Next Tournament

Happy New Year

A break from blogging over the festive period but back now.

When last we spoke (!) I was wondering whether to take podding marines or Tau to Cally. Well, I decided to take the marines.

The big issue was Lysander. While he’s a beat stick, and synergizes well with the Sternguard, he is 200pts. I was also wondering about the 3 “big” tournament builds in the UK at the moment – Wraith Wing Necrons, Demons and Biomancy Nids. Could I get more value from those 200 pts?

The obvious answer was to take a Librarian. Null Zone would make a difference against Nids and Demons. And that is what I thought, but I came up against an unexpected problem – I thought Vulcan was a captain and could therefore take a command squad….but he isn’t and he can’t. So if I drop Lysander I can’t take the command squad. In turn that means I don’t have anything scary to put in the 7^th pod, meaning my “alpha strike” isn’t nearly as powerful i.e. of the 4 pods that come down first turn I have one with Vulcan and the Sternguard, 2 with Ironclads and one with ….. what?

Lots of head scratching ensued.

And then I thought “Space Wolves”! Now, I’ve never really been attracted to the codex – you know how it is, some codices appeal, other don’t, and Space Wolves has never appealed. But as allies…!

So after a long chat with my 2space wolf playing buddies I came up with a plan.

Librarian in TDA, Null Zone, Avenger

2 Tactical Squads with Plasma Guns and Multi Meltas in Pods

2x Ironclad Dreads, Twin Heavy Flamers, Assault Launchers, in Lucius Pattern Drop Pods

10 Sternguard, 6 combi Meltas

Rune Priest, Jaws, Living Lightening, Combi Plasma in TDA (goes in the Wolf Guard Pod),

5 TDA Wolf Guard with Combi Plasmas, in a pod (one of them goes with the Grey Hunters)

8 Grey Hunters with Mark of the Wolven, Plasma Gun and a Banner

So …. 4 pods come down first turn. Libby with the Sternguard, tanking wounds from anything with Interceptor and casting Null Zone to make Wraiths and Demons sweat. Two Iron Clads flaming infantry and/or charging stuff straight out the Lucius Pods, and a Rune Priest and 4 TDA wolf guard laying the plasma pain on the drop, with the Rune Priest sniping Tervigons with Jaws. The second wave includes the Grey Hunters to take forward objectives and support the first wave (Grey Hunters are soooo much better than Tac Squads!), with the Tac Squads coming in to snatch mid field objectives.

I really liked this list, and the great thing was that I could borrow all the space wolf stuff from my buddy, meaning that the only things I had to paint were 2 Lucius Pattern pods, and finish off 5 normal pods. So I sat back to enjoy the holidays and ordered the Lucius pattern pods. However, forge world let me down! One of the pods came with a bit missing. I called them and they said that it would take them 10 days to get the bit cast and out to me. This was about 2 weeks to go until the tournament. With list submission date looming I decided not to take the risk and submitted a very similar list to the one I played at the Games of War tourney i.e. Vulcan, Lysander, Command Squad, 2 Iron clads in normal pods, sternguard and 3 tac squads.

Unfortunately the models I used for that army were a mix and match from 2 different armies (i.e. 2 very different colour schemes). With painting scores at Cally I wanted to make sure the army was cohesive. So with 2 weeks to go before the tourney I had 4 pods to finish off, 3 to build and paint from scratch, a tac squad to paint, a command squad to paint and a Vulcan conversion to complete and paint. After a marathon weekend of building and painting (which almost involved a divorce!) I realised it was just not going to happen (line highlighting drop pods takes for ever!).

But the TO threw me a life line. He offered a “list amnesty”. He offered anybody who had submitted a list from the three most popular codices a chance to swap for an army less well represented. Codex Marines were one of the three, so I swapped to Tau.

So, after all that, I’m back playing a variation of the list that got stomped at the GT… sigh!

EYIG