29/10/11

Yeah, I know that I said that I'd probably only be posting weekly or bi-weekly but I've changed my mind and I'm just going to post whenever I have the urge.

So yeah, today has been a good day for hobbying so far. I tried using the print feature on BattleScribe (ooooh) and it worked well. I've started work on my 'new' Ghazghkull model, and I am currently in the process of re-posing the arms. Not too much mind, just so that he is holding a guardsman (etc) aloft in his power klaw while raising his gun to shoot at stuff.

I have also pre-ordered my shiny new Necron codex, which I am very much looking forward to and hope to post a Necron tactics article when I have it.

Oh, and then I got back to find a shiny new Dakka.

27/10/11

I have been pondering creating a user article for some time, and after staring at the hyperlink allowing me to create a user article for some time, I have finally decided to give it a shot.

So to start with in this user article, I feel I should mention that despite my flag I'm not actually a resident in the USA. I'm actually from Yorkshire, UK, although what my flag shows doesn't bother me to much so I'm not going to pester anyone in order to get it fixed.

I first got into the hobby of miniature wargaming through the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game (yes I did fall for Games Workshop's cunning plan), and over the years I have amassed a collection of miniatures from this range totalling over 10,000 points, although Dwarves still remain my favourite from this game system.

It was in 2007 that I was first introduced to 40k, as loads of my friends had picked it up. In our little group we had Guard, Tau, Dark Angels, and 2 Vanilla Marine armies. When I first looked at the range for 40k my first instinct for my first army was a Space Marine army. From what I'd heard the general footslogging force for the Marines was generally tougher than the footsloggers for other armies, and after 4 years of playing this type of army in a different game system, this was my original instinct. But the fact that alread 60% of my friends played Marines held me back, as I wanted to be authentic, now that I look back at this, I'm glad it did, as I have played as Space Marines with borrowed armies since and I just don't like the way that they play, it's not my style. But in the end I did end up making an authentic decision, a stupid decision, but an authentic one none-the-less. I ended up with Footdar.

My footdar haven't been appalling for me don't get me wrong, but they're footdar, and they're not great. I just liked painting infantry, and these formed the basis of my army, and in about a year and a half, I had about a 40% win rate against my friends. But this is what set me up for my next army. I decided that now that I had a year of experience of 40k, it was time to do my first proper army.

Orks remain my favourite army to date. I love how they're a fun army, both fluffwise and on the tabletop, I love the codex and I love how there's so much that you can do with it. But again, my inauthentic streak kicked in, and I ended up with a triple Nobz squad list. Comprising of 2 Warbosses, 3 squads of 10 Nobz covered in equipment and in Trukks, and a big mob of 30 shoota boyz as my deckchair unit. This army looks stupid, but it really works for me and appeals to my style of play, just 6 months ago I took it to a friendly tournament with my friend group, which has now evolved to about 12 people (still not huge) and won the whole thing with it. This doesn't seem like a great achievement but this gave me at least some confidence to go out and try my hand at higher levels. With the same list, I took my list to the Yorkshire Tournament in September, and managed to hold my own to finish in joint 18th. Since then, I have loved tournament gameplay, I think the thing that I find most enjoyable is the time limit, and that you don't have to wait too long before I am occupied moving models again, or pounding a Marine squad into the dirt with a Power Klaw.

However, the tournament also taught me that if I am to try punching higher than my weight, I also need to upgrade my list, and so it is currently undergoing a major revamp.

I have changed the list in a number of ways, In the case of What I have dropped I have removed from the list:

One of the Warbosses

The Squad of Nobz that didn't have a Warboss with it.

I dropped one of the Nobz squads because I found that due to their lower leadership if they ever lost a combat they were very likely to run, and for a 400 odd point squad this isn't good. So what I did was I added:

Ghazzy

2 squads of 10 Lootas

One of the main problems that my army faces are armies that are faster than it. I rely on being able to hide my Trukks before finally crashing into my opponents line and hope that they never recover. When I play armies like Dark Eldar, I really struggle, simply because I can hit the opponents line, but while my nobz are busy crunching on units the rest of the Dark Eldar are backing off ready to spam my Nobz with lances and poisened weapons. Lances are especially my worst enemy. Ghazzy gives my Orks that extra oomph in hitting the enemy line, as I have found that with normal Waaagh! movement a common occurence is for me to roll poorly on one of my squads run moves and so it is stuck out in the open and out of combat, whereas Ghazzy's waaagh makes it easier to get everything into combat.

The Lootas are especially for armies like the Dark Eldar, as they give me some decent (if sometimes unpredicatble) long range firepower with high enough strength that they are able to do the damage to enemy vehicles.

As well as my prized Orks I have a large number of Necrons, and hence I am really excited for their upcoming release, and am hoping to post a tactics article going through every unit in the Codex soon, I have also dabbled in IG, but found them a bit too static for me, and I have recently bought a large second hand army of Daemons, which I am looking forward to using more frequently.

I also play Warhammer Fantasy, and I am currently in the process of creating a large Empire army based around the Knights, as I like the look of them and the seem a fun unit to use.

I am hoping to post here about what I'm getting on with weekly or bi-weekly (probably bi-weekly).

I'm pretty much done for today, my elbows are starting to hurt after resting them on the desk for so long, but yeah, thanks for reading.