Building Better Allies in Blocks

Working through small ally contingents for use with my Space Wolves has led me to thinking about a system of putting together ally forces in a concept of building blocks. The concept of building blocks follows a simple format that creates a single ‘base block’ being your primary detachment. The’ base block’ starts at a bare bones 1,000 point list with no frills and no gimmicks, just wholesale pain at discount prices. To this base block we add detachments of allies that are preformatted into ‘task blocks’ depending on the situation. These ‘task blocks’ fall into three categories: offensive, defensive and operational. In my system ‘task blocks’ only requirement is to be less than 750 points, this gives you a package at the most common point value of 1,750 points.

Adepticon 2012: Combat Patrol Thoughts and Review!

Combat patrol at Adepticon is quickly over shadowed by bigger things like the Grand Tournament and the Team Tournament. Heck, I even read more about the Gladiator event than anything related to Combat Patrol! This is really unfair to the Combat Patrol event and I found it to be my favorite event of the weekend. Combat Patrol is like speed dating for 40k, you get to meet a ton of people really quickly and the games are very fast and very brutal. Each of my four games was easily completed in less than 40 minutes. The action is fast paced and very unforgiving, unlike in an 1850 point game when you make a bad decision in Combat Patrol it is a much harder hole to dig your way out of. Another cool thing about combat patrol is that is takes place in the Grand Ballroom while the Team Tournament is going on – so there is plenty to look at between games!

Adepticon 2012: General Thougths

At the end of the day Adepticon offers an opportunity for a gaming experience unlike any other. Guys who go every year or live in larger cities with many large events every year with a large player base don’t have an appreciation for how lucky they are. The largest tournament I had been to was only twenty six people, the best I ever placed in a tournament was second. The large majority of us play consistently in smaller venues with a much smaller crowd of local players we consistently see. Adepticon brings in a huge crowd of players with tons of different ability levels, you will see guys who flew in from Sweden and play on the Swedish ETC team, guys with multiple other Grand Tournament wins and even local guys who come because it’s right down the road. 

Adepticon 2012: Part VI (Final Round!)

Going in to the 4^th round at Adepticon things were going great for my first real ‘GT’ experience – too great. I had racked up 3 wins against 3 great opponents and in facing Necrons, Tau and Eldar I had faced a slew of really fun armies and avoided the dreaded Grey Knights. Tim was excited for me but I had a strange feeling in my gut, something bad was about to happen – with 3 wins I would be in the top 25% of tables and with over 25% of the field being Grey Knights I knew my luck was running out. The pairings were posted and with some reservation I headed up to the wall to find my next table assignment.

Adepticon 2012: Part V

Going into the third round I was excited to be positioned where I was and thankful for playing both Necrons and Tau, but my odds of dodging Grey Knights were diminishing with each passing round. Bracing myself for the inevitable thrashing at the hands of Grey Knights I once again waited in line for the pairings posted on the wall and headed off to find out what awaited me at ‘Table 95’.

Not the Actual table, but you get the idea...

Adepticon 2012: Part IV (A New Hope!)

After completing my first game against my Necron opponent it was time for lunch, basically a 45 minute break for all 250 some odd players in the room. I quickly found Tim and found out that his game didn’t go as well as mine. Looking around we decided to make a bathroom run, top off the water and check on the Forgeworld line. Unfortunately the Forgeworld line was obscene so we went back into the hall and ate some fiber bars and drank some water while we reviewed the next mission. After all my research on Adepticon there was one piece of advice from Sandwyrm over at The Back 40k that stuck in my mind, DRINK WATER!

 

Adepticon 2012: Part III

The Adepticon Grand Tournament starts at 9 am on the schedule, but in reality that is check-in and army display preparation. So if you get down to the grand hall at about 8:30 AM Friday morning and people are milling about turning in army lists and checking in with the scoring table. Once you hand over your army list you get your mission packet and the judges let you know that the first round starts at 10:30. You find a spot and set up your army for display while frantically going over all the missions to determine how screwed you are. My first thought was ‘Crap! Every mission has kill points’ I even sent a text back to my buddies at home to let them know how screwed I was with my 19 kill point list as I glanced around at Grey Knight armies with 5 and 6 kill points!

Adepticon 2012: Part II

Simply getting to Adepticon with army in tact is an experience all in itself. I had my army figured out months ahead of time and spent the money on a Battle Foam case, this proved to be almost a requirement. I flew to Chicago with a bag for my clothes, a bag for my army and a small separate cardboard ‘picture frame’ for my simple display board. Two things about traveling, number one is spend the money on a good case if you are going to fly (more on that later) and make certain you have some extra room for the return flight! After the event was over I had to buy another bag to carry all the things I just could not live without that I bought (or won) at the event, conveniently enough there is a Target less than 100 meters away from the hotel.

Just getting there is half the battle!

Adepticon 2012: Part I

This is the first in a series of articles I will be writing about my experience at Adepticon 2012, from the perspective of a veteran of the game for almost two decades - that had never had the opportunity to attend a large event. How do you make it so many years in the hobby without ever attending a large event? Well here on the West Coast we didn’t have the benefit of so many years of large GT’s and independent events like the guys over on the East Coast for one, and two – I was always intimidated about going to a large event.

Transmission from Mars: Alaitoc Rangers +

From Stuff I Have Painted: Eldar/Dark Eldar

Finished up a squad of Alaitoc Rangers yesterday. For those of you that are keeping track...these are not orks either. They didn't actually come out at all how I thought they would, which can also be said about the photography for them... The camo pattern worked way better in my head,and while I still like it, it isn't what I expected. I used the browns and purples to tie them into the base, however I was trying to keep them lighter in tone in order to contrast with the forth-coming Pathfinder squad, which I intend to be quite dark.

Space Wolves: Second Look at Speeders

When your codex contains arguably some of the best troop and heavy support choices in the game, its easy to overlook things in the rest of the book. My Space Wolf list had been very meat, Grey Hunters, and potatoes, Long Fangs, in the past – to the exclusion of everything else. I wasn’t using anything except those two choices, the only difference in my lists would be whether or not I substituted in three drop pods to get the assault forces in there even faster. Then, as if by fate, I found three old speeders in a box I was sorting through the other day.

Photo Credit: Space Wolves Grey Blog

Army List: 1850 Space Wolves Toughts

I am continuing to get in games testing this list and practicing with it. Recently I have switched from being a 'rhino rush and beat your face list', to a more subdued 'take the midfield and challenge you to take it back list'. I know allot of people roll with Wolf Guard Battleleaders and other hand to hand thing-a-ma-jiggers in their lists but I roll with the double Rune Priest. Against Grey Knights, Eldar and Tyranids (no catalyst for you!) the 4+ negate psychic is murder.

Wolves take to the rout!

Hobby: Display Board

Display boards for your army come in all shapes and sizes, from the complex to the very basic. Using a simple 20 x 30 inch picture frame using the glass for your display surface is a very simple way to do it, adding some textured paper with a color matching your army underneath the glass can help tie it in to your army.

Grey Knights: The New Leaf Blower!

So a Grey Knight army won the NOVA invitational, congratulations to the Winner of the invitational tournament go to Nick Nanavati who managed to use his own cunning, tactical strategy and skill to design a list and play it well enough to win the tournament!   The finals of the open tournament also feature another Grey Knights army that was ground to bitz by the juggernaut that is Tony Kopach; the wunderkind who won last years open and this years Adepticon at just 17 years of age. So now with all the data mining from the 'ard Boyz and now the NOVA tournaments we can finally stick a fork in the Imperial Guard auto-win mythos, once and for all, right? Now that Grey Knight are racking up win after win and laying waste to all that stand in their way, we know they are the new kings of the hill and we can all begin constructing our very own internet auto win kill lists! Right!?

Grey Knights are the new Bieber!

'Ard Boyz; Garbage in, Garbage out

How to create a 40k 'hockey stick' with statistical data is really not as hard as you might think. By assuming that we can use army placement in tournaments as the perfect predictor of the individual viability of armies in a perfect data set that represents the entire cross section of the country; we no doubt arrive at a set of data point ripe for manipulation. In the Warhammer 40k blog-u-verse it is the constant analysis of numbers, that have any number of variables built into them that absolutely no one can account for, in order to produce results that support your hypothesis that acts as our 'perfect model'. The hypothesis being supported depends on the individual conducting the analysis and what particular set of data they have gotten their hands on. Oh. My. God. What did he just say?!

The blogger way to conduct analysis

Game Time: SPOCON Results

Every community has its little convention of gamers getting together once a year. The Inland Northwest is no different and this weekend gamers from around western Washington, northern Idaho and eastern Montana gathered in Spokane for shenanigans and general merriment. Card flippers, role players, board gamers, historical and sci-fi miniature players and LARPers (the most dreaded of all geeks) all gathered to stare at each other’s silliness while other people who had the misfortune of stumbling by got to be surprised by it all.

Ummmm - where was the sign up sheet for that again?

Gaming: Monthly Tourney Time!

One of the local gaming shops has been running some monthly tournaments and this months was a primer for the upcoming large tournament at SPOCON. The TO (tournament organizer) for this one (Winterman) is the same guy who will be doing the SPOCON tourney and he used the scenarios he has been working on for the big tournament.

Game Time: Walker Battle Royale!

An event where only walkers can be used; it’s Battletech 40k! One of the local hobby shops is holding an event next weekend with some interesting rules. The armies are limited to ‘walkers’ from the elites, fast attack or heavy support categories. The armies are then further limited to 200 points. The interesting trade off is that once a unit is destroyed it can respawn the next turn in a random deployment zone and at the beginning of each turn there will be a roll off for who goes first. Special awards given for most kill points, longest time without losing a model and so on…

Edward Teach and his Sentinel of dewm come for you!

Game Time: SPOCON army list progress

When I put together my list for SPOCON, the annual local geekery convention with 40k tournament thrown in, I thought the majority of my army was done. What a horribly wrong assumption that turned out to be! After reviewing my army list and laying out the mini's I came to the dramatic realization that I have a bunch of work to do in order to get this force ready to my standards prior to the tournament in a month.

Imperial Guard Army List: SPOCON

SPOCON is an annual shindig here in the Inland Northwest much like other annual conventions held around the country. It’s a SCI-FI / Fantasy event featuring gaming, comics, quest speakers, a writing contest and other accoutrements of general geekdom. Of course there will be a tournament for 40k players featuring an ‘Adepticon’ style unique missions and game play married to a NOVA style scoring system for overall champion with points for painting, sportsman ship and gaming.

Badges, every gamer loves badges.