Megabattle Full Report

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Love This Pic

Fear the Neo-Quint'Aan:

Today's Kill Total: 1 Vindicare Assassin, 1 Imperial Guard Heroic Senior Officer, and 4 of his staff. Not a lot but he absorb a few rounds of crucial shooting in the process.

Megabattle Update

Chaos scores a victory, full details and pictures to follow.

Marinehammer

Since the release of the latest Space Marine Codex, White Dwarf has been filled with numerous articles focusing on Marines (sometimes including Chaos Marines) to the point of foolishness. Some apologists say its only their turn for the spotlight but its been over 3 issues filled with marines and another one on the way. Let's face it, Warhammer 40K is dominated to an extreme by Space Marines.

No other Games Workshop game suffers a similar fate. Fantasy Battle has many equal armies sharing the spotlight. Battlefleet Gothic and Epic are set in the same universe and while marines feature prominently there they are not the majority overall. But 40K is different for a variety of reasons:

1) 40K is bigger than all others combined, even WFB;
2) Marines are a great entry army because they are easy to assemble, paint, and play;
3) Marines are super-heros in a galaxy of regulars.

What this means is that well over 50% of the new people coming into the hobby start with Marines. The good news is that veteran players that stick with the hobby often branch out into the other races but the bad news is that it is the new players that drive sales, and therefore focus of the company.

Now, back to me...

I started with Eldar and played Eldar hard for years, about a decade. I had a chaos marine army I inherited from a friend but it was a secondary force, something I fielded once in a while for variety. The last couple years my focus switched from Eldar to my marines because I felt I could identify more with the characters in my marine army and I lost touch with my Eldar. I feel pangs of guilt often now because I know the game is flooded with marine players yet it has become my main army. To offset this guilt I am slowly building a Lost and the Damned army of renegade Imperial Guard and mutants with only a couple marines in there as squad leaders.

I hope Games Workshop moves away from Marinehammer and back into Warhammer 40K. But by the looks of things, it won't be anytime soon.

Arms Race

The race for air superiority has officially begun.

For a few years, there were a few flyers here and there. Marty's ork fighta-bomba which made a lot of noise but didn't really bother my marines. Stu's Tau dropship. Not a whole lot worth worrying about.

But then I got the Helltalon and things seemed to heat up. Here was a fyler with definitely edge. Deadly and fast and used to devestating effect against a series of opponents, talk began about how to best model Anti-aircraft mounts on vehicles. Some Eldar players got some Vampires and Pheonixes and it now seems that having the AA gun for the army is not such a bad idea. Dalton is building his own flyer based on a Warthog model. White Dwarf mag #301 had rules for flyers intercepting each other in a battle report. Corey is talking about building a firestorm grav tank for AA support. I'm considering building my own AA support vehicle or platform.

The wildest part is that I don't see this phenomenom going away. Flyers are here to stay and smart players will start taking this new type of threat into account.

Veteran Sergants and Las-Plas Combos

I've been having discussions with Dalton (aka DMan) about certain aspects of army lists that lend itself to abuse more than others. Part of that discussion involves the use of veteran sergants in squads, also known as aspiring champions, Exarchs, etc. Squad leader upgrades that are most prevalent in Space Marine and Chaos Marine armies.

The basic premise is that squad leader upgrades are very common in lists today but in reality should be rare. And when these squad leaders are taken the usual weapon on choice almost always is the power fist due to its effectiveness against enemy troopers, characters, and vehicles.

I admit I am guilty in my chaos armies of almost always taking aspiring champion upgrades. I like the tactical flexibility the upgrade gives my squads, the ability to take power weapons and power fists to deal with those targets that regular troopers struggle against. I feel I have some measure of defense in all this though, and that is because I use exclusive undivided chaos without resorting to the mini-dexes of Night Lords, Alpha Legion, or Iron Warriors. In effect I deny myself cult marines and all daemons except furies in exchange for nothing. I would hope people would allow me some latitdude on my preference for aspiring champions.

On a similar note, my two most commonly fielded tactical squads make use of the lascannon heavy weapon and plasmagun special weapon. Lately it has been noted that the "las-plas" combo is the most effective for marine squads and has become ubiquitous across the board. Well, let me tell you that back when I was experimenting with weapons for my squads I settled on a lascannon and plasma gun as the combo that worked for me. A lot of other marine players said "oh, don't do that! Your bolters and lascannon fire at different targets, you'll always waste one of them. Use missile launchers or heavy bolters." I responded by saying that I liked the tactical flexibility and I prefered the high strength of the lascannon cause when I shoot at a hard target I want the best shot possible. That was years ago. Now its seen by the majority as the best combination and my selection looks like powergaming. Yeesh.

Anyways, not one to disrespect the common good I've added a third tactical squad I intend to use often that has a missile launcher instead of a lascannon. And I've got some ideas for introducing some other mixes in the special weapons department. I'll keep you all posted. ;)

 

Megabattles

I've got a megabattle coming up on Sunday. 8 players bringing 2000 pts each, 8000 pts per side, Chaos versus Imperials. I have a love-hate relationship with megabattles. I like the excitement and anticipation, the plotting and scheming. But I've never had a great experience in actually playing the game.

Don't get me wrong. I've had enjoyable experiences at times. And even when it wasn't enjoyable it was a fun event. But the problem is that when you start getting to 4K pts per side and more you start to see imbalances show up. Codices designed for 2000 pts and one org chart don't scale upwards like you would think. Sometimes an opponent might find his portion of the army facing 5 or 6 versions of a unit where he would normally expect 1 or 2.

Another problem is slowness. The game moves at exactly the speed of the slowest person halved. Finishing megabattles is an accomplishment in itself. The sheer confusion for shooting and close combat is so extreme that despite having 4 people you still have to do everything one at a time.

Lastly, we have the dreaded feeling of being the losers. If one side is totally getting smucked by the other side, the whole day can feel like a big waste. Fortunately, pitched battles are the norm in megabattles due to the size of the armies involved.

We are wise this time though, and have taken precautions to avoid some of these issues. For one thing, we are dividing the deployment zone so that each player has his own area and faces off against one opponent. Secondly, we are starting with half of each army in reserve so that the game doesn't get bogged down too early. Hopefully when the last reserve force arrives in turn 3 some of the initial jitters have worn off and the game is flowing smoothly. Plus, we are all experienced players so no slowness from newbies!

All in all, I'm looking forward to this match. May the chaos gods smile upon us.

2500 pt Black Storm Fleet

At the Battle For Telico Secondus.

 Here is the 2500 pts fleet I used successfully in a fleet engagement. Based on the Chaos Space Marine list in Armada
Ninveah - Despoiler Class Battleship
- Warmaster Quint'Aan, Lord Rhavoc the Ancient (+2 LD, 2 fleet re-rolls)
- 5th & 6th Companies of the Black Storm (+1 LD, LD max increased to 10)
= 560 pts

(I should point out that this ship is the Namesake of this blog.)

Astral Hunter - Hades Class Heavy Cruiser
- Lord Kirith (+1 LD)
- 7th & 8th Companies of the Black Storm (+1 LD, LD max increased to 10)
= 260 pts

Caligo Eternus - Archeron Class Heavy Cruiser
= 210 pts

Darknight's Pride - Devastation Class Cruiser
- Lord Diomedes and the 7th Volistad Regiment (+1 LD, 1 squadron re-roll)
= 240 pts

Elucius Rex - Devastation Class Cruiser
= 190 pts

Ethereal Nightmare - Murder Class Cruiser
- Lord Deucalion (+1 LD)
- 2nd Company of the Black Storm (+1 LD, LD max increased to 10)
= 230 pts

Murderous Intent - Carnage Class Cruiser
= 180 pts

Capricorn Retaliation - Slaughter Class Cruiser
= 165 pts

Cosmic Fire - Slaughter Class Cruiser
= 165 pts

The Deathhounds - 4 x Idolator Escorts
= 180 pts

The Adoleo Casta - 3 x Infidel Escorts
= 120 pts

Organization

For a long time I never organized my marines into preset squads with squad markings. They were all marines and flexible to go into any formation I deemed necessary for the current army list.

Then about two years ago I finally bit the bullet and come up with defined squads, and painted squad markings. I divided them as this:

1 squad of 10 Chosen Marines
2 squads of 15 Tactical Marines
2 squads of 10 Assault Marines
2 squads of 8 Havoc Marines

For a long time this was my divisions, although sometimes I would make a third tactical squad from the other tactical squads and use them as infiltrators. The 15 man squads were useful in terms of absorbing damage, but lately I've been finding the desire for the third tactical squad more overwhelming, so I reorganized into this:

4 squads of 10 Tactical Marines
2 squads of 10 Assault Marines
2 squads of 8 Havoc Marines

The chosen were never being fielded, so taking a heavy weapon from them allowed me to make them a normal tact squad. I changed the squad markings of the painted squads last night so I'm ready to go, and all set for the megabattle this coming weekend.

Small Amount of Gloating

On Feb 11, 2005 I earned a rare win with my Marines over Corey and his Eldar. This was my favourite picture from that battle:

In it you can see the destroyed Wave Serpent partially obscured by the Helltalon flyer, a destroyed Falcon right underneath it, a dead vyper, and the remanants of the Striking Scorpions arriving at close combat far too late. In the top right you can see my marines advancing on the objective.

Great game, but the severity of the victory was all due to the powerful flyer. Too powerful for pickup games, its going to have to be a special treat for grudge matches and megabattles.

Ok, More Details Required

This blog is going to be a place to record the development of my Chaos army and fleet. Although Deep Space has sufficed in terms of recording information and talking about the development of my Chaos Marine forces for the past few years, I think a blog would be useful for concentrating the development into one stream.

So here goes nothing.

Why?

Because I can.