Stormeagle!

Looky looky what leaked today

It's like a land raider and a Storm Ravevn had a baby! How cute!

This was found today on the forgeworld site. No Information at the moment other than the cost

£80

Ouch!  That's easily the cost of almost 2 Stormravens! It looks pretty cool though. It will most likely be an upgrade to the existing stormraven kit. Hopefully it will be in some way compatible with already built ones!

Well, let's take a look at what they are representing here

• Typhoon launcher (Maybe one, maybe 2) similar to the contemptor

• 2 twin linked lascannons (in the place of the previous missiles)

• Twin linked muli-melta

• Extended troop compartment (No dreadnought grapple though)

• Many, many, extra wings! haha. Seriously, the answer to 'why aren't people buying this shit' isn't 'add more wings'
  

Imperial Guard versus Blood Angels Pre-Game thoughts

Howdy folks!

Dok and I plan on playing a couple of games this weekend. We are going to run a round 3 of Orks Vs. GK which will have a full picture battle report. We will also be doing a mini battle report on our 2000 BA vs IG game but I am missing a few tanks still and no one wants to see a game full of proxies. :(

It should almost be as epic as the battle over Yavin 4!

Ughh, work

Work is holding me down and preventing me from making any sizable posts this week, leaving me very tired.

Like this, but with way more beard

So, hopefully when the craziness dies down and I can get home before 11:30 at night I will post some more awesomeness. Until then may all your Necrons and Blood Angels kill some bitch ass Tyranids!

Just another day...

That the preview of Dr. Who series 7 is out!!!!

A couple things about the trailer

• DALEK!!! The Daleks have been mysteriously absent from Matt Smiths run on Dr. Who. There was one briefly in the last couple episodes of series 6, but that is not enough to fill my Dalek quota! MOAR DALEKS PLZ!
• Cowboys... It looks like Matt is still wearing that cowboy hat for some freaking reason. And now he is battling alien Jonah Hex? Wtf is going on here? 
• Cleopatra???  If I'm not mistaken, I think that's supposed to be the notorious Cleopatra that is mentioned over and over again throughout the series. Which brings up the question, Where's River Song? 
• There's no preview of the new companion that I noticed. Maybe they haven't got any good scenes in yet, but it seems weird with the big announcement that they wouldn't even show a sneak peak
• More Dr. who!!! I'm just excited that the 7th series is under way and more episodes will be coming our way in the near future!

Later this week, I will be recapping some of the masters series games I got in this weekend. 2 down, 6 to go!

40k Masters series!

Game Empire Pasadena and Game Empire San Diego are running an interesting event this year. It is called the Warhammer 40k Masters series! 

I'll steal the recap from the link above

"The Warhammer Masters Series is intended to provide players in the Southern California Area a venue to show their stuff against the best of the best in Warhammer Fantasy and 40k. The series will be divided into a Northern Conference coordinated from Game Empire Pasadena, and a Southern Conference coordinated from Game Empire San Diego. The series is organized after the fashion of a professional sports league. Players will be split into divisions and will have a schedule of games laid out at the beginning of the season. Over the course of the season, players will compete with opponents both in and out of their division, record their glorious victories (and occasional defeats, perhaps!), and have a lot of fun!"

What, no dynamite?

The basic breakdown of this league is as follows

• All games are 2k
• You have to play every player in your division
• Missions and terrain are random each match
• At the end of the normal league, the top players go into a playoff. Then the winners of the north division and the south division playoff against each other!

 This is a cool attempt to determine who the best player in SoCal is. It would be awesome if the guys up north were in on this as well, but there would need to be at least two more stores involved. Oh, and the prize for the overall winner is cold, hard cash!

I'm gonna be doing battle reports on each of my games in this series against some of the best players around. Check out my opponent schedule

Andy V. - Imperial Guard - I've never played against Andy, but he wins a lot of tournaments and is a cool guy so I imagine this is going to be one of my hardest matchups.
Allan H. - Grey Knights - Allan, aka Blackmoor, is one of the best 40k players in the country, if not the world.  I did beat him up fairly good the last time we played, but his dice were mad at him, haha!
Lee H. - Space Wolves - Lee is an excellent Space Wolf player. I don't think I've ever actually played against him but I hear he is awesome.
Casey H. - Dark Eldar - Casey always has unfortunate dice against me, but is a really cool guy who reads this blog so I can't talk crap. Hi Casey! Haha!
Derek P. - Blood Angels - Derek recently switched from Deathwing to Blood Angels and I am really glad. I have terrible luck against deathwing. I'm not sure what's in his Blood Angel army besides girl marines, so this will be an interesting BA on BA matchup.
Travis S. - Orks - Travis is going down! I'm going to paint some shark teeth on my stormravens so they can be jawesome all over your face!
Rob P. - Dark Eldar - I don't believe I know Rob, but I only play armies that are good against DE. Or at least that's what Casey would say.
Greg - Orks - I got to know Greg over at the Realm at an RTT a couple months ago. He's a really cool guy who is about 6 months into playing 40k. I didn't think he had 2k worth of dudes when I talked to him last, so he must be upping his game. 

All in all, this is going to be a lot of fun. I haven't been able to play at 2k in a while with all the BAO practice, so this'll give me the chance to unleash some big armies and kill a lot of shit! And then, when I meet Dave in the finals, his dice can betray him again and I will walk away with $500 in my hand!

You're going down, sucker!

 

Chaos Space Marines: Plague Marines getting a fresh coat of evil!

Greeting followers of Chaos!

Most of the stuff you have seen from me over the last year has been about Orks and while I love me some Orks I am pretty excited about the rumors of the upcoming Chaos Codex.

So with the future in mind, I decided to put in some work on my favorite objective holding unit, my Plague Marines.

Here are a few pics of them at about 80% done. I will post up a finished picture when I get their rhino done.

In this pic I have just base coated and drybushed. Not a lot going on

Highlights on the gun and a few touches on the armor

Check out the new companion for the Doctor!

From BBC news

"Former Emmerdale actress Jenna-Louise Coleman has landed the role of the Time Lord's new companion in Doctor Who, the BBC has confirmed."

Check out her IMDB here

So, how will she stack up to previous companions? How will Amy Pond go? Will she stick around for a while or will they go back to rapid firing through companions? Most importantly, when will Rose be back?

Bring back Rose!

Nothing like some good Rose+Doctor action!

More Dark Angels rumors!

This may be a bit of a stretch, but it seems reasonable enough to me when combined with the white dwarf spine...

Some of the painting kits were leaked today and they showed off the colors, the how to paint book, the dvd, the hobby starter kit, new brushes, and the paint sets for fantasy and 40k. Now, according to the limited amount of research I just did on Google, every other 40k paint set has included Ultramarines colors and figures. The previewed paint set on the other hand...

BLAM! Dark Angels!

This doesn't prove or disprove anything, but it does make a strong case for a DA codex in the near future. Stock up on your deathwing and robed marines now! They might be flying off the shelves pretty soon...

'ard boyz is cancelled?

That's the rumour at least.

uh-oh, it's the wtf die!

I never was able to play in 'Ard Boyz, since it always was scheduled on my sweet, sweet yearly beach vacation, but I'm kind of disappointed to see it go. The word around town is that it always brought out the douchey of the douche since there was no comp to keep people in check. But I've been playing in no comp events almost the whole time I've been playing tournaments for 40k and I haven't really ran into that many douches.  Comp seems like more of a hindrance than anything. But that's a story for another day.

There are good things and bad things about 'ard boyz going away. On the good side, that clears up several months for the indy circuit to squeeze in more tournaments, hopefully it will get rid of 'ard boyz scoring as something that influences TO's (I'm not a fan of having to table my opponent to get max points. That doesn't seem fun), I don't have to even remotely consider 2500 as a point level, and I don't have to try and fit it in at the end of my vacation! 

And then there's the potentially bad things... This could mean GW is going further away from supporting a tournament structure for their game. Possibly leading to imbalanced rules since they are not prioritizing them and an overall decline in the game.  This may sound crazy, but when Soldado was interviewing for a position with GW, they told him to his face that GW does not prioritize tournament play. Their first priority is the new customer (read: teenager) with the rich parent. The tournament player has an established army and doesn't make as many bulk purchases (in their mind).

This seems to me like GW is shooting itself in the foot. People who play in tournaments seem to be the people you would most want supporting your game. They are passionate about the hobby and travel all over the world with their little plastic men to play warhammer.  Why wouldn't you support someone who is supporting your company?  Obviously, tournament players are in an abusive relationship with GW.

If GWs only goal is profit, then they are still fucking up! It's not like the indy tourney organizers run these events for their health. I'm sure they are turning a tidy profit.

In my personal experience, going to magic tournaments is what turned the corner for me from part time nerd to professional nerd. In my perception, It went from some nerdy card game we played during lunch at school to something that people all over the world were doing! That's a pretty crazy feeling for a young kid to have. You now belong to a global community of people who are enjoying the same thing that you are.

Fostering a community and supporting the player base are what I think GW needs to do to get it's ass in gear and stop being a monolithic corporation and bring itself down to the fans level.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Ah, St. Patricks day, a holiday after my own heart. It celebrates some of my favorite things in life, drinking, red heads, and more drinking!

As with most things, Wikipedia says it best "St. Patrick's Day, although not a legal holiday anywhere in the United States, is nonetheless widely recognized and celebrated throughout the country. It is primarily celebrated as a celebration of Irish and Irish American culture; celebrations include prominent displays of the colour green, feasting, copious consumption of alcohol, religious observances, and numerous parades. The holiday has been celebrated on the North American continent since the late eighteenth century, prior to the American Revolution."






So, go forth and drink  copious amounts of liquor!

And don't forget to wear your green!

BAO pics part 2!

I just got some pics in from Dave Fay of Dave Fay is awesome, inc and I wanted to post a few of the cooler ones, as well as a link to his gallery of shots from the BAO. You can see all the pics from his games and his time a the BAO here.

First up is Grimgob's home made Ork battlescape. The man loves him some Orks, what can I say? All the terrain is super modded to an Ork theme. down to the details of Ork graffiti and grots putting Orky bits on the imperial statue! Thanks for bringing this up, Grimgob!

Continuing the Ork theme, we have the winner of best painted overall. Soldado actually got to play against this gentleman and wound up taking him down. He's got a bunch of forgeworld counts as stuff, but a brilliantly painted bad sunz army!

Here's Dave and Russ' list from game 3 of the team event. Both armies are well done and I believe Dave got honorable mention in the overall painting contest.

Dave branded his box with a sweet 3 for int sticker.

 And finally, at the beginning of day 2. The epic matchup of matchups! Pre-game fight stance!

Game Empire RTT: Game 1 BA vs C:SM

This last Saturday my flgs had a 1850 RTT tourney. After the BAO, I decided I had enough of GK for a bit and decided to break out my Blood Angels!

Here's my list
HQ:
Mephiston
Librarian w/shield, unleash rage

Elite:
Assault terminators w/hammer, shields
Sang Priest w/power weapon

Troops
Assault squad x 10 w/2 melta gun, power fist
Assault squad x 5 w/melta gun, melta bombs, Rhino
Assault squad x 5 w/melta gun, melta bombs, Razorback w/Las-plas

Fast Attack
Baal Predator w/assault cannons, searchlight, dozer blade 
Baal Predator w/assault cannons, searchlight, dozer blade

Heavy
Stormraven w/Multi-melta, assault cannon, searchlight
Stormraven w/Multi-melta, assault cannon, searchlight 

The first game of the day was against Albert from dracusjournal with his excellently painted Celestial lions Space Marines

His list:
HQ
Vulkan

Elite
2 x ironclad w/heavy flamer in drop pods (He was using contemptors as his ironclads. They are very cool looking and they look awesome in the gold paint)
7 x assault terminators in a LRC

Troops
Tac squad x 2 w/flamer. missile launcher, fist, one in a rhino, one in a pod
Scout squad w/combi-melta, fist

Fast Attack
Land speeder storm

Heavy
Predator with lascannon sponsons

Bling, mothafuckin bling!

Albert's army is very well painted. He even has the celestial lion shoulder pads and rhino doors from forgeworld! They are spendy, but definitely add a unique feel to the army.

The mission for this game was a modified BAO. 2 40mm objectives in CnC deployment and 3 25mm objectives in seize ground deployment.  There was some other wackiness that got you points, but the main objectives were the objectives.  The mission deployment was dawn of war and Albert had the initiative.  He chose to go first and away we went!

Diablo 3 Release Date Announced

Breaking news from Irvine CA.

Diablo 3 has finally received a release date of May 14, 2012

WTF FINALLY!!!

Im going to click the shit out of things!!

 Hell yeah!!

Release info here

Necrons, my first impression

Last night I got to play a couple games with the new necron list I was posting about here. I played against Deathwing twice  at 1k and 1500.  I won both games, but they were very difficult and it seemed like the 'crons were very hit and miss. 

Boo!

I like the mechanics of the necrons.  They get a bit ridiculous when the 6's are plentiful. But if you are rolling average or below average then it's a bit underwhelming. I think the problems I was seeing were a bit magnified against Deathwing, but it's always good to play against your worst matchup. That way you can figure out a way to counter them. Dark Eldar seem like they would be an even worse matchup, with their speed and ability to make the crons take a lot of saves.

Here's a quick review of the units and how they performed in my first couple games

Woo hoo!

Suck it, Travis! Samurai Pizza cats are being released on DVD! Samurai pizza cats are by far superior to other anthropomorphic, jive talkin, Martial art knowing creatures! It's because they have catitude!

Forge world Decimator Preview - Pics and Thoughts

First and foremost, WOW!

It's an amazing model!!! Its everything a devoted Chaos Lord has ever wanted in a dread!!

Big, Scary, Menacing, fucking skulls and spikes!! HELL YEAH!!!!

Necron, wtf is a necron?

This weekend I was lucky enough to be able to find some painted wraiths, scarabs, and immortals at my flgs for a pretty decent price. And with the upcoming escalation league that the store is running, I figured why the hell not and I picked them up. My buddy also has an extensive collection of everything not marine, so I figured I could patch any holes with his collection.

Also, Necrons and BA can ally... right?

Tyranids are for bitches, amirite???

The first couple matches are going to be at 1000 points so I wanted to talk about some of the units that look good to me and then what I plan on trying for the first game. Check it!

Bay Area Open Singles recaps

For 40k singles, I decided to return with Grey knights since they performed so well for me last year. It looks like a lot more people had the same idea though. Here's My list.

It's a little different from what most people are playing, but I think the Grand Master makes all the difference in the BAO style mission. I used him to make my dreadnoughts and dreadknights scoring almost exclusively, but that made up for his points cost in almost every game. What I didn't really consider was how big of a target it made those units.  I still played just as aggressively with them, when maybe I should have held them back a little more and focused on the mission.

Check after the jump for recaps of my games and my thoughts on the tourney overall.

The armies of the Bay Area Open!

I got a chance to run around a bit on the first day and get a bunch of pictures of the awesome armies that came to fight for the top spot at the Bay Area Open 2012!

Check them out after the jump!

BAO 2012: Team event recap

I'm finally returning to a place where I can talk about this shit rationally, so without further ado... The BAO Team tourney recap!

Me and Soldado decided to head up to the BAO tournament a day early to take on the team tourney. The team event is basically 1000 points per person using the same force org chart. Only one person needs to take an hq and both need at least 1 troop. With that in mind, we decided it would be awesome if we took a bunch of planes! Also, Mephiston!

My army!

My list
HQ
Mephiston
Librarian w/fear of the dark, shield of sanguinus

Troops
Death company x 5 w/power fist
Death company dread w/blood talons

Heavy 
2 x Stormraven w/multi-melta, autocannon

Soldados list

Soldado's Army minus some dudes in the case

Elites
2 x Psyker battle squad (both with an overseer and 8 psykers) Both w/chimeras w/heavy bolter, multilaser

Troops
3 x Veterans w/ 3 x melta guns

Fast attack
3 x vendettas



When it comes to blood angels, I don't mess around. I'm either killing everything or you're gonna win :) This army was inspired by top gun and we were gonna dress up in shorts and go shirtless to re-enact the volleyball scene, but then we thought better of that. It was prolly best for everyone that we didn't.

Our tactics for these list is basically vrrrooommmm!!! planes! Other than that, we thought a bunch of planes would give us a definite mobility advantage. Soldado's shooting combined with my CC elements and supporting shooting from the SRs is pretty strong. The supplementary combo was weaken resolve/fear of the darkness.

Check out after the jump for some recaps of the games and some pics of our first battle

Bay Area Open 2012 Day 2

So with day 1 wrapped up I was pretty confident going into Day 2.

With my only loss coming from the person sitting at the top of heat, I didnt feel all that bad about that loss.

The day opened with me paired against Orks!!!

Game 5: Pitched Battle Deployment vs. Josh Harris's Orks (Won best painted)
We didn't do anything, at all really until about turn 4. It was a bunch of maneuvering to not get rolled over. In the end, I ended up winning by 1KP in the final turn. It was very silly, and orky chess match!

Game 6: Spearhead Deployment vs. Allan Hernandez's Paladins (I HATE GK!)
He combat squaded everything, rolled a 5 for +3 scoring units and proceeded to school me. Paladins are hard for orks and I played poorly. I think I have a strategy to beat him next time... I think....

Game 7: Pitched Battle vs Demitri Amero's Necron DeathStar.
This game was a headache. He deepstruck his deathstar unit in front of all my wagons, and I charged him with my whole army. From turn 1 to turn 7 we were locked in. It was pretty lame. My lootas killed a few Heavy Destroyers this game, which was their crowning achievement for the tournament. I wont this game on turn 7 with him just about tabled.

Overall, it was a great event and I ended up placing 13th. Should have been tied for 8th but I forgot to get my painting scored. God damn painting was the bane of my life this weekend. I guess it was just bragging rights difference between 8th and 13th, so whatever, but the weekend is a culmination of rookie mistakes and not following the simple instructions.

Word of advice to people playing in major tournaments; Follow the instructions!!!!

Day of rest

Let me tell you, even after sitting here all day and relaxing/watching Dr. Who (new episodes on netflix, woooooo!!!) I'm still tired as hell from 3 days of warhammer 40k madness in the bay!

Friday, me an Soldado played in the 40k doubles tourney with BA/IG with dreams of grandeur and riches beyond our wildest dreams. What ended up happening was not so much that. More on that tomorrow.

During the singles event I went a respectable 4-1-2 and Soldado went an excellent 5-2. Tying with 4 others for best Ork general including Grimgob and warboss Russ! That's some good company to be in and an excellent showing from the Ork codex in general.

The Overall winner was IG, with GK taking second and SW taking third. That's pretty much the breakdown of top power level codexes which is what you would expect to see at an event with no comp.  They haven't released the numbers yet, but the make up of the tourney was pretty strange from what I saw.  A good number of GK players, 5-6 eldar players, and only 3 necron players. I'm still surprised how few necron players are showing up at the tourneys. There have been none at the local RTTs and very few at the bigger events.

I'm not sure if that's due to the models not being widely available or if people just are not interested in them. But it seems like a weird phenomenon as the codex is excellent. Maybe robots just aren't people's style?

Either way, it was a really fun event, but really tiring. I'll be recapping my games and showing some pictures of the excellent armies at the event. Until then, I'm gonna watch me some more Dr. Who and rest up!

Bay Area Open 2012 Day 1

Here we are in the first day of the Warhammer 40,000 championship of the Bay Area Open 2012. I have the say its a veritable who's who of gaming and the competition is INTENSE!!!

On the day I am 3 wins 1 loss, my loss coming at the hands of Christian Allesio's ( Forgive my spelling) 6 Hyda IG, which is an absolute NIGHTMARE for my Battlewagons!!!

Quick recap:
Each of the games is played with a set deployment and the Bay Area Open mission, which is a combination of all 3 book missions at the same time!

I brought my standard Battlewagon Rush list.

Game 1, Dawn of War Deployment vs. Mech Eldar with a Farseer and Eldrad.
It was a tight game, I failed a lot of KFF saves, but in the end I eeked it out.

Game 2, Spearhead vs. IG. I was tabled... Really dead on turn 3.... Fuck IG!

Game 3, Pitched Batlle vs. Mech Eldar... (sooo much Eldar.).. with and Autach
He reserved out and came in piecemeal. I almost screwed up and handed him the game because the turns went by so fast, but I got it...

Game 4, Dawn of War (I HATE DoW) vs. Grey Knights (I HATE GKS!)
It was a non-standard list, and the game rested on a very close roll with Ghaz to charge and barely barely barely make it. It was so close we called Reece over to make the call for us. Damn close! Battlewagons wreaked havoc through his lines and Ghaz cleaned up like 6 KP. He was tabled on turn 6.

So with Day 1 behind us I know I am in for an uphill battle, lets hope my KFF holds strong and Ghaz can continue to kill everything!

Another report tomorrow after the event, I think...

Soft Scores and losing like Men! BAO Team Event.

The Bay Area Open Team Event was Dok and I's first endeavor into the doubles world.

After hours of deliberation we decided on the following lists:

THE AIR FORCE

Dok:

HQ
Mephiston
Librarian - Fear of the Dark / Shielding

Troops
5 Death Company with 1 Power Fist
Death Company Dread with Blood Talons

Heavy Support
StormRaven - Assault Cannon / Multi-Melta
StormRaven - Assault Cannon / Multi-Melta

Blood Lord Soldado (Myself, duh!)

Elites
Psycher Battle Squad +4 Psychers in a Chimera with Heavy Bolter and Multilaser Turret
Psycher Battle Squad +4 Psychers in a Chimera with Heavy Bolter and Multilaser Turret

Troops 
Veterans + 3 Meltas
Veterans + 3 Meltas
Veterans + 3 Meltas

Fast Attack
Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta

Results after the break!!

BAO day 1

So, it's Friday morning and we should be gearing up for the team tournament... But Soldado is over there snoring his ass off!  More as the day develops!