Spring Update

I've been busy for the last few weeks, and I wanted to share what I've been up to!

Since my last post I have indeed received my Ariadna army for Infinity. It's 20 very specific models, and I couldn't have done it as cheaply as I did without Shae Konnit from the Dakka Dakka boards. I've played about a half dozen games with them now and I've learned mountains of new rules each time. I'm thankful that my list works well because I sort of bought it blindly. As I said I hadn't played for a while, but I was reading up on special rules and designing several lists, and finally settled on something I thought would be fun to play but not super overpowered so as not to scare off newcomers. Here's a group shot of all the models (unfortunately unpainted):

In the back left you have five Scots Guards (two with Molotoks, three with AP Marksmen Rifles) together as a linked team. Their main weakness is a lack of MSV and range, but anything up to 24" away that's not camouflaged is toast. Part of the same combat group is the five Caledonian Volunteers in front of them (two with Rifles, three with Chain Rifles). They're the order fodder for the Scots Guard link team, and can actually clear out other lesser infantry models with relative ease thanks to the Chain Rifles. In the second combat group on the right, I've got a Dozer Engineer with two Traktor Muls (one Katyusha MRL and one Uragan MRL), a 112 Doctor, a Caledonian Volunteer LT, two forward observer S.A.S. dudes with CH: Camo and Infiltration, then three 45th Highlanders with Chain Rifles. Again, that's 20 models (technically 21 orders) and it has been fairly fun to play. I bought enough "specialist troops" to be able to complete objectives in ITS missions, but my goal is to have a competent force for standard play that opponents might have more fun playing against than your standard Nomad/Aleph/CA tournament list full of bad-asses with high stats and paragraphs of special rules. These are super low-tech humans, and half of them are in kilts.

In the world of 40k, I have been keeping up with the campaign and even participated in a $10 tournament my local store (Shieldbreakers) put on a few weeks ago. The owner refused to show the missions before hand, but thankfully I read up on most of the major tournament mission packets the night before so when he handed out the Adepticon 2014 Championship packet, I was already familiar with them (just not the horribly worded scoring section lol). I ran my balanced, take-all-comers Tau list in that tournament expecting not to do well, and let's just say I got what I expected. In the first round I was randomly paired against Noah and his Seer Council Eldar list with DE allies. Noah's a fun opponent and a cool guy, but he certainly came to win lol (not blaming him, it was a tournament). This Seer Council was maxed out with two Farseers and 10 Warlocks all on jetbikes, an attached Baron from the Dark Eldar codex, and he also had a few Wave Serpents, War Walkers, and Warp Spider units. Here's a picture post turn one:

Right where the red oval is in the picture is where that Jet-Seer Council is after the first turn, and it assaulted both Broadside units and my Riptide there on the right in the second turn. It used hit and run and re-engaged after shooting the units up some more, and after a little while I had lost on the Primary, tied on the Secondary, but ultimately lost this very decisively. I had a few people who didn't know me let alone know much about 40k try to tell me about the unit and what it's capable of, so I had to laugh them off a bit, but listening to the newer 40k players be amazed at units that have existed for nearly a decade like they're brand new units is pretty amusing. ;)

In round two I fought against Gary, the father of one of the store's other regulars. It was right about this time the owner changed the round time limit from two hours to two and a half hours. Anyway, he brought a Leman Russ-heavy IG list and it was a pleasant surprise and a nice change of pace. I hadn't gotten to play against IG since my Tacticon report from two years ago! The Front Armor Value of 14 and Side Armor Value of 13 that these tanks have is pretty demoralizing when all I have to punch through it at long range is massed Strength 7 and a few Strength 8 weapons. I mean, I had the Riptides too, but I honestly had to end up relying on them to do some hard work without getting wiped off the table. Here's what the table looked like after the third turn:

He used Creed to outflank two Leman Russ's and MAN did that change my plan! Thankfully the durability the Skyshield adds to my list helped my units last for a lot longer than they should have. I hopped off the Skyshield with the missle-sides (and newly attached Commander) to the right with a really good difficult terrain roll, and ended up in the ruins getting side-armor on the Russ's. I needed 6's because the Broadside's main weapons are both "heavy" type, but their shots are also twin-linked, so I rolled and ended up getting a ton of hits! I yet again needed 6's to do anything (I know, it was a really bad gamble) but I rolled 8 6's in front of Gary and annihilated the tanks! What luck! I ended up winning with a crushing victory, but that wasn't as important as the fun I had playing Gary, despite his sorta bad dice rolls and my super crazy hot rolls.

In the third and final round I got paired against my wife, Amy, but we were both tired and my record was better, so we decided that if she conceded it would be our best chance at getting 3rd to possibly score some prizes (since the store was not randomizing prizes or doing door prizes). We were forced to wait to the end and after eight hours I had taken 4th place out of 10 players. Not too shabby I guess, but I wasn't expecting better considering I brought a pretty non-competitive list. First place was Cody's Beast-star Eldar/Dark Eldar, second place was Noah's Jetseer Council Eldar/Dark Eldar, and third place was a really surprising mono-Khorne Daemon list with hordes of Bloodletters plus Skulltaker and a few other gems.

Well, I'm looking forward to getting  my Infinity painted, my Tau painted, and with some of my friends starting to bring their Warmachine around more often, I might try to crank out some of that as well.

Thanks as always for reading and there should be more updates coming in regularly over the next few months as I start to ramp up my projects for the summer.