Skaveny fun times

Got my first game in with the new book, yayz.

Played my buddy Kyle's Vampire Counts. He was trying stuff out so it wasn't the nastiest list possible, just your standard PD generation Skelly bunker army (14 PD and 4 bounds, lol).

I threw this together quickly:

Thanquol and Boneripper

Plague Priest level 2 w/ censer, 2 scrolls, furnace

3x 24 Clanrats, shields, flag and mus (champ with Thanquol), 2 Ratlings, 1 WFT

2x 20 Slaves

24 Monks, champ, flag, Banner of the Under Empire

5 PCBs

5 GRs w/ poisoned attacks and slings

Doomwheel

I threw the Doomwheel on the left flank and centered everything on the Furnace, scouted the GRs. He deployed in a nice line, Dire Wolves on the flanks and 3 units of Skellies with Vamps and a unit of Grave Guard with the Lord.

Things didn't get good until around turn 3. The GRs scouted and march blocked plus sniped a few skellies, magic was ineffectual (rezzing Skellies, dispelled wind of undeath) and I just let him come to me.

Notable moments:

-Doomwheel's first shot was a misfire, then it just played keepaway with a unit of skellies. It isn't good for fighting these guys on its own, so shooting was kinda wasted.

-WFT misfired and blew up first chance it got.

-One Ratling kept misfiring, but it got double 3's and double 6's so it kept on trucking. Still managed to pop a lone Vampire.

-I got the Dreaded 13th off TWICE. One from a miscasting Vampire (scrolled it sadly), the other from irresistable warpstone dice. I nuked a unit of Skellies, killing all but the Vampire, who got blasted by a Ratling Gun.

-A unit of slaves got Death Frenzy and charged into his Grave Guard, killing 4 then popping and killing 2 more plus 2 skellies from their cornered rats rule.

-Boneripper did jack all barring firing his Warpfire Thrower into combat between skellies and slaves and killing 16 slaves and 12 skeletons!

-The Lord and a Vampire, plus their units of GG and Skellies charged the furnace and Priest. They whittled the monks down to 12 plus the Furnace and lost around 13 to smoke, censers, and attacks. Next turn the PCBs ran in, I got off Death Frenzy and gave the Monks 5+ poison and I beat the Vampires by 16 or so and crumbled both units and Vampired, including the Lord!

So, my first impressions:

-Doomwheel is a misfire factory, but it will mess up big monsters and multi-wounders with shooting and crush infantry with impact hits. I may just want an A-bomb or WLC.

-Thanquol is redonkulous, even if I did only roll up 3 Tokens. Re-rolling those 1's saved his ass so many times.

-Ratlings got nerfed hard, but they don't totally suck.

-Skaven magic is insane. Death Frenzy and poisoned attacks FTW.

-VCs only have a few worthwhile spells to stop (Wind of Undeath is murder on weapon teams, Vanhel's, and that's about it) so save your dice.

-More power dice means more miscasts.

-WFTs are awesome, even if they blow up.

-The Plague Furnace is insane, but I'll need a bigger unit.

-The Censer ends up being more trouble than it's worth on a Priest riding a Furnace, he forces a ton of T tests on your Monks on top of the gas and doesn't affect nearly as many enemies.

-PCBs are insane. So freaking good.

-Slaves are still the best fodder unit ever.

We had a great game and I'm looking forward to the rematch Saturday, will post up my 2500 list when I finish it up.

My projects

Hey, I had some thoughts and I wanted to get them down so I don't forget. Don't like it, well too bad!

I've got a little bit of everything right now, but I don't have the money or patience to build them all into full on armies, so I'm going to be pruning back and making an effort at a reasonable number of armies.

I want to go for Space Marines, Orks, and Imperial Guard for now. Daemons may come later, same with Tau and Eldar and anything else that catches my fancy.

Locally, we have a bit of a scrub problem. People cry cheese way too quickly and suboptimal lists get thrown around a lot. I've tried teaching people with words, but I'm going to try something different. I want to throw big mean rock lists at them (one dimensional armies) and walk them through beating it until they can handle themselves. Orks are perfect for this. I want to turn my army into a "typical" overrated Ork uber army. That means Battlewagons and Nob Bikers. I would put a horde together, but fuck that I'm not painting 200 models.

So, I want to get up to 2000 points of each. The Battlewagon Brigade is easy, all I need is another Battlewagon and some buggies. More on that as I figure it out. The Nob Bikers I'm going to do up as Feral Orks and use plastic Orc Boarz to keep them cheap, but it also gives me some sweet conversion potential. I won't be using my Shokk Attack Gun, Kommandoz or Flash Gitz, but I want to keep them around for funsies. So, I'll have 2 Ork armies that are perfect noobslayer armies, but I will use them for good. Instead of just stomping on people, I will walk them through the game and help them figure out how to beat it with their balanced list. Hope it works. These guys are my favorite "fun" army, but if I can turn them into a teaching tool I'll be all for it.

Inspired by a post over on YTTH, I want to build up an army for 'Ard Boyz next year. Space Marines jump out since I have upwards of 3000 points of them but no real focus. I'm going to go for a "Best of" list with everything I love minus Sternguard. 2 LRCs full of Assault Termies, Tacticals in Rhinos, Scouts, Speeders, TLAC Dreads, Dakka Preds and a Librarian. Balanced, powerful, and easily scalable between 1500 and 2500. I need a lot of work to get there though, both LRCs, TH/SS Termies, and TLAC arms for my Dreads.

I have some Guard and I want to bring them to tourney readiness, but not 'Ard Boyz level. 2000 is the max. This will be a mostly mech list with Vets in Chimeras, Demos, Vendettas, etc and an infantry platoon to round it out. It's easy to bring Guard to 2000, but before I expand them further I want to get a good feel for them and make them different from my marines.

Deathwing is my pet project. I want to put together a DeathRaven army, similar to the one I posted earlier. All termies and Bikes, leaving the vehicles to my other armies. It should have a unique style and be a lot of fun to play, plus I won't have to buy much.

Daemons are tricky. I really want to build them up for the unique style of play and having another army in Fantasy, but I feel I have too much. I might just jack Stelek's competitive Daemon list for cheap, or stick with my initial plan for sprue Daemons. At present I'm deciding between 4 main builds: Daemonzilla, mono Slaanesh, "Best of" (chariot Tzeralds, Fiends, PBs, Bletters, TzDPs) or "competitive" (Fiends, dogs, PBs, Sheralds). I'll probably just playtest a bit more and figure out which I want. These are for fun like my Orks and DW.

All that should keep me busy and poor for a good while. Anything not fitting in the scheme will be sold off, converted, or hoarded for later.

I'm doing this to help make myself a better player by sticking to one army and learning it inside and out so I can better help my friends improve their own games and bring our community out of the cesspool of scrubdom that grips us to tightly. Plus, with some real focus I won't go leaping after the newest shiny thing.

Thoughts?