Thursday, May 27, 2010

Playing Dark Angels: The Dreadnought

Space marines on the battlefield are a lot like one-man armies. They have a tool for almost every job, and are pretty good at applying that tool to the appropriate situation. They're durable and hard to take down. Occasionally a foe will get lucky or prove to have just enough skill to take a marine down for good. If that marine was one of the most honored members of the chapter, he can be brought back from the brink of death and serve his chapter as a true machine of death, impervious to almost all forms of attack.

Of course, here I am referring to the dreadnought, the armoed walker that wrecks havoc on the opponent's mainline troop units. These little gems are quite amazing the Codex: Dark Angels, and you're about to learn why.

Playing Dark Angels: The Smoke Launcher

If one is to point to a single item in the Dark Angels codex that makes it truly viable, it is actually not the ability to field Terminators as troops. The humble smoke launcher which comes as standard equipment on all but the Land Speeder uses different rules from the rest of the Imperium, as the rule is printed in the Dark Angels Codex. Instead of providing a cover save, the DA smoke downgrades all hits to glancing hits.

This has the effect of drastically increasing survivability for the target vehicle for the turn smoke is in use. Consider, if you will, how hard it is to kill a land raider using only krak missiles. With the basic load-out 3 weapons, the vehicle requires a minimum of five glancing hits to destroy. Chances are, the opponent will not be rolling 5s and 6s for every single glance, and on average, the opponent will need about 12-15 glances to take down a land raider.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Where has all the time gone?

This post is mostly an "I'm still here; don't go away" kind of post. I have started back taking classes at the university to grab a Master's degree in software engineering, so all of a sudden some of my free time has been eaten away. I do have some things in store, however, so here's a teaser of stuff to come in the next couple of days:


  • Tournament Information & Army Lists
  • Planetary Empires: Campaign Update
  • Playing Eldar: My experiences so far
  • Playing Dark Angels: Series Debut

The Playing Dark Angels segment is going to be quite long-winded as I go over the ins and outs of using the codex in the current edition (according to my experiences). This is going to be an ongoing series describing the different facets of list building as well as strategy and tactics behind the units. The list alone is worthless if you're not using it properly, and for the Dark Angels, that is something more deadly to the player than the opponent's army (much like the Eldar, I'm finding)

I will cover deployment options, timing, meta-game decisions in list building, and the benefits awarded to this army. They do exist, and I find after having played for over two and a half years with them that I do much better with these units than their counterparts in other Space marine codices. I will discuss differences to those codices, but will emphasize how to make Dark Angels work for you rather than bashing on wargear options and rules that haven't been brought into parity. I will also show how Dark Angels line up in the grand scheme of the typical tournament scenarios and scoring.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

'Ard Boyz: Missed it by one point

I'm sitting down to eat dinner after a full day of awesome gaming. Short story is I missed third place by a single point. I'll have details up at some point tomorrow. Maybe someone will decide they can't make it and I'll get to make the semi-finals.

Edit:

Colds suck. I've put up a brief explanation of each of my games over at Bolter and Chainsword. The post link is here. Biggest lesson learned: 4+ tervigons is hard to deal with.  Short version: Problems with mission 1 as expected. Wrecked face in missions 2 and 3.

Monday, May 10, 2010

'Ard Boyz: Updating the list

Having had a chance to go over the new missions being used in the 'Ard Boyz event this coming weekend, I have made some changes to the list I was going to run. I am still going in with my Dark Angels; I don't have the wysiwyg models to run a viable BA or SW list, and I'm way underpracticed with Eldar.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Playing Eldar: Results of the First Outing

Lucas came to the game with Ghazkull, some bikers, lootas, a large Nobz squad, and several boyz squads mounted up in trukks. He informed me that he only brought 1500 points, so I did some manipulation to the list to trim it down. I removed the harlequins, falcon, and one of the guardian jetbike units. I used the points I had left over to increase the number of jetbikes in the remaining unit.


The main goal with the list is to stay maneuverable, reserve the jetbikes to keep them safe and let them do some harassment and objective capturing late game.

We ended up with table quarters and annihilation for our mission. Lucas won the rolloff and gave his lootas the protection of the top floor of a building and deployed the rest of his forces forward. I managed to get a good bit of cover in my corner as well and kept the grav-tanks mostly out of line of sight.

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