Cancon 2019 here I come

Hello All,
Well the lead up to Cancon 2019, specifically the 40K ITC championships starts today.

I have purchased my ticket, so the first hurdle is completed. If you are interested in going, the link is here.

So, the next question is, what am I going to play?

I would like to have an answer , but honestly I don't, well not a complete one.

Sounds cryptic doesn't it. Well the truth is I know I will be playing Aeldari. I just as yet, don't know which faction.

I have Craftworld Eldar- these are dear to my heart.

I have Dark Eldar- the sheer speed of this glass cannon I really enjoy.

I have the start of a Harlequin force- who does not like clowns, I still remember my Harlequin v Terminator debate with Ras in our year 10 maths classes.

Finally the newest god on the block, the followers of Ynnead.

I have six more weeks until I am on holidays, then the army design will begin in earnest. Hopefully Chapter approved will have dropped by then and I can spend a few weeks making list tweaks.

Anyways that is my State of the hobby.



Cheers
Lupus


*As always these pictures remain the property of their owners and I do not claim them as my own

It is not the Wolf time

Well No Russ, But lets be honest.
If there was going to be Russ, we would have had a lot of spoilers.

Is it the Wolf time

This time tomorrow we will know if it is the Wolf time.
Will Bjorn be reunited with the Primarch?

Will we see Russ?

I for one hope so.

He is one of my favourites and to be honest he does deserve a non FW horus heresy model.

All slow on the painting front.

It has happened yet again.
I find myself trying to find the will to paint my old school Dark Eldar army.

I have been slowly stripping them for the better part of a month, without any real progress due to a lack of interest and available time.
But that is all going to change!
Cancon is but seven months away and this year I am hoping to place in the top ten, which will beat this years result of 15th place overall.

I intend to have a well presented army, including display board and custom objective markers.
To this end I have decided to set the following targets.

July
Strip, clean and convert the army.

August
Paint Vehicles

September
Paint Infantry

October
Paint Characters

November
Base army and make objective markers

December
Make display board.

January
Fine tune my list and pain any addition units I may need due to FAQ's or meta changes.

So that is the plan as it stands.

I have no doubt that this order will change, as it always does. But now I have a plan and a goal.

Cheers Lupus.

Drukari / Dark Eldar Here we go.

Well it starts again. Another year, another army that I will try to complete. I say try, because I seem to be a hobby butterfly, I land here, I land there, I never seem to finish an army properly, well this one I intend to be different.
To this end, here are the models that will form the foundation of my army, belonging to the Black Hearts Kabal.

2 razorwings, 5 raiders and  1 ravager, it seems all with dark lances.

30 Kabilites warriors

Metal Archon

As these are all third edition models except for the Razorwings, I found it hard to see what weapons were what. This is not that important in casual play, but in some tournament events it is prefered that models are WYSIWYG, this avoids any confusion. For those readers that have not heard this term before, WYSIWYG sands for What You See Is What You Get. To this end, I needed to decipher the weapons of these models, the below picture has helped a lot.

3rd ed weapons

A big thanks to Marcus who found this for me, at least now I have the ability to start getting my army prepared for Cancon 2019. That is right, you read correctly. I am going back again, which I shall discuss in a later post dealing with this in particular.

But here at least I have decided on the Drukari or Dark Eldar for us old farts.

Anyway that enough for this morning.
Cheers
Lupus.

My Dark Eldar starting point- The Kabal of the Flaming rose

Hi all,
So I though as I am going to be embarking upon the Dark Eldar for this year, I would list the forces that I currently have available.
So lets jump straight in

My original list of miniatures.

Characters
1 Archon, 1 Heamonculus, 1 Succubus.

Vehicles
5 Raiders
1 Ravager
2 Venoms- converted from Vypers

Fast attack
13 Reaver Bikes
5 Hellions
10 Scourges

Troups
57 Kabalite warriors with various weapons, 2 blasters and 8 splinter cannons.

5 wracks

5 wyches

Elites
5 Mandrakes

16 Incubi

Flyers
2 Razorwing jets.

As usual these are stock photos from the net, and I do not pretend that my models are painted to these standards.

The majority of my models as you can see from the pictures, are all 3rd edition models.

Thoughts
My plan is to update these slightly I will update slightly with head swaps and minor conversions, so they keep their old look, whilst also looking as nice as I can make them.

The issue will be adding newer units to the army. I will have to be selective as I do not wish for my army to look too disparate. I have some idea's about this, but I will have to wait and see.

As it stands i currently have my Archon and 10 Warriors taking a dip into simple green.

Anyway that is it for today.

Cheers
Lupus.

Index Dark Eldar List

This is my attempt at an Index list for Dark Eldar.
It is not optimised.
Battalion Detachment for a total of 6 cp at 1993pts.


Hq
Archon  Agoniser, Blaster, Warlord
Archon Agoniser, Blaster

Troops
1x Kabalite Warrior squad
 8x Kabalite Warriors, 1 with blaster

4 x Kabalite Warrior squad
10x Kabalite Warriors, 1 with blaster 1 with dark lance.

Dedicated Transport
5 x Raiders [6 PL, 115pts]:[/b] Dark Lance

Elites
Mandrakes
 8x Mandrake, Nightfiend

Fast Attack
Reavers
2x Grav-Talon
Arena Champion
6x Reaver
Reaver with Blaster

Heavy Support
Ravager Dark Lance, Dark Lance, Dark Lance

Flyer
Razorwing Jetfighter,  2 Disintegrator Cannons, Splinter Cannon

On Saturday, I will have my copy of the new codex and will see how this basic list has changed.

My Random thoughts are all well and good, but I will be working on this army over the coming months. to improve the list as well as the old 3rd ed models.

Cheers
Lupus

Dark Eldar.

Hi all,
With all the rumours and teasers that are about concerning the update to the Dark Eldar. I will be the proud owner of the new Codex and may find inspiration enough to start using the Dark Eldar I have in the garage.

To be honest I have never really been into this faction and the Army I have was an Impulse purchase, so I will be interested to see what GW have done with them in the new book.


Drukari be damned, I am old enough to remember when this army was first released.

Cheers
Lupus.

Trying new things

Hello all,
Yesterday I attended a tournament at my LGS that was a one day event of three games of 1666 pts that was limited to one special detachment, and we played maelstrom missions.
This special detachment was this.

Melton Meltdown Detachment

Compulsory:
1 HQ.
3 Troops.
1 Elites.
1 Fast Attack or 1 Heavy Support.

Optional:
1 HQ.
2 Troops.
3 Elites.
2 Fast Attack.
2 Heavy Support.
1 Fortification.
1 Flyers.
Dedicated transports as normal.

Restrictions:
All units must be from the same Faction.
Command Benefits: +1 Command Point.

After playing nothing but 2000 points and with these restrictions, I found it hard but challenging to get my head around what to take.

In the end I tried this army out.

IL-Kaithe the only true Craftworld worth taking.

Craftworld Tactic Alaitoc
Farseer- guide, doom

6x warlock conclave- quicken / restrain, protect / jinx 

3 x 5 rangers

20 guardian defenders with 2 shuriken cannon teams

5 x wraithguard with wraith cannon

2 x 6 reapers with exarch having a tempest launcher

2 x wave serpents with shuriken cannons, spirit stones and vectored engines

1 falcon with bright lance, shuriken cannon and pulse laser.

Here are some of my thoughts on why I used these units. First I wanted to add some -3 to -4 rend firepower to my list, my reapers are awesome, but sometimes their -2 rend is not enough to punch through the enemy armour.

So with this in mind, I added a falcon to my list to try out the pulsar and a bright lance. I further added a unit of wraithguard with wraith cannon again to add some punch to my army.

I further felt I needed two rune of battle powers for my army, so I added in the warlock conclave, and expecting them to take some fire I made them 6 strong.

In attendance on the day was the following armies. My Eldar and one of each of the following Deamons, Ad Mech, Dark Angels, Custodes, Death Watch, Iron Hands, Tau,  Black Templar and one withdraw for reasons.(would have been an Imperial guard amy)

With these thoughts on army design and against this diverse lot of armieshow did the list perform?

Round One.

I had a bye round one due to Imperial Guard player needing to withdraw. This happens at any tournament when the real life concerns of players need to take precedent. This gave me plenty of time to watch games and look at items I wanted to purchase in the future.

Round Two.

My opponent failed to roll first turn and then seized against me. Sigh my going second continues.
I played against a Dark Angels Azrael plasma castle list. It is not often that I am outgunned but this time I was, Azrael's 4++ bubble was enough to blunt my firepower.. I lost this game 15 to 13 vp. The game ended with only the Farseer and one reaper being left alive.

Round Three

Going into the final round and I played the Iron hands all comers list.
Again I went second after failing to seize. This was a fairly close game until turn three when I did some damage with my wraithguard that he could not come back from.


List reflection.

So how did my list go?

Well I was right to include the bright lance, I was wrong to include the falcon perhaps, I may revisit it at a later date, but for now i found it O.k. The warlock conclave was a big points sink 180 points for two powers. I would have been better to run just a spirit seer and spend the 135 points on more firepower for the list.

Likewise the falcon was lacking offensive power for its points. The bright lance was great as was the pulse laser, but there is bound to be better ways to include them. At this stage I am not sure what though.

With these two singular thoughts I have found my list to include  350 points of fat. I will look in the future to streamlining this.

I already have idea's on where to take this list and I will wait for the next LGS 1666 point event to try them out.

Stay tuned.

Cheers
Firelupus

List disection from Cancon

After thinking about the tournament and how my list performed, I decided to put my thoughts down on pseudo paper.
Do not get me wrong, placing 15th is a great result and I am very very happy with it. But each and every games was a close fought slugging match. I had to use every ounce of my skill as a general to get the wins, and in one case the dice decided the win, not my skill.

So I am going to discuss my list design and thoughts and reasons why I decided to take what I did.

Here is my list again for reference.

Brigade Detachment:  Craftworld Trait – Alaitoc 

-HQ-

Bahaleth - Autarch with Swooping Hawk Wings 

Shuriken pistol, banshee mask, power sword, force Shield 

Shimmerplume of Achillrial  Puritanical Leader

Farseer

Singing spear,shuriken pistol

Farseer 

Witch Blade, shuriken pistol, Shiftshroud of Alanssair 

Warlock

Shuriken pistol, witchblade

  

-TROOPS-

3 units of 5 Rangers

ranger long rifle and shuriken pistol

10 Dire Avengers including exarch

9 x shuriken catapults, plasma grenades, shimmer shield, power glaive.

2 units of 5 Dire Avengers including exarch

shuriken catapults, plasma grenades 

-ELITE-

3 units of 5 Striking Scorpions including exarch

Mandiblasters, shuriken pistol, plasma grenades, Scorpion chainsword, Biting Blade

-FAST ATTACK-

5 Warp Spiders including exarch

Death spinner, twin deathspinner and powerblades

2 units of 5 Swooping Hawks including exarch

Lasblasters and Hawk talon

-HEAVY SUPPORT-

2 units of 10 Dark Reapers including exarch 

Reaper launcher 

Warwalker Squadron 

1 x Warwalker with 2 x Starcannons 

Supreme Command Detachment  Craftworld Trait – Alaitoc 

-HQ-

3 Spirit Seers

shuriken pistol and witchstaff


Okay so first, the craftworld book has a lot a great stratagems that enhance the Eldar army on the battlefield, to make the best use of these, I first built my army for command points.

Decision 1. Maximise command Points.

I decided that to play how I wanted to play I needed between 12-13 cp. So a Brigade detachment for required.

This locked me into having 3 hq, 6 troops, 3 elites, 3 fast attack and 3 heavy support choices.

I also wanted to have the majority of the runes of battle powers available so that meant I needed a supreme command detachment.

So now I needed to have 6 hq, 6 troops, 3 elites, 3 fast attack and 3 heavy support choices to make my army legal.

So all this would give me 13cp to play with during deployment and the battle rounds.

So far so good.
On to my Choices to fill the slots.

Troops

Rangers 
I decided to fill my troop requirements with three units of rangers for deep strike push back and character sniping ability.

Dire Avengers
The Dire Avengers were to form my main battle line with the main unit of 10 acting as the anchor for my line. the two smaller units of five were to be harassers and objective grabbers.

Elites

Striking scoprions
I filled these slots with three units of 5 striking scorpions all equipped the same, these units with their built in deep strike allowed me to make my opponent think about their deployment and deep strike protection. 

Fast Attack

Swooping Hawks

Two units of swooping hawks were my dedicated anti horde option, with each squad putting out 20 shots, they would bring a volume of fire to my list that was needed. The also deployed on the table in my games, to allow for turn 2+ bouncing around shenanigans.

Warp spiders

I included one unit of these because of their strength 6 weapons, and I purchased the exarchs power blades, simply due to wysiwyg rule, I did not fancy cutting them off my metal model. I would have like more of these but I only own 5 models.

Heavy Support

2 units of 10 dark reapers, these guys were the ranged power to my list and did the majority of the heavy lifting each game.

A unit of 1 Warwalker with Starcannons, Originally there were two in this army , but i needed to drop one to upgrade my large unit of avengers from 5 to 10.

HQ

An Autarch
She was here to provide rerolls, immunity to moral due to puritanical leader warlord trait and reclaim some CP on a 6+. With a banshee mask, powersword and shuriken pistol, I found him to be under gunned. The shimmer plumed helped this somewhat.

2 farseers
The runes of fate are a great set of powers, during play testing, i felt i needed at least 4 of them in my army.

Warlock
He was included in my army to allow access to the stratagem seer council.

Spiritseers
These three were included to give my army another three runes of battle powers, and for ten points more than a warlock. They survive for longer and have a proper smite if I needed it. 


So that were my thoughts going into Cancon.

My after Cancon thoughts on my army was that I gave myself tunnel vision chasing those 13CP.

In virtually every game, I was looking to my army for a third threat to inflict damage on my opponents.
Whilst I did set out to achieve my goal of winning six games, they were all apart for one game hard fought, but in all of them, I felt my army needed more teeth.
This is something that I will need to develop further.

So what would I change.

I could have reduced my reapers and large dire avenger squad to 9 man size, so as to deny my opponents the choice of the reaper secondary mission.

Speaking of my large unit of dire avengers, they cost 140pts. For the same cost I could have used 17 Guardian defenders and used the 1cp strat to give them 4++ save. Again, I blame tunnel vision for this.

Making these changes would have made reaper only worth 1 point instead of three.

Going first in a few games would have helped, but the dice decide.

I would equip my Autarch with a fusion gun or reaper launcher to make use of his 2+ to hit. This was where keeping him cheap and cheerful was not the right call.

Adding the needed bite to my list. This honestly is something, I have as yet not worked out how I want to approach it.

My Scorpions and Hawks had an effect each game, the most notable was in game two when a unit of five chewed their way through a eight strong warlock conclave.

My war walker provided some support in most games, but a single walker had minimal effect on the game, will have to rethink this, as it is a good harasser, but its output in most games was minimal.

I will try out different options for the future.

Anyway that is my thoughts
Cheers Lupus.

Cancon is over for another year.

The Australian long weekend has come and gone, and with it Cancon's 40th anniversary. I have attended Cancon before, but this is my first time playing 40 there.

My son is now old enough to allow for my attendance at this great three day event, as such on the Thursday before Australia day my mates and I travelled up to Canberra from Victoria. Some of us used cars others aeroplanes but we all arrived safe and sound.

This year I competed in the 40K ITC Championships with some mates from my local gaming group, The Death Touch Dojo. This was the first time that the team year made the trip. It was comprised of  Leigh, Matthew, Tim and I, with a few others unable to attend due to family commitments. (Maybe next year we will have a stronger presence)

We started our adventure that is the three day, eight game 40K ITC Championships.

*Disclaimer*- All my battles were so hard fought that I neglected to get any photos after game 1. As such I will be using stock images, for the most part.

Over the course of the weekend there were highs, lows and of course a lot of laughs, great games and good conversation.

The list I set off with to vanquish my opponents with is the Valiant warhost of Bahaleth from Craftworld IL-Kaithe.

So here it is.

Brigade Detachment:  Craftworld Trait – Alaitoc 

-HQ-

Bahaleth - Autarch with Swooping Hawk Wings 

Shuriken pistol, banshee mask, power sword, force Shield 

Shimmerplume of Achillrial  Puritanical Leader

Farseer

Singing spear,shuriken pistol

Farseer 

Witch Blade, shuriken pistol, Shiftshroud of Alanssair 

Warlock

Shuriken pistol, witchblade

  

-TROOPS-

3 units of 5 Rangers

ranger long rifle and shuriken pistol

10 Dire Avengers including exarch

9 x shuriken catapults, plasma grenades, shimmer shield, power glaive.

2 units of 5 Dire Avengers including exarch

shuriken catapults, plasma grenades 

-ELITE-

3 units of 5 Striking Scorpions including exarch

Mandiblasters, shuriken pistol, plasma grenades, Scorpion chainsword, Biting Blade

-FAST ATTACK-

5 Warp Spiders including exarch

Death spinner, twin deathspinner and powerblades

2 units of 5 Swooping Hawks including exarch

Lasblasters and Hawk talon

-HEAVY SUPPORT-

2 units of 10 Dark Reapers including exarch 

Reaper launcher 

Warwalker Squadron 

1 x Warwalker with 2 x Starcannons 

Supreme Command Detachment  Craftworld Trait – Alaitoc 

-HQ-

3 Spirit Seers

shuriken pistol and witchstaff

My Army on Tea tray ready for battle.

Day Zero

We arrived in Canberra on Thursday afternoon, and decided to have a quick look at Epic during setup.

In the Fitzroy before tables had terrain.

Main buildings of Cancon

A pretty table with this mountain on it.

Day One

Captain bunny dropped me off at the Fitzroy pavilion and proceeded on to the board games and vendor stalls for a day of mad spending. ( Captain Bunny earned his title due to his wife booking a manual hire car, and he had not driven a manual in a very long time)

Captains face when he saw the car was a manual.

Game 1, Sisters of Battle against Eleanor 

I lost the roll for initiative and was given second.
This was a tough first game, but what a way to start.
Eleanor was a canny general and knew her army well. She had played ITC in America and really knows the system in depth, I hope to play against her next year.
Eleanor used her Celestine to maximum advantage and I only managed to kill the Gemina.
These are the only pictures that I took of any of my games.

After turn 1.

My counterattack begins.

During deployment, to deny my deep strikers.

We only managed to get three turns completed before we ran out of time.
I won this game 14/13

Game 2, Alaitoc mirror match against Mitchel

I lost the roll for initiative and was given second.
Mitchel also was running a brigade of Eldar and we both had a lot of the same units and tricks in our army.

Mitchel was just returning to 40K since early 6th ed so he was getting used to the new rules etc. We had a fun game.

I won this game 17/7

Game Three. Brett and his Knights.

I lost the roll for initiative and was given second.

During practise for the event, I knew that my list struggled with anymore than two knights, I had a practise game versus four knights and got trounced.
So going into this game against Magnus and three chaos knights I knew that I was behind the eight ball.
I lost the roll for initiative and was given second. I started strong and killed a knight first turn and Magnus by turn three, but by then that damage was done.

My army had no teeth left to it.
I lost this game 31/18.

It is worth mentioning that Rick was an awesome player and he had some laughs. The game ended with his two remaining knights sitting on objectives and my last unit which were scorpions hiding in a ruins basement.

So at the end of Day One I had won two games and lost my third. I was ranked 57th out of 128.

Day Two

Day two started started with another early start, although memo to self ensure the place I stay next year has aircon. By day two Captain Bunny had got the feel for the rental and he was back to just being a normal driver.

Game Four, Josh and his Sisters of Battle

Again I went second, which seemed to be the theme for the weekend with all my games I went second.
This again was a very close game and Josh was a challenging opponent. I cannot remember exactly what was sin his army except it was very similar to my first game. Celestine, Exorcists and lots of infantry.

I  won  this game 15/14.

Game Five. Jonny, Big bobby G and his Ultramarines

This game was a close battle, My reapers started working on killing his tanks and dread, whilst my infantry keept working on his marines. Eventually I destroyed his armour, Jonny was a tenacious opponent and really made me work for the win.

I won this game 20/18

Game 6. Jack and his Ynarri 

So final game of Day two and I was paired with a lad called Jack.
He was running the Yncarne with a lot of Harlequin support. As he was running an assault army, I castled up in a corner and had him run to me , his army was very very quick, it was a bloodbath on both sides, but I managed to Table him.

I won 29 /19.

At the end of day two with 5 wins and 1 loss I was ranked 11th and feeling good.

Day Three

Day three started with my army being paired against Josh and his Tau army.

Game Seven Josh and Tau

Josh is a seasoned general and knew exactly how to use his army. This was an enjoyable game, and Josh showed his mettle when at one point I asked for some time to think, like a gent he gave me a moment and went and had a smoke, so I could plan out how to deal with his suits and shield drones. 

I managed to reduce his drones from 38 to 15 by games end, I would love to play Josh and this list again, as it was very challenging and he was a gent to play against.

The final score was I lost this game 33/8.

So the final game of Day three and of Cancon, saw my army matched against a no infantry Deathguard army of Will.

Game Eight Will, Morty and a lot of disgusting resilience.

A no infantry death guard list.

So with this final game started, Will and I had an out and out slugging match with his army and mine.

Highlights of this game was Morty in my lines in turn 1, and killing some units, by troops fell back in good order and proceeded to shoot Morty down. We then engaged in a ranged fire battle with some sneaky scorpions keeping his tanks engaged in combat and not shooting for a few turns.
The highlights for me was when Will used a stratagem to explode a plague drone in my lines and inflict the final wounds on three units. Making 6 disgusting resilience rolls for a plague burst crawler, needing only to fail three for it be destroyed and instead he rolled six 6's. I had to shake his hand for that.

But in the end I reduced his army down to just one crawler remaining before we ran out of time.

My final victory was 27 / 20

Results

With this last battle completed my final placing was 15th out of 128th, this was my best placing at a major event to date.
My Dojo teammates consisting of Leigh, Tim and Matt finished 2nd, 12th  and 78th.

As a result our team, The Death Touch Dojo secured the Best Team Award for the event.
This was an awesome result. I wish I had been there to see it, but I had a plane to catch. Which was delayed by an hour, so I could have stayed. Sigh.

The Lads grabbing the first place for the Team award. I however was at the airport waiting on a delayed flight. Sigh.

I highly recommend attending Cancon for a weekend of gaming, regardless of the games system you play. It is a great weekend, and I will be going again.

A big shout out to the TO's for the event, they did an amazing job, before, after and during and would and will attend their events again in the future.

Thanks for reading, my usual ramble.
Lupus.