Battle Report: BA vs. new Tyranids (1′500 points)

Mission was capture & control with a dawn of war setup; the game ended in a draw.

Captain Parcival checked his Tac Com and knew things didn’t look good. The 2nd Company formed a first line of defense in the outskirts of Plethora Hive, the last position the Blood Angels still held on Tenebra IX. The incoming data showed that Class C organisms were moving three klicks NW inbound. Soon there were going to be Tyranids everywhere.

Parcival went through his geotactical situation. In his immediate area of control there was a Dortis Sugar refinery and his own locator beacon. The Tyranids were surely going to feast on the sugar, but if they had a chance to destroy his locator beacon and cut him off from supplies, they wouldn’t let it slip either. Parcival told his troops to hide among the buildings so that the Tyranids would run into a seemingly empty area. He figured they only had a chance if they attacked by surprise and did a mechanized countercharge into the back of the Tyranid wave.

All of a sudden, there they were. A Hive Tyrant was directly charging with Termagants towards the locator beacon. Parcival ordered his very own Razorback and the Rhino of Squad Calrissian to move against these incoming creatures.

On the right flank, the Rhino of Squad Derian and the two Baal Predators rolled onto the scene and went straight for the sugar refinery where Hormagants and a Carnifex were trying to dig themselves in. However, just when the Rhino reached the refinery, the Carnifex charged the vehicle and tore it apart killing the entire squad with the exception of Sergeant Derian himself. Derian ran into the refinery and up the stairs onto its roof so he could take shots at the lingering Tyrandis outside. The Carnifex followed him into the refinery, however, and Derian could hear the brutal noises as this creature was smashing its way through the machines. Derian just hoped that the creature was too heavy to make it to the upper floors.

In the meantime, the two Baal Predators were busy killing Zoantrophes which they successfully did as they were still fully operational. However, mopping up the Zoes took away precious time when the Blood Angels’ infantry was in bitter need for their support.

On the left flank, Parcival and his Honor Guard exited the Razorback and took shots at the Hive Tyrant. The creature produced infernal screams as it felt the cleansing fire of the Emperor, but stayed focused and destroyed the Rhino of Squad Calrissian first. The Termagants quickly fell over the proud Warriors and the Hive Tyrant started to collect a heavy blood toll, too. However, Parcival stood firm in his decision not to yield a single meter to these creatures and let his Powerfist hammer onto the Hive Tyrant until the creature was no more. Parcival felt the stinking scent of the alien when he gasped for a breath of fresh air and tried to refocus, but in this moment a couple Venators came in and a Trygon dug out of the earth. Parcival played his last ace and called in Assault Squad Vincenzo who shocked down on the surprised Tyranids. Parcival’s and Sergeant Vincenzo’s Powerfists continued to do their ugly work, but a huge blow by the Trygon’s tail finally knocked Parcival off his feet and left him with an intense pain in his chest. He felt the warm comfort of Sanguinius wing’s folding around him and in the corner of his eyes he saw how Vincenzo delivered a last and final blow to the Trygon. And as Parcival’s memory was about to fade away, he heard the familiar beeping sounds of a locator beacon delivering its coordinates to some battleship in orbit…

Hiatus

I am going on a hiatus and leaving my Blood Angels alone for a little. Instead, you are going to see here a few articles on Warmachine over the next couple months instead.

I have been playing Games Workshop games (in chronological order: Blood Bowl, Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40′000) throughout all my hobby life and so far GW has given me a great time with their miniature range that keeps getting better and the fantastic universe serving as a background for one’s own little campaigns. However, now is the time to try Warmachine. Here are the reasons why:

1. With the Blood Angels Codex coming in April I don’t wanna build that units now and wait and see first what happens.
2. Privateer Press is making awesome miniatures for Warmachine. I finally fell in love when I saw an image of Dannon Blythe & Bull. From this point on I knew I need an army just to have these models.
3. Privateer Press has a predictable release cycle with fast updates for all factions. If you play Dark Eldar, Necrons, or the Inquisition, you may like that.
4. Privateer Press is cheaper. You don’t need that many models to start a respectable army while the price range is about the same as GW’s. To get started, all you need to buy is the main rulebook because the rules for every unit are printed on a card that comes in the unit’s box.
5. Most of all, Privateer Press integrates the community. They have a forum on their website where I got quick and friendly help when I decided to take the plunge. But most of all, when they were about to release the new MKII rulebook, they had a field test where everyone in the community could download the PDF, give it a try in a couple games and give feedback to the company! Now how great is that? Today, we live in a connected world where everybody is talking about how important it is to reach out to your customer. This company is doing it!

Integrating the community in the production process is about telling your customer that you care. Furthermore, it’s a little bit like opensource software. Opensource software is so great and stable because many eyes review the code. I expect Warmachine to be a much smoother experience than Warhammer. GW develops everything in secrecy, pumps out FAQs, and still there are some gamers with no sportsmanship exploiting holes in the rules. I think at GW work many creative spirits who make great products, but once they’re out in the wild they morph to a certain degree into something the developer didn’t think of. When you integrate the community, you have even more creative spirits plus the checks and balances from out in the wild, so using that information is the best thing a company can do. Why should it not talk directly to its customers when it’s so easy in our modern world?

Why Blood Angels have 4+ INV Stormshields

Today’s merry topic is why Blood Angels have worse Stormshields than any loyal Space Marine Chapter of the Second Founding. Nobody knows quite the reasons, but rumors indicate that the Blood Angels actually order their Stormshields from Grotz in the Terto sector.

In other words, since the advent of the latest Codex: Space Marines it is especially evident that the Codex: Blood Angels is outdated. Common sense tells you that it is just natural to use some of the rules for the Vanilla Marine for the Blood Angels as well. Over at Bolter & Chainsword one can even download a nice homebrew “Codex: Blood Angels – Revived” that allows you to adapt the Blood Angels rules in a three tiers system depending on how close you wanna stick to the original. With this document, you can iron out all errors in the current Codex: Blood Angels and everybody could be happy – if it weren’t for reasons of jealousy.

You see, with the Codex: Space Marines, all those Vanilla players felt treated well again. Suddenly they had cheaper troops and cool wargear to play with – if you compare the Ironclad Dreadnought to the Furioso Dreadnought and the Vanguard Veterans to the Veteran Assault Squads, you can sort of see where the ideas were coming from. So, everything in Vanilla world was good and that’s okay as every fan deserves a Codex he’s happy with.

However, some Vanilla players reacted to Blood Angels players’ attempts to unify the rules with utter refusal. Obviously, the new Vanilla Codex was theirs and nobody else should have a part of it as this would endanger them feeling special anymore. When a Blood Angels player vented his frustration over at Librarium Online about Blood Angels Stormshields still being a 4+ INV save rather than a 3+, he was corrected by a Vanilla player that this differences are necessary for balancing reasons. Yeah, right. When there were rumors about a new Codex: Blood Angels in 2010, people commenting over at Bell of Lost Souls already know how broken it will be. The truth is, the Codex Blood Angels can be considered broken right now, but not in favor of the Marines in red. There’s a list of challenges a Blood Angels player has to think of if he wants build an army list that is as efficient as a Vanilla list.

Since the Blood Angels have been confirmed for April 2010, we will see a few types of players come into focus:

1. Veteran Blood Angels players enjoying the new Codex.
2. Blood Angels newbies picking up the army because it’s either just the latest strongest army (they think) or because they like the fluff.
3. Vanilla players bitching about the new Codex: Blood Angels. I assume those are the ones who picked up Vanilla Marines just because they were the latest strongest.
4. Vanilla Veterans who are still proud of their own Chapter and are happy for the Blood Angels players because ultimately it’s diversity that makes this game great.

I will play anytime with a happy Vanilla or Blood Angels Veteran. I will also play anytime with a Blood Angels newbie who wants to commit himself to this army because he likes the Chapter’s fluff and background. However, I won’t have much patience for unhappy whiners. Everyone gets a little jealous every once in a while because the time frame when one’s army is the latest fad is relatively short. If you let that dominate your game, you’re missing a whole lot of fun. All the Space Wolves models that will be left unpainted when the Codex: Blood Angels arrives will speak for themselves.

Blood Angels rumors

Just a quick note to spread the word that there’s a current and condensed thread with Blood Angels rumors over at Bolter & Chainsword.

Your Absolute Worst Reloaded

So, the FTW collaborative post came out – many thanks to Ron for running cool ideas like this one!

This collaborative post was about our absolute worst miniature in terms of modeling and painting – my Blood Angels Scout Captain was part of it as well, of course. However, reading through the answers from other people I have to say a lot of stuff they did actually isn’t that bad. I mean, if I go to tournaments at the FLGS I see armies that are far worse but are still being tagged as “painted” by their owners.

Either way, I give my vote for “best of the worst” definitely to Gotthammer and his Chaos Predator tank that should really be an Orkzez Loota Waggon. I am sure you agree with me that it’s so bad a.k.a. crazy that it’s definitely cool. And if that’s not enough, check out his Apothecarius down at the bottom of the post.

(oh, BTW, I still have one of those HeroQuest Chaos Sorcerers, too )