Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I mean, battle scars make sense in Tyranids but not in the sense of battle scars but genetical defects for a full type of tyranid.

Is actual fluff than when two hive fleets encounter each other they eat themselves and the strongest is the survivor. And it can also happen than a hive fleet takes evolutionary paths that are dead ends or that maybe made sense in the past but are obsolete or outright detrimental.

Why don't make battle scars sense? Especially the battle scars for monsters seem absolutely fluffy for nids.

I had my league game tonight. I was planning to try both AdMech agendas to see how they felt in practice. Unfortunately, I was up against a Space Wolf player with no vehicles, and we played Crucial Intelligence which has no objectives. Whomp whomp, I had no way to try the agendas or gain any parts. I don't think that reflects poorly on the agendas, I think I just got unlucky. I'll have a non-league game against my first opponent on Friday, so I'll ask to try them out against him (and I'll loot that damn Redemptor Dreadnought).

I know we talked about experience stacking earlier in the thread, but holy God I accidentally did it. I had a hard time picking agendas for this mission, so I went with Reaper for surety and gambled with Survivor on the Warglaives (he had a lot of Thunderhammers, and literally everything had Stormshields). Survivor is great because the 3 Knights are one unit, so you have to lose two to be at half strength. I figured I could limp away from his Thunderwolves with one and keep some experience. Instead, they ran around the board edge and blasted the cavalry with their lances (thanks to Canticle rerolls), swung back to the other board side and killed his Vanguard Vets, killed his Terminators, then charged up that board edge and killed his warlord. One Knight took 6 damage, the other took 5, and only because he blew 3 CP to interupt fighting, heroic intervene 6", and had a fight last ability. The Knights had the speed and range to dictate engagements, charging what they could kill, and shooting what they couldn't. All things told, they scored 11 experience.

More pics of that terrain, please!

Just for you, I'll take some pictures of the shop's terrain on Friday. They've got tons of space and literally dozens of boards full of terrain to fit different biomes. Friday's game is reserved on a lava world board.

Cool. Thanks.

I'm always looking to steal ideas... uhh... I mean be inspired by cool terrain ideas.

Righto, I had my practice game today against my Space Marine opponent from the first game. Generally relevant discussion stuff first: I got hands-on experience with the AdMech agendas. It seems like Tech Scavengers is the reliable, bread and butter way to get parts. That's good fluff, and in practice it's not very hard to achieve the action if you're initially conservative with your infantry. It's even easier since you can take Multi-tasking for RP instead of CP, and the action starts at the end of movement. You basically don't miss a turn, so long as the unit survives. 3 exp is decent too, so you'll probably play this agenda every chance you get. Your opponent just needs to have a vehicle.

Break the Seals is an extremely weird one. You randomly roll to mark an objective after deployment (can't be in your deployment zone), which can be disastrous. It is very likely to take 3 or 4 turns to even get to the objective with a character, let alone do so safely. Three rolls to hit a 5+ is 70% chance, which isn't terrible over the course of an entire league, but painful in an individual game. Scoring 3 or 4 experience isn't bad, but some match-ups may make it impossible to score. The one really important saving grace is that it recovers a weapon part specifically.

Of the three categories, by far the most impactful are weapons, and that's the sole reason Break the Seals is worthwhile. Most guns are workable since they're really just vehicles for the Power Source effect. All the effects are good, like halving movement, splashing mortals to nearby units, and making enemies lose ObSec. In a short league like mine, it's probably worth 5 RP to get the core you want.

My personal white whale is Teleportation Matrix with Vambraces or Digital Cannon. 18 or 24" range assault weapons and if you score any hits then you can teleport to engagement range with the target. Essentially a +30" charge range. My Manipulus is built for melee combat (Anzion's, Masterwork Bionics). I'm seriously tempted to also take the Teleportation Node Battle Honor, which lets me go into reserve (even if engaged) and redeploy in my deployment zone.

Regarding the other archeotech, Force Fields are fairly minor buffs; the only useful ones are 'nearby core units always Hold Steady or Set to Defend', 'nearby core can re-roll one hit or wound', and one Force Field part has an extremely conditional fight last via a Ld contest. Techno-arcana are hyper-specific buffs that apply only the turn you pick a specific Canticle, and mostly only apply to Cult Mechanicus. You'd have to get extremely lucky to get a useful combination.

In summary, it seems like you'll hoard a stockpile of parts first. After you've built a gun or two, most of the parts will be useless and you'll dump them into Consecrated Upgrades. Eventually you may find a good combination of effects for the other slots, but it's not something to plan for.

+++
So about the game, for those interested. We were doing Sweep and Clear with our Crusade armies, but gained no progress in the league. We set aside Agendas to score as a moral victory, just to keep in practice using them. We were playing on the lava field board. He chose to be the attacker and placed his objective in the top left corner, so I placed mine in the middle and bottom left to make one lane of attack, and his last objective went just to the right of the central structure.

The game was a bit of a foregone conclusion, as he didn't have serious anti-tank against my exclusively vehicle army. I reserved the Vanguard and hid the Rangers. He alpha-struck hard and rolled well, but didn't finish any vehicles off. The Armigers were regenerating 2 wounds per turn, and the Manipulus got to work on the tanks; I think I recovered ~20 wounds total. The Knights killed his right side push and captured that objective, while the tanks shot him off the left middle one. At the bottom of turn 1, it was clear he wouldn't get control of the objectives back. Still, good practice to play it out and test your limits; he managed to kill 2 Knights, which is more than the better equipped Space Wolves player.

The rest of the shop's boards, for HBMC's benefit. I'd've taken more pictures, but I don't want to spam the page.

 DarkHound wrote:
The rest of the shop's boards, for HBMC's benefit. I'd've taken more pictures, but I don't want to spam the page.

You can just link to them, or to your gallery. Don't need to post them all.

Those are some very nice looking tables. Where is that Tau stuff from?

Everything is either GW plastic or 3d printed (filament). The latter, in the case of the Tau terrain.

Yup, my local shop has a pretty healthy business producing and selling 3D sculpts, as well as selling use of their printer for custom orders.

I did just realize I made a pretty big mistake: vehicle squadrons are treated as separate units for the Order of Battle. They gain experience and upgrades separately, take agendas separate, and so forth. So I didn't actually gain 11 experience on half my army in one match. That's good, and I'm glad I caught it before it affected an actual league game. Plus it means I can tailor the upgrades to match each Knight's fluff.

So I had a weird idea. One of the recent AoS 3.0 articles talked about their equivalent of Crusade, and it looks like holding and capturing territory is native to all factions- it's a core Path to Glory mechanic.

Now obviously, no one has seen the Crusade content for Chaos Daemons yet... But since that army can play in both games, and time and space are pretty meaningless concepts for Daemonic armies...

What if the same army shifts back and forth?

I'm dealing with an ultra-fluffy, open-ended story-based Campaign, so any buffs are essentially story hooks rather than ways to steamroll your opponents.

But I like the idea of territories- it's why DE is still my favourite Crusading dex- despite being able to build glorious machines or pursuing the path of sainthood.

 DarkHound wrote:
Yup, my local shop has a pretty healthy business producing and selling 3D sculpts, as well as selling use of their printer for custom orders.

I did just realize I made a pretty big mistake: vehicle squadrons are treated as separate units for the Order of Battle. They gain experience and upgrades separately, take agendas separate, and so forth. So I didn't actually gain 11 experience on half my army in one match. That's good, and I'm glad I caught it before it affected an actual league game. Plus it means I can tailor the upgrades to match each Knight's fluff.

Is your local shop At Ease Games in Miramar? That looks just like it from the pictures!

Ding ding ding, we have a winner! Are you a local?

 DarkHound wrote:
Ding ding ding, we have a winner! Are you a local?

San Diego is my hometown, and At Ease was my local store.

Hey again, I started this thread asking for experience and now I've got some to share. We've got 3 weeks left in the league and the staff are starting to think about the next one. I'm starting a new faction from scratch, so I hope thinking out loud about my experience and planning a new faction can help others prepare their own. I've been playing Knights and AdMech, and I'm preparing ~50PL of Iyanden Eldar.

So far in the league I've been fortunate and have gone undefeated; I've been averaging 6 exp gained from 2 agendas and about 7 kills. That bears out what we discussed earlier, where a couple units gain about 6-8 experience each game. I've seen the opposite, where players can't get a foothold in the match, fail to complete agendas, then lose more experience than they gained due to failed out of action tests. That seems to happen when players take agendas reacting to their opponent, rather than taking agendas they built their army to score (just like secondaries in regular play, duh). The lesson is to figure out which units you want to upgrade first, then figure out which agendas they can score, then pick the best of those for the match at hand.

In actually spending that experience, I was surprised how infrequently I used the AdMech's crusade rules. The core book upgrades are very strong, and the faction specific rules seem to be either niche or gated. After 5 games, I've finally built my first relic and I'm no where near either a second or a squad-wide weapon upgrade. Factions without extra rules aren't going to feel a difference for 6-10 games.

I'll give a practical of how I'm planning my Eldar. Several important units, like the Wraithblades or Farseer, don't actually benefit from much from Battle Honors so I don't have to worry about their experience. They'll get to 6 exp for the one useful upgrade through kills and participation (and maybe a timely Mark). The unit of Dire Avengers starts as mandatory chaff but has a lot of room to grow. Fleet, Grizzled, and Battle Tested all make them great at getting to objectives and completing actions (and there are a lot of missions with actions). I'd probably Mark them to get Battle Tested early and then start completing Shadow Operations agendas. Similarly, the Dark Reapers could use almost every Battle Trait and want plenty of Exarch gun upgrades; they'll be a good target for Survivor and Marks in most games.