Crusade of Fire review

So I managed to get myself a copy of another one of Games Workshop's woefully limited release books.  The pre-orders seemed to have been completely sold out in the first 3 days on the Canadian and U.S. websites, so I ended up buying a copy from the U.K. website.  Overall, I have to say the book was a pleasant surprise.  It basically breaks down into the campaign rules with scenarios, and then three sets of special rules; Dog Fights, Gladiator battles, and Demon Worlds.

Unlike the Blood in the Badlands book, this one tried to push the idea, and benefits, of game mastered, or co-game mastered, campaigns.  The overall campaign was designed to have 3 "teams" fight over the re-emerging Corvus sub-sector.  I liked the idea that the map gradually reveals, so players who are behind can easily get to new virgin ground and not get overwhelmed and surrounded.  The only drawbacks that I see is that you can't just forge out and claim the sub-sector for yourself, and without a proper multiple of 3 teams could become unbalanced.  I'm looking forward to getting a campaign going with some friends.

I'm always into expansion books for the game rules, and luckily we are given some great additional rules.  First lets start with the Demon Worlds.  This was a great little special rule that can be added to any game, and will completely re-define the balance of power.  Have an extra person, they can be responsible for running any demons that popup.  Best of all, it gives you a reason to get some of the awesome new plastic demons that have been released, they really are all fantastic looking models.  There is a lot of extra accounting work, but it seems like it should be a blast.

Taken from Beckjann's Deviant page

The one thing that I saw drum up a lot of buzz on Dark Eldar forums were the gladiator battles that are supposed to take place in the heart of Commorragh.  This had the potential to be so great, but seems like it maybe needs a bit more refinement.  The basic Arena of Death rules are built to demonstrate two characters battling, which would be much more interesting without the addition of challenges to 6th edition.  They allude to using more than 2 players, but I have a feeling it will add a even further degree of complexity to these rules.  Reading this over a couple times, it begins to feel like a different game using 40k models.  You determine your speed based upon your Initiative value, the facing of your opponent that your are in(the opponent on a round base), and other modifiers.  Modifiers that are added through cards; cards you have to photocopy and print out.  I think this really missed on so many levels.  Facings are terrible on a circle based model, there are always going to be times when you can't tell which quarter they are in, go a front and back facing only, if you have to.  A chart that allowed us to use regular playing cards might have been a bit more accessible instead of separate cards that you need to play.

Finally, my favorite addition, the dogfight special rules.  They are effective and relatively simple, a stark contrast to the Arena of Death rules.  Basically, in the shooting phase a flyer may attempt to dog fight with another flyer.  Then it is basically a paper/rock/scissors setup, the attacker chooses 1 of 3 tactics by using a hidden D3, and the defender does the same and you compare the results to the chart, then repeat for 2 more phases.  There are a number of results across the tables ranging from firing all your weapons at a flyer, firing a shot at a ground unit, to nothing at all.  So potentially, you could shoot an enemy on the ground, then fire all his weapons at the enemy flyer at BS 1, and then fire all his weapons again at full BS.  On top of that, if you do destroy a flyer in a dogfight, it's worth an extra victory point.

Simple yet effective rules, but you want to take it one further? Well let's throw in some race specific maneuvers to add some extra spice.  This accounts for every race that can get a flyer, including races like Tau and Eldar that only get access to ForgeWorld flyers.  Still not enough? How about race specific fighter ace upgrades?  My only issue here, is somehow they missed the one important race with the fighter aces, Dark Eldar(if we don't see a correction, I'll probably cook up some of my own).  This is absolutely how additional rules should be done in my mind.

Hopefully I can get some reports in using some of these rules in the near future.

Like a Baron!

So I haven't gotten nearly the number of games in to keep going with my tactics articles, hopefully that will be remedied a bit this weekend.  So what have I been doing? Sitting on my butt? Ya, mostly . . . but I've also been doing some painting and conversion work.  One of the units I've been working on getting ready for play is my Hellions.  They aren't quite done, but expect some pics coming soon.

I've also been doing some minor conversion work.  While looking for some bits for another project (that got pushed to the back of the workbench) I came across an old partial conversion that I got from a friend in a trade.  It was meant to be a hellion skyboard for an Archon in the previous edition, simply a part of an Eldar Vyper with some small conversion work.  Problem was it got broken and never completed.

"Hey, I need a Baron Sarthonyx to go with my hellions, and joing my beasts.  He needs a cool skyboard!"  As the though went through my head the bits started flying.  A couple evenings worth of work I got what you see below.

Comin at you

So as you may be able to see, the central board is made from the rear half of a Eldar Vyper.  One of the wings was broken, so I trimmed it down to the body, did some slight re-gluing and then filed it flush.  The new wings are the bottom part of some left over Raider rudder blades.  The guns were just the barrels off a couple extra splinter rifles that come with the raider kits.  You can't see it in the vents, but the reason they are so centrally located is because of the location of the vents and corresponding jets on the front and back of the board.  Finally the board needed a bit of greenstuff to hide the center line (this was done previously by whoever started the board, but I wanted some slightly different details, so it was removed and redone).

Quite the "pigstikka"

So I had an awesome looking board, now I just neede a Baron to ride it.  Since I had been working on 10 out of the 15 total hellions that I had, I tried putting one of the half assembled hellions on.  He just didn't quite  have the look I wanted.  I started going through other bits, and came across the legs to one of the Venom passengers.  A quick pop off of a Hellion body from the legs, some dry fitting with Blue-Tac and I had something that looked like the start of something.

Next I needed a Hellglaive.  My first though was modifying the powerspear from the Scourges set, but the pulled back nature didn't flow with the pose.  While I was digging for that bit though, I noticed the spear from the Raider passengers.  This was a wicked looking hook, and had some promise.  I built out the glaive blades by trimming down the top side of the spear head so it was flat and then adding a second spearhead .  I did this with another non-wielded spear, and then trimmed down the handle on both spears and glued them together.  A quick check of the Baron's wargear, a pistol arm, and some more Blue-Tac and the model concept was dryfit together.

Looking down at trouble.

I still want to add a flowing component to him.  I'm going to steer clear of the superman capes that seem so prevelant.  My goal will be one of the sleeveless trenchcoats similar to the old incubi that came with Vect's Raider.  It should be a good test of my sculpting skills, but I may take a few days to do some testing with tissue paper to see how I want it to flow.

Hobby Plug: Slapdash Minis

It's been a bit a while since I've gotten to do any hobby stuff, lots of reschedules for games and stuff.  I've gotten some painting done up that needs some pics and posts.

Luckily though, work is such that it allows me the opportunity to play videos while I'm working.  So luckily, Monday morning I get to come into a nice juicy video from some former local guys who I like to keep track of on YouTube.  It's a lot of gamer ramblings, but it's always nice to hear some non-WAAC type of discussions on the hobby.

Remember to hit up SlapDask Minis on YouTube, follow him, like him, give him some support.

Find the FAQs . . .

So I surfed over to the Games Workshop page today looking to clarify something on one of the FAQs and noticed the complete lack of an Articles section under the 40k section.  At first I thought they had maybe removed it by accident.  But after some searching, in some of the more logical places like the 40,000 guide link on the front page, I found it in the Gaming section.

I don't frequent the GW site much, so maybe it was covered in the White Dwarf daily.  But really, I continue to be baffled at how GW doesn't put this in a more accessible location.

Tactical changes Pt. 2 - Assault, the new challengers

I was hoping to get a couple more games in with the new FAQ to add to this, but a small visit to our house by Papa Nurgle left everyone in the house a plague zombie for a week plus, so I missed our normal gaming time.

With the changes that 6th Edition brought, when I analyzed my play style and the new rules it quickly became apparent that  I would need to make some changes.  With my Dark Eldar I always tried to use speed and assault to overwhelm my opponents, while dropping some deadly cover fire.  The firepower is actually better with the changes to rapid fire, and vehicles being easier to counter, but obviously it would require a bit more resiliency to consistently make it into close combat.  So I went back through the codex, and re-evaluated some units.

Bash Brothers

One of the first units that was re-introduced to the list was the Talos.  In  the twilight of 5th the Talos had sort of fallen to the wayside in favor of the Ravager and Razorwing, but with the Ravager seeming less reliable, the Talos was re-inserted with some haywire blasters.  Luckily my first few games after this change were vs. Tau, so I really got a good feel for how the Talos did vs. shooting and overwatch.  T7 and a 3+ save let the Talos get in close to where it wanted and once he got that first pain token he laughed at the AP1 and AP2 that had previously been the  bane of his existance.  Being AP2 in close combat the Talos can handle all those 2+ Meganobz, terminators and broadsides that became so much tougher vs the AP3 power weapon.

Bringing the Pain . . . Tokens

Along with the Talos, the Cronos was also re-introduced.  The Talos was always a beast in close combat, the Cronos not quite as much, being only strength 5 with a limited number of attacks hurt him.  But thanks to the Smash special rule, the Cronos can now play like a big boy giving up 1 attack to swing at strength 10.  This really lets him reliably ID multi-wound models, and take apart vehicles.  I've found it harder to include the Cronos with how well the paired Taloi work and the sheer firepower the Razorwing brings, but I may work more to including him to distribute the pain tokens.

The Ultimate Archon standing in for now

Something else that I've been re-visiting is one of the units that I had previously found a waste compared to other choices, the all seeing Archon.  Since he is already running a really high initiative, the furious charge changes meant less wracks and less use for haemonculi, so an HQ slot opened up to play with this guy.  So far my standard loadout has been shadowfield, blaster, djinn blade, with combat drugs and phantasm grenade launcher when I can fit it in.  I know the Djinn is a gamble, but really I want him to be perceived as more of a threat than he actually is, and it's worked out well for me; although the huskblade is really looking appealing.  Telling someone he's WS 7, I7, with 8 attacks on the charge, a 2+ invuln and an 18" dark lance causes some concern.  The trick is he can do some real damage, but he's just there to draw the lambs to the slaughter of the anvil he's running with.


One of the units that I had been eyeing up towards the end of 5th edition has become a true anvil for me in 6th, the Grotesque.  T5 with 3 wounds and a pain token for Feel no Pain off the hop make these guys hard to deal with.  There are two draw backs to these guys.  First is that they are slow, usually travelling on foot because they take up 2 transport slots each.  Second, they require a babysitter or may 'explode' causing potential ruin.  The resilience means they can take the time to footslog across the board, so it's not that big a drawback.  As I alluded to above, dropping an archon in with these guys brings the big boys to them.  With the Aberration and 4 other Grotesques, they can be dropping up to 23 attacks themselves, usually wounding on 2's.  They have been a true shining star for me and will get a full tactics article in the near future.

A Future Purchase

Lastly, one of the units that has been important in my assault testing has been the reaver jetbikes.  My intial thought was that they can easily get in position to support other units in an assault, ideally charging first and soaking up the overwatch with their T4 and 4+ Jink save.  This did work a certain amount, but as I switched my other assault units, I found that the sheer harassment potential of these guys worked much more in my favor and could easily get in close enough to tanks to make a mess with the heat lances.  They brought another high priority target for the enemy to deal with while slower units like the Grotesques go into position to do some real damage.  I'm still tweaking numbers of guys in a unit and the number of units, the fast slot is full of high demand units now.  I have found a distinctly beardy advantage to 3, as long as even 1 bike is alive, he ALWAYS regroups on his normal leadership because he is more than 25% of the starting unit.

So next I'll review how these changes have built my current 1750 point list and what my expectations are of them.

Tactical changes Pt. 1 - Assault, the returning contenders

Tactics article all set to post, GW releases new FAQs, I've tried to edit this real quick.  If something doesn't make sense it may be because of edits, or FAQs.  It was going to be longer, but I decided to break this into a series of articles.

Tactically, the game has changed in extreme ways for my army.  Running a hybrid webway army in 5th edition, relying heavily on the alpha strike type of assaults that it allowed for made my glass cannon a thing to be feared, death by a thousand cuts as I liked to call it.  But 6th edition came, and karma thought it would be fitting to disassemble my list in the very same way, death by a thousand nerfs.  A lot of the changes aren't that big by themselves, add overwatch, random charge distance, no run and assault, no fast moving vehicle assault, nerfs to feel no pain, nerfs to furious charge . . plus others that don't come to mind right now.  None of them seemed overly big changes by themselves, I enjoyed most of them, but coming together, they were the perfect storm of destruction for my webway list.

So as many Dark Eldar players learned, assault is much harder, and more dangerous, to get into.  Wyches take this the hardest, arguably one of the best assault troops in the game in 5th, they were the perfect dichotomy; gods in assault, wet blankets when they were shot.  The bounce back though is their access to haywire grenades.  Wyches are no longer the tarpit unit that they were, now they are used to run up to a vehicle and hit it a few times with haywire and watch the hull points melt away.  It's an odd change for a unit that doesn't want to be shot, and preferred to hide in an assault last edition.

Run from the guns . . . But get the tank?

In a similar vein, the wracks were a powerful short range torrent type squad.  10 strong with a Haemonculus out of a webway portal usually saw 3 flamer templates, followed by an assault where they leveraged 30+ attacks at initiative 5, re-rolling to wound in most cases.  They were easily the workhorse to a beautifully themed Coven army.  Now, unfortunately, wracks often loose as many models as they kill between the loss of the initiative boost and nerf to feel no pain, they could do short range fire fighting with the liquifiers, but that turns the rest of the squad into a delivery system.  With wounds coming from the front and random charge distance, they are self defeating, leaving themselves out of range for a followup assault if the liquifiers do cause any damage.  For all the struggles I've had in getting a decent set of them together, there is a good chance they are going to be sitting on the shelf mostly.

But it is about balance, and other armies are having similar issues.  So some units came through perfectly fine, or in some cases even better.

The plus side is the beasts seem to be just as good as they were before, in fact I'd almost say they are slightly better.  You loose a little average charge distance, and the wound allocation shenanigans, but that's not a big deal.  Ideally, you want the Khymera out front now anyhow, the benefit here is the differing initiative values.  When you move into combat, Khymera and Beastmasters are out front and make it into base to base with the rank and file guys.  Once they kill a few at initiative 6, the Razorwings now get to pile in at initiative 5, hopefully into holes created at I6 that lets them into base to base with the important guys like special weapon troopers and character upgrades.  Since wounds have to be taken from base to base with the razorwings who go on initiative 5, there is a good chance we can burn off those characters/special weapons.  Tactially, I'm looking at adding the Baron as my second HQ, just to make these guys so much better.  They will get Stealth, Hit and Run, and someone with a shadowfield to soak up wounds; oh, and thanks to a FAQ clarification that indicates that they still go at I1 even though they ignore terrain, he also gives them grenades.  With the Beastmasters being characters, it will take quite a bit to have the Baron locked in a challenge, so it should be quite effective.

Come here Mr. Terminator, tell us about your 2+ save again?

Incubi are another squad that is still pretty effective.  Up until a few hours ago, I was going to comment on how these guys would be great for challenges, and continue to fulfill most of the roles they had before.  What a difference a few hours makes.  AP 2 Glaives according to the FAQ, this means that they should still peel through terminators the same as they did before, which is one thing we were maybe going to have to worry about.  Again because of the differing initiative between the Klaivex and the squad, we can use the Klaivex to pick out characters/upgrades.  Because of their 3+ save, these guys are much more likely to survive overwatch and make it into combat with full effectiveness.

I've already touched on the Talos in a previous post, but he had mostly been on the fringes of the list, so I'll review and start with him in part 2 of the series, Assault, the new challengers.

Rise of the Talos

With a change in edition, there needs to be a change in strategies, I've played the game through a little better than  four iterations of the rules and learned quickly that even though it looks like a small update, it's always a whole new game.  With that in mind, my first couple 6th edition games were ran with an old style list.  Webway portals, heavy on assault and short range units like wyches, wracks, and beasts; and of course Ravagers, and a Talos for theme.

The approach of death

Obviously, the list fell completely flat, but I needed to see how bad it was before I could re-build.  One of the things that has been echoed throughout the Dark Eldar community, is that our vehicles didn't get nerfed as badly as others with the addition of Hull Points.  To an extent I agreed with this, Raiders and Venoms were already fragile and once they got into those rapid fire and melta ranges they died, this remained the same.  The one thing I did notice was my Ravagers were getting destroyed much easier.  Sitting at a further range, I often took more heavy shots with the ravagers, resulting in stuns and weapon destroyed results  with the occasional destroyed result; often the Ravagers would still be alive at the end of a game.  6th edition though, the stun locks, or multiple stuns turned into Hull Point death, and the move and fire at full range of rapid fire weapons put more things in range sooner.  The Ravagers were still quite good at anti vehicle, but they just weren't lasting long enough to work as that anvil unit.

Bash Brothers chillin

My first instinct was to try and rely on Flyers, we have some very good ones.  But I quickly realized that two things, they weren't going to be available enough through out the game to bring to bear effectively enough(2/3rds or less of the game turns), and they were just a gimmick effectiveness for now; as more armies got flyers, or figured out how to torrent of fire them down they would be just as vulnerable.  So I was concerned for a bit, but then I noticed how well my Talos was performing, twin-linked haywire blasters had him tag teaming vehicles dead via hull points with a scourge unit with two more haywire blasters, and once he got that first pain token, he was much harder to kill.

'Come at me Bro'

So as part of my Apocalypticon build, I had gotten another Talos kit, mostly for some more bits, but also to throw together another Talos with these observations in mind.  The last few games, the Ravager has sat on the shelf, and the heavy slots have been filled with 2 Talos, and usually a Razorwing.  Surprisingly these guys have absolutely preyed on vehicles that take any damage(finishing them off quickly stripping two more hull points), laughed at overwatch as they crash into assault with hammer of wrath, and dominated the table.  In combination with a few other changes, that I'll detail in a later post, I think the foot bound Taloi are here to stay, and spark the Dark Footdar revolution, I definitely believe they give the Ravager a very viable run for that 'king of the heavy' crown that it once had.