Decided to give my Necrons a break, and try out some of the new psychic powers in 6th Ed. I did consider rolling out my Ulthwe Eldar, but I’ve been having an urge to use my Chaos list for a while so brought that along instead, taking on a force of Imperial Guard.

The list uses the Space Wolves codex so that I can use Terminators as troops, but I’ve converted, green-stuffed and begun painting them as Slaaneshi renegades. For 2000 pts I brought along Logan Grimnar, 2 Rune Priests and a Wolf Lord as my HQ, 2 units of Terminators for troops, 3 Dreadnoughts in my elites slots and a Land Raider for heavy support. The game was Hammer and Anvil (long deployment) and Crusade (standard objectives).

To put it simply, things did not go well! The first few turns my good armour saves kept me alive, but from turn 3 things turned against me. My opponent started blasting up my armour, and my Terminators came into the killing range of a LOT of focused firepower.

Foot slogging across the table like I did was a mistake, if I was planning to do that again I’d need to bring a lot more Terminators instead of armour. Ideally I’d like to try putting my guys in drop pods and firing straight at the enemy.

For some reason 6th Edition just isn’t working for me. I think part of it is that I’ve only p,ayes a few games. On top of that my armies weren’t particularly optimised in 5th, and they’re definitely not set up appropriately for 6th. Of course this all works nicely to Games Workshop’s advantage; I want to buy a lot of new models!

It's deep strike that swings it

I've seen a few articles on deep striking recently (From the Warp, Tech Bay Four, probably some others I've forgotten), which is a subject I've been thinking about recently.

The last couple of times I've played my Slaanesh Terminator force I've been using the Space Wolves codex. Besides simply being shiny and new the Wolves get stronger independent characters and more fun wargear/rules toys. And lets not miss out the main reason I switched to Wolves - real Cyclone missiles!

But I'm thinking of going back to a Deathwing based list. The Cyclone thing isn't too big a deal, I don't really play tournaments so I can just pay the extra point for a proper Cyclone launcher. The weaker characters are a bit of a pain, but this is Fifth Edition where troops choice swings it, and with the selection of models I've got it's about six and half a dozen between the codices.

The Deathwing have deep strike. Ok, so Space Puppies can climb into drop pods, but it's just not the same. For one thing, I don't want to go spending all that cash on a drop pod model for each squad. On top of that, teleporting is just plain cool. And let's not forget that deep strike should put me close enough to dish out some heavy flamer based pain.

Now that still leaves my Dreadnaughts and Land Raider. I could put the Dreads in pods, then either ditch the Raider or run it solo, but I'll probably be better off keeping them on the go. They'll form a solid anvil to complement my deep striking hammer. Trundle up to pin the enemy down with that lot, Dreads can screen each other and the Raider while popping smoke and that will buy me time to get into position and start zapping Terminators onto the battlefield.

So far it's all theoryhammer, and may turn out to be full of fail. Regardless, I'm pretty tempted to give it a go and find out how it works, it's not a style of play I've ever had a chance to use before so if nothing else it's a learning experience.

Where we stand

Just a quick warm-up post on what position I'm in with my 40k gear.

My Ulthwe Eldar are probably closing on half-painted, currently finishing up a Fire Prism, working on a squad of Jetbikes and getting ready to start a Vyper.

My Terminators (Slaanesh Renegades using a Space Puppies Wolfguard list) are built and (mostly) converted up, but I've only started painting one squad.

The Termies are a pain to paint, so they're staying on the back burner while I do my Eldar, so at least I'll have something to put down on the table.

This blog's a bit of an experiment, don't think I've blogged on 40k stuff before, but been reading plenty of them so that makes me an expert, right? >_> I'm mostly hoping that having a blog will keep me focussed getting some painting done... and maybe even get me playing a few games!