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Got my first full sized (ie 3000 pts) game in, still against EC

My list

Vigilator
Cataphractii Librarian
8 Cataphractii (5x volkite and power axe, 3x combi grenade and thunder hammer)
Spartan
3x Castra Ferrum dread with double gravis missiles and havoc launchers
15 Tacticals
10 Inductii
15 Assault (4x power maul)
10 Support with alchem flamers in a Rhino
Kratos (melta turret, pintle melta, volkite sponsons and hull guns, Decurion Locus)
Cerberus (sponson and pintle heavy bolters)
no RoW

Enemy rough list
Praetor with Paragon Blade
Chaplain
10 EC superveterans with shriekers and charnabal weapons
5 EC supertartaros
10 vanilla Cataphractii with mixed weapons
Spartan
2x10 Tacticals
2x5 Cacophonii
Contemptor (autocannon, fist)
Leviathan (full melee)
3 jetbikes all melta
RoW that gives +1 move to everything

Table quarter deployment, Cthonia mission with 6 objectives that can each only be scored once and you are limited in how many you can score in which round.

I open up with the Vigilator, who deployed solo on top of a ruin, he fails to wound. We're house ruling that ruins and woods block LoS across so it's hard to shoot anything else turn one, tanks and dreads just kill a few Cacophonii. Enemy turn 1 the melta jetbikes vaporize the Vigilator, giving them 2 VP for first blooding an HQ on round one. Round two my Support squad drives up and murderizes 5 superveterans and 2 supertartaros guys with the alchem flamers. From then on it's mostly a game of me whiffing a lot with my tanks and getting slaughtered in melee. The Cerberus over 4 turns does 2 hull points and a blown off sponson to the enemy Spartan and 3 hull points of damage to itself. I barely wipe out all the Kakophonii with my dreads before the Leviathan closes in and slaughters a Castra Ferrum each turn. I did make a mistake in pressing forward early, leaving some objectives in my back field and running out of troops to go back and score them and I never recovered from giving up those 2 VP on the Vigilator. The EC player also always outplays me on reactions. I've finally figured out how to minimize his, but I still can't use mine effectively. The bright spot was again the Kratos, finished off all the rest of his supervets and suptertarts after they slaughtered their way through my full Assault squad and the remnants of the Support squad with zero casualties, and vaporized the Praetor with a cheeky pintle melta shot after he tried to scratch the paint on it. EC win... probably 3-2 on objectives and 4-1 on secondaries.

I do really like the system still, apart from the catastrophic layout and constant page flipping. They really used up the mental space they save with so many units being vanilla across the board on just the right amount of highly detailed skills and wargear.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Got my first full sized (ie 3000 pts) game in, still against EC

Out of interest, how long did it take you to play? We were having this discussion at my club the other week about how it seems to take us an inordinate amount of time to do the mid-sized games, let alone 3k+ matches.

open up with the Vigilator, who deployed solo on top of a ruin, he fails to wound.

How effective have you found the vigilator? I've used him a bunch of times now, but I just can't seem to make him "work" for me. I think it's too many bloody rules for one thing, but I just struggle to get kills with him. In the 5 games (I think) i've used him now i've never killed my priority target, which is normally the warlord or most threatening consul. Almost managed it once, but the fact he only plinks 1 wound at a time makes him ineffective at neutralizing tough multi-wound models. Otherwise I think he's probably claimed ~7 or 8 kills of other things.

I do really like the system still, apart from the catastrophic layout and constant page flipping. They really used up the mental space they save with so many units being vanilla across the board on just the right amount of highly detailed skills and wargear.

I've started writing myself up cheat sheets before a game. Unit and weapon profiles, which unit has what special rules, followed by those special rules. It makes it go soooo much faster looking anything up.




Pics from a recent game. Lot of fun that ended in a draw.

Start of game.


Opponent tried a turn 1 alpha strike on my spartan which had me gaking bricks for a few seconds. I've seen him successfully pull this off a few times before on land raiders, kratos' and a leviathan.
Luckily my spartan is made of sterner stuff and he only managed 2 Hull points, and the jetbikes were munched on my turn.


The dreads all met in the middle of the board.


After the havoc squad dakka'd my melee dread to bits, I thought it only fitting to return the favour and kicked his dread to death with my melta one. Brutal 3 don't count for gak if you whiff all your rolls.


The spartan, having survived 4 turns of siege tyrant shooting as well as hits from both the dreadnoughts plasma cannon and a couple of errant Scorpius missiles finally succumbs to a Warmonger lead squad of whatever these bastards are. Who tele'd in an promptly minced the tactical squad and spartan, although not before losing a guy to interceptor fire form the lascannon array.


The praetor and his squad of terminators are a touch incensed that their ride has been wrecked.


That was all the photos I took, but my termie squad absolutely creamed by the hammernators soon after. I can't remember what unit they were, but they were fearsome. Things might have went better for me if i'd had either of the dreads or either of the plasma units near by. But as it was they were free to happily smash their way through whatever was near them. I won't make that mistake again.
My interemptors FINALLY killed something. Toasted an entire tactical squad in one round of shooting. It's only taken them 3 matches as they always get wiped from the board early on.
The Repeater support squad continues to pull it's weight. Slagged the rhino and vapourised the tac squad inside it.
After putting down my melee dread, the havocs turned their attention on the support squad. They killed two of them, but I returned fire with 30 plasma shots and ganked the entire unit.
Melta dread again did quite well. I'm really liking the duel melta cannons.

 Snrub wrote:
Out of interest, how long did it take you to play? We were having this discussion at my club the other week about how it seems to take us an inordinate amount of time to do the mid-sized games, let alone 3k+ matches.

Actually we're finding it a breeze, apart from rulebook flipping. The "classic" pre-8th edition mechanics sit well with us. We didn't time it but our venue is open for 5 hours and I was playing card games while waiting for my opponent to arrive, we set up, played, and left significantly before closing time. Definitely under 4 hours for a full 3k game.

How effective have you found the vigilator?

First time using him, as I said it was utterly catastrophic as I didn't realize there's no special provisions for targeting Independent Characters in HH. I set him up alone and he got killed immediately and gave out First Blood VP. Apparently the lone wolf sniper guy is supposed to have a tactical squad babysitting him at all times. And I would definitely use him for picking out Apothecaries and Sergeants, not trying to kill a hero over 3-4 rounds of shooting.

A 3000 point game of my Sons of Horus vs. Imperial Fists. This was a role-reversal game where the Imperial Fists deep stuck in much of their force while the Sons of Horus held the center of the table. I won this game largely from a deep strike mishap that put Dorn's legion on the edge of the table with their shooting in front of their Terminators.

From there, I just had to speed bump and Footsies the Sword Brethren (or whatever they're called) until I chipped them down at range that my large tactical squads could handle them in melee. While dreadnaughts wormed their way around to the back side of the IF terminators keeping them busy and away from objectives until the end of the game.

If you saw each side's respective dead pile, you would have thought I lost; but the game was more about keep away than retaining bodies.

***

I've played a fair number of HH games at this point, and I wanted to give my two cents on the game duration.

I find that a 3000 point game isn't much longer than a 2000 point 40k game. Like lord_blackfang mentioned, if you take out the book flipping. Because at this point, I'm pretty sure GW puts time in R&D to find ways to layout rules worse than humanly thought possible. However, if you write your own datasheets with the USRs and everything, it isn't so bad.

Beyond that, it depends on the number of template weapons and times you engage in edge rules (for us, tank ramming). Even templates aren't bad if it is only a few and the non-persistent/weak ones. Of the people I've played, most don't field many template weapons. I don't either. A quick ask of how many template weapons each side has really speeds things up since it lessens any need for spacing on top of working with the templates themselves. I often won't space stuff out anyway if the template is giving me my 3+ Save, as it is no worse than being hit with bolter fire anyway. Then it is just a matter of stuff like artificer armor saves/apothecary rolls/volkite deflagrating slow roll type stuff. Which is annoying, but I try to get those single die roll things done quickly.

But there's not much figuring out Toughness or Saves. Since both sides have most of the same stuff. Melee Initiative can bog down sometimes. But due to the plastic models currently available, my group doesn't engage in too much melee yet anyway. Like 70% shooting, 30% melee. I've had whole games where my Sons of Horus may have well been Blackshields. Since I didn't or barely use any of their Legion rules.

I find the HH rules are classic GW. A bunch of hoops that don't accomplish nearly as much as one would think the process to get there would. Read: needlessly complicated. But once you understand that, and not sweat the small stuff, it isn't bad.

I really like these in-game photos and associated commentary. Keep ‘em coming!

More gaming happened in Epic scale, as we're all waiting for the Legiones Imperialis to slowly dripfeed into our systems there's always good ol' Epic: Armageddon to smash. Or in this case, orks faces to bash with both hands as the capitol city of Miami V needed defending, twice in a row!

First battle saw the orks thoroughly scrunched against the hot'n'hateful steel of Mechanicum.






The second battle saw an almost unstoppable triple-mob charge pour through one flank of robots, but the day was still carried by remorseless robots marching to the ork home base through a burning channel ripped in the earth by a nova cannon shot from the backfield Ordinatus.









It was also finally a good excuse to take a family portrait of the Mechanicum painted thus far

That's a beautiful looking game and army there

Bobug wrote:
That's a beautiful looking game and army there

Can't have the orkoid menace stomping around in our galaxy willy-nilly, can we now. Thanks

Miami V? How did Brother Crockett and Tubbs perform?

My hobby time has recently been taken up by ambitious gamesmastering duties and research, half-painted models languishing forgotten on the painting table, but at least there's been some tabletop time in there. More gaming pictures it is, then! This time it's been a solid weekend filled with a couple of big Titanicus clashes full of nuclear fire and fender benders with our loyalist line taking the cake against a traitorous mutant horde.










Exidium Ultimum got to take a walk in the second game, crushing three Warlords after the scenario forced us into a very aggressive spearhead deployment

Sherrypie, your pictures are always a joy to look at. Full of beautiful armies and (lots of) fantastic terrain. I spend ages scouring each one for all the fun little details.

These big titan battles look amazingly fun.

 Snrub wrote:
Sherrypie, your pictures are always a joy to look at. Full of beautiful armies and (lots of) fantastic terrain. I spend ages scouring each one for all the fun little details.

These big titan battles look amazingly fun.

Always glad to hear it, so I haven't faffed about in vain

And yeah, Titanicus games are great fun especially after the chain reactions start and one flank suddenly evaporates in a bright flash.

Game from last month against a roided up ultramarines list. 2k if I remember correctly. Was not in any way a fun match for me. Best part was that it only lasted a touch over an hour, so it was nice and quick.
He fielded Remus Ventanus, Master of signal, Telemachus, 5 man Fulmantarus, 10 man locatarus, Breacher squad, tactical squad, Xhipon, 10 man lascannon squad and a fething scorpius.
Against my Preator, duel melta dread, 10 man terminator squad, 2 tactical squads, 10 man support squad and a spartan.

I intercepted his xhipon with the spartan and blew it out of the air before it got to do anything, which he seemed very displeased with. Seemed fair to me considering the rest of his list.
Highlight of the game was packing up.





But my game from last weekend was really fun!
Played against an absolutely nutty Night Lords list. Not sure what his right of war was but it lets him take 5(!!) HQ's, which in this case where a praetor, 2 Heralds and 2 Librarians. But he's restricted to bikes and land speeders and can't score without the Heralds. It was a great match full of swingy moments where things could have gone pear shaped for either of us.
I ended up winning by 2VP (11-9) although that was only because the mission/board edge didn't favour his army. Had we been on the long edge's i'm sure he was have soundly trounced me.

Lists were


Halfway through set up.


Turn 1, my spartan is immobilised by the land speeders (proxied with attack bikes).


Turn 2, The push up the board begins.


The Night Lords pull right back. (Note the praetor on Doomriders bike!)


I dared to hope I could keep them corralled in their corner so I could get my Interemptors up there to sort them out.


But in typical Night Lord fashion, they sprung their track before I could spring mine.


Turn 4 see's the Contekar arrive and do horrible things to my back line.


With his impromptu assault stymied I finally started to close the noose on his praetor + command squad.


Turn 5 is where it fell apart for the Night Lords as both Heralds were gone and my dreadnoughts rapidly closing in on the command squad.
In a last ditch effort to pull a win the praetor assaulted my melta dread, which (to the surprise of both of us) managed to kill the remaining 4 command squad members with overwatch.


Turn 6 saw the melee dread hack apart the 2nd librarian and his last squadmate before finally being destroyed by the surviving land speeders (only took them 5 turns of shooting him!).
While the contekar squads disposed of the seekers and my despoilers.
My prator made it into combat with the enemy preator and swiftly put and end to him.


Learnt a lot from this game in regards to handle fast moving armies. Also drove home how much I love my duel melta dread.

 Snrub wrote:
Highlight of the game was packing up.

That's funny and sad at the same time. Never a good sign when it's a relief to start putting stuff back in the figure cases. The terrain looks pretty good though.

Nah I get it, it is both saddening yet amusing.

The table's at the venue where we were playing are all gorgeous with heaps of varied terrain types and all really well crafted. I'll have to get pictures of their Titan table next time i'm there. It's a genuine jaw dropper.

Got a cheeky game in on the weekend. It was the other guy's first time playing Heresy and was proxying some DKoK as Solar Aux. There was probably a 400ish point deficit in his favour as I'd never played against Solar Aux before and wasn't sure how balanced compared to marines they were, so didn't want to go too hard on a first timer who was potentially playing a non-beginner friendly army. Hence my lack of proper anti-armour. But I figured one las-pred and some a bunch of terminators would be sufficient for a couple of Leman Russes.

Turns out he bought 7 of the fethers.




A wall of AV14 is a serious issue when you only have 3 lascannons and couple of chainfists!


Charonite Ogryns are not to fethed with, either.


This leman russ did more damage to me in death then it did in life.



Reinforcements start pouring in for the Solar Aux.


Ogryns did not fair so well against the terminators.


Neither of us realised that cyclops were only effective against vehicles and buildings, so we quickly houseruled they could be used against infantry too. With uh.... explosive results.



In the end I managed to kill 3 of the Russes. Mostly due to terrible rolling on my part as not even sunder could help my get the Pens I needed. With little else that could touch the high AV, most of my army was stuck waiting for his infantry to come in from reserves. Which, aside from the ogryns and cyclops, didn't happen until turn 4 and 5. So it was a bit of a wonky game all things considered. I'm actually glad I left my duel melta dread at home, as it would have probably just chewed through his tanks and he had nothing really that could have hurt it and I don't think it would have made for a very engaging match.
The 2 thing I really took away from this match was the 1, Charonite Ogryns are not to be fethed with, they can dish out some serious hurt on the charge. The other was that Battle Cannons majorly suck this edition. The lack of pie plate and AP3 really makes them terrible. As soon as I saw the 7 tanks plonked down, I was expecting to be blitzed by turn 3. But when they can't even reliably get throw power armour, they're hardly worth taking. The tank with autocannons was a lot more threatening with it's rending 6+.
It was a fun match though all in all and the 3 cyclops coming in and vapourising the tac squad at the end was a laugh. Did in 30 seconds what the Russes couldn't do in 5 turns of shooting.

Had a bit of fun with a two-table megabattle of 30k, with traitors summoning the daemon lord Gra-Bul'Ah (Hung-Ov'Ah for you puntastic anglophones out there) who eventually got banished back into the Empyrean through sheer embarrassment. Fittingly, the player in control of the mighty daemon marshall after it arrived had been similarly hammered a few hours beforehand. Initially my plan was to throw my Death Guard dreadnought-only vanguard into the Blood Angels to die off in the opening moves of the game so I could then concentrate on taking pictures, but as it turned out, my commanding ancient brother was the only remaining traitor model on the ritual table at the end of it all

On the second table, Mechanicum forces struggled over the control of a possessed Warhound titan while astartes forces savaged the Chaos obelisks around the place.



On the ritual table, my dreads took the fight to the Blood Angels while skies rained fire. Ultimately, two chaplains of the Angels united to crack some heads and caused Gra-Bul'Ah to pop back into non-existence not by dying, but rather through combat resolution loss as too many World Eaters died in the same combat for the might daemon to keep up with

Good god, both those games are fething beautiful.

I love how much character those dreads have.

Gorgeous indeed

Cheers lads, it's a visual hobby after all

3k game yesterday against EC. Long edge deployment with Blood Feud mission.

As per usual, I deployed really badly. I should have put the spartan where the dreadnoughts were and tried to zap his vindi's first turn.


EC parking lot. My spartan managed 1HP off the venetor before being blown sky high by the vindicators. Luckily I had the good sense to deploy the Praetor and squad inside before it happened.


Top of turn 2. I took a few licks in the 1st turn, losing the spartan, an interemptor, a couple of terminators and a few support marines (who fled off the board the next turn)


My melee dread put paid to the leviathan in a brutal round of combat, I made all 5 of my attacks and he failed all but 1 armour save. It blew up and took out one of the jetbikes, but failed to damage anything else, which is a shame as wiping out a few of those palatine blades would have been really helpful later on.


The EC praetor and squad deploy to take care of my melta dread before it could do any more damage. They lost a terminator to overwatch, but pretty quickly pulled it down with their chainfists.


The Palatine blades, having dealt with one of the terminator squads, quickly move on to butchering a tactical squad. Meanwhile in the background, the two melee contemptors proceed to punch each other to death.


The venetor having nothing better to shoot lines up on the interemptors blowing them away in a hail of heavy bolter shells.


The EC praetor and squad finish hacking apart the despoilers, while the palatine blades chase down the last of the fleeing tactical marines. My praetor and squad rally after having failed a morale test (I rolled boxcars on a Ld10 test.... ) and make their way back to the EC car park. The other tactical squad on the right move up to do.... something (I have no idea what I was doing with them.), while the final outrider sneaked around the back to take out the last of the Recon squad in the building.


Boxed in with nowhere to go, the tactical squad make a defiant last stand. For some hairbrained reason which had us both scratching our heads afterwards, I chose to hold the line rather then overwatch. 40 shots should have been enough to take out the terminator at the very least and maybe chip a wound of the praetor. But no.... I didn't. And they lost combat, fled and where chased down... Dunno what I was thinking.


End of turn 6. My praetor and squad spent the last two turns tearing up the EC tanks much to my delight. The EC praetor moved in as close as possible for the hopes of a last turn showdown between the commanders, but ended up at a frustrating 12.5 inches away, so no longbomb charge.


Despite only have 4 models left on the table I manged to scrape a win by 1VP, thanks to choosing tanks for my Blood Feud target. I almost chose dreadnoughts, as I was far more confident of being able to kill them both (which I did). But the venetor/vindis all squished together, plus the two rhinos swayed me to picking tanks. Quite a fun match and it taught me not to underestimate Palatine Blades who are really nasty on the charge. Not quite sure why people insist they're crap.


I also remembered to take photos of the amazing Titan table the store has. It was built by the Zorpazorp guy, who I think has a youtube video about it. All told there's about $7,500AUD worth of titan sitting there destroyed. I've heard someone say in total it cost them over $10k when all said and done. Do yourself a favour and check out the full sized versions in my gallery. There's heaps of great details on them.

More gaming every once in a while!

My Ashen Gods kicked some God-Breaker butt yesterday, ~2600 points per side rushing to burn each other's backline objectives while wandering dust clouds blew up in the outskirts. The Iconoclast got checked by a Clawlord, lost all of its shields, was killed by another Warlord immediately afterwards and crippled one of my own Reavers on the way down, but the enemy had by this point already been aggressively outmaneuvered and cornered in their own deployment zone, soon to be torn apart by my demi-Ferroxes ripping into their flanks as they burned all of the objectives without losing any of our own.