Kill Teams Campaign Ending Mega BATTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Kill Teams group decided to close out a successful five week campaign by having a six way free for all.  Ben's Tau Empire took the day by holding two of the five objectives at the end of round five.  I had a couple of Marines and my Librarian/Leader left.  Realistically, I wasn't mobile enough to get to most of the objectives.  I also didn't have enough models to effectively hold what I was able to get to.

The board that we played on was gorgeously set up.  Here are a bunch of glamour shots.

At the end of the game, the Tau held two objectives and the Grey Knights held one.  I think somebody else held one, but I missed the photo.

Heralds of Ruin - Weeks 4&5

I ended up playing both weeks 4 and 5 in my Kill Teams campaign over the weekend.  I had missed week 4 due to personal issues, so we just played a catch up game and then the current week's game.

As a refresher, my list is Iron Warriors and is made up of 2x Siege Terminators (1 is the leader), an Apothecary, a Plasma Gun Dude and 4x Bolter Dudes.

For the week 4 game, my opponent (Will) was playing Astra Militarum.  He had maybe three or four 5-man squads, each with a meltagun.  He also had several heavy weapon bases with either Lascannons or Missile Launchers.  Really, I had no chance from the start.  The heavy weapon bases were deployed to lock down all of the places I could potentially move up the board.  This made it very hard for me to attack.  When I was able to move forward and shoot, I'd kill 2-3 Lasgun Guardsmen, who were basically throw away models.  The heavy weapons and meltaguns destroyed my team.  I ended up losing a single Bolter Dude permanently.  It was a rough battle.

For the week 5 game, my opponent (Max) was playing Imperial Fists Space Marines.  I can't think of a more thematic battle.  He'd sprung for a Rhino and had a Heavy Bolter Centurion to go along with (I think) 6 or so Marines.  We were playing the mission where I was defender and he was attacker.  If I made it to the end of round 5 with at least half my models remaining, I win.  If he gets me to below half strength, he wins.  If he gets me to below half strength, but I also get him below half strength, it's a draw.  In practice, that means he only had to kill four of my models, while I had to kill five of his.

Given how small the sides were, it was mostly a game of exchanging fire and two assaults.  I ended up making a series of lucky saves, while my Terminators missiles and power fists denied him armor.  I ended up winning at the end of round 5 with four of my seven models alive and seven of his nine dead.  It was a fun game and he could easily have won had I failed one more armor save.

The tables we played on were gorgeous.

Heralds of Ruin Kill Team Fully Painted

I sat down for a couple of hours and knocked out the last couple of models for my 250 point kill team.  I think the Apothecary needs a little more detail work, but I can knock that out later.  I really just needed to get everything to the 90%+ stage for table play.

I definitely need to do squad markings on the shoulder pads.

Kill Teams "Mega Battle"

My Kill Teams group got together and did something a little different.  We played a game with three of our teams, the Imperial Fists, the Iron Warriors and a group of Imperial Guard, versus 600 points of Tau Empire.  The Tau Empire consisted entirely of a Commander, three Crisis Suits and a Riptide.  It was a fun battle.  The Tau side ultimately won, but was only had the Riptide with a handful of wounds remaining.  Everything else died.

The gaming board was pretty nice.  We played at Showcase Comics in Swarthmore, PA.  They have an amazing assortment of terrain that can be used for a variety of games.

We went with a sort of "gutted out NYC" vibe, complete with Central Park!

This Imperial Fists Centurion was one of the stars of the game.  His Heavy Bolter fire took out one of the Crisis Suits and damaged several others, including the Commander.  The Iron Warriors Siege Tyrant Master was one of the other stars.  Never underestimate Marines with massive weapon systems.

The lowly Guardsmen did a great job of slowly moving across the board and drawing fire.  Unfortunately, I don't think their Lasguns did much in the way of damage.

This is where we learned not to bunch up when a Riptide with a S8 AP2 Large Blast weapon is standing close by.  The casualties were epic.

After that blast, we learned to spread out a little more.  One of these Marines actually survived to charge the Riptide.  He tied it up in combat for a round, effectively taking away the Riptide's shooting phase.  I think he deserves an award for that.

That's all I have  I don't know how it happened, but I didn't get a single solid shot of the Tau enemies.  I'll try to do a better job in the future!

Heralds of Ruin Inquisition Kill Team w/Pig Iron Productions

I've been playing Warhammer 40k Kill Teams lately using the Heralds of Ruin rules.  It's been a lot of fun.  I've mainly just been using the models I have available and painted.  My experience thus far is that this doesn't make for very effective teams.

I'm seriously considering putting together an Inquisition Kill Team.  The Heralds of Ruin people put out specific lists, so the options vary a bit from the Codex choices.  My thought is to go with the following list...

The idea is to have a relatively basic Inquisitor with 20 Warrior Acolytes broken into four 5-man units.  The Warrior Acolytes will be supported by two Medics and three Death Cult Assassins.  My idea was to go Ordo Hereticus and have the Inquisitor "under cover" posing as a group of cultists to infiltrate an existing cult in the underbelly of a hive world.  In that sense, no Inquisitional logos or polished armor is allowed.  Everything needs to be filthy and covered in rags and rebreathers.

I'm thinking about using these models from the Pig Iron Productions Kolony Ferals line...

The guy with the staff thing would be the Inquisitor.  He's obviously the cult leader.  He's amazing.  I've seen this sculpt before and totally love it.  Two of the other guys will get light conversion work...  probably a backpack...  to become Medics.

These guys will be the basic troopers.  I know this picture isn't as great, but they totally fit with the command guys.  I'd need four blocks of these.

Last up are the melee guys.  Three of these would end up as Death Cult Assassins.  Some of the heads look a little rough, but for an extra couple of bucks, I can get ten extra of the head sprue that has the hooded, masked guys.  I prefer those anyways.

All told, it would cost 60 GBP plus shipping to order directly from Pig Iron.  TheWarStore used to stock them and still have an area in their web store, but it's empty.  I'm trying to find a US distributor.  It would almost certainly be cheaper.  60 GBP is a little rich for my blood right before Christmas.  They do accept PayPal.  Maybe if I sell some crap I don't need, I can just PayPal this stuff and get it for "free".

Heralds of Ruin Kill Teams Review...

I met up with a few new friends over the past weekend and  we all played a few games of the Heralds of Ruin Kill Teams rules for Warhammer 40k.

Here's the link...  http://heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.com/p/kill-team-rules.html

It wasn't without it's flaws, but I chalk that up mainly to not having fully read the rules and having built a sub-par kill team.  I did what I normally do in these situations and just grabbed a bunch of models that were fully painted, with no thought to how they'd perform.

I had a Necron Noble (sort of like a lesser Lord), 5 Immortals, 5 Warriors and 2 Canoptek Scarabs.  My opponent had a very well painted Imperial Fists list featuring (I believe) about 10 Marines with a mix of Sternguard, Vanguard and regular Bolter Dudes.  One guy had a Heavy Bolter.

We played at Showcase Comics in Swarthmore, PA.  I can't speak highly enough about this store.  We were able to fill two full 4' x 4' tables with matching terrain.  Here are a few action shots...

I ended up losing in a fairly overwhelming slaughter.  This is the first time in a long time I can remember Space Marines feeling like this unstoppable force.  It was difficult to put a wound on them and when I did, my opponent kept rolling 1-4 on the Injury chart.  Only a 5-6 kills a guy.  I, on the other hand, took more wounds overall and rolled far more high numbers for Injury.  Even with my Reanimation Protocols, I lost more than half my force and had to take Rout checks.  Necron Ld values are 10's across the board, so I stuck around and lost when we hit the end of turn 6.

Overall, it's a very fun version of the game.  My main take away is that I need to completely rebuild my list to add a variety of options.  I think that AP 3 is the magic you're looking for.  AP 5 might as well be AP -.

WargameExclusive's "Totally NOT Tau" Models

I know I posted yesterday about playing a Necron Kill Team, but I think I'm going to start a background project building out a Tau Empire Kill Team also.  Why, you ask?  Because of this guy...

Seriously...  this is the most tough looking Tau dude I've ever seen.  His name is probably Shas'vre Ba'dass or something similar.  They label him as "Squad Leader Ghost".  He's obviously supposed to be a Stealth Shas'vre.  It's a $20 model, which seems totally reasonable for something with this level of detail to act as the Leader for a kill team.

There were a couple of other pretty solid options on the site...  which I'm going to link to before I forget.  They have a regular website AND an eBay store...  the latter being how I've bought from them in the past.  eBay just makes everything easier.

https://wargameexclusive.com/

http://stores.ebay.com/warex-store

This one looks to be a Tau Empire themed Culexus Assassin.  I've thought about running a Culexus in the past, but wanted to stick to the Tau theme.  This will work amazingly well.

They also have some bikes that would work well as Eldar bike stand-ins.

I'll probably put an order in once I decide on a Kill Teams list.  The site has a ton of other really cool looking models from a variety of factions.  They have some pretty amazing looking Adepta Sororitas and Adeptus Mechanicus models that I'd love to own.

Heralds of Ruin Kill Team Rules

I'm going to be playing the Heralds of Ruin Kill Team rule set with some new friends I met at a recent Age of Sigmar tournament.  I'm really looking forward to it.  There are a ton of different factions that don't quite line up with the regular GW Codexes.  As an example, there is a Tau Empire kill team list, but there's also a Kroot Mercenaries list with some units that don't normally exist in 40k.

I'm going to give Necrons a shot, mainly because I already have them painted up.

Here's my Kill Team...  hopefully it'll perform well.  I may have to make some changes.  My give me a reason to finally assemble the box of Tomb Blades I've had sitting around forever.

It's currently a Noble, five Immortals, five Warriors and two bases of Scarabs.  I'm thinking that it'll be pretty durable and the Scarabs will be able to rush forward into cover to take out threats while the rest of the army trudges forward.

Tau Kill Teams Test

Tomorrow night marks the test of my kill team. I'm not expecting great things as the team is more fun than anything.

Here it is:

Deathrain+ Pattern Crisis Suit (Armourbane)

6 Fire Warriors with Photon Grenades (one with Hammer of Wrath)

Piranha with Fusion Blaster, Disruption Pod and Decoy Launchers (It Will Not Die)

I'll post the results.

More Work on the Tau Kill Team

I did some more work on my Tau Kill Team today.  I got the weapons more or less done.

I also tried something new on the little shields.  I tried to get a nice even gradient from one color to another.  I want the armor in general to be a little dirty and smudged, but for the areas I would consider to be powered to be gleaming and bright.  This includes the little shields as well as the power indicators on the backpacks.

The more I paint these guys, the more they're taking on a colorful anime sort of style.  I'm kind of digging it.

I also colored in some armor panels with The Fang (old Shadow Grey) and highlighted with whatever the next color up is.  I'm not entirely sure if everything looks appropriate as I'm colorblind!  haha.  I pretty much just stick to the basics and match highlights to bases.  The new GW paint line is spectacular for people like me.  Everything lines up together really well and the paints tend to come in three color blocks.

And I remembered to color in the bare arm dude's arm.  Looks much better to me now.

Let me know what you think.  I think you can leave comments.  If not, send an email to kriswall@gmail.com.