Last weekend during our monthly 40k day the unthinkable happened. We finally got a winner for our planetary empires game that had been going on since January. After months of figuring out tile bonuses and forgetting to use the Universal Special Rules that we gave to our units (until they were almost dead) Joey V. directed Hive Fleet Cerberus to victory! Joe was all fired up to play his bugs when we began, and with his new codex in hand he went on to dominate nearly every game he played. The stats we kept during the campaign show that Joe never lost a game, and only had a few games in a draw. Toward the end, having so many tiles allowed enemies to bring a few hundred more points to bear in his games. Even with the odds stacked against him, his tactical prowess still led him to victory!
In an attempt to start a tradition I chose to make this years trophy based on last years winner. Our last league was won by an Ork Player and thus I present the ORKY. (Its kind of like an Oscar, but with more dakka.)
(Also note the the proper alignment of the trophy has the ork running away fiercely.)
Next time we have a 40k league the trophy will now have to be based on Tyranids. But that may be a while as TQ has been steadily inducting us into his WARMACHINE fold and with the new fantasy on the way we are all excited about ranking up and marching forth to victory!
When I passed Joey V the camera last time we got together I wasn't expecting this. Joe and Jon are both on top of the current standings in our planetary empires campaign. Since the new codex dropped they have both been on a rampage, and loving every second of it. When their inevitable clash came no one expected them to pick up the Battle Missions book and create a bio mess like this.
In his current quest to repaint his Tyranid force with a Hive Fleet Behemoth color scheme while updating his army to the new codex, my brother Jonathan came up with a simple yet effective Doom of Malanti. Using spare carapace armor from his old kits in addition to the unused portion of his Trygon / Mawlock kit he transformed an old Zoanthrope into the DOOM with a minimum of effort. As I stated last time I featured one of his conversions, "Not bad for a kid who put his models together with Gorilla Glue about a year ago!" It's fun to see him improving in his modeling and painting skills. Now if we could only get all those layers ofspray paint off his old models. Simple green can only do so much.....
Last weekend a few more of our Planetary Empires players straggled in from the snowy wastes of South Jersey. We were slammed with about 20 inches of snow and are scheduled to get more tonight. I'm sure glad I'm on my week off work!
This battle report features my brother Jonathan's in the middle of being stripped and repainted Tyranids. He had just finished building his Mawlock and gargoyles and was eager to get them on the tabletop. He ended up stealing a few of my models this game since most of his army is in tubs of Simple Green at home, but his list looked something like this.
I was running a pretty typical Space Marine list with a lot of anti swarm firepower.
Librarian - Avenger, Gate of infinity
Tactical squad - Power Fist, Plasma Gun, Missile launcher, Rhino
Tactical squad - Power Fist, Plasma Gun, Missile launcher, Rhino
Tactical Squad - Power Sword, Flamer, Missile launcher, Razorback
Landspeeder - Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter
Dreadnought - Assault Cannon, Missile Launcher
Vindicator
Whirlwind
Land Raider Crusader - Multi Melta
The game was pretty one sided. He set up first along the majority of his deployment zone like he usually does. I find most of the inexperienced players in our group do the same thing, and it usually leads to their downfall. Being his first game with bugs in some time, he also ended up having synapse issues that could have been mitigated with a little more planning upfront. After the game, we talked about some changes that he could make to his list such as using a Parasite of Mortrex with one big blob of gargoyles and a Trygon prime or a few warriors in some Mycetic Spores to get a synapse bubble across the table quickly. He has a lot of tyranid models sitting around, and I think at the moment he is overwhelmed with the amount of choices he has with the new codex. If anyone has any tips or list suggestions, let him know in the comments. He really wants to win a game one of these days.
This weekend saw the start of our second round of competitive play. We are using the standard Planetary Empires rules with a few modifications to ensure variety among the games. If your interested all the rules are listed to the right under links and you can see the status of our campaign map.
My first match up was again Joe V. and his tyranids. He got the new rules a few nights before and decided to see how his old list played out. Contrary to the codex creepers cries, things seemed manageable with good target priority and threat management. Even though I lost the game I could clearly see where i went wrong and it was in no part due to the new Nids being overpowered. I misjudged how far away my assault marines were form the genestealers and that my tyrant had imaginary wings on it and got caught after the genestealers got a 6 for difficult terrain and a 6 for fleet. If I had faced either one at the time I felt that I could have taken them out in close combat. After my assault plans fell apart I went on the defensive and did my best to salvage the game but the damage had already been done.
Just remember, Have faith in your Bolters when your other weapons fail!
