Medusa IV Campaign- Turn 3, Battle Phase 2 moves

With battle phase 1 having come to an end, the players made their moves for battle phase 2. The map now looks like this:

 

Medusa IV Campaign- Turn 3, Battle Phase 1 results

The battles have been fought, blood has been spilled and territory has been captured. Turn 3, battle phase 1 of the campaign comes to an end, here is how the map now looks:

 

 

The Ork horde continued their advance south through the forest. While they were having much fun smashing through the trees, they came upon a Tau outpost that promised even more fun for the Boyz.

 

As they were getting ready to attack, they were joined by some Chaos Space Marine allies, newly arrived to the area. The Warboss decided to be magnanimous (not that he knew what the word meant) and let the Chaos Boyz join the attack (after all, once the Tau were out of the way, they could always scrap with the Chaos followers).

Hobby Costs- October 2015

As part of my ongoing look at my hobby costs for the year, here are October's numbers:

 

• -£11.30 Sold Landspeeder (ebay)
• -£8.80 Sold Landspeeder (ebay)
• -£12.80 Sold Chimera (ebay)
• -£5.36 Sold Catachans (ebay)
• -£11.70 Sold Chaplain and bikers
• -£19.47 Sold Commissar and Tactical marines
• -£5.70 Sold Scouts
• -£5.50 Sold Attack bike
• £28.00 Large carry case (ebay)
• £53.00 White Scars cards and War zone Damocles: Kauyon
• £16.80 Ebay postage costs

Totals for October = £17.17

Running Total = £930

 

Damn you GW! I was doing so well this month until I read the new rules for the White Scars in the War zone Damocles: Kauyon expansion and picked up the book and the White Scars datacards to go with them. Really looking forward to trying out the new formations and Relics when it arrives. I also managed to find a cheap large carry case on ebay for transporting my Ravenwing in one case.

 

I managed to sell a lot of stuff on ebay in October which helped to pay for the new stuff that I purchased. 

Battle Report 33- 1850 pts Ravenwing vs Eldar

This week's battle report comes from a practice game that I had the night before Blog Wars X. When I arrived in Stockport on Friday night, I had a game against Pete's Eldar army in preparation for the tournament the next day.

My army consisted of:

 

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE

Sammael- on Corvex (with CS)

Interrogator-Chaplain- Space Marine Bike, Mace of Redemption, Auspex, Meltabombs (with BK)

 

5 Ravenwing Commnad Squad- Ravenwing Company Banner, Apothecary, Grenade Launcher (CS)

 

5 Black Knights- Grenade Launcher, Huntsmaster has Meltabombs (BK)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 grav guns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB1)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 plasma guns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB2)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 meltaguns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB3)

Dark Talon- Rift Cannon, Two hurricane bolters, stasis bomb (DT)

Ravenwing Landspeeder- Multimelta, Typhoon Missile Launcher (RL)

 

RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON

Ravenwing Darkshroud- Assault Cannon

3 Ravenwing Landspeeders- Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons (RSS)

As a note, due to the comp rules of the tournament, a 2+ re-rollable save (cover or invulnerable) became a 2+/4+ save. This reduced the effectiveness of the Darkshroud by a marginal amount. My Warlord trait was set with Sammael, giving me +3" to charge and turboboost moves.

Pete's army consisted of:
Prince Yriel (with W2)
Spiritseer- Rune Armour, Shuriken Pistol, Witch Staff (with W1)
4 Windriders- Shuriken Cannons (WR1)
4 Windriders- Shuriken Cannons (WR2)
9 Wraithguard- Wraithcannons (W1)
5 Wraithguard- D-Scythes (W2)
Wave Serpent- TL Scatter lasers (WS1)
5 Wraithguard- D-Scythes (W3)
Wave Serpent- TL Scatter lasers (WS2)
6 Swooping Hawks- Exarch (SH)
Wraithknight- Suncannon and Scatter Shield, Scatter laser (WK)

Pete's force was Wraith-heavy and was going to be tricky to deal with. Putting the D-Scythe Wraithguard in the Wave Serpents was problematic, as he could jump out and most likely eliminate any unit he wanted with their flamers. The Wraithknight would prove problematic too, as my Ravenwing army lacked the grav heavy set-up of my White Scars, but hopefully the massed plasma could deal with it.
Pete's warlord trait gave him -1 to my Reserve rolls and his Spiritseer got Cleansing Flame, Hammerhand and Banishment.

We decided to play the kill points mission, as I thought this would be the toughest challenge for my Ravenwing against Pete and wanted to test them.

Blog War X- Ravenwing Army Review

Once I have completed a tournament, I like to take a look over my list and battle reports to see how the army performed; what units met expectations and which units didn't really do much in the game. With my battle reports from Blog Wars X now finished, it is time to review my list and see how it performed.

 

As a reminder, my list was:

 

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE

Sammael- on Corvex

Interrogator-Chaplain- Space Marine Bike, Mace of Redemption, Auspex, Meltabombs

 

5 Ravenwing Commnad Squad- Ravenwing Company Banner, Apothecary, Grenade Launcher

 

5 Black Knights- Grenade Launcher, Huntsmaster has Meltabombs

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 grav guns, sergeant has Meltabombs

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 plasma guns, sergeant has Meltabombs

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 meltaguns, sergeant has Meltabombs

Dark Talon- Rift Cannon, Two hurricane bolters, stasis bomb

Ravenwing Landspeeder- Multimelta, Typhoon Missile Launcher

 

RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON

Ravenwing Darkshroud- Assault Cannon

3 Ravenwing Landspeeders- Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons

First off, my results at Blog Wars X were way better than I was expecting. I didn't think I had taken that tough of a list to the tournament and was really surprised with how well some of my games went. I don't know if this was due to some great dice rolling from me and some poor rolls for my opponents, but I don't think I faced any weak armies over my three games (in fact, Matt's army was specifically designed to counter lists like mine). With that said, let's take a look at my units and see how they performed.

Sammael

The Ravenwing Chapter Master was a compulsory choice for my army (in that I wanted to take the Ravenwing Strike Force and needed a special character), but I probably would have taken him anyway.

Sammael was my Warlord in all three of my tournament games (as well as the practice games), mostly due to the fact that he is a tough character (T5, 4+ invulnerable and Eternal Warrior) and for his guaranteed warlord trait (+3" to charge moves). His warlord trait is very handy, allowing me to risk long range charges with a greater chance of success.

His plasma cannon can be pretty powerful, but it does come with risks. In game 1, he almost killed himself firing it during the game, taking two wounds when it overheated. In fact, a lot of the time, I never got to fire the Plasma cannon as I was too busy Jinking with his unit.

In combat, Sammael was quite successful too. He did fight in a couple of challenges, but these were against low level sergeant models. In game 1, he slaughtered a power fist wielding sergeant to help save his squad from harm and took out several of the enemy Command Squad too. In game 2, he wiped out a unit of Eldar Jetbikes in combat and secured an objective on his own. In game 3, he took out some Pink Horrors in combat, but them embarrassed himself by being slaughtered by a lowly Thousand Sons Champion in a challenge.

Sammael certainly works better when provided with re-rolls to hit in combat (he does get one with the master-crafted sword), as occasionally you will roll poorly and struggle to get many hits with him in combat. His strength of 4 is also a bit unfortunate as he can often struggle to take on more powerful characters or even bike-mounted foes.

Overall, Sammael worked very well in the army, only dying in one of the three games. I would definitely take him again.

Blog Wars X- Armies on Display

Hi everyone, here are some of the photos of the armies on display at Blog Wars X.

 

First up we have some of the entrants for best army.

Medusa IV Campaign- Turn 3, Battle Phase 1 Moves

With turn 2 coming to an end, the players made their turn three moves, some taking the opportunity to build new structures with their hard-earned resource points. The Medusa IV campaign continues, with the map now looking like this:

Medusa IV Campaign- Turn 2, Battle Phase 2 results

Turn 2 in the Medusa IV 40k map campaign came to an end a couple of weeks ago, I've just had too much to post with recent tournaments to update the progress until now! Here's how the map looks:

Blog Wars X: Game 3- Ravenwing vs Chaos Space Marines/Chaos Daemons

Welcome to the third and final battle report from my games at Blog Wars X. Game 1 and Game 2 had seen two solid victories for my Ravenwing, meaning that in game 3 I found myself at the lofty heights of table 1 for the final game of the tournament. What was even scarier was that I actually had a shot a winning the whole tournament!

Game 3 was a maelstrom mission using a modified Blog Wars tactical objectives deck. There were 18 cards in the deck, three drawn each turn and six turns in the game, so you could potentially score every card during the game. The six seize objective cards were worth 2 pts each, the other cards were worth 1 or 2 pts depending on what the card was. Impossible to achieve cards were discarded before the game began (cards that became impossible to achieve as the game went on had to be kept) and one card could be discarded at the end of each turn.

I was exceedingly nervous going into this game, given how high I was placed in the rankings (I must have been either 1st or 2nd). I was even more nervous when I saw that I was playing Matt and his Tzeentch Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemon army. Matt and I had chatted during the day and I found out that my army was the exact kind he expected to face at Blog Wars and had designed his army as a counter to it. He had at least three AP3 flamers in the army and all his psykers would be taking psychic shriek (great against bike armies), with Ahriman being able to cast it 3 times in one phase. To say this was going to be a tough game was a little bit of an understatement.

As a reminder, my army consisted of:

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE

Sammael- on Corvex (with CS)

Interrogator-Chaplain- Space Marine Bike, Mace of Redemption, Auspex, Meltabombs (with CS or IC)

5 Ravenwing Commnad Squad- Ravenwing Company Banner, Apothecary, Grenade Launcher (CS)

5 Black Knights- Grenade Launcher, Huntsmaster has Meltabombs (BK)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 grav guns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB1)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 plasma guns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB2)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 meltaguns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB3)

Dark Talon- Rift Cannon, Two hurricane bolters, stasis bomb (DT)

Ravenwing Landspeeder- Multimelta, Typhoon Missile Launcher (RL)

RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON

Ravenwing Darkshroud- Assault Cannon

3 Ravenwing Landspeeders- Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons (RSS)

As a note, due to the comp rules of the tournament, a 2+ re-rollable save (cover or invulnerable) became a 2+/4+ save. This reduced the effectiveness of the Darkshroud by a marginal amount. My Warlord trait was set with Sammael, giving me +3" to charge and turboboost moves.

Matt's army consisted of:

CHAOS SPACE MARINES:
Ahriman (with TS1)
Chaos Sorcerer- Level 3, Spell Familiar, Meltabombs, Skalanthrax (with TS2)
9 Thousand Sons (TS1)
Rhino (R1)
9 Thousand Sons (TS2)
Rhino (R2)
Helldrake- Baleflamer (H1)
Chaos Predator- TL Lascannons, two Lascannon sponsons (P1)
Chaos Predator- TL Lascannons, two Lascannon sponsons (P2)

CHAOS DAEMONS:
Lord of Change- level 3 psyker (LoC)
10 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (H2)
Burning Chariot of Tzeentch- Blue horror crew (FC)

His warlord trait allowed him to Infiltrate one unit. For the plethora of psychic powers, he got:

Ahriman- Tzeentch's Firestorm, Boon of Mutation, Endurance, Life Leech, Psychic Shriek
Sorcerer- Life Leech, Enfeeble, Psychic Shriek
Lord of Change- Flickering Fire, Cursed Earth, Sacrafice, Dark Flame, Summoning
Thousand Sons 1- Tzeentch's Firestorm, Breath of Chaos
Thousand Sons 2- Tzeentch's Firestorm, Breath of Chaos
Horrors- Flickering Fire, Infernal Gaze, Summoning

Blog Wars X: Game 2- Ravenwing vs Eldar

Welcome to my second battle report from Blog Wars X. Having won my first game, I found myself at table 4, going up against Tess' Eldar/Dark Eldar army.

 

The mission was the Emperor's Relic; a modified Relic mission with an immobile Relic in the centre and one objective for each player in their own deployment zone. The Relic was worth 10 pts, your own objective was worth 5 pts and your opponent's was worth 15 pts. Secondary objectives were also in play.

This was one of the missions I was worried about , as I only had one objective secured unit in my list (the tournament rules grant Sammael objective secured for this mission), so would have to completely control any objective I wanted to grab.

 

As a reminder, my army consisted of:

 

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE

Sammael- on Corvex (with CS or S)

Interrogator-Chaplain- Space Marine Bike, Mace of Redemption, Auspex, Meltabombs (with CS or IC)

 

5 Ravenwing Commnad Squad- Ravenwing Company Banner, Apothecary, Grenade Launcher (CS)

 

5 Black Knights- Grenade Launcher, Huntsmaster has Meltabombs (BK)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 grav guns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB1)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 plasma guns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB2)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 meltaguns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB3)

Dark Talon- Rift Cannon, Two hurricane bolters, stasis bomb (DT)

Ravenwing Landspeeder- Multimelta, Typhoon Missile Launcher (RL)

 

RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON

Ravenwing Darkshroud- Assault Cannon

3 Ravenwing Landspeeders- Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons (RSS)

As a note, due to the comp rules of the tournament, a 2+ re-rollable save (cover or invulnerable) became a 2+/4+ save. This reduced the effectiveness of the Darkshroud by a marginal amount. My Warlord trait was set with Sammael, giving me +3" to charge and turboboost moves.

Tess' army consisted of:

Prince Yriel (with FD)
Farseer- Singing Spear (with W)
3 Windriders- Scatter lasers (W1)
3 Windriders- Scatter lasers (W2)
3 Windriders- Scatter lasers (W3)
6 Fire Dragons- Exarch (FD)
5 Wraithguard- D-scythes (W)
7 Warp Spiders- Exarch (WS1)
Wave Serpent- Scatter Lasers (WS2)
5 Dark Reapers- Exarch (DR1)
5 Dark Reapers- Exarch (DR2)
2 Warwalkers- Bright Lances (WW)

Archon- Webway portal, Shadowfield, Haywire Grenades (with W)
5 Kabalite Warriors (KW)
Raider- Nightshield (R)

His warlord trait gave him +1 to seize the initiative and re-rolls on his reserve rolls. His psychic powers were Eldritch Storm, Will of Asuryan and Mind War.

Quite a tough Eldar list to face. The Archon/Wraithguard/Serpent combination meant the unit could deep strike anywhere on the board and D flame a unit of his choice. The Fire Dragons would embark on the Raider to deep strike also. Jetbikes are a pain as they are really fast and can put out a lot of firepower. Dark Reapers are great against Bike armies as they are AP3 and ignore Jink saves, meaning my Ravenwing would be in trouble.
Thanks to the +1 to reserve rolls from the Autarch and the re-rolls to reserves from the warlord trait, the Eldar reserves were practically guaranteed to arrive on turn 2.

I won the roll for table side and chose the side with the Ruins to deny them to Tess. I won the roll for deployment too and elected to go first, hoping to hit the Eldar hard before they could strike. I deployed everything forward, the Ravenwing support squadron covering the Command Squad.

In reply, Tess set up only three units. The Warp Spiders and warwalkers deployed in the rocks to my right, with the Kabalite warriors deploying to the left at the back.

Deployment and Scout moves. The shields represent the objectives.