January Painting

So looking back at the last month and a half or so of posts all I see is a wall of text. To break it up and give people what they want I present to you all my January efforts at the painting table. These 2 units are actually part of my B&C Librarium Painting Challenge.

To begin we have Tactical Squad 4. The sergeant for this squad was shown earlier (the AOBR Sergeant conversion) and here are the rest of his buddies.

I have tried to make the squad as varied as possible with different helmets and bolter varients. The chap below has an old school bolter that was lurking in my bits box.

This fellow has a MK2 Helmet and belt fed bolter

Guy below has a Drum Fed Bolter

Guy below has some funky targetting gizmo on his helmet. Hopefully it will prevent this gets hot rolls

This fellow has an Iron Hands Bionic arm and attached bolter

This chap has a box fed bolter

I have to say I am really happy how the Multi-Melta guy came out. A different looking MK2 Helm made all the difference.

After that comes Brother Opis, 1st Company Dreadnought. I enjoyed making his base which has some nurgle elements to it. Corroded Icon and squashed nurglified guardsman. You cant see it in these pics but he has a helmet and a corroded lasgun.

The dreadnought itself is an AOBR dread with minor conversion. I cut the faceplate off and attached a different one and a forgewold bit (the plaque thingie) on his torso. Not much else done aside from that.

Later this month expect to see some of the other units I have done for the challenge. Namely Sicarius and a unit of scouts.

Deathwing vs Wolfwing Part 2

 know that there have been many, many comparisons done between the Deathwing and the Wolfwing. The pros and cons of each. I have even talked about some of them in an earlier post detailing why I chose DW over WW. There is a very good over all comparision between Deathwing and Wolfwing done by Ron at FTW and can be read HERE

This however will be a direct comparison between my current Deathwing list and the closest I can get to it using the Wolfwing.

THE LISTS:

My Death Wing - 1750

~Belial

~Interogator Chaplain in Termie armour

~Squad 1

3 x Lightning Claws

Apothocary with Stormbolter / Powerfist

Banner Bearer with Stormbolter / Power fist

~Squad 2

Power Weapon / Storm Bolter

Heavy Flamer with Chainfist

2 x Powerfist / Storm Bolter

Lightning Claws

~Squad 3

Power Weapon / Storm Bolter

Stormbolter / Chainfist

2 x Powerfist / Storm Bolter

Lightning Claws

~Squad 4

2 x TH/SS

Assault Cannon / Powerfist

2 x Powerfist / Stormbolter

~Dreadnought with Assault Cannon

~Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon

~Land Raider with Extra Armour

This gives me 2 IC, 20 terminators, 2 Dreads and a Land Raider.

Belial and the chaplain run with Squad 1. This gives them a total of 6 LC and 5 PW I5 WS5 attacks, 15 LC I4 W4 attacks and 8 I1 W4 Powerfist attacks on the charge. Rerolling to hit. Its pretty devastating when it hits. These chaps either DS or walk across the field. The apothecary gives them the ability to shrug off 1 non-instant death wound per turn as long as they are not in CC.

Squad 3 Rolls in the Raider. This means that they generally sit in the backfield  protecting an objective while the raider snipes at vehicles.

Squad 2 and 4 walk across the field, each supported by a dreadnought.

This seems to work. I have not lost a 1v1 game yet using this configuration.

Now lets have a look at as close a list as I can come up with using WW

Wolf Wing – 1805 points

~Logan Grimnar

~Wolf Priest in Termie Armour

~Squad 1

3 x Wolf Claw

2 x Powerfist / Stormbolter

~Squad 2

Power Weapon/Storm Bolter

Heavy Flamer/Chain F ist

Wolf Claws

2 x Stormbolter/PowerFist

~Squad 3

Power Weapon/Storm Bolter

Wolf Claws

Stormbolter / Chainfist

2 x Stormbolter/PowerFist

~Squad 4

2 x TH/SS

Assault Cannon / Powerfist

2 x Powerfist / Stormbolter

~Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon

~Dreadnought with Assault Cannon

~Land Raider with extra armour

This is an exact model count duplicate.

My tactics would be slightly different here. I would run Grimnar with Squad 1 and the Wolf priest with Squad 4. This way, both of the squads would get preferred enemy.

Assuming he does not use his Living Legend rule, Grimnar gets 6 attacks on the charge, the Wolf Claw chaps would get 12 I4, WS4 attacks and I would choose for them to re-roll “to wound” and the Powerfists get 6 I1 WS4 attacks. Getting charged or charging this unit would be a very painful experience.

Squad 2 and 4 would be supported by a dreadnought each

Squad 3 would sit in the Raider, same as the Deathwing and Squad 4 would be walking.

COMPARISON:

The Wolfwing comes in at 55 points more costly. This can be solved by removing a single TH/SS termie from the list. This of course drops your unit count by 1.

Belial vs Grimnar is a no brainer. Grimnar utterly outclasses Belial in every way possible except price. He is more than double the cost of Belial.

Chaplain vs Wolf Priest. This one is a little more tough to call. The Wolf priest is 25 points cheaper and gives preferred enemy. However I would have to go with the Chaplain. He retains the old chaplain stats i.e. higher Initiative, more wounds and attacks and also allows you to re-roll hits on the charge. I think that is worth the 25 points.

Squad 1. The WW squad is cheaper but is missing out on the extra attack from the banner as well as the ignored wound from the apothecary. Do I think that makes a difference. Well, if Grimnar is attached I don’t think the extra attack matters but I think that being able to shrug off a wound is well worth the extra points. A Deathwing termie costs 53 points, the apothecary upgrade is 30. Save 1 wound and it has paid for itself. I think the Deathwing Squad comes out on top.

Squad 2 and 3 are almost identical in price so no real differences.

Squad 4. The WW squad is more expensive but overall is the better pick. You get the upgraded Storm shields so its more survivable and if you attach the Wolfpriest its going to be quite nasty in combat.

Dreadnoughts – roughly the same price so no real difference there. However the old style smoke makes them more survivable so I would choose the DW dreads.

Land Raider. Also a hard one to choose between. They cost the same but the WW version comes with the new POTMS. For a raider that is being used as a firebase I think this may be the better bet as it allows you to shoot with BS4 and split fire. However for a moving LR you really need the extra armour to stay mobile. While you can afford this in the DW list you won’t be able to get it in the WW list. In fact, with the old POTMS you can still go 6 inches without the extra armour if you are stunned plus shoot a weapon at BS2.

This, coupled with the old style smoke makes me choose the DW raider.

A few other army wide differences are the smoke launchers and the fact that Deathwing armies are all fearless. The smoke is an important issue. With the plethora of Melta around, the ability to make all penetrating hits glancing for a round is invaluable and has saved my bacon more than once. The pros and cons of fearless units are well documented so I wont rehash that except to say that I really like it.

CONCLUSION:

Its odd, when I started this I fully expected for the Wolfwing to come out on top. However, looking at it I would hazard that the Deathwing sneaks out in front. Now granted that this is a direct comparision and I doubt that a Wolfwing player would have a unit set up like this and is unlikely to have the same play style or tactics usage but I think the principles are sound. This is especially true since to get an army comparable to mine the Wolfwing has to compromise on number of models or wargear choices. It cant have both as it is just too pricey.

Ultra Meet 3

Every 3 or 4 months member of the Ultramarine Sub forum of  Bolterandchainsword.com gather together for a weekend of gaming and fun.

The first one was at Warhammer World in Nottingham and the second and third one at the GW store in Cambridge. This store is great. 8 tables in the basement with very helpful and friendly staff at hand.

Last weekend was the third meet and while it was small (only 6 of us managed to get down) it was a blast.

I used 3 separate lists. My First Company UltraWing, my 71 marine foot slogger list and a balanced list with various elements.

I got in 4 normal games and took part in the “Mega Battle” at the end. This was a 3 a side game using normal 40k rules and 1750 points per player.

My first game I used the Ultrawing. Standard 12 inch deployment with 4 control points. This game started off terribly for me as my Belial with attached Termie Chaplain and Squad managed to get Lost in the warp on his Deathwing Assault. Game not even started and I had lost a quarter of my troops and both IC’s. Still, in the end I managed to pull off a draw as we were both holding 1 point and contesting the others.

Second game used my footslogger list. 71 marines. 4 Tactical squads, an assault squad with chaplain and 2 full 10 man Devastator squads. Game was control points with Dawn of War Deployment. This did me no favours. In the end it was a loss to me as I just did not have the speed to get my guys to his point fast enough. If it had gone to turn 6 then I may just have managed to get close enough to contest his objective.

Game 3 I used the Ultrawing. Annihilation with Dawn of War again. To be honest I don’t remember much of this game. I know I managed to immobilize my opponents LR with my dreads Assault Cannon and then spent 3 turns doing nothing to it with the same dread in assault. In the end I won on Killpoints. It was a close call as I only had 2 terminators and Belial left alive.

Game 4 was vs Matt. I suppose I could be called his Nemesis as he has yet to beat me in 6 or 7 games. I ran a balanced list. I had 2 tacticals in rhinos, a plasma dread, ironclad, vindicator, LR, LC Captain and command squad and terminator squad . He was using 2 assault squads, 2 tacticals in rhinos, a dread and Calgar with Assault Termies in a LRC. Game was control points with table quarters. 

I again started badly as both my dreads, my vindicator and a rhino were taken out after only 1 round of shooting. However I was able to lure away his Calgar and deep strike my termies in to claim his objective while holding onto my own. I think had the game gone another turn it would have been a draw but was a victory for me in the end.

The last game of the day was the mega battle. 1750 per player with 6 players for a total of over 10000 points. Game was annihilation with standard deployment. It was an all out slug fest. My guys did ok however once again my Belial and command squad played no part in the game. They had a deepstrike mishap and were placed by the opposition in the far corner of the table. In the end they managed to get off a whole 6 storm bolter shots in total.

Ultimately though, our side went down by 19KP to 16KP but it was great fun and I hope to be able to do something similar again.

A few highlights:

My Land Raider squaring off against Matts LRC. Alas, my lascannons were in effective vs his armour. The shots would have been better spent killing rhinos and pods.

Andrews Melta Dreadnought came down right next to my Land Raider and did...nothing. It was butchered by my terminators and managed to kill 2 of them when it exploded.

This was a vast melee in the middle of the field. In the end it included 7 different units. 

The ethics and morality of cheating

Right, so by now everyone has heard about the cheating problem that went down at the 2010 Indy GT Circuit: Seattle. I am not going to go into that as it has been widely posted.


What I am going to talk about is the ethical and moral aspects of cheating and how different people perceive it to be.

Wikipedia throws up this very good definition of cheating.

“Cheating is an act of lying, deception, fraud, trickery, imposture, or imposition. Cheating characteristically is employed to create an unfair advantage, usually in one's own interest, and often at the expense of others.”

The whole issue of cheating came up on a topic over at the B&C and it was interesting to see how people basically broke down into 2 camps. While all agreed that Nathaniel is an idiot who deserved everything he got, some seemed to think that he was an idiot because of the act of cheating while others thought he was an idiot because he was stupid enough to get caught.

Now before I go on let me state that I am very much a member of the former category. I loath anyone who intentionally cheats and this post will be biased to that viewpoint and I apologize if it seems like I am sermonizing.

The people who considered him stupid for getting caught had a few arguments to justify why they seemed to condone cheating. Some players seemed to come from a cultural background where cheating is a part of every day life. Some folk maintained that if you are playing in tournaments for money and prizes and that forms part of your income then you are justified in trying to maximize your returns on investments. Some people even used the whole “if no one knows you are cheating then it isn’t hurting anyone”. One person even went so far as to recount a tale from his army days where cheating was used as a test to see who could “think outside the box” Another one was “if no one catches you then you weren’t actually cheating”

Looking at the above reasoning the only one I could ever possibly forgive is the cultural one. If that’s how you have been brought up and don’t know any better then its understandable that you would go into a tournament with a cheating mindset. But its only forgivable once. Once its been explained to you why cheating in the game is wrong then you have no excuse.

To the professional players who use tournaments as a form of income, well all I can say is that if you choose that as your profession you should be good enough not to have to cheat.

“Thinking outside the box”…well we have a name for that. It’s called “Rules Lawyering” The box you are trying to think outside of is there for a reason and is structured around a rule set. Trying to manipulate that for your own gain is just wrong in my book.

Now, as to the “if no one knows you are cheating then it isn’t hurting anyone” brigade all I have to say is this. You are just plain 100% wrong. A: Because people generally realize later on that they have been cheated. They go back and check their rule books, talk to their friends and sit and analyse the game seeing where they went wrong. And B: Because even if they don’t figure it out, you have stolen an experience from them. People paint up their armies and travel sometimes 1000’s of km to play our game and if they loose out because they happened to play a cheat then they are loosing out on the fun and excitement of the game and that is just wrong.

I know of people who have left the hobby because of experiences like that. I know people who will never go to a tournament again because of bad experiences with cheaters. This costs the hobby as a whole and by doing that it costs the cheaters themselves in the long run.

“If no one catches you then you aren’t actually cheating”…ummmmm. No, A thousand times NO. Whether or not you are caught, you are still a cheater. As I put it on the forum. If you drug and rape someone and they never realize due to the drugs, does that make them any less violated? No, they have still been violated and you are still a rapist.

Ultimately though, cheating is a betrayal of trust. We go into each game with an unspoken contract that we will play honestly and within the rules. Betray that trust too often and the game will become unplayable. And also think of this. Someone who is cheated against will come away with nothing from the game, he will have learned nothing except for the bitter taste of an unwarrented defeat.

In conclusion all I can say is that cheating is wrong, just plain wrong. There can be no justification for it, especially not in warhammer or any other voluntary hobby and even more especially if you have been caught and warned before. You are not going to die or starve if you don’t win and it is ultimately to the detriment of the hobby to do so. You choose to play the game and you should play it honour and honesty. I know that I personally would gain no enjoyment from a game if I won it via questionable means. I like to win because of my skill and knowledge.

And as for Nathanial, well his minis should be confiscated and he should be beaten with a rattan cane until the knowledge of what he has done wrong sinks into his head.

More Musings (Deathwing Vs Wolfwing + C:SM whinging)

While trawling through a few of my forums I have come across a few topics that peaked my interest and I just want to delve into them a little bit. I do tend to ramble a little as thoughts come to me as I write so just bear with me.

One of the interesting things I have seen is that people want a lot more out of Codex: Space marines. I see talk about being able to make viable armies from 1-10th company. Which is fair enough I suppose since people want to mould their armies like they want.

The problem I see with that is it is just not realistic, in either the game or fluff. C:SM is meant to be a template for the typical Generic Marine Company deploying to a Typical Generic Scenario. This means mixed units. It means assault units supported by tactical and heavy units.

I think GW are doing rather well with how they have disbursed these specialized companies across various codii. If you want to do an Assault company then use the BA codex. 1st co then you can take Dark Angels Deathwing or  the SW codex. A Crusade/Legion army then you have Black Templar to use.

I have seen people say that you could gain access to these companies via wargear options i.e. Want access to an Assault Company then giving your Captain a Jump Pack allows Assault Squads to be used as troops or give him Carapace Armour to make him into a scout captain or even arm him with a heavy weapon ala Davian Thule from DoW to make a devastator captain with devs as troops.

However this would dilute the specialness of the other chapters and make them less interesting. We have already seen some of this with Bike Captains being able to take bike squads as troops. This has had an impact with Ravenwing players (and there is no end to the bitching I have seen)

It also allows them to expand the fluff of various elements of the Space Marines. You would not get the reams of lovely stuff found in the DA codex if you were to have a unified Space Marine Codex.

So I see C:SM being very good for what it is. A generic codex for use by the majority of players which allows a fair amount of selection. If you want specialized companies then you need to use specialized codii.

The second is the debate when it comes to First Company and which codex to use. Dark Angels vs Space Wolves.

To be honest I don’t care much either way which codex people want to use. I am not a long time Dark Angels player (in fact I am not a DA player at all) but I do use their codex for the Deathwing rules to fun my Ultramarine First Company. I do have a few thoughts though.

I can see and understand why the DA players are getting pissed. They have had the 2 things that made their chapter unique taken away. i.e the ability to take Terminator and Bike units as troops. Without those they are just over priced marines with obsolete wargear. I am not going to look at the bike issue as it doesn’t effect me one bit.

I am a new comer to the whole Deathwing and have only had the codex for around 2 months. What this means is that I had a choice when it came to what codex to choose: SW or DA and I can tell you that the GW staff really tried hard to get me to buy the SW one. I had to sit and think long and hard about it and despite the fact that the SW codex was far stronger, had better wargear and more versatility I decided to go with the DA codex.

My reasoning for this (and I am sure that many people would disagree with me on this) is down purely to fluff and appearance. The Dark Angels are, baring a few bits and pieces, generally Codex adherent which means they are closer in rule set to the Ultramarines than the Space Wolves are. I also believe that the Deathwing rules represent a Codex 1^st Company far better than the Space Wolves do. The reasons they do are:

•         Wargear options are closer.
•          Led by a captain, not a Chapter Master.
•          Able to teleport.
•          Ability to take a “command squad” i.e. apothecary and banner bearer.
•          Can take Chaplains and Librarians in TDA. (I know that SW have the equivalent but it’s not the same)
•          I know many would not agree but I feel that the 4++ save in CC only of the DA Storm Shields is a far better representation than the 3++ always of the current C:SM and C:SW

While I know that there are some major issues with C:DA (like why on earth Belial is the only DA Captain not to have a 4+ Invulnerable) I feel that the good far outweighs the bad.

That being said, there are just as many reasons to have taken the SW option, they just weren’t the right reasons for me.