Tyranids: First Contact

Hi all,

I haven't gotten much further with painting the hive tyrant but instead this week I managed to borrow some models off a friend and play a 1875pt game so thought I'd do a short one about my experiences so far.

I was using a flying hive tyrant with lash whip, bonesword and heavy venom cannon, 2 units of 30 termagants, a unit of 30 hormagaunts, 2 tervigons, 2 exocrines, a unit of 3 zoanthropes with neurothrope, a venomthrope, a unit of 4 warriors with 2 boneswords and lash whips, 3 deathspitters and a barbed strangler using a Combined Arms detachment.  I was playing against raven guard using a talon strike force with a pinion demi company, which mostly deep struck or outflanked, a librarius conclave of 3 and a shadowstrike kill team.

The battle went well, playing a maelstorm mission, my tervigons were disappointing as they did little before getting killed, while the gaunts of both kinds did very well holding up space marine units and even wiping some out after a few turns. I really liked the exocrines, their Ap2 high strength weapon really helped against the marines where other units just had to rely on weight of shot to do damage.

Another unit I like were the zoanthropes as they more than earnt their points back and worked well to anchor the back line of the army against the deep striking stuff and take on the librarians.

I didn't get much out of my tyrant till the last turn but I think I needed to play it more aggressively rather than holding it back in future games.

I definitely want to get an exocrine and loads of gaunts for this project as for me they're what worked well during the game so I'll probably look into the endless swarm formation, which allows gaunt units to go into ongoing reserves when destroyed on a 4+.

Hopefully I should have a guide for how I'm painting my Tyranids plus a fully painted Tyrant to show with it next weekend.

All Hail Mars! Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarii Rangers and Vanguard Kit

On the 5/4/15 I got my first wave of skitarii for my army, which was three boxes of the infantry.  These models are great and really easy to put together coming in 7 pieces, legs, torso front, torso back, two arms, head and backpack.  There are 5 different poses of leg, torso, arms that could be put together in combination to give lots of different overall poses.  There are two different sets of heads to make either hooded rangers or helmeted vanguard plus the two sets of guns for them and one of each special weapon.  The squad leader has all the options for pistols and melee weapon plus some special heads.  The only thing I think the box is missing is more of the special weapons as a squad of 10 can take three, which can be three of the same.

Painting-wise they are very nice models with loads of nice details all over.  The standard martian paint scheme of red and silver really looks good on these models and the martian ironearth paint makes for an excellent base.  My first squad of rangers are below to show how they look painted.

I also recently had a chance to play a small 750 point maelstrom game with them as well and these new units are good, I was only using the rules from the white dwarf as it was before the codex release so I wasn't able to use the doctrine imperatives.  The rangers work really well as back field units with their extra range over most standard units and their ability to pick you special weapons and characters being very useful, while the vanguard proved their worth as a support unit for dragoons, allowing them to take down a chaos lord easier by lowering toughness.  The additional rules available for the codex allows you to improve either BS or WS (sometimes to the detriment of the other) and if using the special formations and battle-forged force organisation chart gives them crusader and scout (without outflank).

This is just a little look at them, I'll do a more in-depth tactica and review when I've played more games with larger forces.  I will also do posts on the other types of units when I have made them and had a chance to play a game with them.

All Hail Mars!: Adeptus Mechanicus: First Look

This week sees Games Workshop releasing the first waves of releases for a new factions for 40k, the Adeptus Mechanicus, which are one of my favourite in the fluff and something I've been looking forward too since their were rumours about this release several months back. The Mechanicus are a part of the Imperium of Mankind, basically being scientists and engineers who are responsible for the production of all technology, regulation of technology and seeking out lost technology but are very much not like modern scientists and engineers.  The members of the Mechanicus worship the Machine God and the Emperor as the Omnissiah (its physical manifestation), and believe that a small part of it lives in each piece of technology called a machine spirit.

The Mechanicus have been missing from Warhammer 40k for a long time, despite their reasonably regular appearance in the background material and novels.  This weeks sees two kits up for pre-order with their rules in White Dwarf, one infantry box and one walker box which both contain two different choices of what to make with it.  With the rules out in White Dwarf yesterday, I though I'd have a quick look at the rules for the infantry and give my opinion on what they're like.

The first unit is the Skitarii Rangers, they are consummate hunters who stalk their prey until its destruction has been achieved.  Squads start at 5 and can go up to 10. They have a profile similar to scions with 4+ armour, a 6+ feel no pain, relentless and move through cover.  Their weapons are 30" range S4 ap4 rapid fire with precision shot, so they're very good at picking out things like heavy weapons etc.  The can also take special weapons, 2 normally or 3 if the squad is ten models.  The special weapons they can take is an arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver, which I'll have a look at later as they're shared with the other squad.  The rangers look like your back field objective holders who are very good at taking the teeth from guard veteran squads etc or killing anything space marine scout or lower.

The other unit the infantry box makes is the Skitarii Vanguard, who are rad-troopers equipped to fight in the worst environments using radiation as their weaponry.  They have the same profile as the rangers but swap move through cover for Rad-Saturation, which reduces the toughness of models locked in combat with the vanguard (to a min of 1).  This helps to make up for their strength 3 in combat but you'll still need to watch out as you're ws 3, t 3 and i 1 so you're outclassed by space marines in a one on one fight.  The vanguard have radium carbines as their weapon which is a 18" s3 ap5 assault 3 weapon with another interesting rule called rad poisoning which means that on to wound rolls 6s auto wound and cause 2 wounds rather than 1.  They can also take the same special weapons as the rangers in the same proportions.  My take on the vanguard is they're your assault/close shooting troops who are good anti-horde and can have a go at high toughness monstrous creatures with their auto wound on 6s causing two wounds.  The special weapons can really help with squad more than the rangers as they have to get closer so get more use out of the arc rifle and plasma caliver.

The special weapons these guys have access to are interesting and unique to their faction and they are the arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver.  The arc rifle is where the majority of these guys anti-tank will come from its a 24" range s 6 ap5 rapid fire weapon but the best part it is haywire so will easily strip hull points from any vehicle especially if you get within 12" for two shots.  The transuranic arquesbus is a 60" ap 3 heavy 1 sniper with armour bane so my thoughts are that it fits best with the rangers, improving their ability to hurt models with a better save and give them some anti-tank capability plus with reltenless you don't have to worry about moving with it.  The plasma caliver is your terminator killer as an 18" s7 ap 2 assault 3 gets hot weapon so it can do some tank busting too but you need to be careful as three shots give more chance of killing yourself with it.  The way I'm thinking of using the special weapons would be mostly in smaller squads so not to make them too expensive as the arquesbus and the caliver are equivalent to ~3 and ~4 vanguards in price so quickly stack up and bring your model count down.

These are my current thoughts on the new skitarii infantry, I should have a smilar post on the walkers coming soon.  What do you think of them? Post in the comments below.

Dropzone Commander: Jump-Off Point

Hi all, recently I have been looking at dropzone commander which is a game that i have glanced at in the past and even bought the starter set for but never done anything with this.  I have been motivated by the pictures that have started to appear of the next wave of released coming out of  Hawk wargames, so I'm going to start to actually build-up a force and play some games so I thought I'd start a series on this.  This first post will give an overview the game world and the factions currently available.

The setting for the game is a "hard sci-fi" one, so theres no space wizards rather lots of cool future-tech.  Its set in the year 2670 where mankind has colonies the stars initially with the help of an alien race called the shaltari, who showed them a set of earth-like habitable worlds and discovered on their own a set of more hostile world with large amounts of resources.  The humans and shaltari fall out after it comes to light that the shaltari want to use humans in foot soldiers in their war against another shaltari faction.
Some time after this an alien device falls to Earth, a White Sphere made of unknown material that seems to defy measurement.  This alien device disappear, seemingly liberating itself after being connected to the internet and broadcasts a warning that something is coming and that humanity should run.  In the message a date and place are given where all those who wish to should meet it and on that date a large rag-tag fleet of ex-military and civilian vessels assembles to do what the White Sphere told them to.  The military opposes them and after a destructive battle the military fleet is left battered and the others leave eventually forming the Post Human Republic (PHR).  Two days later the Scourge, an advanced aggressive alein race, show up over humanity's best world and invade them shattering humanity's defences, though the majority are captured or killed, some people are able to flee to the frontier worlds and proceed to make sure they can't be followed.  The survivors form a new government the United Colonies of Man (UCM) and rebuild and prepare for retribution.
The game picks up on the opening day of Mankind's reconquest letting you take any of the factions and fight to decide the fate of humanity's future.

Currently there are five playable factions, the UCM, the Scourge, the PHR, the Shaltari, and the Resistance.

The UCM are a faction that has no particular weaknesses with units to cover all bases without being to expensive but their units are never as effective as other faction's specialists.  The area in which the UCM do excel is their fast moving aircraft, they have access to two different fast movers with one being a dedicated interceptor and the other a heavy bomber.

The Scourge are the primary antagonists in the Dropzone story and are a parasitic alien race that invade humanity's world in search of hosts.  In game scourge are a very fast, short ranged, high powered army but they lack long ranged fire-power on a large scale and are in general quite lightly armoured.

The PHR are cyborg who descended from the humans who left before the Scourge invasion, in game they have lots of hard-hitting and heavily armoured units as well as lots of specialist units but they are also the slowest faction, going no where fast on the battlefield without using drop-ship relying on them more than any other faction to get around the battlefield.

Th Shaltari are an alien race who showed humanity the majority of its best world and are the most advanced race in the game.  They employ anti-gravity tanks as well as massive war-walkers to dominate the battlefield.  They are also the only faction not to use drop-ships per say, rather they use teleportation gates and this allows them to move across the battlefield in a unique manner going from one gate to another and therefore moving across the battlefield the fastest of all.  On the battlefield their units are either fast with weak armour or slower with high armour but all have energy shields which give them usually a 5+ save against all damage, this movement capability and saves makes they a tricksy race with lots of movement shenanigans to pull.

The last faction, the human Resistance are a rag-tag bunch of survivors of the Scourge invasion who use a mix of old military equipment and converted civilian tech.  They are the only faction that don't have passive countermeasures on all their vehicles and are often more fragile than the other races but these vehicles are cheap, very cheap so if you wanted to run a horde of vehicles then this is the faction for you.  While their civilian technicals are cheap and flimsy, the old military tech is very survivable with high armour and good damage points.  Resistance are also unique in that there are two sub-factions, allied and feral, where the allied are those that help the UCM and get special praetorians and archangels to add to the army while the feral are those that oppose and get berserker infantry and the barrel bombers.


I hope this overview is helpful, I may do more in-depth faction reviews as I play the game more and also as I play I'll do things like review the game mechanics and some tactics that I learn.

Reviews: The Mass Effect Trilogy

I recently finished playing through the Mass Effect trilogy straight after each other and thought I'd do a review on the series.  I will avoid spoilers though the games have been out for a long time, so I will talk about any game choices in general terms rather than specific plot points.

The player in Mass Effects controls Commander Shepard who is the main character in the story, you can customise the gender,appearance and class for the Commander when you start the game, with the choice of class having a significant influence on the game as each class has a different set of abilities.  There a six classes to chose from with each class having one set of powers or a mix of two: the soldier (combat), the engineer (tech), the adept (biotic), the vanguard (combat/biotic), the sentinel (tech/biotic) and the infiltrator (combat/tech),  Each of the power sets are different, with combat being the most straight forward as you rely mostly on weapons and buffing weapon damage, tech has a selection of powers that are strong against shields and armour as well as disrupting synthetic opponents while biotics have lots of crowd control and debuff abilities while relying mostly on powers for damage.  Your class selection depends on what play style you wish to use, and it is possible to change your class between each game even if you load the previous games save.

The story through the three games is amazing in my experience, it has lots of interesting well developed characters, interesting enemies, memorable locations and an epic story running through it that wouldn't be out of place in a movie or tv series.  There are points within the story where your actions have both an immediate effect as well as a knock-on effect in the later games.  I also had all of the expansion packs during the play through which add extra missions, this additional content add more direct links between the current game and the next, and in the third game one of the DLC mission arcs is a bit tongue-in-cheek and makes fun of the game itself in places in a good way, which is a very funny set of missions to play through filled with tropes and clichés and is bet done with as many crew-mates as possible.

The game play of the series is a fusion of role playing game and shooter elements with combat consisting of a mix of firing your guns and activating targeted abilities while the non-combat parts were often dialogue based, with a wheel giving different ways to advance the conversation, as well as interacting with objects such as hacking, collecting and examining.  The combat gets more streamlined and evolved through the series with a cover system appearing in Mass Effect 2 and at the same time the cool down for abilities changed from individual ones to a combined one.  Characters also have one or more guns to use in combat as well as powers from heavy pistol, sub-machine gun, shotgun,assault rifle and sniper rifle.  Each has strengths and weaknesses, the slower firing weapons do more damage per shot and are good against armour but require more aiming and are less effective vs shields whereas the faster firing weapons are easier to aim and good vs shields but do less damage per shot and less vs armour, which often means that you want one fast firing and one slow firing weapon to suit any situation.  The ammo system in one differs from two and three, in one weapons can firing a certain amount of shot before overheating and needing to cool whereas in two and three a more traditional ammo system is used where you collect thermal clips, which can be used in any weapon, that have a certain amount of shots before needing to reload the weapon.

Mass Effect 3 introduced an on-line multi-player that is linked to the single player campaign in which up to 4 players co-operate to survive waves of enemies while completing small objectives such as collection/drop off items, kill specific enemies, take and hold an area or escort a drone.  In each match your character earns experience and credits, with the experience levelling up the characters as in the single player and the credits are used to buy random "boosters" of equipment, new characters, bonus exp for certain characters, and one use items.  I found this addition to be a really nice one and allows for a quick game without cutting the story into too small chunks to do anything significant in.

Overall I really enjoyed the series and would definitely play again in the future if I were to have a gap in my hobby, so I'd give it a 5 out of 5 rating.  I hope this helps inform you on the series and I would definitely recommend playing it if you like strong story driven rpgs and haven't already.