The 6+ Save

First day’s over! Yay! Before anything else: hella-good tournament thus far. No complaints. The players are 100% cool. The TOs are 100% cool. The experience is 100% cool.

Sorry we didn’t liveblog anything — nobody’s watching anyway. I plan on writing a super cool NARRATIVE BATTLE REPORT about all of my games at some point in the future because I get enjoyment from 40k through painting and background rather than playing. Lol. It’ll have more pictures too.

Briefly, we need to be douchebags because that’s our thing! There were 15 dorky-dorks on day 1. Skinny white dudes need to stop thinking Ork battle cries are cool — you aren’t huge and green, you are small and white. It’s also amazing how many people still can’t pronounce “las.” Here’s the breakdown:

• Day 1 “WAAAGH” counter: 9
• Day 1 “layz” counter: 6

Oh yeah, and Army Builder is stupid. Don’t whine at me because I didn’t use it and don’t bitch when I ask to see your codex instead of believing the thing you printed out. 

Anyhow! I went 1-0-3. Cool story. Whatev. Here are pictures of the armies I played. Some of them may be bad because I was paying attention to losing so much.

Doc’s Imperial Guard. They cool.

Turns out they’re all girls!

David’s meched out Blood Angels.

Zoop!

Dante’s Eldar. He needs to finish them because they look really cool.

MISTER ELDRAD.

Casey’s Blood Angels.

Cool Stormraven conversions!

We’ve got just over 12 hours until the Bay Area Open. Got to Berkeley from San Diego by 11 a.m. and set out to finish up our armies. I only had to put on my FIST decals, thankfully. My buddy Josh didn’t have do do anything though. Kinghue, trooperlarkin and hessian7 are here with their Grey Knights, Dark Eldar and Tyranids, too.

We gonna win and win big. And by win big I mean suck and get all emo because we can’t play this game we spend a bunch of money on. Here are a bunch of progress pics. We’ll try to liveblog the tourney tomorrow if there’s internet access.

So here’s a big picture post of our stuff. Some looks better than others. Whatev. How can we not have fun with 2 days and 7 games of 40k?

Micro Sol makes decals WORK FOR ME.

Hessian7 painting his ‘Nids to a 3 color standard because he forgot to start before last night.

The IMPERIAL FISTS are complete.

Objective 1: statue of St. Celestine.

Objective 2: Massive FIST.

Objective 3: dead FIST brother-captain.

Josh’s mech Blood Angels.

Josh’s Librarian and sergeant.

MEPHISTON! THE LORD OF DEATH!

Kinghue’s STRIKE. FORCE. HUE.

Mr. Crowe.

Kinghue’s Grey Knight Terminators.

The KNIGHT of the FLAME.

Grey Knights Dreadnought.

Trooperlarkin’s Dark Eldar Venom spam.

It’s THE DUKE!

All of trooperlarkin’s army is female. Except the Duke. PIIIMP.

Razorwing Jetfighter.

Because I just returned to playing 40k after a pretty lengthy hiatus — I “played” until 5th started but really hadn’t put many games in since the beginning of 4th — I’ve been really into starting as many armies as I can. Imperial Fists were first, then there was my Crimson Fists idea and in between that I’ve had flashes of “OMG GUARD AGAIN,” “Hive Fleet Kraken time!” and “Eldar. Eldar everywhere.”

But I probably won’t end up going with any of those last three because — aside from Tyranids — 40k armies have become incredibly distilled. Not on the rules side. The rules are, generally, pretty solid. You can make good lists with any book and pilot them to great success if you’re a good player. What I’m talking about is something I’ve mentioned in passing before: a lack of flavor.

Some among this new generation of writers over at Games-Workshop are apparently boring squares with no sense of how 40k ought to be (or maybe they just don’t get paid enough to care). Let me use Codex: Eldar to illustrate what I mean, since talking about the Imperial Guard would push me into writing a massive litany of hate that’d stretch on for way, way too long.

Contrary to what a lot of people out there on the Internet seem to think, Eldar can be competitive at the highest levels of tournament play. They’ve got more than one effective build — really. My problem comes with the fact that none of those builds reflect what their decades of rich, finely-crafted background illustrates. Just look at the unit choices in the book itself: you’ve got a bunch of different aspects and wraith units and skimmers and jetbikes and AWW YEAH THE AVATAR. That’s not what people play though.

Since I’m at work I’m not really going to go much more into it. Just wanted to throw out some delicious food for thought (terrible phrase, fuck). Anyone out there remember when Eldar were cool? When you could roll an Ulthwe list with a huge Seer Council and guardians that wrecked shop? When you could actually theme an army around Biel-Tan that had representatives from more than two aspects? When “Dire Avenger vehicle upgrade” wasn’t part of the 40k lexicon?

I’m guessing not many do.

But I do. And I want that flavor back.

So I’m at work and kind of bored because my boss is too busy in meetings to give me an assignment. Thusly, I have decided to broadcast my battle report over the Astronomicon internet and share with you my glorious battle experience from this past Saturday. It was 1750 and 3 rounds, just in case you forgot. I went 1-1-1 (w/l/d), but everybody worth listening to knows that means 1-2-0. I had fun anyway. Woop-woop.

Game I

• Opponent: Richard. He plays Tau
• Result: loss
• Game type: we placed an objective in our deployment zones and deployed 12” up
• Lysander Awesomeness Grade (LAG): 9/10

So I got paired with my broseph Richard for the first game. He plays Tau and is ridiculously bad — like holy fuck he hasn’t won a game in ages. It’s mostly because he plays Tau Empire but I think it’s also because he kind of sucks at rolling dice. Anyway, I knew it’d be fun because it’d be my FIRST REAL LIFE GAME EVER with Lysander and his Imperial Fists. I went first.

So after forgetting to fortify a ruin with the greatest 200 point bro-cap in the game (never ended up doing this once at any point ever. Lol) and not using my Land Speeder Storms’ scout moves, I take my first turn of moving. Time to Gate of Infinity my squad of 10 assault terminators up! Hell yeah, Richard’s about to get it good! Like right in the bu— scatter 9, first ring of terminators barely within 1”, 2 on the mishap. Oh yeah, and first turn’s night fight so I didn’t need to get that close anyway.

Wellp.

Whatever. He seemed more butthurt for me than I was butthurt about it. I’m here to have fun with my gorgeous army. I continue playing. Poop on some stealth suits. Feeling good about everything.

The turns go by and Lysander’s squad gets picked off pretty quickly. Hessian7 taught me how to roll ones like a MOTHERFUCKIN’ CHAMP. So by like turn 4, I only have Lysander and some scouts left on my objective. Mister “one more turn for Rogal Dorn” survived alone with about 1600 points of communist aliens shooting at him for 3 turns before dying and the scouts end up with just Brother Sergeant Powerfist sitting on the objective. He feels like the best scout sergeant in the Imperium on the board because he wrecked 2 skimmers and fended off a squad of fire warriors trying to contest.

Last turn. Moment of truth. Suits inbound, time to go to ground for that 3+. Nothin’ but 2s. We don’t need to fortify nothin’!

Game ends in a loss instead of a draw. Whatever. It’s my first game. And my shit looks hot. Hot. HOT.

I was nothing but proud of Captain Lysander and his stubborn fists and had fun with Richard, who seemed genuinely sorry that my assault terminators died turn 1. Later on, I heard he was being a big baby bitch about the game and talking shit like he was awesome. Whatever. I’m bro enough to not give a fuck.

Game II

• Opponent: Ed. Rocks the Salamanders Space Marines
• Result: draw
• Game type: objective in the middle of each table quarter with spearhead deployment
• Lysander Awesomeness Grade (LAG): 6/10 (that’s the minimum)

This game was boring. Still fun, just not thrilling.

We played on a cool city board. Ed was a cool guy who, like me, didn’t know how to play his army. We had to cut it short at the end of turn 4. Geeked on his Vulkan with a Vindicator the moment he got out of a Rhino (what you know about 3++?). I end up running Lysander’s squad and contesting his second point while holding one myself. Ends in a draw.

Cool. Let’s move the hell on.

Game III

• Opponent: Izrael. Iron within, iron witho— wait that’s some Chaos shit. Izzy plays Necrons
• Result: win
• Game type: 12” deployment and then kill the fuck out of each other
• Lysander Awesomeness Grade (LAG): 8/10

This last game was by far the most fun. Not just because I won really big — subconsciously that was probably a part of it, honestly — but because Izzy is the best kind of player ever. None of my opponents were bad to play against, but when you face someone with the same game philosophy as you, which in my case is to throw down and see an epic story unfold before you, it’s the greatest time you can have playing Warhammer 40,000.

Anyway.

I zoom around with scouts. Terminators begin walking everywhere because I was too scared to gate up my assault guys, as he kept up-talking his Nightbringer and I didn’t know (lol). My scouts punk a tomb spider in close combat after he popped their speeder because they have a fist. Some destroyers do them in right after. My Vindicator owns up on some scarab swarms and a few warriors — whatev. Other scouts decide to go jump at the Nightbringer so I can get the charge if they survive. They survive and it begins.

Librarian pops Null Zone and I assault the Nightbringer with thunder hammers. He kills one, I fuck up his shit so hard. Those terminators then proceed to get fucked up by some destroyers because I can’t roll armor saves if the game depended on it. They finish the game with the Libby and two bros.

Simultaneously, Lysander leads the charge against the rez orb and its warriors. Two scout bros who’d spent time finishing off the scarabs join in and chase down the Lord because the terminators cannot. The game lasts for one more turn as I kill enough remaining guys to phase those ‘Cronz out.

zz.

I feel like he could have won. Good game, Izzy. Let’s do it again sometime.

PRIZES TIME:

• First: Dark Eldar with Silas rolling the dice
• Second: Dark Eldar with B-Ram rolling the dice
• Third: Tau Empire with everyone rolling poorly against Richard. MY BAD, STOP GIVING ME SHIT ABOUT IT
• Fourth: Dark Eldar with trooperlarkin rolling the dice
• Best Painted Army: My Imperial Fists
• Best Model: Vulkan He’Stan owned by Ed
• What really matters here: I was told that I placed 9/20. Yay!

So basically really skilled people made powerful Dark Eldar lists then stuck on the autopilot. Jay-kay, it still takes effort to not lose with that army. I can see Dark Eldar smashing so much face in this year’s Indy GT circuit. Also, there were no Imperial Guard or Blood Angels players present. That’s weird. Take away from what what you will.

Notably, tournament pairings were done by hand so some people ended up playing not exactly the people they should have, but by no means do I think the TO was unfair or consciously paired certain people against others to skew results. And what I mean by that is that Hessian7 got fucking robbed.

Fun tournament. Even with deficiencies I’d play it again exactly as it was because it was fun. That should be a no-brainer, losers.

We played nerd games yesterday. It was that 1750 tournament we’ve been talking about. None of us placed unless you count trooperlarkin coming in fourth, which we all know doesn’t matter.

I took a bunch of pictures. Most of them sucked because I had my glasses on and was concentrating on playing. I might do a battle report later. For now, here are some cool pictures. Mostly of my fucking amazing Imperial Fists. The army won best painted thanks to his expertise. Fuck yeah.

Scouts destroyed these. In close combat. Eat so many dicks, unpainted Tau.

Ed’s Vulkan. Sorta blurry. TO thought it was the “best model” so it got that prize. He only started like 5 months ago or something and is already pretty awesome at the hobby overall.

Ed’s epistolary. WHY WOULD YOU EVER PAY POINTS FOR AN EPISTOLARY?

FOR DORN! *poop*

Nightbringer thought he was big. Geeked on him with some Thunder Hammers.

Alex Stark’s Grand Marshal. Wish I’d taken a better picture. Lighting was off. Cool take on Black Templars.

Gonna have that 1750 of Imperial Fists done by Saturday what what! They’re getting done fast, good and cheap — reminds me of your mother, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, Lysander and this librarian are going to poop up on all comers this Saturday. Expect multiple battle reports from the bros next week!

Look at dat shield. DAT FIST.

About to Gate of Infinity up in this shit.

Look at that decal. And those scouts. Mmmngh-mmmngh! Most amazing part is this whole army is getting done in only a week. Aww yeah.

Rocked out 5 of 25 terminators today. And a scout too (oh crap I forgot to take a picture). I’m pretty pleased. You should be too ‘cause how the fuck do you not get excited about Imperial Fists? DORN!