Lost Again at Warhammer 40,000

Do any of my loyal readers remember when I was undefeated during 10th edition crushing the dreams of kids with their golden armour clad super soldiers that were even taller and more bullet proof than the Emperor’s finest? Astride their majestic jet bikes, capes blowing in the wind facing off against two chaos spawn and whatever else I plucked from the shelves of my miniature cabinet and threw on the table when summoned by Bill. Expected by one and all in the gaming store, to be swept aside because the Internet said Death Guard sucked? Those were the days.

Stay twelve inches away at all times.

I have of course been busy and I also injured myself, so badly in fact I could not paint and there was doubt I’d even make it to my scheduled game against Bill. So before I go any further you may be asking why are there goblins in the banner image? Several reasons, one I never took any photos of our game today I thought would make a good banner, there was doubt I would make it to the game, let alone persevere through pain to blog about it. Two it was recently Orktober, I was going to keep painting hard then I suffered a seriously painful injury. Mike, neigh Uncle Mike also talked to Bill and I informing us that not only was Mordheim coming up but Warcry may be run as a league at the Sentry Box soon. These very goblins were used in Warcry at the Sentry Box previously, some of them may have even been used to play Mordheim. The rules for Orks and Goblins were in a White Dwarf article which must be at my mom’s house somewhere.

Now that everyone is confused and I’m on beer number four, I should inform you this will not be an exhaustive turn by turn battle report, like some of the fifty or so others I’ve typed up over the years. Rather it will be some observations both on what has changed in Warhammer 40,000 since I last played and they re-balanced the game, but also will reflect the fact that I painted my ass off. And although most people would say I have little to show for it, I would counter not many people have the painted Nurglings necessary to flood a flank with them. The record will clearly show I lost the game to the snazzy codex toting Ultramarines. Some random store patrons were really impressed with my museum quality collection of nurglings though.

Ten things I learned today playing 40K

Deep Strike then Charge!

Exterminatus Level Threat

Bagonhead’s Last Stand

The Beast needs more torque!

1. I really, really, need to read all the rules. I have excuses, work and pain being chief among those. But I bought the mission card deck and I still haven’t read it. I also need to learn the stratagems to the point of memorization. I’ll never read all the enemy codices and I’ll continue to pay for that, but I just don’t have time. However I own two 10th Edition Rule Books, Bill kept borrowing my new small one, but I really should learn the basic rules.
2. I need to remove some of the restrictions I place upon myself. No I’m not switching to unpainted pieces of plastic. No I’m not using named characters. No I’m not abandoning Nurgle. But since I can’t paint faster, I need to paint smarter. I still plan to finish a few more models I don’t need for any tactical or strategic purpose in Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition. I also still plan to paint more fluffy models like Chaos Spawn, but I spent all of 9th Edition using a single sub-optimal Chaos Lord. The fact Maceo the Maligned ended up a Chaos Spawn is indicative of how effective he was on the tabletop. So new leaders or even old leaders will be fielded and I’ll slowly improve my army by adding more characters to it as the Death Guard can field a lot of character models with up to two leaders per plague marine squad, because plague marines with knifes and nurglings with strength two claws can only kill so much.
3. Today we played 1000 points and honestly I can field a lot of models at 1000 points these days. I had twenty plague marines, a dozen nurlgings, I had Blightlords, a hellbrute, I even had two Chaos Spawn! But Bill had some fancy land raider which had super flamers and took advantage of the new Overwatch rule and killed seven plague marines during my movement phase when they walked around a corner. I didn’t even charge the damn model! It is indeed 2nd Edition all over again. I honestly didn’t mind playing 1000 points but I think we’ll trend towards larger games as some people do field Chapter Masters and named characters and models that cost four hundred plus points!
4. At this point in time, I must complain that Google has gotten worse. I of course am too busy to keep up the latest and greatest thinking about Warhammer 40,000 but I try to provide useful links for my readers on occasion and honestly it seems hard tonight. I had a lot more observations I wanted to make, detailing my thoughts having been away from the game for a few months, but I am getting frustrated trying to find a link to illustrate my point above. I told Bill I think someone at GW HQ reads my blog, because things I write seem to get incorporated into rules updates eventually, but maybe someone at Google will read my blog and become less greedy. Who am I kidding? Usually I can find a link explaining what confused me, but I have standards, there are websites I don’t link to anymore for reasons. Also the reason Google sends you to YouTube videos is Google owns YouTube.
5. Seriously today, may be the day I finally abandon Google. I just want a blog post I can link to about the Landraider Redeemer’s effectiveness in 10th Edition since the rules update came out and no, I don’t want to link to Redit, YouTube or a random forum post that will be blocked in a day or two. If you have thoughts on the Landraider Redeemer or Google please leave them in the comments. I just want to support fellow indy hobby bloggers, not feed the giant corporate juggernaughts devouring the Internet. Shoutout to Goonhammer for not sucking.
6. So besides adding a better or even more Chaos Lords to my army along with more Foetid Virion and finally learning the rules, what else do I have planned? Blightlords. They died but they did protect my Chaos Lord and they can teleport. They can have a gun that shoots over 24 inches. I’m not sure if one squad of ten is better than two squads of five. But given restrictions I place upon myself they are the closest thing I have to a hammer in my painted miniature collection. They don’t take that much more time to paint than a regular plague marine and they have more wounds, a better basic gun and a better basic H2H weapon. Their objective control score may not be as good but at one point today I had infected four of the five objectives and I still lost. I definitely chose sub-optimal secondary objectives.
7. I finally counted and I have 21 bases of painted nurglings. Plus I have five and should convert a sixth nurgling infested objective. That would give me the maximum number of 27 nurgling bases that I think can be fielded by the Death Guard. I doubt I’ll buy and paint two more boxes of nurglings. When I played Kharne, Angron, and the angry red horde, the nurglings died quickly. Today most of them survived the entire game, so the optimal number of nurglings per 1000 points is yet to be determined. Nine nurglings in a single unit is awkward to maneuver but I do think just dumping them on top of or slightly in front of the centre objective is “my plan”. Then I’ll either teleport or march up another unit to actually capture the objective as they are famously objective control zero.
8. Fast Attack is no more and for too long was denied the followers of Nurgle. My commitment to the aesthetic and the inexplicableness of Chaos Spawn is admirable but there are faster better models I could be fielding. I still plan on finishing the fourth Chaos Spawn which has been primed black on my desk since before my injury but eventually I’ll add some daemon engines. Bikers or jump pack assault troopers are unlikely to return to the legions of the Death Guard and I told Bill that if the Chaos Codex comes out first I will give it a go as last edition I bought it then never even used it. Hopefully the option to field plague marines with CSM remains. Because let me tell you, having a codex is generally, if not always better, than not having a Codex.
9. Bill has apparently switched allegiances to the first company, abandoning the second company. That is what passes for variety among Ultramarines. Why this matters, is Bill and his Ultramarines are my most frequent opponent since moving to Calgary. Today when I chose my army list I thought to myself, “this doesn’t have much anti-armour.” I just fielded my latest greatest painted models or most of them because we were playing for fun. Then Bill brings a land raider, a particularly brutal dreadnought and what Bill referred to as a transport. That adds up to three vehicles, plus terminators, Sternguard and Bladeguard so despite going with the -1 armour infection, I struggled to put it mildly. Melta guns have always been my favourite special weapon, but I plan to keep painting more plague flamers because I’ve bought the models. My need for more better guns continues. This army will never be an alpha strike army, but Bill likely will never play an army again which deploys one gun that can shoot over twenty four inches. I really want to field the Predator Annhilator and may even have one “new in box” from several editions ago. I need to paint harder or at least faster.
10. It has already taken too long to type this all out but I feel I should have ten top learnings. Even if Google did sap my mojo and I have decided to not publish this tonight because I like to proofread and carefully edit my text if you can believe that. So besides learning all my rules, bringing more better models I’ve already painted, planning for bigger games against tougher opponents, trying to make time to keep up with the meta so I don’t have to rely on Google, painting and fielding more Blightlords, tempering my nurgling obsession, adding more maneuverable elements to my army, getting my own codex, fielding more guns with high strength and longer range, what else does my army, the Diseased Sons of Nurgle need? Probably practice. Back when very few people had played very few games I was more competitive. Now that the fine print of stratagem cards are being adjusted and actual thick ass codices are being released I’m going to have to commit a little more time to actually playing the game instead of just painting and earning badges.

Today is #MiniatureMonday and I was going to write more, I did type up a revised 1000 point army list. Basically I swapped hellbrutes, dropped five plague marines and added ten chaos cultists which can infect objectives now though they too need more guns. The other addition will be an Icon Bearer. I had one per squad painted before so I have seven painted already. This unit is only costs 45 points but I can’t decide to put him in the five model squad or to make a twelve man squad. One thing I discussed with Bill was putting a Chaos Space Marine Lord in the Burning Sores. That may happen eventually, after I paint the Lord of Virulence, there are so many options I’ve never tried. I also have an unpainted Daemon Prince that I specialty ordered…

If you have thoughts on everything wrong with my playing, my army, my blog, and Google you can leave a comment below. Who knows I may heavily edit the text tomorrow, but I also need time to edit the photos because if I could post better photos on the Internet surely I’d be rich and famous by now.