And So We Wait...

Well my 6th Edition Rulebook will be here tomorrow and I played in my last games of 5th edition 40k ever again and now what do I do?
I've had the last 5 days to go BAT!@#!@# INSANE!

Eat flag heathens! 

I want so badly to play 40k, but I can't because 6th is going to be out and I'm so done with 5th right now. (I have been painting sisters like a mad-man, I've almost painted 22 now! :D)
And I'm terribly impatient, I can already see tomorrow being very very long.
But In the meantime to stave off my own insanity I will regale you with my LAST GAMES OF 5TH EDITION!
Well first of all let me tell you I played Sisters, for the first time in a long time. 
I put them down and felt confident in them, like they weren't going to crash and burn in the second turn. 
For the tournament the special rules were that Forgeworld kits were legal in your list, but no structure points or buildings or flyers.
Since I was playing Sisters I forwent taking the Repressor...and that's all they have so no Forgeworld for me.
The lists were capped at 2500 pts so I took:




Celestine:115pts
Jacob: 90pts


Battle Conclave:  150pts
6 DCA, 3 Cruez


Fast Attack
Dominons: 6 Doms, Superior w/Combi-Melta, 2 Melters, Simulacrum. 132pts
 Immolator: Multi-Melta, Ex Armor, Search Light  81pts
Dominons: 6 Doms, Superior w/Combi-Melta, 2 Melters, Simulacrum. 132pts
 Immolator: Multi-Melta, Ex Armor, Search Light  81pts


Seraphim: 10 Sarahs, Melta Pistols  185pts
Troops:


Sisters of Battle: 10 Sisters, x2 Flamer. 135pts
 Rhino: hunterkiller 45pts
Sisters of Battle: 10 Sisters, x2 Flamer. 135pts
 Rhino: hunterkiller 45pts
Sisters of Battle: 10 Sisters, x2 Meltaguns.145pts
 Rhino: hunterkiller 45pts
Sisters of Battle: 10 Sisters, x2 Meltaguns.145pts
 Rhino: hunterkiller 45pts
Sisters of Battle: 10 Sisters, x1 HeavyBolter.130pts
 Rhino: hunterkiller 45pts
Sisters of Battle: 10 Sisters, x1 HeavyBolter.130pts
 Rhino: hunterkiller 45pts


Heavy Support:
Retributors: 10 Rets, 4 Heavy Bolters, Simulacrum 140pts
 Rhino: Hunterkiller 45pts


Exorcist: 145pts
  Hunterkiller
Exorcist: 145pts
  Hunterkiller


2509pts.


I figured I'd be able launch off all those Hunter Killer Missiles for some kind of devastating alpha-strike. Honestly I never had good opportunities to fire them, since I could only move 6" and shoot them I fired off a few but a lot of my other tanks got pulped too quickly to get their rockets off, but It was the last 5th tourney so I wasn't too keen on "giving a shit."


The first scenario was random night fight each turn on a roll of 5+.
I played against a formidable Grey Knights list including 3 dredds a bunch of Razorspammers and a Grandmaster in a Purifier Squad.
I killed 5 Interceptors...
 THE WHOLE GAME.
 Because I had to fight in night fighting every turn while my opponent did not. So it was obviously one of the silliest games I've played. But I couldn't do much with no shooting.


My 2nd game was against one of the newer players at the store he took Guard with a handful of Chimeroes and a few Leman Rusties and a DEVUL DAWG and a Manticore. The mission was standard NOVA setup but with the central objective was worth 4 objectives. 
I stole the initiatives and started to round the giant Skyshield Landing Pad in the center of the board, every turn blasting or stunning a few enemy vehicles each turn. My deathcult and Jacob held back until my opponent broke for the center objective, then the deathcult made short work of that stormtrooper squad. I won the game 4 Objectives to 2 and 2 -2 on secondary table quarters.
The final game was a "Just Kill Each Other Scenario" primary objective was KP secondary was VP.
 I set up my girls in a standard wide field 2-3-19 formation*. The Opponent's army was...silly.
 No offense but he was another beginner who hadn't had many games not against his close friends so his list was: 
1 Captain, 1 Landraider Helios, 1 Dred, 1 Rhino, 1 Assualt Squad, 2 Tactical squads, and 2 Devastator Squads.
It was weird. My sisters foundered a bit when their vehicles got blowed up turn 1, and the dominoes were stopped cold and forced to huddle in their blown-out immolator for the rest of the game. I also lost one of my Exorcizors to one of those !@$##KED Drop Pods that lets dredds assault out of them. I spent a lot of turns holding back my units waiting for someone to land and tie up his devos so I could cross and cut down the tactical squads with bolters and flamers. It took 4 turns for The Saint to arrive, after that close range fire and DCA finished off a full 4 squads before time was called. I won 12 to 8 KP.


I got 6th in a very large turnout for our store of almost 20 players...
And as a final go of 5th it was basically more of the same...
I hate GKs!
Sisters Rule! (when you roll good, which I didn't)
I hate when it's dark! 


I'm just praying to the Mail Gods that my rulebook will arrive tomorrow or I might gnaw my own leg off in anticipation....


...Actually if I don't get my BRB tomorrow I'll probably pull my Dreamcast outta my car and make a Let's play of one of my favorite games "Typing of the Dead!"

Ray You a busta'!

See you on the other side...for 6th.


*That means 12" from the Table Edge.

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like.

Hello there! It has been a while! As Frank stated, summer trips and all that. This is actually concerning my particular journey across the pond to jolly ol' England. While I wouldn't admit it before, I was having a pretty bad losing streak with 40k before my trip. So bad in fact, that I vowed not to play again until 6th edition came out. So during my hiatus I left the country and went on a Spirit Journey to England to visit Warhammer World/GW HQ. I wanted to get inspired to play again and hopefully get some insider tips and tricks to get me revved up to play again. My first warhammer related visit was to this place:

 My first REAL Games Workshop store (Wakefield). Unfortunately it was closed by the time I got there so I snapped a quick picture before an employee came out from the back room. I quickly ran back to my friend's car and hid because I felt like a giant creeper taking a picture of a storefront after they were closed. The next day I went to the one in Leeds and proceeded to be followed around by the employees which was sort of odd because I just wanted to look around, not to have my ear talked off. Compared to our gaming store, the space was pretty small and only had three half size tables, the stock however was greater in number and much more varied than in our non-GW run store. In our store people also don't follow me around, they treat me like one of the guys (with more storage space... cleavage) which I like. I bought a model (Astorath the Grim if you're wondering) and the White Dwarf that came out that day (new fliers edition, it gave me something to read for the next couple days but this isn't a post about that...)

A couple of days later I went to the main event (well the main warhammer based event in this trip, I did a lot of other stuff in my two weeks): WARHAMMER WORLD! Frank asked if I went to business reception but I skipped that part...

This is the view from the front:

 A pretty epic way to start if you ask me. Anywho these fellas greet you as you walk in the front door.

 I felt it was necessary to sign the guestbook, I really should have mention JaR but I was too excited so I just put down the name of our gaming store instead.

 Then it was onto the hall of miniatures! Taking pictures in here was really hard due to clear shelving and lots of glass and lights and reflections so most of the pictures didn't really turn out. I must say this whole room was pretty impressive. I spent a good two or so hours wandering about and looking at everything. I must admit that I know there are a lot of space marine chapters, but I never realized just HOW MANY there really were until I saw half a wall just covered in different space marines... compared to basically half a wall for all the other 40k armies...

 Unsurprising for most of you is the fact that I'm only including pictures of the Blood Angels. This was after all MY spirit journey. I have other pictures of the other models as well, but since my army is Blood Angels it is what I've chosen to include. Seeing what their blood angels looked like reminded me why I chose a different color scheme. While they were well painted and looked nice and all that stuff, it just gets boring after a while. Seeing all the different armies gave me some ideas of what I wanted (or didn't want) to do with my guys aesthetically.

 After the hall of miniatures I continued on toward the gaming hall. But first I wanted to stare down the barrel of a space marine's bolter and see what I could see. I was told that if you did this then you'd see your life flash before your eyes, all I saw was black plaster... *shrug*

 I checked out the gaming hall (which was huge and pretty awesome) and got some ideas for table building and themes. My favorite table was an Egyptian inspired table (unfortunately after a couple pints you forget to take certain pictures... more on that soon). I was sad that I hadn't brought my army to play, but I didn't exactly have room to pack it in my carry-on.

 After a stroll around and a bit of observing it was time for Bugman's Pub and subsequently... DRINKING!

 I only had two pints (only one of the above was mine, the other was my friend Nate's, my second is below). I had some Troll Brew which was hoppy and yummy. I mostly just sat and took in the fact that I was in a different country at GW HQ and how awesome it would be to bring everyone from my local gaming store to come here. After my first pint I decided it would probably be wise to eat some chips (fries) with my second pint since Nate and I were going to walk to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem afterward for more beer.

 Before leaving I spent way too much money on gifts for Frank and took a couple pictures of the interior of Bugman's.

 Outside was another random space marine so I decided to help him hold up his gun since it looked heavy.

So the trip was pretty amazing all in all and as far as 6th edition is concerned, very well timed. I'm properly excited to start playing again and hopefully in the coming days you'll see an updated list for my Blood Angels and my thoughts and feelings on the rules! Frank pre-ordered the gamers edition and we're crossing our fingers that it may show up on our door early!

If you're wondering what took me so long to write this post (I got back about 3 weeks ago...) here is a hint of what I've been doing:

6th Rumors and The Time of Ending

Hello out there JaRonaughts. It's a warm and wonderful day, excitement is just outside and it's only a door away! I'm ready if you are!

First off let me make a point about the infrequency with which we've been updating this blog lately.

Sorry! Sorry everybody. In the last 3 weeks all 3 of our contributors have been on summer trips, moving to a different state or graduating from college, so we've been a bit busy. Somehow though we found time to play a new Grudge Match which will be posted later this week, which is a Menage a Trois.

Now that I've got the SITREP down it's time to talk about the future of our favorite space-based miniatures game. Recently we've been bombarded with rumors about all the cool new things that will be put into the new edition of Warhammer 40,000. And I can say confidently that I'm EXCITED! Like 'peeing the bed and keeping your parents all night yelling lines from Power Rangers' excited. In addition to the dire need of 40k's rules for an updating (spring cleaning or clear-cutting hopefully) there's another reason I think I'm so excited and just can't hide it. I think it's because the last edition came without much fanfare and rancorous adulation, it slid in, changed a few things and then took it's place as the new rules, because it was sooo similar to the previous versions. Here's what I mean: 

I can't remember what exactly different between 3-4-5 edition. I think there was sweeping advances in 3rd edition... that's about it.

However even though I haven't played 2nd edition in YEARS I can still remember all the different aspects of the game because it's like my brain remembers it as something all together different. And that's the same kind of effect I'm hoping for in 6th. 

Although 5th needs to be dead and gone as fast as possible it wasn't the worst 40k edition, I think it had the most obnoxious codices for sure, but the rules were solid, maybe except for unkillable vehicles. 

All the rumors for 6th sound pretty cool, however now that there's so many and they're all conflicting between a set that's coming to light now and ones based on the leaked rules (which I like) it looks like we'll all have to wait for GW to put the damn thing in our hands to see what's exactly there. However on her recent journey to Games Workshop World HQ in Overcast Olde England one of our contributors was given a few snipets of inside info about 6th edition one of which was a cryptic: 

"wound allocation was based on percentages." 

Hmm what could it mean? I'm not sure, but I'm sure in time GW will either put out the new rules or be destroyed by our hands.

Necromorial Day Weekend

    Howdy out there folks of the nightmare-o-net. It's Frank from Just a Rhino again. Now recently we celebrated Memorial Day Weekend, and if your Memorial Day was anything like mine it was FRAKING HOT! And instead of standing in the hot evil sun next to a hot grill me and the LGS crew decided to beat the heat with some INTERIOR GAMING!
    Yeah inside is the good side. And for the special holiday weekend we started off our Necromunda Campaign! Necromunda as you may or may not know is the fast paced game of English ladies! 
No wait that's soccer....or lacrosse...




Quiditch?


    I don't know, anyway Necromunda is a 'gang' based skirmish game, pitting your crew of criminals against everyone else's, in a mad fight for creds, territory and YOUR LIVES! (OMFG!)Your gang is comprised of your gangboss a few 'Gangers' and the ubiquitous redshirts called 'jeuves' who are the 'pledges' of your gang, doing a lot of the dirty work to eventually become a full fledged gang member. After each battle wounded gangers recover (or die, or lose fingers, or legs, or eyes, or other crazy stuff) and your gang leans on some squares for enough food to refit their weapons and feed themselves. Any left over cash can be spent by the gangboss on new gang members, weapons, or special RARE items which cover everything from A Power Sword to a FRAKIN' PARACHUTE! Also each member of your gang levels up over time gaining new skills and stats which sometimes can get out of hand. 
    But the game is always a total blast. The learning time for the game is anywhere between 30 secs for avid 40k players to 30 mins for a lot of others. The game moves quickly with each side running, diving, shooting and hiding in the deteriorating bowels of the giant hive-spire. Sometimes games end prematurely when some cowardly (or smart) gangs hoof it after loosing a few of their boys. This mechanic is actually one of the saving graces of the game.

Your Gang Can Be Grrls Like This.

    After you 'lose' 25% or more of your gang your leader (if standing) must take a Leadership test or you automatically book it back to your own turf. This seems silly when games can end literally before they start (See Shootout followed by one side auto-running due to having no standing fighters) but most of the time it cuts the games down to just enough turns to be interesting and frantic, but not so long that you're looking at your watch. The book keeping for the game sometimes takes longer than the game, but I'd say half the game is leveling up your dudes and collecting extortion money and buying better gear for your boss. 


    Although I'm saving the best for last one of my other favorite bits about NecroFUNda is that theres' a lot of very cool missions included in the rule book, it really keeps things interesting after a few 'gang fights' in a row, there's even a special scenario for rescuing your captured gang members. But my favorite has got to be Shootout: a Wild West gunfight complete with walking straight at your enemy and seeing who goes for their guns first, and then all hell breaks loose. 
     I said I'd save the best for last, and I did: It's Free! The whole game book and Extra rules and junk are all on GW's website ready for your to download.  And if you're an avid 40k player or member of a local gaming club or store you've probably got enough terrain to mash together the tallest buildings you have into a pretty clustered and fun table. Obviously this game and all the other 'skirmish' based specialist games (Mordhiem, Gorkamorka, Blood Bowl) is best played using the Campaign rules and running your crew against at least 4 other players gangs. 



Bottom Line, Give it a Try. Grab some guardsmen and some cardboard buildings and Get Rich...

...Or Die Trying.

Northern Wastes League!

Ever since I creamed Frank in the JAR Grudge Match Match-tacular, I've been playing a lot of Blood Bowl on Fumbbl.  Mostly because I like being better at things than Frank, but also because I actually like the game.  The endless nature of the Fumbbl divisions was starting to irk me, however.  Basically, there's two leagues that never play each other, each  consisting of hundreds (thousands?  Probably thousands) of coaches and unlimited teams per coach.  Every 3-4 months, there's a MAJOR TOURNAMENT, which you can enter and immediately lose, if you like.  I did.  It was fun, but it also put a harsh spotlight on how Fumbbl's divisions are nothing like real sports leagues.  If only there was some way to play Blood Bowl online in a reasonably-sized, structured league with seasons and championships...

Happiness is a Warm Gun

Hello all, fancy seeing you here. I figured it was time for another post since no one else seems to have anything to talk about. I have a feeling that may change with more and more rumors pouring out about 6th edition and the fact that it may be coming out soon (within the next two months is our current guess at JaR. Frank says this month). Personally I don't know why we don't know when exactly it is coming out. Of course I could have missed some big chunk of news and they've announced the release date, but a cursory google search didn't give me concrete evidence and I'm really not invested enough in finding out to go further than that! MOVING ON.

Last night Frank and I played the first in our round of teaching games. When I was first learning how to play 40k, Frank would just tell me what I needed to roll and I'd roll it. I didn't know why, I just did it. This became a HUGE problem when I tried to play other people because I didn't know what to roll. Luckily the other people I have played so far have been willing to help me instead of trying to screw me over cause I'm new at playing.

So last night was a lesson in learning how to figure out what I need to roll in certain places (to hit, to wound, close combat rolls). We played a 500(ish) point list. It turned out in the end that both of our sets of math were wrong, I was under by 10 pts and he was over by 20pts. I'm not saying that is why things turned out as they did, but I don't want to give away the ending.

So my 500(ish) pt list went as follows:

Captain Becky
-Lightning claws x2 (because it takes a special kind of asshole to have just one lightning claw)
-Jump pack

10 Man assault squad
-2 flamers
-power weapon

Devastator Squad:
3 plasma cannons
storm bolter

So here was how I felt after I wrote my list and was thinking about my strategy



Here is how I felt when we actually started playing.



Let me explain WHY. Frank played sisters of battle because he needs an excuse to use them after amassing an unreasonable number of sisters. Anyway, I don't know enough about sisters to give you his exact list but here's what I remember: 31 sisters total (I think) 2 regular squads each with flamer/heavy flamer (10 sisters a piece), a squad of (forgive me if I butcher this) retributers? 10 ladies with big/long distance guns. And a lady with a power weapon, she was his HQ choice but I really wasn't paying attention because I was watching all my guys get killed. So I had 16 dudes in my army and he had 31… not very good odds just by counting bullets *sigh*

So we rolled, he deployed first and I stole his initiative (YEAH!) so I went first which didn't turn out to be as awesome as I'd hoped. I fired 3 plasma cannons into his big guns squad, basically if I had gotten it right I would have had 15 plasma cannon shots against them, due to terrible rolling and the evil scatter die I think I landed 3, and one wounded. That was my luck pretty much most of the game, I missed the rolls that mattered. I saved Captain Becky and a combat squad of 5 to come in later in the game. The other half of the assault squad came in and ended up hiding because there was no way they'd make it anywhere to shoot or fight.

Frank moved up a squad of regular gals to the middle of our shortened board and fired some shots off, I don't remember exact sequences of events for a while in this part of the game because I was distraught that my plan was failing so horribly and I was rolling like crap. Frank will attest to this and that I'm not just blaming my dice. ANYWAY, most of my assault squad got killed and the devastators were all blown up after not doing my much good (so much for crowd control).

At this point two things happened, 1- I resigned that I probably wasn't going to win this game, 2- Since I gave up on winning I was free to just send Captain Becky in to crush some souls.

So I dropped her and her combat squad with 2 flamers in behind the second squad of normal sisters. After a round of flamers to the face followed by being eaten alive by Cpt Becky and her crew (eventually) in close combat, Cpt Becky realized there was still one man left in the other squad of assault marines and he was taking on 10 sisters by himself. He lasted through about 3 rounds of close combat before he was killed.

Cpt Becky and her last remaining marine from her combat squad went to the middle of the board to attempt to clean up what that other marine had started, after all these were the only people really left. So it ended up being Cpt Becky alone surrounded by sisters and a boss lady, with Becky and the Boss Lady both down to having one wound left, it became a roll off. Time after time we both rolled one save (since we'd only wound each other once because we both suck at rolling), eventually Cpt Becky fell and Frank won.

So over all it was fun but it is reinforcing the fact that I'm not positive I want to be playing space marines of any sort any more. But we'll see how it turns out when we try a bigger list. So moral of the story is: Don't play Blood Angels in low point lists.

So as I was surfing the internet today for pictures for this post, I kept coming across these My Little Pony pictures with the ponies dressed up as various costumes, and I missing something completely? I remember seeing something about bronies the other day but I didn't think much of it… Any way here you go

Chaos Pact? I Don't Even Know Her! (Blood Bowl WIP)

Good Day to you Out there JaRheads! (Patent Pending).

I have a quick little update for everyone on my Chaos Pact Team, the Toxic Evils (-Pros).

As you may remember from my last post I was building a team similar too, but not exactly the same as the Olde Chaose Alle-Starse! Hey! Did you know? That the original Chaos-All-Stars roster included Ogres, Goblins and Troglodytes? They didn't even have Marauders or Beastmans, it was just Gobs and Big Guys, not the least big guy to speaking of being ol' giant crossbow face himself Morg'th'n'Thorg (Shortened to MTG)! Even in those formative years of Blood Bowl pubescence Morg was quite the rough costumer, laying the smack'eth down'th on anyone'th he could get his hands on. Now, my Chaos Pact team needs an awesome ogre too, so there was no better place to look than in the annals of Blood Bowl past! I spent a lot of money, and I spent a lot of time, but now I have one of the original Blood Bowl ogres of my very own! :D He's so cute! And now that he's painted up and based he's ready to go run a pain-train on the field!

His name is Gruff Ramjam! And he's really cool! Notice his team logo belt buckle and manly chest and back hair! His banana sling says "pleasure" but his big fists and mohawk are all business! He's also got a familiar but awesome tattoo on his bicep but I forgot to take a good picture of it. I love him.

Now that we've looked at a classic model on my team let's look at one of my newer designs. She's a blood crazed Blood-natic of Khorne, she bathes in blood....BLOOD!

Her name is Fiercia Lowblow and she's a marauder!

Her lack of clothes might appear non-threatening but her name and giant blue crab-claw speak to a much more pointy and painful nature. She's not 100% done yet, I want to do some blood effects on her claw and obviously base her.

Well that's all for now, but I've still got some more surprises up my sleeve for this team so stay tuned, and always your comments and concerns are welcome.