Jawaballs and Fritz Broadcast Live: Three's Company?

On Sunday February 21 Fritz and I will be doing our third live broadcast! In case you were not one of the 400 people who tuned in last time, here is what you missed:

Fritz slapped Brother Captain James around the table using his Black Templars.

Brother Captain James knocked Jawaballs down a couple notches by beating him in a tight objectives game.

JB, Fritz and BCJ answered lots of questions.

Jawaballs got married live on air! For real!

Yup, I tied the knott live on air, with Fritz serving as my impromptu Best Man and my buddy Matt, who is a Justice of the Peace, performing the very short ceremony. If you wish to see some of that video, my Ustream channel where you can watch the wedding part. If it prompts you for a password, it is jawaballs1.

So we are planning our next broadcast for Sunday the 21st. We would have done it sooner, but the prior two Sundays are consumed by the big game, and Valentines day.

I managed to fix the issue with my camera, so we are able to shoot in HD with a nice cam. That means we can pan and zoom and shot you hotspots of action as needed.

What is new for our next broadcast? Well, BCJ is always welcome to come over, and we will throw out an invite to Black Matt if he is willing. It is a cramped room however, so that may limit us to just three. I would love to get my hands on Fritz's Grey Knight list, and I owe James payback for the beatdown he gave me last time. We will get in a game of 40k, and maybe a mystery game! What game Jawaballs? I cant tell you! That is why it is a mystery game. You will have to tune in to find out.

So check out my channel for updates on time and such. We hope to see you all then! We would love to see our numbers double for the day.

You have plenty of notice, so I hope to see you all there! Chime in here if you will be attending the show.

Jawaballs

Battle Report: Reader submitted. BA vs Dark Angels

Battle 1500 pts BA vs. Dark Angels capture and control bases.

Army lists

BA
Dante
Corbulo

Assault Squads x 2
Rhino x Armour
PW Melta Bomb

Tactical Squad x 5 marines
Meltagun
Lascannon
Melta Bomb

Venerable Death Company Dread

Death Company x5
Rhino xArmour

2 x Baal Preds
Hvy Bolters

He had some Ravenwing consisting of 1 Chaplin led bike squad, another bike squad and Attack bike. Deathwing squad, 2 x 10 tactical squads Meltagun Multi Melta. 1 x Pred TL las and bolter sponsons ,Whirlwind and a Landspeeder.

I won the dice roll and let him set up first and reserved all my units.

He set up spread across the board 1 tactical squad sat on his base and the other set up behind his bike squadrons the Pred and Whirlwind set up on his left flank and the Landspeeder guarding his right.

Turn 1

He moved his bike squadrons up with the attack bike and Landspeeder in support, he infact turbo boosted his Landspeeder moving it 24”

Turn 2

His Deathwing squad came in by one of his bike squadrons and then decided not to move anything else and wait to see what came on for me. My reserve roll where good making 5 out of 8. So I brought on the Baal Preds, Dante, Corbulo with the Death Company and 1 of the Assault squad Rhinos. I moved the Rhinos up my left flank with Dante just behind them. I fired one of the preds at the Landspeeder knocking it out and the other fired at the termies causing 1 casualty.

Turn 3

He opened up on the Preds knocking 1 of them out with an Assault Cannon(good/lucky rolling) and then his Pred fired its Las at the other pred and did nothing. Reserve rolls brought on the other assault squad and the dread. I rolled ok on OE getting both Corbs and the assault squad rhino to move 18”. I popped smoke on one and the other went and blocked Los on the termie squad so the couldn’t see Dante. I moved the surviving pred up to support the Rhinos and the Dread towards the Termies. I fired the Pred at one of his bike squads and caused 2 casualties and ran the dread up 4”.

Turn 4
He moved his Termies led by another Chaplin towards the Dread and also moved the Chaplin led bike squad up behind them he also moved the tactical squad towards the my base but they where about to be assaulted be an Assault squad next turn. He fired on the dread with assault cannon and lascannon but the dread just shook it off thanks to extra armor. On my turn I moved the Dread into assault range unloaded the Assault squad and moved them up to Assault his tactical squad in the open I also moved Dante into range for Preferred Enemy Corbs already in range for Furious Charge. For some reason I forgot to fire the dread at the termies the assault squad fired on the Tac squad causing 1 casualty and Dante killed of the last member of a bike squad with his melta. On the Assault the assault squad took out 5 of his tactical squad not suffering nothing in return. The Dread however only cased 3 wounds he made 2 invuls thanks to storm shields and he hit the dread with only 1 thunder hammer attack and would you believe it killed it what a piece of luck. Oh and by the way on OE 3 out of 4 Rhinos including the Death company and Corbs rolled 1’s the tactical squad came on though and moved towards his base.

Turn 5

He moved his Termies towards my base and turned his Chaplin led bike squad and his attack bike over to take on Dante with only the attack bike being in range. For some reason he never fired his Pred on Whirlwind the whole game apart from the first few turns. He fired the attack bike at Dante and whiffed that was all his firing. On my turn I rolled much better for OE getting all the Rhinos going. Corbs and Death Company moved up towards his base with the others not far behind, the Pred moved and unloaded on the Termies only causing 1 kill. Dante killed the attack bike and in the assault phase the assault squad killed of the rest of his tactical squad suffering 1 casualty in the process.

Turn 6

Last turn as it would turn out. He fired on the Death Company Rhino with meltagun and multimelta only causing weapon destroyed. He assaulted the pred with his termies and did nothing. On my Dante and the assault squad join up and moved towards his last bike squad and I unloaded the Death Company and got the ready to Assault the base. I also moved the tactical squad rhino back towards my base just in case the pred did not take care of his termies. The Pred killed of last of his termies leaving only the Chaplin Dante and the Assault Squad killed of 2 of his bikers and the assaulted and the Death Company fired on the tactical squad causing 1 casualty. In the assault phase the Death Company wiped out 7 of his tactical squad 3 due to rends and Dante and the assault squad killed of the last biker and caused only 1 wound on the Chaplin thanks to some good invul saves.

Game ended with another total victory for the Blood Angels.

Nice batrep man! Another win for the Blood Angels. Keep on marching! Any one else who is interested in having your batreps posted here, please send em to me at hotmail. I will be happy to put em up! Write them up in this format. Describe the two armies, deployment and mission. Then do a turn by turn writeup of the action. Please, if you can, take a couple of pictures of the pivitol moments. Great stuff Charlie!

Jawaballs

Homeless in the world?

Every once in a while I like to give my opinion on something non 40k related, and regret it every time. But I just have to share this.

It is a terrible thing that happened in Haiti. My heart goes out to all of you who are in the affected areas of Haiti, or have loved ones there or worse, have lost some one you love. The world is banding together to help as best they can, especially the celebrities who are all jumping on the Hope for Haiti bandwagon that seems to be more of a fashion statement to them than charity fund. Celebrity fanfare aside, there are a lot of people out there who are in desperate need of food, clothing and a place to live. I hope every one has done their part and donated what they can. Here is a link to where you can do something if you so choose. Save the Children! My wife works for them. :)

Every once in a while, I try to also look at the bigger picture during times like this. For example, I did a quick search and found out that during any given year, 3.5 million people in the US are homeless with almost 20% of them being families with kids. It was a number that shocked me! You can check the site your self. These are people that sit in the corners of city buildings looking at us as we walk bye, too defeated to even ask for money. We ignore them every time. I am guilty myself.

What is my point? I hope that after Haiti is put back on it's way to recovery, if you can call it that... (A lot of Haiti looked like Port au Prince does now, but BEFORE the quake), some of these actors and rappers can shift gears and focus on more domestic or worldly issues. There are 1 million Somalies who are just as desperate, if not more.

I know next time I walk past some dude sleeping over a subway vent in the city for some warmth, I am going to stuff a few bucks into his pocket.

Know what I mean?

Jawaballs

List Help from Jawaballs

Hey

Just been looking at some of your recent GT stuff, i love those death company dreadnoughts. Really nice army. Im entering a local gt in Belfast at 2000 pts. Would you mind commenting on what you think i should keep/drop. If you don't get back to me i understand your very busy. Well here goes anyway.

Dante 200pts
Lemartes 125pts
Honour guard with 2 p/w + jump packs 180pts
Dread with Auto/cannon + heavy flamer + drop pod 180.
assault marines x 10 with p/w and melta bombs 270pts
assault marines x 10 with p/fist 275pts
assault marines x 10 with p/fist 275pts
Tactical marines 115pts
Devastator squad with 4 x M/launcher and razorback with lascannon 275pts
whirlwind 85pts
6 free DC with jump packs 30 pts

Well thats all of it, i know i am up against horde orks and necrons with NO monoliths, the rest don't know. I hope you can help.

Regards
Joel


I suppose the best way to get answers from me is to flatter me! No seriously, the best way to get list help from me is to do some of your own legwork. Joel here came up with his own list, gave me a goal on how he wants to use it, and possible opponents so I know how to help him. That makes it a pleasure for me to give input. Here we go!

Dante and Lemarte are great. You are going for an assault army and they excel. It is not crucial, but instead of Lemarte, consider Corbulo. Drop the jump packs off your DC, throw them in a rhino with corbs and run that up in front of Dante and the HG. It will give a killer squad mobile cover, and give all of your assaulters Furious Charge. Lemartes litanies is redundant if Dante is used properly. Keep at least one model from each squad within 12" of Corbs rhino. Dropping lemarte and the jump packs will save you 55 points... just enough for a rhino! Make sure you put extra armor on it.

Honor Guard: Get the Chapter Banner in there. It is worth it. This squad with Dante will be your scalpel while your other assault squads are the hammers. The 5 of them plus Dante will hit with 32 attacks, over half of them power. To compare, a 10 man assault squad only gets 31 attacks with 4 power shots. Keep them behind the rhino! They will get cut down for sure once your opponent realizes the threat. Throw your HG up against TH/SS terminators, and other hard hitting elites.

Dread with autocannon? Hell no. Go furioso or go home. A furioso dread with haevy flamer will cost 105. Make him venerable and give him the pod. That will save you 10 points and give you a better weapon, absolutely. The couple of extra auto cannon shots do not compare to the venerable upgrade, meltagun and assault power. Your autocannon dread will land and get popped. The ven furioso has a chance to live, will destroy tanks with its meltagun, and with two CCW will last longer in close combat and whack tanks on the charge... He gets 4 attacks on the charge! If you are feeling froggy, make him Death Company. Up to 7 attacks on the charge. Get him in range of Dante and Corbs, and that is 7 attacks on the charge, reroll misses, initiative 5. Death.

Tactical Marine squad? 5 men no upgrades? It wont do you much good. It will sit on an objective in the back, but you can do that by combat squading one of your 10 man RAS. Get that squad to 10 men and give it a lascannon at least. Then you can CS it and at least shoot the Las.

Whirlwind? Put those points into your tactical squad. Or buy a melta attack bike and put the rest into your Tactical. If you are worried about torrent of fire, Heavy Bolter bikes.

If you want a tank, get a Baal Pred, give it heavy bolters, storm bolter and extra rmor.

At 275, your 4 missle launchers and razor back are a huge point sink. I do not believe in razorback Lascannons. It is a threat, and easy to silence. But I suppose the anti horde trade off, and tank killing punch could help. Consider a heavy bolter in there or two. Shoot all those missle launchers into squads using the small blast marker... I think they can still do that right? If you find a good cluster, you will do a lot of damage from far. I never use missles so i dont know.



Consider another Baal Predator or Venerable Furioso dread in pod. In other words, stick with the strengths of the Blood Angels. Autocannon dreads (Can a BA dread even take one?), razorbacks and dev squads are Codex: Space Marine units. They can buy them cheaper with better options. Blood Angels have other options that make them unique. Two Furioso in pods will be a great support to your 4 assault squads and give more synergy to your army. Them coming down after, or as your assault squads slam home will be the one two punch you need. A couple of Baal Preds will give you the torrent of fire you need for fire support. Attack Bikes will give you tank killing punch.

So it goes like this.
Take first turn.

Deploy your rhino far up.
Turn One:
Move the rhino 12", pop smoke and turn it sideways.

Move dante and HG up behind the rhino, blocking LoS.

Move the other squads up giving them cover wherever you can.

Turn Two:
Hopefully your pods come down as Dante and HG jump out and assault. Plan your pods so that they come out they pop transports for your assaulters. Or pop big tanks that will slaughter your boys with AP weapons. If you are lucky, you can disembark your DC from the rhino and assaul them as well. Necrons and Orks should fold. If you are going to assault orks, make sure you can break them on his turn. You have to kill half of them on the charge. So hit ork mobs with two squads. Jump to the back side of the mob to keep his claw out of range of your boys, and out of B2B with Dante.

Assaulting Crons will instant win.

Hope that helps!

Jawaballs

Jawaballs and Fritz are heading to Scranton PA!

Our next road trip is taking us to the home of Michael Scott and Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, Scranton PA! Fritz's lackey Autarch Andrew has been bragging a little too much about how he destroys his opponents out there, so we decided to investigate the area to determine whether it is necessary to declare exterminatus on the whole place or if there is any thing out there worthy of becoming a servitor.

On Saturday, Feb. 6, The Unknown Comics and Games is holding an 18 man 40k tournament. They hold tournaments monthly. It is a small venue so you need to keep track of their website announcements so you know when to show up and sign up. The organizer did Fritz and I the courtesy of adding our names to the list over the phone.

All joking about servitors and exterminatus aside, we are looking forward to traveling to a new location and playing against guys we don't normally get to see. What is in store for us? Only time and the Emperor know. But in the end it is about good people and good games... and three angry, angry dreadnoughts coming out of the sky.

If you live within 4 hours of NYC and have local events going on, let me know! Fritz and I can take a trip and maybe even bring Brother Captain James, Black Matt, Ultrabob and Danny Internets!

More to come...

Jawaballs

Battle Report: Reader submitted. BA vs Chaos

Here is a batrep submitted by a reader! Please feel free to send me your Blood Angels batreps. This reader based his 1500 list on my "rhino rush" mechanized blood angels list from last year. Nice job man!

Battle Report

Battle for Languinus.

Languinus is a small planet in the Ineptus Prime Sector of Space, there have been reports of Xenos incursion and also that some of the planets are revolting against Imperial control and wish to called Free Humanity. Imperial forces have been dispatched amongst them the Blood Angels led by Commander Dante(who has been place in overall command of the sector Imperial Forces)

It was a 1500 pt battle, 6 turn meeting enagagement with 2 objectives and Kill points.

Dante

Corbulo

Assault squad 1
Rhino
Xarmor
PF Melta bomb

Assault sqaud 2
Rhino Xarmor
PW Melta Bomb

Tactical squad
X 5 marines
Lascannon
Melta gun
Melta bomb

Death Company x5
Rhino
Xarmor

Baal Pred
Hvy Bolters
Xarmor

Baal Pred
Hvy Bolters
Xarmor

Death Company Dread


Not sure what he had, not to familiar with the Chaos forces, from what I could see he had 3 troop choices one led by a Chaos Lord on beast and a Sorceror led Terminator squad and Vindicator with a Havoc launcher. All his infantry was on foot.(Have to say in his defence this was the first time he had played with his Chaos army)

I won the die roll let him go first and reserved all my units.

Turn 1:

Nothing much happened except that he mover all his units toward the objective in my deployment zone and left the one in his zone totally unprotected.

Turn 2:

He did much the same thing moving up towards the objective. On my turn only the pred came on, one of them failing OE and couldn’t move) the other was ok. I didn’t want to take any shots from his Vindicator so they used cover to obscure his LOS and waited for support to arrive. Fired at one of his squads with one the preds and caused a couple of casulties.

Turn 3:

His Vindicator made it to the objective and waited for his infantry to catch up no firing as nothing was in range for him.

Reserve roll was better this time on came Dante, both Assault squads and Corbulo with the Death Company. On my OE rolls again on the preds failed the other was ok so I moved the other Pred up and took some shots at his Vindicator immobilizing it. I also moved a Rhino up in front of it blocking it los(popped smoke of course) and unloaded the squad inside. Corb’s Rhino failed OE and was stuck at the edge of the board the other rhino passed OE and made for the objective with Dante in behind ready to pop out from behind.

Turn 4

Only targets for him where the rhino and the pred. He chose to fire on the pred with his havoc and didn’t do anything his termines fired at another rhino and missed with his Auto cannon shots. He continued to move his infantry squads up rather slowly.

On my turn again the pred failed its OE, Corb’s rhino was ok and I moved him up in range so Dante would get the Furious Charge. Unloaded the other Baal at his Vindicator hitting but not doing anything. So I assaulted it with the assault squad and the sergeant killed it with his melta bomb. Dante assault a infantry squad and killed 4 after missing his shooting and took a wound(I just can’t seem make those armor saves). They failed morale Dante caught them and they took another 2 casualties. On my reserves roll the Dread came on and moved towards the Chaos lord and his boys. On the assault Dante only got killed and took another wound.

Turn 5:

He moved up his chaos lord towards the objective ignoring the dread, he did take a couple of pot shots from his other squad with a lascannon and melt gun didn’t do anything. His termines and Sorcerer unloaded on the assault squad and cause only one casualty. On my turn the tactical squad came on and made for his objective OE went off and they would easily make it by turn 6. Unloaded the other assault squad and moved them up to assist Dante just in case he didn’t kill of the squad. Dread fired his flamer and melta into the Lords unit killing 5 and then assaulted. Both preds moved up to the left flank using OE but were not needed. In the assault phase Dread killed of 3 more and because the squad was fearless the took another 2 leaving the lord Unfortunately he did manage to immobilize the dread. Dante killed of the remaining troops in the other squad so now I had 3 kill points to his none things where looking very good.

Turn 6:

Last Turn Basically came down to me staying out of range of his termies and the tactical squad taking the other objective. He assaulted the dread with his other squad his termies and sorcerer could not see anything thanks to me moving up 2 rhinos to block his Los so he destroyed one of the rhinos. In the assault he automatically hit the dread but did nothing the dread killed the Chaos lord squishing him into a pulp after he failed in invul save. In my turn I had moved up the death company previous turn and the assaulted his remaining squad and believe it or not wiped them out.

So there you have it a total victory for the Blood Angels and another planet claimed for the Imperium. As I said before it was his first time using this army in previous games he had used an Ork army against me and slaughtered me(I was using Blood Ravens at the time).

Hope this is not too long mate, feel free to edit stuff as you see fit.

All the best
Charlie

A couple of quick notes for you. First of all, you do not roll for OCE when in reserves. Vehicles that have abilities that may stop them from moving do not use them when not on the table. You should have just moved them up to 12". When Dante charged a squad of Chaos Space Marines and won the combat, they failed morale and ran right? If so, and Dante caught them in an initiative check, they were destroyed. Space Marines have "they shall know no fear" which allows them to not be destroyed in a sweeping advance. Any one else is killed unless they have some special rule that stops it. So Dante would have been free after the charge. Finally, you said that the assaulters hit your dread automaticly. I dont know if you had any weird circumstances, but in assaults, dreads use weapon skill, even if immobilized. There is no auto hit.

Great job and please keep em coming, with pictures next time!

Jawaballs

More stuff to add to the Blood Angels rumor heap!

A reader emailed me with some tidbits he got from a store manager in England concerning Blood Angels romors.

Librarian Dreadnought...

Angel character...

He didnt give any details... but I thought they would add some nice speculation info!

Have fun!

Battle Report: Conflict GT game 4 Blood Angels vs IG

You all might remember my rant not long ago about the death of 40k as we know it. Well, I finally got to play against the list I was talking about in that rant. 3 Vendettas, 2 medusas, 2 48" melta gun cannon tanks, and lots of chimeras filled with vets bristling with melta guns. Oh, he had a psycher battle squad. master of the fleet. etc.

I have to say, that the game was one of the best games of 40k I have ever played. Al was a great opponent and a great sport. The game was interesting, no bs, lots of fun and to the wire. Just the way a game should be.

He won the roll, and took 2nd turn because it was Dawn of War for two turns. I deployed what I could and walked on turn 1 the rest, except for a tactical squad. i wanted some way to save the game in the face of catastrophe.

Deployment: Modified DoW for 2 turns, Mission: control table corners

Turn one: Night fight in effect.

I move on my predators, going for a terrain piece in the middle of the table that would grant me cover saves all game, yet give me full range and sight on most of his army. I moved them both 12" and parked. He had deployed very little to begin with and I had no shots.

On his turn he brought on every thing in full shooty spread. He had a Vendeta on each end and one in the middle, his chimeras clustered in the center and on one end, and his tanks all lined up in the back. He fired some shots, but was out of range.

Turn Two: Night fight in effect.

I move my two preds 6" and get them into position to fire from cover. My bikes moved up behind the preds and my Las teams moved into position the previous turn so they were ready to fire.

I shot my first pred at the first Vendetta in line and reached it through the dark with my searchlights... While failing to hurt, I lit it up for the rest of my army! I next shot one of my lascannons at it... exploding it. The boys bailed out.

My next shot was my second pred at the next vehicle in line, which was a Veteran Chimera. I shook it with the ass cannon... but more importantly, lit up another with the search light. The next lascannon in line... blammo, dead chimera, the boys bail out.

What luck! This was doubly lucky because those two tanks were the only things in range to shoot at my preds, which were far up forward.

I charged my Rhino up the right flank 18" and popped smoke. I was being aggressive, as I learned was the way to be vs this army. Get in their face, force them to make decisions rather then leisure plug away at me.

On his turn, he had very few options. Nothing but a rhino was in range, and he knew he had to kill it. Not much else he could do! So he opened up on it. The smoke saved half of the shots until finally he exploded it. But he was dangerously low on shots! It came down to his last shot, a high damage plasma burst. He succeeded at killing the combat squad, but not the captain. Muahaha.

Turn Three:
Now my preds needed to start working on his troops. I began targeting squads in range and whittling them down. It was like exterminating roaches. I was just managing the size of their squads, so that later in the game a single wound would force LD tests. I moved out the bikes to line up more Chimeras and most importantly two of my pods came down. He had the psycher that reduced my roll by one. So nothing came down in turn two, but two came now! I dropped one right in the front of his chimeras and tanks, and one in the back line next to his heavy guns. My captain moved up on a Vendetta to take it down.

So in my shooting, I exploded another vendetta and my capt. shook the third. I used my other guns to try to pop the chimera in front of my dread and was successful. He then layed the flame on them and killed all but the leader. The other dread popped one of the big guns. On the right side, he had taken wounds so the vet squad was falling back, and my captain moved to force them to continue, before shooting the Vendetta.

At this point, his army was falling fast. He would need a big turn around to save things.

On his turn his squad on the right fell back some more, but managed to stop right at the edge and he turned all of his melta guns on my dread... but MISSED! In fact he missed all of his shots at it and he was desperate to destroy it. It was going to take down his other big gun next, then he would be helpless against the dreads. But luck would favor him. He had a good angle, through my pod with a multi laser. He managed to destroy the dread with it. Damn. The other one took some heavy hits and was destroyed as well. But they did their damage!

Turn Three:
It was turning out that I was in control of the game. As I saw it, I had one corner firmly in control, so only had to work to contest the other three and stop him from being able to contest my corner. I started working on his troops again in the middle with my preds... killing one squad and the other went to ground. My two death company models finally made it across the board and assaulted a Chimera, destroying it! My lascannons took aim at his medussa guns, trying to silence them... i only blew off a gun this time. My captain assaulted the vendetta he failed to destroy, and shook it. It would be able to move next turn and get away...

By the end of my turn, I had taken out all but one of his transports with guys inside. He had a mobile chimera, and a vendetta. He had his psycher squad inside a chimera with his HQ. He had 1.5 operational medussas and one heavy cannon.

On his turn his troops assaulted my DC, but my guys won. Drawn combat. He destroyed one of my preds with his heavy cannon, and moved his chimera boys up into my area to try to take out my stuff in my corner. All I had left over there was a rhino with a squad inside, and a pred. he killed my bikes with the medussasa.

Turn Four:
My pod still not in. It was getting close. I had little left! My captain assaulted and finally destroyed the last vendetta. I took shots at the chimera charging my corner, but failed to destroy or stop it. They were gonna get their licks in. My DC took down a vet squad. At this point, he could not win because he had no troops left, or what he did have left was going to ground and about to die to my DC. His only hope was to contest a draw.

So he moved up his chimera and popped out... exploding my pred with melta fire. With little left to shoot, and little to shoot at, that was about all he could do.

Turn Five:
I had to kill the chimera and command squad. My dread came down and I plopped him right next to them. He got out, tageted the chimera, exploded it and layed the flame accross the squad, killing most. But by the end of my shooting, I was unable to kill them all. If the game ended this turn, it would be a draw...

On his turn he tried to take down the dread but was unable. So he tried to hunker in his last survivors in cover and hold out.

A die roll would end the game a draw on a 1 or 2. I did not want that! I had his two corners contested, he contested both of mine. But the game went on!

Turn Six:
Sadly for him, this would be the end. I made sure I would kill his squad by unloading my marines from my hidden rhino, and assaulting the squad after shooting. It died on my charge. Then I massacred them out of any LoS, and used my dread to block it for sure...

On his turn he had nothing left that could reach my corner, and nothing that could reach it if the game went another turn. But it did not matter, the game ended. I had the advantage in table corners and all bonus points.

Al was a fun opponent. When things did not go his way, he did not piss and moan. My lascannons were on fire and every turn did something. That is a rarity for me! The tide of this battle was determiend by the two rounds of DoW. That nullified his huge range advantage, and allowed me to get my assault cannons into position in relative safety. That allowed me to fire my lascannons on him, without fear of him shooting back. I destroyed his vendettas rather quickly, and took down his chimeras with little loss to my army.

I think the single most important move I made was charging my rhino into his right side. That is how to deal with guard. Get in their face and never let up.

Incoming Transmision...

Good Ole Doc Railgun chimed in with some emailed questions...

+++ Transmission Begins +++

O Brother-Captain Jawaballs,

I know that you're busy, and now get bazillions of emails per day, most of which are from the leading lights of the 40K blogosphere. But I though I'd write anyway and see where your thoughts stand today on what direction the Blood Angels will go assuming the rumors are even half-correct. I'd like to see how our predictions will stand up once we get a peek at the book.

Of course the rumors and so on change every day, so I won't go over specific rumored units and their possible impact, but assuming most of what we've read are true, what will be the strategy and tactics most BA players will settle on? I am certtain that we will see tons of all-jump pack armies and maxed-out Dreadnought lists, just because they seem so cool. That may be GW's intention: sell lots of assault squad boxes (which come in 5s rather than 10-model tactical squads). But I think the core of the BA army's strength won't be drop-podding Dreadnoughts (though you've shown that they are very strong), but more what you and Fritz have been suggesting: finding the right time to spring a decisive assault that captures objectives with no response from the enemy. This edition is about objectives, not killing things. How many models are or are not on the table at any given time is only important as far as what objectives they are controlling or contesting.

So, would you agree that the core BA's strength will remain lurking about gunning down anything that shows its head and manuevering for a decisive charge, or do you think the rules move the army in a different direction. The army-wide Furious Chage will certainly encourage people to want to close and assault as much as possible, but I wonder if that's really the best idea all the time. I see the BAs as a complement to the Space Wolves... Counterattack combind with their extra close-combat weapon make SWs really good at holding objectives or repelling outflanking foes. Furious Charge and the (rumored) extra close-combat weapon makes BAs really good at taking objectives. Seems like they would make a good team.

Actually, I do have a few questions for you about what the implications of changes to certain units might be.

Venerable Furioso Dreadnoughts brought into line with SM/SW Codex statlines. WS5 BS 5 with Furious Charge (so I5) and 3 A? Though it seems clear that these would be good MC and character killers, wouldn't these also be a nightmare for S3 infantry, even if they have power fist-type weapons? Are drop-pods a no-brainer, or will they be more useful for counter-charges?

Venerable (BS5) Dreadnoughts with dual-autocannons. Is the Baal enough firepower, or is something that reliably kills 4 models or one light tank a turn worth giving up 200 points for? This platform is really mobile, too, able to move and fire (and go through terrain without throwing a track).

The rumored twin-linked Devastator shooting (and cheap lascannons) - will this interest you in Devastators again (though I'd rather have the SW ability to split fire), or are Dreadnoughts the way to kill high AV models?

Assault squads as troops - we have this already, but will Tactical squads be seen very much unless they have some special options (like very cheap heavy weapons)? Of course, if Tacticals each have a bolter, a bolt pistol and a ccw, then they're basically Assault marines anyway. So possibly the book should take away the option to put Assault squads in a Rhino?

Overwatch Terminators: finally a reason to not put assault weapons on a Terminator. Is this a test bed for "reactions" in the next edition? Having two rounds of shooting (in the enemy shooting phase, then another in the BA shooting phase) then an I5 Assault (admittedly, just the Sgt) ought to be pretty good at killing hordes of Genestealers.

I know I'm coming late to the proverbial game and you're not likely to reveal the JB-and-Fritz master planning, but what do you think we'll see turn out to be the list that most BA players will turn to again and again?
Is there anything else rumored that you think will see play outside of an Apocalypse game?

+++ Transmission Ends +++

As far as the Fritz and Jawaballs master plan... time will only tell. Planning is impossible with no clue about any thing real... but lets just say that the rumors are supporting the assumptions we already came to some time ago. My dreadnought list is a divergence from the norm, that is why I win games with it. Soon it will become norm and people will adapt. Perhaps part of the plan is to force that adaptation so we can spring our true intentions? Cue shocking revelation music.

Seriously, I believe the hoped for all dread armies will be a flash in the pan because they just cost too much. My expectations for the new dex are low. We will see lots of great things, lots of great hype, and lots of great point totals. Much like the SW dex and the SM dex. Sure, play those Vanguard Vets that can deep strike and assault. That will only be 500 points!

It is obvious that GW is gearing up BA to be the permiere assault army, as they have already printed. FC, assault troops, HG as troops, new assault vets, an assault landing craft, dreads as FA, HS and Elite? The list goes on and on. This is further supported by giving BA librarians something to actually do. Powers that block LoS, grant Fleet to Dreads, grant extra attacks, and hinder the enemy assault all go into supporting their intention.

Is this going to be the dawn of a new age of assault armies? I doubt it. An IG gunline can still lay waste to an army of Blood Angels in seconds. The new changes sound like it will make a jump pack army a little more survivable, but at what cost? Will a Librarian with a Jump Pack cost over 200 points? Mephiston is 300? By the time you get done souping up those rumored uber squads, what will you have left? I forsee a lot of standard Jump Pack armies that will either win big, or lose big. Just like I had before. Victory will become situational and the all assault army will remain on the fringe of tournament success. As well as the dread army... etc.

To tell the truth, I don't see my army changing much. If what I expect to happen comes true, we will see a reduced cost in the army I am already running, which does well. That will allow me to throw in a librarian who will help it do even better.

Give me my three Ven dreads in pods. Let them come down, get FC and Fleet from a librarian, and do even better.

We will settle on that for now.

More to come!

Jawaballs

More Blood Angels info!

Bigred over at Bell of Lost Souls shared this little tidbit with me last night. He posted it up there but I wanted to share it here as well. I think I timed it right to go up after BOLS so I don't scoop him with his own info! If you have any other reliable info out there, please let me know! Come on all you guys in the know... give it up! Jawaballs wants YOU!

Force Organization Chart

Blood Angel FOC is divergant from the Ultramarine one:

-Dreadnoughts are heavy support.

-Furioso Dreads with droppods are fast attack.

-Twin scout entries are both elites, but one is scoring.

-Only dedicated ground transport is the Rhino (Razorbacks are out)

-Assault Squad and Tactical Squad are troops.

-Honour Guard can be troops if fielded with Dante.

-Jump pack units are in every FOC category except heavy support and HQ:

--Assault Squad - troops

--Honour Guard - elites

--Exalted - fast attack



Death Company is 0-1 and doesn't need a slot in the FOC



Units Rules

Tantalus Lander is a dedicated transport for everything in the army except tanks, Land Speeders and Exalted. Its weaponry is: 2 twin-linked assault cannons, 1 twin-linked special weapon.



Land Raider: Redeemer, Crusader and Standard



Terminator sergeants can get close combat wargear. There is a Terminator upgrade to allow shooting in an enemy phase.



Exalted: 4/4/4(5)/4/1/5/1+1/10/3+, jump troops, hit & run, furious charge, no red fury/combat tactics, power armor, stormbolter, power weapon, bolt pistol, no options, no transports.



Quite angelic: masterfully crafted slim armor, jump packs, mechanical wings, masks, long hair.



Named Characters
Erasmus: Furious charge, digital weapons (rending), master crafted combi melta: 18" S:8 AP:1 Assault 1, melta, reroll to hit, 4+ ward save, can chose one set of special rules:

-squad ignores red fury

-red fury and preferred enemy

-rage and feel no pain



Mephiston: 7/7/5/5/3/7/4/10/2+, FnP, Fearless, Eternal Warrior, Fleet, 2 psychic powers per turn.

More potent versions of Might of heroes, Transfixing Gaze and Blood Stasis powers:



The gun of Victor's servitor is 36" S:6 AP:6 Assault6



Psychic Powers

Quickening: Infantry moves as beasts, jump troops and walkers gain fleet.

Blood Stasis: 5" vortex of blood in base contact. Enemy models count as being in difficult terrain, and suffer one wound if they try to move and any of the distance dice shows a 1, Mephiston: can cast it in close combat centered on himself, and enemies attacking with a 1 suffer a wound.

Might of Heroes: one model in squad gets +D3 attacks, Mephiston: can cast it on himself.

Primarchs Grace: Squad may reroll dangerous terrain tests.

Transfixing Gaze: Target model must take a leadership roll off or not able to attack librarian, Mephiston: not able to attack any model.

Living Darkness: A template which blocks line of sight.



Fluff

Background: mainly Blood Angels and 4 successor chapters with one page each:

-Blood Consuls

-Angels Sanguine

-Flesh Tearers

-Angels Vermillion


It seems that we were just dreaming about the assault cannon land raider! Thats ok though, I suspected enough. The lander sounds just as good though.

There is some interesting bits here. First of all, Tycho is good now! Really all I wanted on him was a power weapon and he would have been a steal.

Dropping razorbacks. Fine with me. I don't think they had much room in the dex any way. They lacked OCE and were over priced.

Mephiston sounds truly insane. Bring on Abbadon!

One of the true gems here are the psychic powers. The PDF powers are a joke. "Quickening". Jump troops and walkers gain Fleet??? "Living Darkness" blocks line of sight. It seems they have included powers that actually help your assault boys get into combat. Genius. If GW wanted to make the Blood Angels an aassault pack army, this is the way. You want to bet that I will absolutely add a Librarian to my army. Very nice.

Actually, looking at this info screams for me to return to my original BA army. Hopefully they reduced the cost of assault troops. Now that I can include my HG as troops, that makes them worth the high price tag and i can finally use that pretty squad I painted for golden daemon.

This news seems pretty promising. The only drawback I forsee is price, but BA are already way over priced, so I cant imagine it getting any worse... however, I bet those exhaulted troops will cost a pretty penny... probably pricing them right out of most armies and off the tables like Vanguard Vets. Hopefully, knowing GW, they will pull a Valkrye and put them in the dex for half what they should really cost just to encourage us to buy them. And buy I will.

Does any of this info further illuminate what you may have already known? Does it spark any more army concepts? I would like to hear the ideas!

More to come...
Jawaballs

Battle Report: Conflict GT game 3 BA vs Orks

This is not much of a battle report. Not because I lost, but because Anthony and I both agreed that the game out right sucked.

Kill Points
Blah.

When I saw Anthony at the start of the day I was excited for the possible epic battle between my dreads and his ork mechs. He had 3 squads of 3 Kans, and 2 ork dreadnoughts. His army was rounded out by 3 squads of boys and 2 mech orks with shields. Pretty damn tough. I was excited at the thought of a slugfest in the middle of the table with our dreads going at each other.

Instead we had table corners and kill points.

Here is how the game went.

He deploys in his corner. I deploy in my corner.

Turn One: He does not move for fear of getting close to my stuff and giving up a KP. On my turn, I do not move for fear of getting close to his stuff and giving up a KP. See the trend?

Turn Two:
He does not move for fear of cloes to my stuff and giving up a KP.

One of my pods comes down. Out of boredom, I drop it on his back table edge to stir things up. It scatters off the table. Back into reserves.

Turn Three:
He brings on commandos at my base. They outflank but cannot assault. Nothing else moves for him.

On my turn, I had to make a decision. Slaughter the commandos then sit on that KP the rest of the game like Fritz would do, or have some fun and drop a pod into his boys. I decide to play. I drop a pod into his boys, lay down some flame, kill some boys. Game on. I dropped another pod near his dreads to get them into combat.

Turn Four:
He moves and kills a dread with a lucky nob and assaults another with a dread and kans. Arms are torn off, combat ties. Etc. etc.

Without typing out the rest of this snore fest, I go down 5 to 3 KP in his favor. Dropping dreadnoughts into the thick of it is cool, but Drop Pods being instant kill points sucks bad. But thems the breaks. Anthony knew it and so did I. We agreed that Kill Points robbed us of what would have otherwise been a great game. We should have just played objectives instead. :)

What should I have done for victory? Sit on that one commando squad KP. I should have just dropped my pods safely into my own zone. It was obvious. He would have had to march his kans into my fire power, during which time I would have had a few rounds to open up with preds then charge with dreads.

Hopefully next time I will get to face his orks again in a real game!

More to come...

Jawaballs

Batrep: Conflict GT game two. BA vs Kroot Mercs???

So I waited at my table, about 20 minutes, while every one else started playing. Then my opponent arrived. After a quick introduction, he started pulling kroot after kroot out of his transport. I thought it was cool, but was waiting for his Fire Warriors and other fish heads. Instead, more and more kroot. Noticing my puzzled look, he started to explain that he was playing the "Chapter approved" Kroot merc codex. As far as I knew, this was not a legal army in this tournament... Oh well.

I had never experienced the army before. And obviously, neither had this guy. It was also quickly obvious that he had probably never played a game of 5th edition. Or at least not on a tournament level. Definitely not against some one who wanted to go to Vegas, and absolutely definitely not against my Blood Angels.

With the lurking image that is now famous of a table lined with kroot on the edges and an undeployed tray of White Scars bikers on the table, and one guy posing in victory while the other looks in a rule book with the judge... I started the game with apprehension. Normally, with this sort of army I would have just reserved every thing. But I was not sure if this guy was sly enough to spread his stuff out on the table edge and block me from entering. I did not want to take the chance. He looked like he had something up his sleeve!

So I deployed a Predator, two bikes, and my two rhinos with ten man squads inside them. I could not take the chance that he would assault a combat squad with 40 kroot.

The game would come down to alpha strike assault for the kroot. I knew he was going to come for me, and he knew that if he could wipe out my boys on the table, that I could not bring down pods or other reserves. So I used the terrain, and my bikes and DC to protect my predator and rhinos as best as possible and waited for him to deploy.

Then he started infiltrating.

By the rules, you can infiltrate within 12" if NONE of my models have LoS. If any of my models can see the unit that is infiltrating... his closest distance was 18". Well, infiltration took, and I kid you not, well over an hour. He was shocked that terrain pieces do not block LoS. He tried and tried to get his models within 12". One of the terrain pieces did actually block LoS. So he tried to hide a whole squad behind it. It was like an oil tank looking thing.. made from a coffee can. We figuerd out where 12" would be and he proceeded to place his models while I sat at model height testing if I could see any of them. So place he did. And managed to get them all behind the can... some how. When he was done, about 20 minutes later, I finaly got up to look at his work... and found a pile of kroot about 3" high, balanced like a barrel full of monkeys with less then half of their bases actually on the ground.

For the love of god.

Finally, every thing was infiltrated. Then the wargear issue started. What squad had what? How does it work? All of his models looked the same and had no squad markings. Basicly it was a mob of kroot and he was just taking models from the mob and saying these guys area squad. I asked if his commander lost whatever powers he may have had by joining a squad. Some HQ grant squads powers, some lose them if the squad does not have them. He had no answer for me. He did proclaim that his entire army had Fleet. Skeptical, I asked him to show me where it says that. He could not.

In discussion with another player after, it seems that they do indeed? Are kroot beasts? Do all beasts get fleet? I still dont know, but this kid (not really a kid.. maybe early 20s)could not show me any rule stating that they do, except for one squad. Sorry, no fleet. So then I busted out his list and began scrutinizing each squad and asking him to show me the wargear, and explain what it does... It was like pulling teeth. Torture.

Meanwhile, the guys next to me are half way through turn two. We are still going over army lists.

Ok, now time for the game to start.

Kroot Mercs: God knows what he had. He had a sniper kroot squad, lots of carnivores, some dogs with some boss guys and some flying kroot vultures.

Turn 1:

I tried to seize and end this before it started. I failed. Then he remembered that Kroot had a +1 cover in woods. (we had decided that the terrain was all rubble before hand.) Some of the terrain had little tiny trees on them, maybe two, maybe one... so he wanted them all to be woods. Fine. Have your woods. Fir trees would only intensify the flames when my pods finally came down.

So he goes. He started with his sniper squad. After announcing that snipers hit on 2+, he rolls 10 dice and gets 10 hits. I had to show him the new sniper rules. 2 hits.

He declares that Kroot get to ignore all cover. (He had vultures deployed in rubbble, with no trees.) Another 20 of minutes of searching through his codex reveals, from what I could find, kroot ignore terrain only if it is woods. I allow him to redeploy his vultures to get them out of the rubble.

So he had to destroy every thing I had on the table. One squad of vultures assaulted my Death Company models that were standing in front of a rhino. He had some calvalry that made it in and assaulted my predator and exploded it, killing half of his calvalry in the process. He assaulted and exploded one of my rhinos, killing another dozen or so Kroot. It was going poorly for me! He assaulted and killed both of my bikes.

Half of what I deployed was now dead and I still had to get through another of his assault phases before my reserves would come down. Needless to say, I started to sweat.

But then it ended, and I saw that I would be able to get a rhino away from the carnage.

So on my turn, I manage to roll a 6 on Over Charged Engines for the rhino, and tank shock the crap out of a vulture squad. They made their leadership and moved, but I got the Rhino away from danger.

My tactical squad that got exploded out of their rhino lined up the kroot for a charge. First I opened fire with every thing I had left, and killed a handful, then charged. We had to fist figure out which squad had what wargear... again. He said the squad with 13 vultures had one weapon and the other squad had another... but he had the weapons in the wrong squad. He assaulted and destroyed my rhino with the wrong weapon. The guy that hit it actually had no chance of hurting it. I allowed him to make the change so as not to have to turn back time.

I had to tie up the vultures so they could not go kill my other rhino. It would seem that he would benefit from the weapon switcharoo because now the vulture squad that was in range to get the rhino had the proper weapon... I got his command squad and two vulture squads into close combat, and won! One of the vulture squads was wiped out and the other failed leadership and fell back. But the command squad held and bogged me down so I could not sweep.

My captain killed the calvary.

Turn Two:

I had to survive this round. He had loads of kroot left and I had about 15 marines, a rhino and a captain.

He assaulted and killed my captain with a Str 8 weapon. He also finished off my tactical squad that was in assault. But my marines held. The reserves would come!

Three Pods arrive but my predator lags behind.

It mattered not.

My dreads popped out of their landing craft and ignited their flamers. And kroot burned. They thought they were safe in the woods. They were not. I burned down those trees and the filfthy rats hiding inside them. My rhino that was hiding, pulled back into a safer position. And that was all I could do! I breathed a hearty sigh though. I had killed two thirds of the remaining kroot.

Turn Three:
His vultures regrouped and were coming for my rhino, but they could not reach it this turn. He assaulted and killed a dread with an eviscerator, but that would be the last kill for him.

My other two dreads layed down more flame, killing most of the remaining kroot. I moved up my rhino, unloaded my tactical, and rapid fired on his vultures, killing all but 2 or three. The dreads assaulted and squished a load of them, including their commander.

Turn Four:
The game would end here. He assaulted my tactical with his remaining vultures, but I beat them down. On my turn I hopped back in my rhino and chilled. My pred came on and mowed down any remaining kroot while the dreads finished their nasty work.

By the end of the turn, all he had left was sniper kroot, and he yielded.



I don't know what the story was, maybe he was just a fill in player because of a drop out, maybe Sanguinius was testing me. At any rate, it took all of my training as a teacher to not explode several times. There were a couple of issues here. First of all, the rules on the tournament website explicitly stated that a thorough knowledge of the rules was required. This was not a noob tournament. I understand that inexperienced players will always be in tournaments and I embrace and encourage them. I am more then happy to explain things to inexperienced players and help them out, but I feel that I should have been paid for giving this player a two hour one on one tutoring session. I had to teach him how to infiltrate, deploy, shoot and assault. I had never seen his codex before, and had a firmer grasp of it's contents.

More importantly, I don't believe that this Kroot list was among the legal codexs available. It is not a legal GW codex is it? It certainly looked nice and it was obvious that he spent a lot of time on it. I can understand a small local tournament... but this GT was posted on the GW website as a qualifier for the GW Nationals. I would have hoped for a little more quality control? Am I off base with this?

After things got figured out, the guy was a fun and gracious opponent. He was not being a jerk at all, and I really felt bad for being impatient with him during his infiltration. Once I realized that he was a 5th ed beginner and casual player, not a wiley vet trying to take advantage of rules confusion in a tournament setting, I relaxed and we had a fun game. He stacked all of his models on top of each other in a pile, because he probably has done that at home with his buds in a casual setting. He was definitely thrown by true Line of Sight.

But at the same time, I am a little bothered by the fact that he tried the same infiltration routine on the next guy he played... Hmmm...

More to Come...

Jawaballs

Batrep: Conflict GT game one. BA vs Dark Eldar

The tournament had a ranking system that placed armies against each other based on composition scores. I had a deservedly low composition score. My opponent did not. He was playing a Dark Eldar list with 2 Ravagers with 3 disintigrators each, and 7 or 8 raiders filled with troops and elites. He also had some infiltrating squad that he could place in three different places, then when he decided, unveil which location they were actually in. Pretty cool.

The mission was... I honestly don't remember. It did not really matter. I think it was objectives. I placed a lascannon Combat Squad on my edge on the left side in cover. The rest of my force I placed on the right, keeping a Predator in reserve. Every thing else was behind walls, and waiting for him to come on. Yes, it was objectives!

He gave me first turn and deployed every thing on his edge, spread evenly.

Turn One:

I fired the two guns that had range, my Las cannons, and one missed and one delivered a weapon destroyed. The rest of my guys sat and waited!

On his turn, he went balls to the wall. He advanced a few raiders towards my troops that were hiding on an objective, hoping to get them in range for an alpha assault. In the meantime, he shot the crap out of my las team on the left, killing 4 of them. He had a ravager on each side of the table, and he moved 3 raiders with troops up into the middle with a large terrain piece blocking LoS from my edge, thinking it was a fairly safe spot... He had them all side to side in a row... He had a team of warriors holding an objective on his table edge in the center and sent the rest of his force at my objectives on the right.

Unfortunately for him, his assault was short. His elite force would be left in the open.

Turn Two:

Two of my pods came down, and my predator came on the table.

One of the pods dropped into the middle of the table on the 3 raiders that were moving towards my base. The other, dropped next to the three that were hiding towards the left behind terrain... I opened up with Las Cannon fire, destroying two raiders. Melta gun fire from my bikes took down a couple more, and the heavy flamers from my dreads did the rest. I layed cleansing flame over them two and three at a time since he had them nice and clustered for me! By the end of the turn, almost all of his raiders were immobilized or destroyed and all of his warriors were screaming on fire in their wrecked ships, running for their lives, or dead. Do not challenge the might and vengeance of the Blood Angels.

I mowed down the elite squad that fell short on the assault with bolter fire. This game took an instant turn for the worse.

On his turn, he tried to salvage something. The game was leaning towards me, but he still had a chance. He still had a lot of fire power and tried to reduce my troops and save his. He shot lots of disintigrator shots at my troops and killed a few more. He wiped out a combat squad.

I had a bike in assault with his sneaky infiltrator unit and he assaulted a combat squad with his command squad, relying on my toughness to protect me from his power weapons and poisons I stood strong. The men would hold. Dirty elves.

Turn Three.

The last of my dreads would arrive in the middle of the table on his edge. Time to deal with the warriors holding his objective. A quick heavy flame shot, and assault from another dread would leave them all crispy and squished. My other dread moved into assault with some warriors cowering in the burning wreckage of their raider, and stompy stomped them. My bike moved out to pop yet more ships, this time a ravager.

Assault would go poorly for the evil elves. My captain charged into combat with the squad holding up my other bike, and killed them, but took a wound in the process. He was angered! My combat squad sergeant took down the dark eldar commander and finished up the command squad.

On his turn he was just trying to hide and survive the furious onslaught. He tried to get his poor warriors away from the dreadnoughts running wild on the table, hiding them in every nook and cranny he could find... but there would be no respite, no mercy. All would die... die... die... Purged by the holy flame of the emperor and the might of sanguinius.

Turn Four:

The carnage continued. At this point it was just mop up duties. My predators started finishing off any stragling dark ones who managed to evade detection by the dreadnoughts. The dreadnoughts chased down any others who had broken and were running. He had a lone ravager on the other side of the table that had annoyed me all game with it's three disintigrators. It was looking on at the slaughter and hoping it had not been seen. It was. A quick las cannon shot solved that. My marines assaulted and destroyed immobilized skimmers and peed in their gas tanks for good measure.

The game was over and the raping, pillaging elves in spiky armor were sent back to the shadows from whence they came with lance weapons shoved up their nether regions and their funny looking paper ships turned into origami art and modern sculpture, folded up in the shapes of angel wings and blood drops.



To be fair, I was just about the worst draw this guy could have had. I had way too much fire power that could easily dice his ships and he could do nothing against my dreads except spray and pray. His charge at the beginning, while spirited, was ill advised. I knew he would do it, and am a good estimate of distance. I placed my boys just close enough to tempt him in, but far enough to keep them safe from assault. If I did get into assault with Dark Eldar, it was on my terms. I assaulted his infiltrating squad with my bike for example. That was exactlly what I wanted. He needed 6s to hurt it, and could not shoot it up on his turn. Next turn, they were finished off and I was free.

He was not ready for the fury of my 2nd company. But also, he was not ready for an Indy GT qualifier tournament. In this situation, if none other, you need to bring your A game. He was hurt badly by the tournaments questionable comp score judges. I'm not sure what they were thinking, but that army did not deserve to be judged so poorly on army composition. But, since the guy was actually involved with organizing the event in some way, I don't feel to badly. Maybe they will reconsider their system, which every participant of the tournament had problems with.

Oh well! Round one was a total massacre for me.

Round Two? Guh. Wait til you read that one.

More to come...

Jawaballs

My Conflict GT list!

Some one from Bolter and Chainsword asked me to give the list I used to qualify for the GW National Championships. So I thought I would share it here and elaborate a bit.

Company Captain
PW
Combi Melta

2x 10 man tacticals
Lascannon
melta
PW
Rhino
extra armor

2x Baal Pred
heavy bolters
storm bolter
extra armor

3x Furioso Dread
Drop pod
extra armor
heavy flamer
venerable
furioso

2 melta attack bikes

2 death co models

What do I do? I play conservatively. I am not an assaulty army. I rely on precision strikes where I need them most from my commander and combat squads from rhinos that take advantage of the chaos caused by 3 Furioso Dreads coming out of the sky. I get into position and hang out waiting for the pods to come down. I prep the landing zone with melta fire from my bikes and dakka from my preds. Hopefully shaking or stunning any killy tanks before they land. At any rate, before I move any thing I decide where I will strike hard, and prep the drop zone.

And that is about it! The dreads get out, hopefully the pods provide cover, they pop what they can and hope for the best. Venerable and cover does what it can to keep them mobile and equiped with at least one arm. Next turn, if they can, they assault. Any thing after that is gravy. I wrote a couple of more extensive tactical posts not too long ago. I will write a couple of batreps this week. :)

More to come...
Jawaballs

Vegas Baby! 2011 will be the summer of Blood and Balls... Jawaballs

Jawaballs will be attending the Games-workshop US National GT in the summer of 2011. (I already spoke to the wife... she is coming too.) :)

I scored 2nd best overall at the Toywiz Conflict GT, which was a Northeast Indy Tournament qualifier. One of the first of the year! In case you don't know, Games Workshop will be hosting the US National 40k Championships in Las Vegas, Summer 2011. The tournament will be by invite only. The only way to qualify for the GT will be to place in the top two of an official qualifying tournament in the GT Circuit!

Looks like there will be at least one Blood Angels army in Vegas 11, and that was determined before the new dex drops! Viva la Sanguine! It is the dawn of a Blood Angels revolution!

More to come...

Jawaballs

Looking to buy a Jawaballs painted army?

The guy who bought my first commissioned army has come under some financial misfortune and is looking to sell his investment. You can find it on my commission blog, it was a pretty large army. Go take a look, and if you are serious about buying a viable BA army, especially with the new dex on the way, email me and we can talk more. Jawaballs

The spores are falling!

So GW figured it was time for nids to share the love when it comes to big nasty thumpy things coming out of pods. They gave the world Drop Pod Spores... or some such. I personally know nothing about nids except for that I like to kill them. So I don't know what they are called. But I have to say, that carnifexs coming out of pods scares me! Can't you give them wings if you want them to deep strike? I liked safe deep striking being a Space Marine thing. At Mechanicon a guy deep striked his Tyrant with wings, and of course it scattered onto my model and died. Now we are looking at nidzilla coming down all around us.

It is a daunting thought indeed.

Well, my good friend Black Matt has come out with something to help you on the way to getting your big bugs falling from the sky. He came up with a great looking version of this pod, of which GW has no model for and probably will not for a year... If you are looking to get your pod on, go check out his blog! I personally hope you don't because I don't want to face these 10 at a time. (Kidding Matt!)

I actually think they are cool and will add a new, if horrifying element to the tyranids. Maybe if we are lucky every one will buy Matt's pods and create a huge point sink, reducing the number of nids we will be facing on the table! In that case, both Matt and I will be happy. At any rate, another great product from a great guy.

Jawaballs

Let the dreaming/crying begin!

Image from Ron at FTW. Thanks Ron!

Orks came out and I squeaked not a word. Nob Bikers ran wild for a bit, but just as quickly disappeared.

IG came out and I admit, I threw out my own rant. "The Death of 40k as we Knew It!" Well, it was partially right. It forced me to change my list. But title aside, that was more of a jealous rant about the Valkrye then IG. I admit, I was wrong. Regardless, Mech IG is on its way out and my list is stronger for it. Thank you Codex Imperial Guard.

Space Wolves... A lone howl in the wind... A big scary codex... Months of speculation, fear and OMG! Hmm... Ever play Everquest? I got one word for you. "Fizzle." It will be at least a year before we see any thing worth getting upset about on the tables from the Wolves, if ever.

Tyranids? Yes, they are coming. Yes I hear nightmare stories. Yes, I am a little afraid. But not so much of Tyranids... I more fear a return to the state of the game during my first tournament, at Gamesday 2008, where almost all of the top 12 or so armies were the same damn list played by dudes with as much personality and creativity as their genestealers. Nothing like getting your penis kicked in by a humorless, unshowered 40k robot.

But the trend is undeniable. Since Codex: Chaos Space Marines, GW has upped the ante with every new release. Blood Angels will be no different. This bodes well for me indeed!

Here is a copy of what was posted every where today:

Originally Posted by Duke
So I saw this on a German site (linked into from Warseer)...
plastic boxes:
Blood Angel Assault Squad
Honour Guard
Land Raider Tantalus

Rules:
army wide special rule: Furious Charge
9 Unique Characters, 7 Blood Angels, 3 variants of Tycho
Mephiston over 300 points!
cybots: cheaper
Furioso AV 13, normal: fast attack, venerable: elites
Scouts: fleet of foot, without sergeant: rage
Assault Squad: troops
Tactical Squad sergeant: Devastor weapons twin-linked if fired at targets in proximity to auspex
Honour Guard and veterans one entry, lots of options, may assault after deepstrike
new fast attack with wings, S5 weapons, stormbolters an fall back
death company fully optional, not bound by number of squads
Devastor: lascannon cheaper than space wolves
new Land Raider with lots of assault cannons

"With an almost legendary reputation for the speed and ferocity of their assaults, expect brutal Deep Strike attacks, super-charged Rhinos and a whole host of exciting new options." (www.games-workshop.com, retrieved Jan 12 2010)

Does exciting new options mean things like a new Land Raider Variant with perhaps 3x TL assault Cannons? Or other goodies we may have dismissed earlier?
Source:www.gw-fanworld.net page 20, post #197
1) It turned out that most of the Tyranid stuff from Germany was true. I think We can think of this as preview, some of it wrong, most of it right.Either someone is very good at taking snippets and piecing them together without making mistakes, or has learned how to pick through GW's garbage exceptionally well.

2) I'm going to take this data and conjecture what we can about the likely army list unless there's an FOC modulation as there was with SWolf HQ's.


I'm doing this to project what we know, what we have from the rumors, and what we are sure to be pushed to buy into a coherent whole. I'm trying to leverage the unique points of BA as I recall them...in the SW dex everything that was special about the wolves got its amps turned up to eleven. We have no reason to think otherwise.

Call this a wishlist if you like. I call it an intelligence assessment.
(CONJECTURAL)
HQ:
(from BunBun @ warseer
Dante- As is now but axe will be +1S. Can take an honor guard assault squad.
Lemartes- Can restrain the Death company.
Corbulo- Will allow unit he joins to be Fearless and Feel no Pain. Grail counts as a holy relic.
Moriar- Death Company Venerable Furioso Dreadnought. Nearly duble the number of attacks of a normal dreadnought.
Tycho- Gives preferred enemy against Orks.
Sergeant special character- No details as yet.
(end BunBun)
Captain (unlocks and honor guard (conjecture); unlocks troop bikers per SM dex (conjecture).
SC's etc. (Conjecture, some kind of character that enhances flamers; makes dreads scoring, etc.)

ELITE
Veterans/Honor Guard
(rumored elsewhere from biglou) SC dread w/1-3 bodyguard of other dreads (deathco), takes up a heavy slot too.
Terminators that are esp. good at teleports (noted in press release text)
Venerable (Venerable Furioso)
Scouts? (might end up in Troops or FA; they're fleet, which is interesting.
Techpriest (incl. special one ordered. Conjecture: the SC will Bless vehicles to move as fast, or else move fast with him in them.)

TROOPS
Assault Squad, some # of free p'pistols and two Assault weapons. conjecture: Storm shield option for sgt.
Tacsquad with Auspex sgt, supercharged rhinos. (conjecture: one Tac can take an LR dedicated; would allow LR's on field given crowding in HS. They want us to buy the special LR pretty bad, right?)
Conjecture: Cheaper upgrade on Razorback to Heavy flamers/assault cannon.
Scouts? (with a box set on release this is going to have some push to it, don't know if it will be an abundance or a quality push).

FA
Squad with wings (exalted assault sqad) (likely vampire angel aesthetic) will DS, Storm Bolters, S5 sword (frost axe analogue). (conjecture: likely to have an invulnerable save).
Land Speeder Storm with (at least) fluff on scouts riding to hackzone in it. Possible rule allowing scouts to disembark/assault on turn of landing (I believe that Codex marines can't?). Conjecture: Possible ability to squad up LSS's. Possible rule allowing cerebus launcher to affect other nearby squads.
Furioso Dread, has fleet, maybe hellhound template projection ability (or upgrade to it).
(possibility of Baal pred here when unlocked by a character)
Scout bikers with a (conjectural) heavy flamer option.
Bikers with a Heavy flamer option, maybe an attack bike with some kind of large template weapon.
The rumored flying vehicle. I'm very incredulous that this will show up personally, but if it does I call a 'baby thawk' that'll transport tac squads (perhaps only 5/6 models) and have weaponry along the lines of 2 MLs and TLAC. Will definitely have the iconic D-Day landing craft meme-ramp if it does.

HSUPP
Fancy Land Raider (with assault cannons?)
Fancy Devastators with cheap LC, (CONJECTURE) maybe ability to shoot from moving rhino.
Ironclad Dread (with the push for dreads this will land here, perhaps with an option for a hellhound weapon)
Baal Pred, possibly with new sponson options or POMS. Possibility of swapping turret w/Assault cannons for a hellhound weapon.

EDIT: added stuff from this thread to the cognate:
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/i...owtopic=186717

I got it off BOLS Lounge, got no clue who to credit, it seems to have been pieced together from every where.

YEAH we are getting to the huge "I saw the codex" rumor stage! I love it.

Time to dream!

First of all, it was rumored and dismissed. I even spoke about it in my BOLS post about Blood Angels dreams. Guys jeered me. But I have faith that the Land Raider jutting with Assault Cannons is a reality. This will cause a definite change to my list and tactics as I will take at least two of them.

Vampiric Assault squads with wing? Awesome. I will be all over them. Maybe it will be time to bring my all assault army back out of retirement and the 30 or so marines sitting in a pile on my shelf will get some life again.

Dreads as FA and Elite? Ironclad Furioso? Can I say holy crap? I have found my all drop pod army!

Scouts? Screw them.

A 300 point Mephiston? He is already over priced... Is he going to come with an instant win button? That is what it will take to make him worth that price increase.

A STR 5 Dante is exactlly what he was needing. He will be back in my army and leading the charge.

Corbulo getting the upgrade to Generic Apothecary status? Pretty good. He will be back in my list as well.

As far as other speculated special characters... I would love Telion type upgrades. And if I ahve to take a SC to unlock dreads... no prob. A dread that gets a dread bodyguard? My mouth is salivating.

Here are a few list ideas:

List One:

Land Raider assault.

1 or 2 Assault Cannon LRs filled with Death Company and Assault Termies or vets. Corbulo along for the ride and a Captain.

Supporting will be Baal predators, tactical squads and drop pod ven dreads.

The bubble of death is back.

List Two:

Drop Pod Frenzy.

6+ dreads coming down in pods with troops in pods as well. Moriar for sure. Corbulo or a chaplain to help. A total Jwolf "Brick in the Face" army.

List Three:

Assault Squad Horde

At one point, my old BA army had about 40 assault marines. Lots of guys, pretty scary to look at, a complete fail on the table. I got gunned down remorselessly.

With the new models I will definitely give this army another go. Dante and Lemarte leading and a butt load of assault marines supported by Baal Preds or Drop Pods Dreads. It all depends on the rules!

So there you have it! As you can see I gots big plans for my beloved Angels. Looks like I will definitely be amping up my model count!

Jawaballs

Need a little help with Blood Angels fluff.

Does any one know if in any of the BA fluff, either ancient or recent, they have given a name to the 2nd company captain? I am painting my captain banner and I want his name! I posted on BnC and not gotten an answer yet. ANy one? Jawaballs

Jawaballs and Fritz live! Special Announcement.

Image used without permission from www.heapsgoodstuff.com I will remove it at request.


As you already know, we are broadcasting our next show on Sunday January 10. Brother captain James will be there, and we will be doing giveaways all day! In order to qualify for a giveaway, you need to be a registered follower of our blogs and youtube channels. So make sure you take the 30 seconds it takes to go follow all of them! Model sprues, blisters and jawabases will be given away throughout the broadcast.

Also, I have finally managed to get my HD videocam working! You will be able to see our show in HD, with zooming and panning. If you liked it before, you will LOVE it this weekend.

Finally, and here is the special announcement, Jawaballs is tieing the knott. Thats right! I am getting married... LIVE! No bologna! We already have the marriage licsense, and my friend Matt is a Justice of the Peace. He will be arriving at some point during the broadcast and making it legal! So if you want to join our moment of wedded bliss... Make sure you are watching the broadcast!

This is for real. Once I hear from Matt more of an idea when he will be showing I will post that up for those of you who cannot watch the broadcast but still want to tune in for the wedding.

There you go! Come join us.

The link to view the broadcast is: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jawaballs-productions
and the Password is: jawaballs1

See you there!

More to come.

Jawaballs

Are you a teckie geek? Jawaballs needs YOU!

Hey folks! I am looking for some tech geek support. Want to make 50 bucks cold hard cash? Here is how!

I am attempting to use my Canon Vixia HF200 HD Video camera to broadcast live on Ustream.tv. I am using a PC with 8g of ram, a high end video card and plenty of power. There has to be a way to make it happen. I will purchase whatever it takes to make it work.

Your task... make it work. I want you to tell me exactly what I need to do to make this happen and assist me as I do it. Upon my successful live broadcast on Ustream.tv using my Vixia HF200, I will send you paypal or a check for 50 bucks. The quicker you help me accomplish this, the quicker you get your money. The first guy that emails me the information that works, gets the contract. If he fails, I go to the next one.

What I am not after is is a bunch of guys throwing untested guesses at me. I want some one to figure it out, then walk me step by step through doing it. I am not stupid, and have a good working knowledge of computers. I can install whatever cards that need to be installed.

If this is impossible on Ustream, feel free to suggest another site. The only requirement is that I am able to password protect my broadcast.

There you go! Number one... Engage.

Jawaballs

Jawaballs is broadcasting live right now!

5 PM EST Thursday January 7. Come paint with Jawaballs!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jawaballs-productions

PW: jawaballs1

Just four more days!

Yup, just four more days until the next Jawaballs and Fritz live! If you don't already know, we are broadcasting our next live 40k session on Sunday at 11am EST. We will be playing a couple of 40k games, answering lots of questions, giving away loot and entertaining you by making fun of special guest star Brother Captain James! Check back for more details!

Jawaballs

Flame Wars

Image swiped from mobocracy.net


We have all done it.
Something ticked us off.
We have trolled a forum or thread, reading all the tits and tats, watching one know it all braggart spew his opinion after another... until finally we had enough. Maybe he offended our favorite army. Maybe he misquoted a rule. Maybe he called you out directly...

For whatever reason, it is time to throw in our two cents. Next thing you know, we are getting sucked into a flame war to rival the western front! I admit, there is something to be said for the theraputic value of crafting the perfect zinger of an email or post and clicking submit. We savor the moment... rereading our post over and over, then immediately going to the thread and reading it there to see just how it looks. Following the count of readers who have viewed it... It's perfect. We managed to use no less then 30 words that we NEVER get to use in conversation. We managed to use just the right mix of quotes, italics and CAPITAL LETTERS! But most importantly, we managed to prove our point and make the other guy look like a total douche. I mean, seriously, We are right and every one else is wrong... right? Upon reading our masterpiece of cyber flame, the other guy will just completely admit he was wrong... right? Wrong.

The sad truth of it is that all sides involved in a flame war lose because to any one not involved we just look like a couple of bickering grade schoolers. You might think that the Emperor himself has graced you with omnipotence and grace, but in the end, your post is just full of anger. Not to mention double words like "Your mother smells and and she dresses you funny." Or misuses of important words like "Their, you went and made me mad." or "Battle for Salvation? There just a bunch of bible thumpers." Or strings of capital letters, spelling mistakes, omitted apostrophes, and guh... you name it.

Any one of these things are just feeding fuel to the flame war. No matter what you say, or how well crafted you say it... all you need is a single error and the other guy is off on a tangent, taking advantage of your misfire.

What is worse is the use of the "quote". You can write a 30 page dissertation of a forum post pointing out the multiple ways some dude is a douche complete with diagrams and pie charts... and he can invalidate it all and send the thread in a completely different direction by taking an irrelevant quote out of your copy and twisting it around and around. It is enough to make a circus clown puke.

What it comes down to is that there are a lot of guys out there who thrive off hate. They are miserable with their lives and it brings some small amount of pleasure to share that misery with others. They are never wrong, they know every thing, and they can bury you with vocabulary if you try to contest their power.

Getting sucked into a flame war with one of these guys just brings you down. You might think you have expressed your opinion in a clear and concise manner, when actually it is just a bunch of confusing dribble that makes you look like a babbling idiot. Uninvolved readers will just look at both of you and thank the internets for the entertainment.

So I guess you have to ask yourself... are you guilty of this? Are you a douche? Is that what you want to be? I sure don't.

Next time you feel the need to heat up the flame thrower, do this instead. Write your post. Revel in your cleverness. Then call a friend, or better yet, call a work colleague. Read your masterpiece to them over the phone... hear your self speaking the words. Let them resonate in the room for a few minutes... let them sink in... get it off your chest... then click cancel and go cuddle with your girl. You will thank yourself in the morning.

Are any of you guilty of this? What was your worst experience in a flame war? Have you ever written something and immediately regretted it?

More to come...

Jawaballs

Jawaballs and Fritz Live!

We did an impromptu broadcast the other day, and at one point had about 400 people tuning in! What an outstanding turnout. Fritz and I got in two games of 40k, and I finally managed to get his Saim-Hann on the table, and I have still not managed to beat him. The dice favor Fritz and he got a Kill Point mission against me. His stuff is hard to kill for a close range shooty army! Any way, the day went great. We broadcasted for 6 hours after a slow start and every one was entertained. Some of the highlights were Fritz randomly selecting viewers to be sacrificed to the dark gods in order to roll 6s and me rolling every 15 minutes to see if AutarchAndrew gets kicked from the chat room.

We had our share of glitches and are working to improve the quality. I am trying to get my HD Hand Cam to work on my computer as a webcam, and we are trying to get some one to man the keyboard for the next broadcast so we can answer more of your questions.

What is next? We are planning a show for January 10th together, but also, I am planning to do a "Paint with Jawaballs" on Monday January 4th at 6pm. Stay tuned for more updates and instructions when they become available!

More to come...

Jawaballs