Lamenters WIP part 2 & army thoughts

Lamenters have always been one of my favorite Space Marine chapters... I have finally given in to my craving to paint a yellow army.

Firstly, I planned on keeping the model count low, not only to save $$$ but to represent the Lamenters being few in number and an elite force. Second, I wanted to use units that I have not taken in my Dragons army, so even though it'll be using the same codex, it'll have a totally different play style.

My HQ is a Captain with a power sword, infernus pistol and jump pack. Besides the fact I really dislike special characters, none of them make sense to be leading a Lamenters force... And Librarians don't thrill me too much either as they're a dime a dozen in all flavors of marine armies these days. So even though my HQ selection is the same as my Dragons army, his wargear makes him quite different and I'll explain why he's got what he's got.

Jump pack... Well, he's going to be rolling up (or dropping down) with my troops, who are jump pack assault marines, so he'll be needing one of course. Power sword, because I want to make use of that Initiative 5 (I somewhat regret putting a fist on my Dragons captain as I had overlooked this). Infernus pistol, because like the Initiative 5, I'm paying those points to get that nice BS 5... Hitting 2+ melta, yes please.

Troops are 2x 7 man assault marine squads. Strange number, but I that's the amount of models I bought, and it fits in the points value. One squad is equipped to deal with medium/light infantry, toting 2x hand flamers and a sergeant with power weapon. The other squad has a more tank hunters role, with 2x infernus pistols and sergeant w/ fist. The Captain will be rolling with the latter in order to pack 3 melta shots, hopefully downing any vehicle they shoot at.

All the remaining points are saved for the scary stuff. A big 10 man terminator squad, with 2 cyclone missile launchers and 4 chainfists. Unless I'm playing Kill Points, I'll be combat squadding them and putting the 2 CML's in one group to use as a mobile devastator squad which will advance up with the...

 ...Assault Terminator Squad, all equipped with TH/SS in a standard Land Raider w/ extra armor and multi melta.


And that's the 1500 army in a nutshell. 15 models in power armor with jump packs, 15 terminators, and a land raider. It's a small army, but it's hard hitting. Maybe it'll even win a game or two.

More to come

Lamenters WIP pictures

 

More to come

Land Raider Redeemer

The Land Raiders are some of my favorite tanks in 40k. They're hard to kill, they've got machine spirit... and in the case of a Redeemer, you've got a pair of the most badass flamer weapons in the 41st millennium.  

I could go on and on about reasons as to why Land Raiders are excellent tanks, but instead I'm going to argue for why I opted to take the Redeemer variant over the Crusader pattern.

Points wise, the Redeemer is 10 points less than the other two, so not much to argue about here. However, that extra 10 points gives me that very useful Multi melta upgrade. The real differences between the variants is transport capacity and weaponry. The Redeemer can carry 12 models, or 6 terminators compared to the 16 models or 8 terminators of the crusader. It then becomes a question as to whether the flamestorm cannons over the hurricane bolters are worth the loss of 2 terminators inside.

In my opinion? Absolutely worth it. The twin flamestorm cannons transform the Redeemer from a hard to kill transport into a hard to kill battle tank. Hurricane Bolters are just too lackluster. I get the argument from Crusader-toting players all the time, that the 24" range is just so crucial and makes the LRC much more tactically flexible. I don't buy it. I play against Crusaders all the time, and their Hurricane Bolters pretty much always amount to diddly squat vs. my marines. Flamestorm cannons? Boom, say goodbye to that entire tactical squad (or at least most of it). Even if I only fire a flamestorm once per game, they're still overwhelmingly more effective from my experience than multiple turns of Hurricane shooting.

This brings up another point I would like to make in favor of the Redeemer. The last few games I've used my Redeemer in, I've been getting weapon destroyed results on it. Every time, my opponent won't know what to take off. All the weapons are equally devastating in their own right, and losing a flamestorm cannon or assault cannon is no big deal. With a weapon or two lost, the LRR still has the potential to do some serious damage, something that can't be said about an LRC or standard LR.

Lastly, I don't use the LRR as a transport all too often. It's more of a fire magnet to take the pressure off of my more fragile (and valuable) Vindicators. The trio of hard hitting tanks will clear a path all the way to an objective with a squad or two of foot slogging marines hidden behind, and there is little an opponent can do about it when the rest of my army is supporting the advance.

 

Grudge League progress

There's a Grudge League going on in the local store I'm playing at up in Vermont. Players in the league fight for territories which give their armies bonuses such as furious charge, scouts, extra points, and things like that.

My first day of league play I lost twice and won once. I was pretty unhappy by these results as the losses were extremely close and pretty much my own mistakes when it came to capturing objectives. Today I won 3 games which puts me at 4W-2L. I've learned from my mistakes from my losses in the league and hopefully I keep the win streak going.

Been pretty busy this week with school & painting 40k minis. More to come!

The Vindicator

The vindicator is a tank that I see being used in a great deal of space marine armies. There is no denying how effective this unit can be, the strength 10 AP 2 ord blast is going to annihilate pretty much anything you shoot at, providing you don't scatter too terribly. The versatility and devastating effectiveness of the demolisher cannon makes the vindicator your opponent's worst nightmare, and therefore biggest concern.

Almost every army I see that uses the vindicator will field only one. Most times, one vindicator is not going to work which leads players to believe that the tank is underwhelming and not worth it. The reason for this is that your opponent is going to want to knock out that vindicator with everything he's got, because he knows it's going to smash him up hard if it's not taken care of immediately. All it takes is a weapon destroyed OR even immobilized (since the demolisher cannon is a fixed *and* short range weapon) to really knock it out of the game.

If you want to maximize the potential of your vindicator, you should field at least two. This way, your opponent will have to make some choices when choosing target priorities. Throw in a third vindicator or land raider and that will really make your opponent think about what to do. I would personally field three vindicators if my devastator squad was not so critical for my army's synergy.

For Blood Angels in particular, the vindicator is certainly one of the hidden jems of codex. Now that it's a fast vehicle for BA exclusively, you can use these bad boys at an effective range of 3 feet as they can move 12" before firing. Where regular marine players are forced to use their vindicators defensively (if they are playing them effectively), Blood Angels can actually use the vindicator as an extremely potent first turn alpha-strike weapon. No more hiding behind big buildings with a siege shield and waiting for the enemy army to come towards you. Sure, you could -force- advances by deploying key objectives directly in front of a defensive vindicator, but any general worth his salt is going to see through this trap and use proper countermeasures. And if you play your BA vindicator in a static role, then you're wasting the premium cost you pay for it to be a fast vehicle.

This also brings up the question as to whether the siege shield is now obsolete for Blood Angels. As you can see from my 2 vindicators pictured above, I am of the opinion that the siege shield is worthless. I know quite a few players who swear by the siege shield, but I see it as a waste of points when you can move 12" which is easily enough to move around whatever you may be choosing to hide behind. Yes, you'll lose range by going around, but probably not much. Regardless, I am not going to play my vindicators in a defensive role anyway. Since BA players already have to pay the extra 30 points for the fast profile, tacking on more points begins to turn your vindicators into a liability instead of a cheap hammer.

In short, the BA vindicator seems to me like it's the premier heavy support choice in the codex. It would be unfortunate for a Blood Angels player not to take advantage of this game-changing wonder weapon.

An introduction to the Blood Dragons

Whenever you go to RT's, clubs, or whatever to play a pickup game, one of the first questions a stranger might ask is what army you play. Unfortunately, I have to swallow a bit of pride and say "Blood Angels." I write this because Blood Angels players in general have it pretty bad with negative prejudice these days. The new BA codex is viewed by many as being cheesy and overpowered. I'll be the first one to admit, the codex is probably a little bit too good. But my "Blood Angels" army isn't your typical Blood Angels army, and I can proudly say that I jumped on the BA bandwagon before the "cheesy" new codex was released.

The reason I consider my army to be unique for a BA force is not because I made my own chapter that looks very similar to Flesh Tearers, but rather the unit composition.

No Jumppacks, no razorbacks or rhinos, no special characters. So what could I possibly be playing that is able to win a good amount of games?

Lots of bodies is the idea. 4x footslogging 10 man tactical marine squads is the core of my army, which I field in 1500+ pt games. They need to be footslogging to keep the points down. Sure, Blood Angels tac marines might not be the best troops choice around, but few armies can contend with that much power armor. On top of that, I've got a devastator squad with 4 lascannons, 2 baal predators and 2 vindicators. I'll go into more detail about each unit in seperate blog posts, and how they have synergy with the rest of the army.

Hobby wise, my Blood Dragons are loosely based off of a faction from the PC game Freelancer which was released in 2003. Freelancer is my favorite PC game of all time and I still play it to this day. Some of the motifs of the army include samurai themed (eldar) banners with the faction emblems from the game on the sergeants and captain. I wanted these guys to have a gritty feel compared to my other clean armies, so I did my best to paint an abundance of battle damage and weathering. I am happy with how this army has turned out, both visually and performance-wise on the tabletop.

My next few posts will be about individual unit tactics and how they fit into the "idea" behind this army. Perhaps I will be able to get in a few battle reports aswell.

Welcome to my blog

Well, this is my introduction post. On this blog I will talk about my opinions regarding the Warhammer 40,000 game and hobby. I'm not a great player but over the years I've now reached the point where I'm winning more pickup games than losing which is why I thought it was about time I'd start blogging. Still, what I write on this blog should be taken with a large grain of salt as I am certainly not the best tactician around.

Some background info: I'm 19 years old, soon-to-be-20, and I started playing 40k when I was about 14. My first army was Imperial Guard with a mix of Daemonhunters and my second army was Alaitoc themed Eldar. Both of these armies are around 1750 pts worth, but when I built the armies they were simply whatever models I liked at the time and not meant to be competitive. Up until a couple years ago I would seldom go to gaming clubs and play pickup games against random opponents, so my battles were fought mainly against friends using the same armies all the time. Therefore I didn't have much diversity in battles which led to repetitive metagaming, and made me want a change of pace.

So in the summer of 2008 I decided I wanted to get more involved with the gaming aspect of 40k. I figured it was about time to build an army that I could bring to clubs and stand a chance with instead of losing all the time against more competitive players using one of my "grab-bag" style armies. Earlier this year, I finished up the army after a long break of 40k playing and got back into the game now using the new Blood Angels codex.

Time to get started.