Because why not? so many of us play also it, and a new edition is rising, so i think it's appropriate to have a dedicated thread to discuss about fluff, games and armies. Have fun!
I'll start. Yesterday we've played a narrative apocalypse Necrons vs Empire. Basically in the pariah sector, an expedition of Raven guards+ Salamanders was going to a fortified world, that would have acted as starting points to act against the Necrons threat. Before their arrival, communications from the world stopped. Necrons were taking over it, building their mysterious monoliths. Retaliation will be swift! ...or it will be repelled by the xeno forces? The game has been played on two different battle maps (one is the surface, the other is the subterranean). They are connected by stairs and can also be reached via teleport platform (a infantry unit perform an action and the units above the platform are deployed on another platform of the player's choice. They can be activated by humans too. it's a 2v2 game each player got a main force (1500), which is deployed on one battle map, and a secondary force (500 pts) which is going to be set on the second map, to help the main force of its ally. the main obj are the entrance of the stairs, the 2 monoliths and, in the middle, the platforms and the necrons pyramid (monoliths that just block LoS) the battle maps: SUrface (the monolith ATM was proxied bt a seraphon realmshaper engine) Subterranean level
Deployment! A chunk of SM forces was kept ready for deep strike. Namely 2 inceptors squad, 2 assault intercessor sq, 1 callidus assassin. The deployed forces included 6 aggressors, 10 hellblasters, 3 centurions, 3 exterminators, 3 eraditators, 3 eliminators… ad other primaris) the necrons included: 2 squads of 5+1 destroyers, 3 doom shytes, 2 doomsday arks, 20 immortals and 5 wraiths in the subterranean, 50 warriors and 8 praetorians on the surface). Both necron forces were led by a command barge
We rolled and Necrons won the initiative. Necrons picked the subterranean level… this means that in the subterranean, Necrons got the firt turn, while on the surface SM will have the first turn. now, some pics of the first turn, just to share the goodness. Necrons advance! Salamanders shot down the majority of the air force (also to score one of their picked secondary obj) ….while on the surface, Raven guards move toward the middle ground, seizing the pyramid!
The fight goes on (my cell abandoned me, so i wasn't able to take further pics, sorry. IN the subterranean, Necrons tries to push into the right flank, but they won't go further than this. At least they will be able to hold the ground, while their left flank was slowly crumbling away… 'til the moment a squad of Destroyers came from the surface to help, turning the balance! funny things that happend on the surface. Three 1 pts stratagems used by the Necrons, ended up costing 9 CPs, due to RG stratagem and Callidus Assassin. The squad of 8 pretorians, drowe the full attention of 3 bikes, 1 assault squad, 1 lieutenant and 3 inceptors, and held for 3 turns, until the SM player, out of frustration, spent 3 cps to fight again and kill the last of them. Funny things that happened in the subterranean the Ghost Ark held its ground for 3 full turns, including being stuck in cc with a melee captains, dying only on the 4th round and killing said captain by blowing up. A SM hero with storm shield with 3 wounds remaining, being successfully wounded 2 times by a doomsday… and the 2d6 rolled 2 damages. In the end Necrons won 49 to 33. (i was playing necrons in the subterranean)
Indeed it could, especially given you can use the fighting underground rules from Blood in the Badlands (which also funnily enough contains siege rules) for a 2-level Fantasy game. That'd work very well. Given the Necrons hate the Old Ones' guts, I'm surprised there's a Lizardman Temple in the middle of the battlefield (Kidding, I did read that it was being used as a Monolith proxy, I just couldn't resist) Jokes aside, I'm pleased to see a 40K thread here now, as I do play 40K as well (mainly Tyranids, Necrons and Orks, with dabblings in Chaos Marines, Dark Eldar, Space Marines and now Craftworld Eldar), though I'm still playing 5th and 6th Edition because: I prefer the old-style Warhammer rulesets I don't like how 40K has become so bloated in the most recent editions I can't be bothered to buy yet more rulebooks and Codices for the newest edition
Throwing my hat into the 40K modelling ring, I have recently focused on my Orks and Adeptus Mechanicus armies in August and September of this year! Orks of the Luftwaaaagh: and the Adeptus Mechanicus of Forgeworld Ryza: More pictures in my other painting log. I also have a old, small force of Black Templars/homebrew chapter from pre-Primaris days that hasn't taken the field since the Battle for Maccrage box set was still in print. I also have a few of the older books on my shelf. Might buy the new orks and admech books when they are published for 9th if I start playing the game again, and I have my sights on kill team as well. And want to try out Necromunda someday too!!
Aw man, I LOVE that Ork Waagh idea! Especially those scratch-bashed ork zepplins! So speaking of Necrons, a gaming buddy of mine dug out all of his Necrons recently and tallied up his total points. 9K+ of Necrons. That got me to thinking. Do I have any army that I would willingly take to that level anymore? Once upon a time I had 10K points of Dogs of War (long since sold) and about the same worth of Dark Elves. But that was a long time ago (10+ years). I have... well... I'm not actually sure how many points' worth of my former Renegades and Heretics (now kind of Imperial Guard) I actually have. But after giving it a lot of thought, I do not think I would be willing to bring them to that level. As it is, I have maybe 1200 points of useable "Guard" minis and another 800+ points' worth that need to be re-equipped. I like my Traitor Guard, but after working on that army for 24+ years, I just don't feel like adding more stuff to it. Except for more Sentinels. I don't know why, but I really like Sentinels. I have about 2K worth of World Eaters Heretic Marines, and might bring that to 3K with the addition of some daemons, but not to that level. Especially since I don't have the $260 for a Greater Brass Scorpion. Then there is my Grot Tank army... ...and there's the winner. Right now, I have about 2K worth of Grot Tank army, but there is no way it is stopping there. I suspect I should have been doing the Orks back in the day, and not the Imperial Guard. I like kitbashing. I like scratchbuilding. Orks are fun to do both for, and I keep thinking up new project ideas for that army. It probably won't happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month, but eventually I may wind up with a pile of grot-themed Ork vehicles big enough to take on that 9K+ Necron force... ...and will likely get my arse kicked, but I am okay with that.
I've been working on a couple armies. since everything changed dramatically for me I am able to game with a buddy now.
While we are waiting to digest all the novelties in the SM & Necron codex, here's a question for you. What is the 40k faction with the worst design? (i will look at it from a mechanical pov, but you're free to use a different criteria) I would give my vote to T'au, despite being an army that i own. The problem with Tau is that the idea of an overshooting army that cannot stand its own in cc is cool (and the models too! Gundam ftw!), but the concept creates a big problem in terms of balance. There are 3 phases in which you can damage the opponent. Psichic, shooting, melee. Basically all armies can count on all 3 of them, while Tau only have shooting. When shooting works, it annihilates you ("OMG, Tau are so OP!") When it doesn't, Tau have no chance to survive. In the end, you have an army that everyone hate because when it works it gives a feeling of brokennes.
@Lizerd How do you respond to this challenge? Worst design... hmm... If you were to ask me this question before the 6th Edition Craftworld Eldar Codex came out, I would have said Dark Eldar. When Mr. Kelly wrote their 5th Edition book he obviously didn’t playtest them enough against Tyranids (even though he was a Tyranid fan as well) because with all their Poisoned weapons Dark Eldar had an insane advantage against us just because our army was oriented around monsters rather than vehicles (and thus to this day Dark Eldar players can sometimes be huge bastards to us Tyranid players because of that, though I don’t know how Poisoned weapons work in the new rules so their effectiveness could have changed). When the 6th Edition Craftworld Eldar Codex arrived, I shifted the buck to them, all because of one particular unit - the Wraithknight. This bloody thing was made crazy levels of ridiculous. Once again Kelly was at the helm, plus Elf superfan Adam Troke. I can see why they developed the concept, to make a bigger Wraithlord, but the execution made it far too strong, because where the other wraith units (Wraithguard, Wraithblades and Wraithlord) were tough but slow, they decided to make this thing tough and fast, dubbing it a Jump Monstrous Creature for reasons beyond me (you’d think it’s size would make it even slower than the smaller wraith units). Not only this, but it’s missile weapon options were crazy OP and it got Toughness 8, 6 wounds, a 2+ save and the ability to choose an option with an invulnerable save so it was made treaty difficult to kill. All for a mere 240 points before options, only 10 points more than a Trygon Prime though it was many times stronger. This abomination is the reason why I’m using the 4th Ed codex with my Eldar rather than the 6th Ed one and the catalyst that started the mess that I will discuss below. Now, I nominate Imperial Knights and their Chaos counterparts as the worst designed army because the whole concept of having an army of such huge machines is so easy to make broken, and their presence really helped to make the game the bloatfest it is today because GW decided other armies needed to have knight equivalents too. Not only this but now they’re planning to do the same with AoS with Sons of Behemat, meaning thematic play in that game will likely be ruined too. What happened to the good old days where you could just have a fun and competitive 40K game with a few squads of infantry and the odd tank? Absolutely tragic.
ohh, i like this! Yes, knights army is bad. In 40k lore there's no reason why such precious holy machines should wander around by themselves. They should go with large support, always. So, i welcome a single knight into a army, but not a whole list by them.
I think they should have been combined with Militarum Tempestus to create an Imperial army that is recognisably human (compared to Space Marines who are superhuman) but follows the quality approach rather than the quantity used by Imperial Guard, so that they’re not bloating Imperial Guard unnecessarily - say with Militarum Tempestus scions and some other similar infantry units as Troops, the Knight Armigers as Fast Attack, the regular Knights as Heavy Support and then one of the massive Knights as a Lord of War choice if you want it, so that Knights in general are limited by the Force Organisation chart and the army would have to take at least two infantry units as Troops choices. That way you could have a cool, elite human army, make Knights more balanced and avoid bloating Imperial Guard all at the same time. Then for the other side I think GW should have created a Chaos Cultist army list which had smatterings of Chaotic Imperial Guard, smatterings of Hive Gang cultists and smatterings of Chaos Knights in Fast Attack, Heavy Support and Lords of War to create an army that would be like a Chaotic mix of Militarum Tempestus and Imperial Guard, somewhere between the two in terms of ‘quantity vs quality’.
Hmmm worst design? I dont think tau are great (the so called range experts having an army wide ballistic skill of 4+) and especially considering that fire warriors have dropped in usefulness mainly due to their lack of ap. Honestly the tau no melee needs some rework. Im fine with infantry sucking in cc combat, but battlesuits which are supposed to be extraordinarily powerful getting smacked in melee kinda sucks especially when cannon novels state otherwise (my favorite example being a scene in the damocles novel where a crisis suit grabs a marine by the head and crushes it in). Tau can do melee, but they dont favor it because why would they? They have near limitless ranged firepower. Thats my 2 cents on tau. If we're going to go on worst army for balance? Marines hands down. The doctrines are good enough, stack that with bolter discipline and chapter traits it takes a good stat line to flat out ridiculous
So far we have: Cool concep, badly developed - T'au Bad concept, unsupported by lore - IK army Fine army, broken rules - SM