Trying Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition - Deathwatch vs Thousand Sons

 

A few weeks back I took my Deathwatch down to the club to try 10th edition Warhammer 40,000. I'd found 9th edition a bit fiddly and hard to keep track of, and was quite hopeful for 10th. I certainly found list building a significant chunk easier!

My opponent was running Thousand Sons, and had been playing a few games of the new edition. We picked a pretty standard mission and deployed, with me taking the first turn.

I advanced my bikes, claiming an objective, but my fire into the Thousand Sons was pretty ineffective.

A squad of Thousand Sons with flamers and Ahriman headed into the midfield. They used some kind of magical ritual to remove the armour saves of my assault intercessors, who basically exploded.

Some Thousand Sons teleported into my backfield to score a secondary objective.

On my turn, I charged a Dreadnought and Bladeguard into the Thousand Sons.

But the counter attack started to whittle them down...

Kill Team Cassius then rolled into the Thousand Sons squad who'd charged my Spectrus Kill team...

At the start of the Thousand Sons turn 2, Magnus turned up. I was definitely in a lot of bother.

That's . . . that's a lot of casualties.

My Phobos Librarian charged into the Tzeentch sorcerer to try and finish him off...

Buti it was basically all over - my Captain got run over by a Rhino (the ignominy!), while the surviving Hellblaster tried to facedown a (proxied) Mutalith Vortex Beast on his own...

Magnus smushed another Killteam on his own - the sole survivor got charged.

My dice were not helping, though. Here's a typical round of armour saves...

After some ineffective flailing at each other for a few combats, the Phobos Librarian eventually fell to the Sorcerer, despite having had a relatively good chance of killing the sorcerer outright...

And it was then basically down to the mopping up. At the point of turn 3 that I was tabled, I was down 22-57 victory points...

That said - I had a lot more fun than with 9th edition. The Goonhammer game tracker is excellent and makes it easy to keep track of what you're meant to be doing, picking which special abilities your army has means that you only have a few things to keep track of, and all the units having some cool special ability on their card was fun.

I'm going to put the Deathwatch away for a little, though. They currently lack good anti armour options with the models I have, and I don't want to invest money in them until their Codex comes out. So, it's time, I think, to pull out my rather dusty Astra Militarum...

New Year Plans

 

With the New Year having ticked over, I decided it would be worth having a bit of a think about my plans for 2024. With over a thousand miniatures turning up in the flat, but only painting 42, things need to change. I did manage to paint 85 in 2022, so I can definitely get more done.

I need to change how I think a little bit. I'll only be picking up a miniature if I'm intending to use it straight away, or if its not going to be available in the future. The volume of things I have in the flat is getting in the way of me doing actual hobby - sorting miniatures out is taking up a whole ton of time.

I'm also going to stop running a rolling 12 month count of how many things I've got finished and painted. It was a lot of work to track, and the moment I had a less productive month, suddenly I "should" finish a ton of things before starting anything new, and that could potentially make me miserable feeling obligated.

My new goal, more or less, is to get something done for a project each month, and a couple of small minis finished in between whatever that month's project is. That may vary - I'm working on a deadline for the D&D minis I aim to get done in January, so I'm not going to put that at risk for sake of getting some small things done. The idea is to let it average out over the year.

One thing that's become obvious to me is that for the random individual miniatures I have that aren't for projects, I've got well over a hundred of them already assembled, undercoated and ready for paint... Which means I don't really need to assemble any more this year. This is, again, the volume of miniatures I have giving me a false feeling of progress while taking time away from actually getting them painted.

So I'll aim away from assembling miniatures for the sake of it this year. There's a couple of games where I play miniatures unpainted - like Malifaux and Infinity - so I'll still get those assembled when I can. But the rule will be to assemble things I have a use for - either that I'm about to paint them, or that I intend to game with them.

The hobby room is a problem. It's meant to be a shared space, and my clutter is taking up too much of it. My absolute priority this year is to make half of the hobby workspace is clear for my wife to use, and that the table in there isn't used as a storage space, but either of us can set up there to work when we want to, and then clear up after we're done.

I do want this to be the year that I work out the paint scheme for my Nomads and get at least one of them painted up. I've been enjoying my games with Nomads, and I'm looking forward to having more. The paint course with Roman Lappat last year was what finally gave me the confidence I know enough to get the look I visualise when I think of my Nomads.

I would also like to dip back into my Combiend Army force as well at some point. They have a really striking, simple paint scheme. Getting a few painted will be a good opportunity to settle into something I'm comfortable with that gets good results relatively quickly. 

The plan of actually getting around to playing 40K last year got stymied by a series of bad luck. It's a weird one, because I have a whole bunch of plans for 40K - things to try playing, hobby projects to assemble and paint... But those plans all sit behind having a game, which sits behind having the time to do so, and I've got several busy weeks coming up . . .

In between getting some games in with my Deathwatch, I want to dig out and try my Astra Militarum again. Once the Codex comes out, I'll probably have a bit of a rationalisation of my Guard collection. The idea is to sell some old things, buy some new models, and get them painted up - moving a lot closer to the idea of "buy a kit, assemble and paint it" rather than building up a huge backlog of miniatures.

There's then other games, like Age of Sigmar and Malifaux. The plan was to pop to a Malifaux tournament last weekend, but then I ended up being ill and going precisely nowhere instead. I'm now better, thank goodness, but I missed out on the event. Age of Sigmar, I just need to, again, get a game in. It's sitting behind 40K at the moment because I have more coherent plans for 40K than AoS. In the same way that Dungeonbowl was tempting last year and I never got to it, Legions Imperialis and the Old World loom large this year...

All in all, my main goal this year is really about that tidying and focus - clearing away things that I'm not using, and making space - both physically and in terms of my life and time management. I'm hoping that at least by the summer, I'll be in a better, more "grown up" tidy place. I just need to keep the self discipline of the current tidying that I'm doing to get there.

Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans

A got a few more Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans painted by Squiggle's Studio. I still haven't got a game of 10th edition in yet, but hopefully I'll find the time some point soon...

Deathwatch Bikers

 

I got these bikers for my Deathwatch back from Squiggle's Studio recently. While the bikes are discontinued and won't have a direct profile any more, they're apparently going to be acceptable proxies for the Primaris bikes.

I really have no idea how Deathwatch and Space Marines are working in the new edition. I'm also aware that Space Marines usually have a pretty early Codex so I'm not going to be rushing to change a lot of my Marines just yet. Still, I should probably get a game in.

One Page Rules Battle Report: Deathwatch vs Tau

 

For the second game on "Man Gets New Hat" weekend, we moved up to 2,000 points a side, and my loyal opponent decided to bring his Tau. I changed up a few units to make an actually legal list this time.

We had a whole bunch of miniatures that set up after the others, so first a big unit of Tau Battlesuits dropped into my lines.

I dropped my Vanguard Veterans to deal with the big mech, but they then got counter deployed by a unit of Stealth Suits.

I charged my Assault Intercessors into the big Tau Mech, and they caused a little damage, but it's tough armour really helped protect it.

The Assault Intercessors got shot and stomped to bits, but the Vanguard Veterans decided to ignore the Stealth suits and shank up the big mech suit. It turns out that Lightning Claws and Heavy Thunder Hammers are really rather good in this system, as it got thoroughly blended.

I made a gutsy charge across some open ground at one point, and this was the roll to hit on a 2+ with a fancy rail gun. My opponent's dice were incredibly treacherous this game!

With a handful of Tau models left alive as I solved problems with "charging and stabbing", the game ended up swinging to the Deathwatch quite decisively - but much of it was due to a good deal of luck. Because I didn't know how deadly the Tau shooting was, I recklessly ran at them screaming rather than advancing cautiously, giving them less time to shoot and no time to recover when they had a handful of unlucky rolls. It was a high risk strategy I took by mistake, and it happened to pay off this time.

Still, One Page Rules continues to be good fun, and I'm curious about giving it more of a go now I know it well enough to play a larger game.

One Page Rules Grimdark Future Battle Report: Deathwatch vs Tzeentch

 

Last weekend in the UK, our King got to put on the hat his Mum wore. I wasn't hugely interested in watching this, even if it doesn't happen all that often. So instead, I travelled over to a friend's house to play some Grimdark Future.

For our first game, we decided to start at 1,500 points. In One Page Rules, old Marines and Primaris Marines are different factions. As it was a friendly game, my opponent said it was OK if I took models from three factions rather than two so I could take an Inquisitor.

With four crates of Inquisitorial Secrets to recover, the infiltrators grabbed one, and shot a few Pink Horrors before being cut down by a hail of fire from the Rubric Marines.

The Hellblasters got cursed and then ripped apart by a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch. The counter attack from the Assault Intercessors and Chaplain got him down to a single wound before they were cut down.

But elsewhere on the battlefield, the Vanguard Veterans had cut down the Rubric Marines and thinned out the horrors enough my surviving forces from elsewhere were able to shoot the last couple down. I'd lost a flank, but held all the objectives for the win!

The Greater Daemon made eye contact with the Inquisitor, as if to say "this isn't over", and phased back into the warp, the only survivor of his force...

Trying out 9th edition Warhammer 40K

 

The other week, I managed to make it down to Dark Sphere to get in my first game of ninth edition 40K. To keep it manageable, we kept it down to 1,000 points. We rolled for a mission from the Arks of Omen pack, and got the Incursion Mission "Desperate Raid".

My opponent brought a Necron force with a bunch of Warriors, some Lychguard, a unit of Flayed Ones and I think some Immortals. They had a terrifying ability that meant they reduce the toughness of models they were in close combat with due to the radiation they are saturated with.

I hid most of my units away to avoid getting wrecked by Necron firepower in the first turn. The current competitive rules for 40K have half your victory points coming from the mission, and half from the secondary objectives you select yourself. To try and keep things simple, I chose the Adeptus Astartes missions Shock Tactics and the generic missions Grind it Down and Behind Enemy Lines. I realised only now when writing it up that Behind Enemy Lines and Shock Tactics are both in the same category and couldn't be taken together.

A ton of Necrons pour into the centre of the table, but fortunately only a few Marines fall to their fire, especially due to a well timed use of a Marine strategem that means that they can only be wounded on a 4+ for one set of attacks.

I use some Stratagems and a Chaplain litany to heavily buff up a unit of Assault Intercessors before yeeting them into the biggest unit of Necron Warriors, absolutely wrecking them and leaving only three alive. I could have used another stratagem to take a second attack, and chose not to. It later turned out that this was a mistake as while it would have been massive overkill, those three surviving Warriors survived the rest of the battle scoring an objective every turn for the rest of the game.

The Necrons then came up and counter attacked, wiping out the Assault Intercessors. This happened a few times as a Marine unit heavily damaged or destroyed a Necron unit, only to be wiped out in return.

The Necron player also brought on a unit of Flayed Ones into my deployment zone. Oh dear.

The Destroyers wrecked one of my Phobos combat squads in the ruins on the left of this photo...

But the Deathwatch Veterans proceeded to charge them and absolutely wreck them with a Xenophase Blade and Heavy Thunderhammer.

I still don't have a good idea of what "should" destroy something else. Some things I think will do a bit of damage, and absolutely wreck whatever they're hitting, while other attacks (particularly bolter fire) seemed completely ineffective. I suspect this is knowledge will come with time.

The Flayed Ones charge into the Intercessor Kill Team, but spend most of the game slowly trying to kill them, and the Objective Secured ability scores me a bunch of points.

The combined Necron shooting wipes out the Veterans, and then the characters, meaning I'm running out of units to do anything.

The Intercessors stay bogged down, unable to put a dent in the Flayed Ones.

The Chaplain manages to hold up the Lychguard a little, but not much.

The Vanguard Veterans arrive and absolutely delete a unit with damage to spare. This is a definite equipment issue as they'd have probably been able to still do this with only one lightning claw and a Storm Shield, while having some tiny chance of surviving the follow up fire that wiped them out in practice.

The Hellblasters took some casualties but also had trouble removing much in return. They did overcharge to remove some big walker thing.

With the game done, we added up the points and my opponent hadn't quite understood the mission and had not scored as many points as I had. But, you know, I also hadn't selected a legal selection of secondaries. I'd also run the Xenos Hunters rule wrong for the first turn, applying some rerolling 1s to shooting when it should have just been Melee. And also forgotten Marine doctrines for the whole game.

It was definitely a learning game, is what I'm saying...