force, but when I totalled up my army, I couldn't quite stretch to 2000 pts, so I decided to incorporate some Deathwing and other units. My army consisted of:

 

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE:

Sammael (in command squad)

6 Ravenwing Command- Ravenwing Banner, Apothecary, Champion, Grenade launcher (CS)

6 Black Knights- Grenade launcher, Meltabombs (BK)

6 Ravenwing Bikers- Sergeant with power sword and meltabombs, 2 grav guns (RB1)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- Veteran sergeant with power fist and meltabombs (RB2)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- Sergeant with meltabombs, 2 meltaguns (RB3)

Landspeeder- Heavy Bolter, Assault Cannon (L1)

Landspeeder Darkshroud- Assault Cannon (D)

 

COMBINED ARMS DETACHMENT:

Librarian- Mastery level 2, Bike, Auspex, Conversion Field (L2)

5 Tactical Marines- Lascannon (TS1), with Rhino (R)

5 Tactical Marines- Plasma Cannon (TS2)

5 Deathwing Knights (DK)

 

Sammael was the warlord, so got Rapid Manoeuvre as his trait. The Librarian got Mind Worm, Mind Wipe and Seed of Fear. A nice batch of powers to try out.

The army had a strong Ravenwing component and I was keen to see how the Black knights would perform. The Darkshroud was there to provide a buff to the Black Knights (2+ re-rollable cover save!). The combined arms detachment was taken as I wanted access to a Librarian on a bike. I took the minimum tactical squads with a heavy weapon each. I also wanted to take some Deathwing Knights to take on any power armour in the enemy army.

My army arrayed for battle (almost made an all Ravenwing force)

Dark Angels Codex Review Part 7- Formations

This is the final part of my 7th edition Dark Angels Codex review, focussing on the new Formations in the book. Unlike the previous sections of my review, I am going to repeat the reviews I have already posted for the Ravenwing and Deathwing formations that I have previously covered. This is so that I can put them into context when looking at the formations in general and when looking at the Lion's blade formation.

FORMATIONS

Battle Demi-Compay:

Though similar in name, the Dark Angels' Battle Demi-company is different to the Codex Space Marine formation. It consists of either a Company Master or Chaplain, three units of tactical marines, a unit of assault marines and a unit of devastator marines. It has the option to add up to one unit each of the company command squad, company veterans and Dreadnoughts.

The bonuses you get are overwatch at BS3 if you did not Jink (technically, a Chaplain on a bike could join a unit in the formation and Jink) and gives the formation objective secured.

The battle demi-company is a decent formation and gives a nice bonus to your overwatch attacks. You are forced to take some mediocre unit choices that I have covered previously, namely the assault marines and Company Master/Chaplain, though these units do get some bonuses in the formation. Having objective secured devastators and assault marines is good, the high mobility of the assault marines should help with objective grabbing, especially in maelstrom missions where they can move from objective to objective and the objective secured should help them with scoring.

There are obvious comparisons to the battle demi-company in the Space Marine Codex and I am torn as to which I prefer. The space marine demi-company gives you more choice as to which heavy support and fast attack choices you can add. You have a unit of Devastator centurions in place of the devastator squad, and for the fast attack choice you can take a bike squad, attack bike squad, landspeeder squadron or Centurion assault squad. In addition, you can have a choice of the three Dreadnoughts available in the codex. I feel that this range of choices will give you much better options for how you want to build your army and the Dark Angels battle demi-company is more restrictive.

The space marine formation also allows you to enact the Tactical Doctrine, a one-use only ability should increase the damage output of the company, particularly the tactical marines. The Dark Angels formation gives you the overwatch bonus and should essentially triple your damage output from overwatch. Depending on the armament of your tactical and devastator squads, this could amount to significant damage for any unit that is charging you. This ability is always active and not one use only, though it does rely on your opponent charging you, so may be of less use against certain armies.

Dark Angels Codex Review Part 6- Heavy Support and Lord of War

Welcome to the penultimate part of my 7th edition Dark Angels codex review. If you missed the previous parts, there are links at the bottom of the post to take you to them.

In this part, I cover the last two sections of the force organisation chart, the Heavy Support category and Azrael, the Lord of War for the Dark Angels.

HEAVY SUPPORT

The first entry in the category, the Ravenwing Landspeeder Vengeance, was covered in the Ravenwing review section.

Battle Report 11- 1500 pts White Scars vs Orks

This written battle report features my White Scars taking on a rather unusual Ork army (at least in my opinion) commanded by Ross, played at Dundee Wargames Club.

 

The battle was big guns never tire and we ended up with 5 objectives on the board.

Battlefield terrain. The shield represents the objectives in the game.

My army consisted of:

Kor'sarro Khan on Moondrakkan (K)

Librarian- Mastery level 2 (L)

5 Bikers- 2 grav guns, sergeant with meltabombs (B1)

5 Biker- 2 meltaguns, sergeant with meltabombs (B2)

3 Bikers with attack bike- heavy bolter (B3)

10 Tactical marines (TS)- Flamer, in a drop pod (DP) with deathwind launcher and locator beacon

5 Scouts (S)- sergeant with meltabombs in a landspeeder storm (LS)

10 Devastators (D1 and D2)- 4 Missile launchers, in a Rhino (R)

Dreadnought (D)- Multimelta, Heavy Flamer

5 Assault terminators (T)- Storm shields and thunder hammers

 

My warlord trait was fixed with Khan and the Librarian got Prescience, Precognition and Foreboding. Not a great batch of powers; Prescience was always useful, Foreboding could come in handy, but if the Orks are at my devastators, then I am in trouble. I don't rate Precognition at all for a marine librarian.

My army was quite different from what I normally field, I wanted to try out some units that hadn't seen the battlefield yet and have a change from the blog wars list I have been playing with recently. In addition to Khan, I added the Librarian to see how he performed. I reduced the size of one bike squad and added an attack bike with heavy bolter to deal with the orks. I also got rid of the grav guns as they would have limited use. One unit kept them in case any meganobz turned up.

I took the scouts and landspeeder storm. With the Cerberus launcher going up to S4, it could actually do some damage against the Ork horde, plus blind tests are great against I2 as standard in the army.

I also added the Terminators. I knew that Ross was keen on walkers and thought these could deal with any walkers or even a Stompa if it showed up. A dreadnought rounded out the list. I was keen to see how it performed with its increased attacks.

 

When making my army, I tried to use the new Detachment rules in the space marine codex. However, I really struggled to fit it into 1500 pts. I had enough models for the basic demi-company, but when it came to the auxiliary choices, I could only go with the Stormwing or with the 1st company formation (with a unit of terminators and two units of Sternguard). These ate up way too many points to be able to field a decent demi-company list with any upgrades at all. I do want to try these out at some point, but it will need to be in a bigger game.

 

Dark Angels Codex Review Part 5- Elites and Fast Attack

Here is part 5 of my 7th edition Codex Dark Angels review covering the remaining Elites and Fast Attack sections.

 

ELITES

The Deathwing units in the elite section have been previously covered in the Deathwing review.

 

Company Veterans:

These veterans have exactly the same cost and options as the previous codex (with the additional option of grav weapons). They can get two special weapons in a 10-man squad and every member has the option of taking meltabombs. They can also swap the bolter for a chainsword, giving them a good number of attacks on the charge.

In a vacuum, the veterans are a decent unit. They can take two special weapons and each veteran can take a combi-weapon. With the addition of a drop pod, they can be an effective alpha strike unit.

 

However, Sternguard and Vanguard veterans are a superior choice. The Sternguard get access to special issue ammunition and the Vanguard can be equipped with jump packs and cheap power weapons, making them a more viable assault force. Company veterans are a decent choice, but there are more effective units on the codex for any role you may want to use them for.
In addition, the next choice on the list renders this unit obsolete.