White Scars Army Review- blog wars tournament

Having reported on all my battles from Blog Wars 9, I thought I would take the time to review my army and how it performed during the day. If you need context for the review below, follow the links to get the battle reports for my battles against the Space Wolves, Necrons and Space Marines.

 

1. Chapter Master

My Chapter Master had the standard internet load out; bike, artificer armour, power fist, shield eternal and auspex. I liked the Chapter Master, his 2+ save, 3+ invulnerable and eternal warrior did field a lot of wounds that otherwise would have resulted in dead bikers. He managed to get into combat in all 3 games, but only in one did he make a difference. In the first game, he failed to kill my opponent's wolf lord (who was on one wound) and killed a few destroyers and immortals on my game against the necrons. In the third game, he managed to kill most of a unit of Sternguard and his orbital bombardment took out the enemy warlord and a Centurion. He only survived the final game, running off the board in the first and being killed in the second.

His warlord traits were very useful in the first and third game (infiltrate and fearless, respectively). Overall, he was a powerful unit, but I don't think I used him to optimal effectiveness. I tended to keep him out of combat, where he probably should have got stuck in more. I would probably take him again in the army.

Blog Wars Armies on Display

There were some fantastic armies on display for blog wars 9. Some examples are shown below (albeit in my shoddy photography skills).

First up was Dave Weston's amazing tyranid army. Dave ended up taking the prize for best army and best character. You can check out more of his army on his blog.

Blog Wars Battle Report 3- Howling Griffons Space Marines

When I arrived in Stockport for blog wars on Friday, I met up with Luke, Peter and Daniel for some practice games. Luke and I squared off against one another as he wanted some practice with the Maelstrom mission against a fast moving force. It was a fantastic game, which I will write up at a future point.

Imagine my surprise when I turned up for my third game on table 8 (luckily, I didn't have to move!) and it was against Luke's great Howling Griffons Space Marines army. This was going to be really interesting. We both knew what to expect from each other's armies and had a very close first game against one another, would this game turn out the same?

White Scars advance.

Luke's army consisted of:

Inquisitor Coteaz (C)

Level 1 Librarian (L)

3 Grav Centurions (Cent)

Thunderfire cannon and techmarine (TC)

4 Bikers- 2 grav guns (B)

5 Scouts- Sniper rifles and camo cloaks (S)

5 Devastators- Lascannon and 3 Missile Launchers (D1 and D2)

2 units of 5 Sternguard- Combi-meltas (S1 and S2) in drop pod (DP1)

2 units of 5 Sternguard- Combi-meltas  (S3 and S4) in drop pod (DP3)

2 units of 5 tactical marines- one with meltagun  (T3 and T3) in drop pod (DP2)

2 units of 5 tactical marines- one with missile laucher (T1 and T2)

His warlord trait game +1 to seize the initiative and re-roll of reserve rolls (which we both forgot about). In addition to Coteaz and his re-roll, the chances of seizing were quite high. A lot of small units for grabbing objectives and some serious firepower.

Blog Wars Battle Report Game 2- Necrons

Game two was against Ben’s Necrons in a Decurion detachment on table 8. I have not played Necrons since the new codex came out, but had read all about the durability of the Decurion detachment, so was expecting a tough match.

The mission was a modification of The Relic. There were 3 objectives; one in the centre of the table and one in each of our deployment zones. Your own objective was worth 5 points, the centre was worth 10 points and your opponents was worth 15.

Trouble comes this way.

Ben’s army consisted of:
2 units of wraiths (W1 and W2)
two units of flayed ones (FO1 and FO2)
a unit of necron warriors (NW)
two tomb spiders (TS1 and TS2)
two units of scarabs (S1 and S2)
two units of immortals (I1 and I2)
a unit of destroyers (D)
a unit of Lynchguard (L) and Nemesor (N).
Seeing them arrayed, that was a whole heap of necrons to try and kill.

Blog Wars Battle Report Game 1- Space Wolves

I set off early in the am to the distant land of Stockport. I had a car packed with mighty warriors, eager to sell their lives for victory, along with a long drive's supply of power ballads (I wanna know what love is!) and pockets full of my strange, foreign money (the most fun you can have in England is trying to buy things with Scottish money, I occasionally throw in monopoly money, just to see if they notice). This was my first foray to Blog Wars and I was looking forward to seeing how I got on. My last tournament gave me one win, one loss and one draw, I was eager to see how my fortune would change.

 

Unfortunately, due to the time constraints of the tournament, I was unable to take sufficient notes for a full battle report, but will give an overview of the battle with plenty of photos.

The mission was essentially kill points. You scored a number of blood points proportional to how much of the enemy army you destroyed (a unit or model reduced to 50% models or wounds/hull points was worth half) and a bonus for killing the special character, as well as the secondary objectives

Our forces clash.

My first game was against Nathaniel (NafNaf from Objective Secured) and his thunderwolf cavalry heavy Space Wolves army (Blue in maps). His fantastic looking army (along with some lovely conversions) consisted of:

 

Two units of 5 thunderwolf cavalry- with wolves and storm shields (T1 and T2)

One Wolfguard battle leader on thunderwolf (WBL)

Two Iron Priests on Thunderwolf (IP1 and IP2)

Tactical squad (TM1) with two plasma guns in rhino (R)

Tactical squad (TM2) with two meltaguns and combi-melta in drop pod (DP2)

Dreadnought (D)- blizzard shield and great axe in drop pod (DP3)

Arjac Rockfist (A) and 4 terminators (T)- mix of thunder hammers, storm shields and combi-meltas in drop pod (DP1).

Battle Report 6- White Scars vs. Astra Militarum

This week at Dundee Wargames Club, I played a battle against Pete's Astra Militarum army. I had previously played Pete's Harlequin army, so it would be interesting to see how the Guard fared against the White Scars. We played 1500 pts on a 4 foot by 4 foot board and rolled up Emperor's Will for the mission (one objective in each of our deployment zones). This would be my last game before blog wars, so I wanted to run my White Scars again for the game. After blog wars, I think I will run a different army for a while, maybe my Orks or Guard (or even get the Vampires out for some fantasy gaming).

The battlefield had a trench line running along the centre, with some ruins in each deployment zone and one in the middle besides the trenches. There were a few craters scattered around the board. The set up looked interesting, some cover for the shooting elements of our armies but plenty of open space to manoeuvre and for gun lines.

The game in full swing.

My army consisted of:

Chapter Master- Bike, Power fist, Artificer Armour, Shield Eternal, Auspex (CM)

5 Bikers- 2 Grav guns, Sergeant with Meltabombs (B1)

5 Bikers- 2 Grav guns, Sergeant with Meltabombs (B2)

5 Bikers- 2 Meltaguns, Sergeant with Meltabombs (B3)

Attack Bike- Multimelta (AB1)

Attack Bike- Multimelta (AB2)

3 Centurions- Grav cannons and grav amps (C)

10 Devastators- 4 Missile launchers (D) with Rhino (R)

10 Tactical Marines- Meltagun, sergeant with combi-melta and melta bombs (TM) in drop pod (I forgot to include this when making up the maps).

 

My warlord rolled on the Personal table and got the one which gives an extra victory point for each enemy character slain in a challenge (very useful with all the sergeants running around). My plan was to take the first turn or two to focus on the enemy armour and eliminate it. I know how much damage Guard tanks can do to marines. With the armour out of the way, I could hopefully rely on the toughness of the bikes to take out the guardsmen and hold the objective in the enemy's deployment zone. I would definitely be outnumbered, but with any luck, my tougher troops could hold out against the massed guard firepower.

 

Back from Blog Wars

Got back today from Blog wars 9 (that was a long, long drive!). Had a fantastic weekend of gaming, lots of excitement and close, harrowing games. It was a great event that was very well run and very enjoyable. Well done to Alex (from From the Fang) for putting on such a brilliant tournament.

 

Many thanks to my opponents on the day, all were a pleasure to play against. I will be posting photos and battle overviews from my games over the next couple of weeks, as well as photos from the armies that were on display.

 

It was nice getting to meet everyone whose blogs I have been following for a long time, I can now put faces to a lot of the names. I also got some nice compliments on my army, objective markers and the blog, which was definitely appreciated.

 

Many thanks to Luke, Peter and Daniel for keeping me company and for the practice game on Friday night (see Luke, who said that meeting up with a random guy you met on the internet always turns out badly?).

 

Hopefully, I will be able to make the journey for blog wars 10 in November.

Blog Wars Bound!

Today is blog wars 9! My car is packed with a display board, dice, books and White Scars eager for battle.
Good luck to everyone for the event today, sorry in advance for my surly pouting as your army stomps across mine with as much resistance as polystyrene to spray paint.

Objectively Important- Objective markers in 40k

My Dark Angels have scrambled over the battlefield, searching for errant scraps of paper.
My Orks have scoured the board for wayward Gretchin.
My Guardsmen have surged forward, eager to reunite with their unpainted brethren.

My armies have fought over a large and varied number of objectives over the years. From my initial forays into 40k, where the objectives were ripped up sheets of paper with victory points written on them, to using spare models that were not involved in the game to represent points of interest on the board (this last one in particular can get tricky if you forget these models are not involved in the game and accidently try to assault the objective).

More than any other edition of the game, objectives are a big deal in 40k.

 

Now, what has this got to do with anything? you may ask. I decided it was high time to get some proper objective markers made up. This was during my Imperial Guard phase, so the objective markers were themed around my guard force and painted up to match their colour scheme, but will work for any of my armies.

I don’t know about you, but I find it much more exciting to fight over a communications array or some supplies, rather than over unpainted models or different coloured dice.

 

These objective markers were made from the spare bits and pieces that tend to go unused over the years from different boxed sets or vehicle accessory sprues. They do have a slight sheen to them though. After I applied the numbered transfers (for use in maelstrom mission), I decided to give them a coat of purity seal to help keep the transfer on and help stop damage to the paint. For some reason, this resulted in the models getting a nice, white sheen so that all my battles now appear to take place at dawn on a nice winter morn, so that all my objectives have a nice layer of frost on them. Oh well, if everything was easy…….

 

Here are all six objective markers in all their glory.

White Scars blog wars army- updated

After a flurry of painting in the past few weeks, I finally managed to get my army for blog wars finished. The army has seen some modification from my previous post, thanks to some playtesting and advice from some fellow gamers (many thanks to the fine folks on 40k Addicts facebook group for their tips).


Blog wars army arrayed for battle.