My Battle Buddy

More and more information is coming out about whom can ally with whom. Much to my excitement Dark Eldar and Eldar are Battle Buddies!! This really opens up a lot of possibilities with my Harlequin themed army. I just have to decide on what will count as what and start looking for some miniatures after the FAQs and rule book drops. 

One thing I do find very interesting is from everything I have read Swooping Hawks, and jump infantry, will be extremely awesome! Perhaps I can finally run my mighty Eldar hawkmen army and not be laughed at or ridiculed. (Yes, I am a Flash Gordon fan. If you do not know the movie I speak please go and rent it now!) A squad of 5 should have an average threat range of 19" with their movement and assault move, and with haywire grenades completely strip a heavily armed vehicle of its hull points in one turn of attacks. 

I really think 6th edition will go a long way to make Eldar a lot more fun to play. We shall find out in a few short days. 

Whispers from the Dark

Yes, it has been a long time since I have posted anything. Life has reared its ugly head and I have not been in the gaming mood or feeling up to doing any sort of miniature work for a long time. Since the last post, I ended my 4th edition D&D campaign, ran a special edition of my 3.5 D&D game for my best friend who is not working in Thailand for the United Nations, and have been working on several novels.

The good news is that I am back to create some awesome miniatures and scenery. I am pretty excited about it. Especially given that 40K 6th Edition is around the corner.

Two things really annoy me at this moment. The first is that there is a lot of angst over the upcoming edition especially over how allies will "ruin" the game. Really guys? We have not seen the fuill rules on allies, but we know the gist. The missing component is what levels of cooperation will allies have for various armies. Sure I can take Sisters of Battle for my sexy Eldar, but I suspect they will be uncooperative allies at best. The nerdrage needs to rest ... until after the book comes out.

Secondly, I am soooo tired of the power gamer theoretical power penis builds which sadly revolve around including allies. My favorite to date is the Killa Kan wall supported by Eldar Farseers. Um, just no. Its great to start thinking outside of the current box, but to do so blindly is kind of premature and a waste of mental energy. For 5 minutes I started to do that, then I went on to watch Piranha 3DD.

One thing that does intrigue me about the ally rules is the ability to make some really interesting counts as armies or some really cool custom armies. I have been toying with the idea of doing a Harlequin army build, which I cannot do under just the Eldar Rules. However, with Dark Eldar allies, it becomes so much easier on my idea of the theme. Also, it opens up a whole world of modeling options.

I have started working on getting my 80's era Eldar Harlequins completely WYSIWYG by custom making some fusion pistols and Harlequin kisses. This was in preparation for a local tournament, but I am not sure I really want to play given that 6th edition drops that day. If I get them done, then great, otherwise I will eagerly devour the new rule set.


  

War Machine Initial Impressions

Sunday I had the opportunity to play some War Machine. Unless you have been living under a bridge, you should know a little about the game. If not, shoot on over to Privateer Presses website and take a look. The miniatures look awesome if you are into steam punk Victorian stuff.

Overall, I think War Machine is a decent game. It is by no means perfect and suffers from a scaling problem. There is a crazy amount of stuff to track. You will need something to keep track of focus and spell effects. You will also need something to track your jack system status. Grease pen and card protectors work great. Yeah, this game uses cards for the unit stats.

I think the game probably plays best at the 25 point range. 11 points is really too little, but would make real quick games. A single mistake would spell doom at that level. I found that 15 points feels right for learning since you can have an interesting  mix of jacks and units. The game still moves pretty fast at that level.

I feel 35 points would be pushing the upper level of what the game can realistically support. There is just too much to keep track of and not enough focus to really spread around. Sure you can play larger games, people do it all the time. I feel that you would need a bigger playing area.

A key tactic in the game is to know when to utilize the special ability that your war caster has. In some respects you need to think about the game at least one turn in advance since the order that you activate your units in can make a huge difference. It is a sad day when you do not use your own special ability.

I also think that how War Machine handles cover and concealment is probably the best way I have seen in a miniature skirmish game. They essentially use penalties to hit, which makes a lot of sense. I also like how the deviation of missed area attacks is handled. I really hope Warhammer 40K adopts similar rules.

I did manage to get in a few games against different lists. I played my own list, with no changes between the matches. I own 15 points of Cygnar, which is half painted at the moment. It consists of the starter box and a Black 13th Unit. In the games I played the jacks I had were not as effective as I had hope. You really need to have extra focus to put on them to get them to do something interesting. For the most part it seemed they were big targets.

The Black 13th however were exceptionally awesome! They had an answer for everything. I was really surprised at how versatile they were. Reading about them on the internet really does not prepare you for what they can do. Even in the game where I faced the all stealth list, they were the go to unit. I think if I played them more aggressively, I might have won all the games I played.

Overall I like many aspects of War Machine. I think it is a game I could play off and on for a long time but only if I can get a decent 4x4 table made.  

 

Eldar Tactics - Rise of the Swooping Hawks

Swooping Hawks are one of the least used units in current Eldar armies today. Occasionally you will see some brave individual attempt to field a squad of them, only to have them under perform or get shot to pieces before they can do anything. This is not a problem unique to Swooping Hawks - a lot of deep striking assault troops tend to be cut down easily.

I tend to change this in the games I play. I have decided to build an army around using Swooping Hawks again. To add further insult to my opponents I will play "Attack of the Hawkmen" from Flash Gordon when they attack somewhere.

Fear me and my space elf hawkmen!

Swooping Hawks have some good things going for them. For one they come with Haywire Grenades that if hit will penetrate vehicle armor, no matter how high. Most likely they are going to just glance the vehicle. This is perfectly fine as well, since the worst result on the glance table is "cannot shoot". A vehicle that is not shooting is not achieving its points back and is neutralized for a turn.

Secondly, a Swooping Hawk squad with the Exarch upgrade has the option to buy the ability "Intercept" for 5 points! This ability is gold since it makes the maximum to hit roll 4+ on all vehicles. Those pesky Dark Eldar skimmers just got a whole lot easier to hit.

Swooping Hawk shooting is not impressive. They best they can do is harass light infantry. The leader can be equipped with a sun rifle that not only shoot six times, but has a chance to pin an enemy unit. I have never been successful at pinning an enemy unit with laser fire, so I stopped taking the Sunrifle upgrade. What I do take is the Hawk's Talon. The weapon is is STR 5, Assault 3. Outfitted with a Hawk's Talon the squad has a good chance of being able to penetrate the rear armor of a tank if they deep strike in.

How will I use the mighty Swooping Hawks?

My new tactic is to field two to three large squads of them and have them deployed on the table at the start of the game. They will be sent after primary vehicle targets that can threaten my vehicles - such as Razor Backs, Land Raiders, Storm Ravens or Dark Eldar Ravagers. Additionally, any vehicle that has some sort of cover save would be targeted if it is in an opportunistic range.

The Hawks will hit and run with the goal to keep them alive until the end of the game. Their mobility should allow them to take advantage of cover or line of sight blocking terrain features. Near the end of the game, they will be used to contest objectives or just overwhelm straggling foot troops.

Another option that I am currently exploring is adding an Autarch to the mix with wings and a fusion gun. That would add some extra ranged tank busting abilities to the squad for the turn they deep strike in.







 

Hmmm

This morning I discovered why Blue Table Painting makes all their big scenery pieces out of just foam and not foam and hardboard. Hardboard in large sheets likes to bend a bit too much causing a lot of stress on any filler compound you use.

I am debating scrapping the WarMachione table and salvaging what I can from the foam. I might go ahead and finish it up, but cut back on the detailing and crack filling I had planned on doing. Decisions, decisions.

Warpath

I just got the beta rules for Warpath, a game being put out by Mantic Games. The game is 40K-ish in a lot of respects. I am not sure how successful the game will be, as I see some holes in the system already.

What I do like is that the game has a number of modifiers for shooting. Cover seems to reduce the chances of being hit, instead of preventing damage. The other thing that I love is the heavy weapons guys can shoot at different targets!

I will have to print out the rules and read them to get a good grasp of how fun the game will be. Might do a test game next week sometime if I can scrounge up the models.

I am doing a happy dance, the majority of my order has shipped! I should have D&D miniatures and WarMachine armies by next Wednesday. Should be a good week!

War Machine Table

Its been too long. I am enjoying my month long vacation, and by vacation I mean making scenery! My family is out of town which means I can do crazy scenery projects and not get the third degree about how I am making a mess or taking up too much room with my garbage.

I decided to use the time to make a niffy war machine table. I wanted something that could play up to four people and still be interesting to play all the normal two player missions. What I came up with was a nice rocky mesa piece that will be lots of fun once I build some bridges to connect parts of it. I will also need to make some removable pieces to fully enhance the game play. Overall the table should be fun to finish and paint.

This project is bigger than anything I have done, and I have made it out of scraps left over from other projects. As my first foray into such project types, I have learned a few things.

The first is while using scraps is cost effective, it is far better to plan on using who sheets of foam. I should have just purchased a sheet of 2" foam and carved the rocky cliffs from that instead of layers of the smaller stuff. There would be less gluing hassle and overall there project would have flowed better.

The second thing I learned is foam will dull a blade really quickly. I was not aware how quickly until I worked on this project. I will have to buy a few new blades this week.

Thankfully, I have finished cutting everything I need to cut on the board itself. The next step is to put down some putty to make the transition from foam to table top and then to glue down a bunch of stand before I start painting it with my mighty airbrush! In theory, I could finish this up by Tuesday if I actually work ojn it over the weekend.

I did order my starting War Machine forces. I am going to play some Cygnar painted up like the Confederacy, minus the battle flag. I love the Cygnar blue, but I already have a blue army in Ultra Marines. Besides if Martin gets into the game, I know I will be painting his stuff up in traditional blue and I want my stuff to stand out as different.. Hopefully I will get them sometimes next week.

Other than that, I saw Green Lantern this week. I would like that two hours of my life back please. Its a decent movie if you do not think about how utterly absurd the story and characters are. I am not referring to the super hero genre or camp-ness. I am referring to the huge gaping plot holes and nonsensical character development. I actually had hope that it would be good. DC can stop making movies now as they seem to be terrible, with the exception of Batman.