Death Guard vs Space Wolves (1750pts)

I played this army about a year ago, it was one of the last times that I played with unpainted models, so it does go right back.  I think that I just about won that one, possibly, either way a re-match is overdue.  So here we go…

Renegade Armigers (War Dogs)

My thinking at the moment is that the Death Guard are lacking in long range anti-armour units.  They’re really a close up army, even things like the Plague Burst Crawlers, which seem like back line artillery pieces, seem to work better with the short range weaponry.

So, to mitigate that, I’ve picked up a couple of Armigers.  They have a Mini-Codex in Chapter Approved 2018, so in my head I’m also still sticking to my Mono-Codex army.  Honest.

I’ve given one “battle damage” using the same hot metal file technique as my Land Raider and the other some “Nurgly” looking protruding horns.

Assembled & customised

Base layers

Highlighted & washed

Bodies completed

Finished

Typhus Corrosion

I’m still working on my weathering and need to practice “sponging”, I did this before Cadian Shock published his article on the subject.  I’d asked for that article during conversation with him during the time that I was working on these two models.  I’d tried sponging before but just wasn’t happy with the outcome and so painted over it.  The Typhus Corrosion used on the legs of the models was applied with a brush and, I guess, a “stippling” technique.

Death Guard vs Dark Angels (1750pts)

I’ve played this Dark Angels player a few times now (here and here) and he normally plays a pretty infantry heavy list with lots of deep striking stuff.

List Theory

I’ve got some Armigers on the way to the table and this might be my last game without them for a while.  So I wanted to play with an anti-tank type of list, the type of anti-tank that I have now before the Armigers come along.  As I’ve said this player doesn’t seem to bring along a lot of armour, so it might not be the “best” of choices, but it seemed like a good idea and weapons that can deal with tanks also seem to be able to take on multi-wound Primaris Marines quite nicely too.

Teaching Tau

Should the title have an apostrophe in it?  Mmmm, well they’re still the new kids on the block as far as I’m concerned…

Anyway, a gamer new to 40k was looking for someone to give him his first game of 40k.  I’ve been there as the newbie trying to pick it up, so it seemed like a bit of pay back to the community to spend an evening helping him out.  So I did.

On Painted Armies

“You shall not pass!”

Jake over at Cadian Shock made a comment about how my decision to only use models that are fully painted influenced him to make the same decision too.  I was going to reply on his blog, but it started becoming a bit rambling and long, so I thought I’d jot my thoughts on it down here.

In short I did decide about a year ago to only use my models once I’ve painted them, and I think I’ve stuck to it ever since.

Firstly let me say what this is not, it’s not a judgment on armies that are not painted.  I played for maybe four months with a varying proportion of unpainted models.  There was simply no way that I could play a game without having some of my models unpainted.  I don’t think that I could have spend four months not playing but painting.  How would I know if the hobby was worth the time investment?  So I’ve fielded legions of grey plastic models on a table and never had a bad word said against it.  Likewise I’ve played against, and continue to play against, armies in all sorts of states of painting.  There was one game that I remember where the enemy didn’t have any arms as the chap playing them wanted to experiment with equipment load outs, and it was fun game.

My reasons for only playing with a fully painted army boils down to these, possibly strange, personal opinions.

1. I think that an all painted army looks really good on the table.
2. I think that two all painted armies on the table look even better and consider making sure mine is painted a fair effort to try and have a game like that.
3. Forcing me to paint a unit slows down the rate at which I introduce new units into my army, there’s a constant slow input.  So each model is given time to bed in and for me to see how it performs.
4. That I have spent all the time and effort, and I’m not a quick painter, to paint a unit means that when the inevitable happens and it’s blown off the table in turn one that I won’t give up on the unit.  I’ve invested in it, I’m going to bring it back to the table.  If it wasn’t painted there might be many units I just wouldn’t give the chance to get to know and they’d be sitting unloved on my shelf.
5. The rate I which is buy new models is choked by the painting stage, this helps me control my game budget immensely.
6. I think that I get a decent feel as to how each new unit changes how my army works as it’s the only thing that’s changed for a few games.
7. I dabbled with the game back when Rogue Trader first came out and had uncompleted units of Space Marines, Space Orks and Imperial Guard aplenty.  It’s really satisfying to now have, over 30 years later, a fully painted up army.

My first fully painted squad!  It only took me 31 years.

So, in short, this is a personal decision that helps me manage, control and learn from my gaming.

I think this is the last game I played with an unpainted model.

I don’t charge, I intervene, heroically.

Thought of the day…

If you use heroic intervention to get into combat rather than charging you can avoid overwatch.  This could be a very good thing.

The downside is that the unit won’t get to fight first as it hasn’t charged, so depending on what other combats are going on you might get clobbered before you can strike back.  You also need to be within 3″ of any enemy unit to pull it off, but for fast units like a Daemon Prince this may not be a problem.

In the situation above Typhus could use Heroic Intervention to get into combat and avoid all that nasty overwatch from the huge machine gun.

Edited to add…

The obvious thing that I missed is that Heroic Intervention happens “after the enemy has completed all of their charge moves”.  So you can’t do it instead of charging on your turn.  Sigh…

Death Guard vs Grey Knights (1500pts)

List Theory

I find the Grey Knights a challenge to play against.  Pretty much every unit has the ability to do a version of Smite that while the range is only 12″ the warp charge never increases over 5 and it does 3 mortal wounds to Daemons.  As I often have a fair few Daemons this can really hurt me.

They also seem to be pretty mobile with lots of things that can deep strike and the Gates of Infinity psychic power that can teleport any unit around the table.  This is great for grabbing objectives or pulling valuable units out of melee combat so that they can shoot again.

So I wanted some solid stuff that could hit hard against tough elite units and something quick that could grab objectives and react to the cards that I drew.  The army broke down into roughly three pieces.