Selling the old Chaos Space Marines (pictures!)

Well, the day has finally come for me to get rid of my old Chaos Marine army.  It's been a good army, but I haven't played it for like 2 years, and it's not really doing me much good as it is.  I like the models, and when I was finished painting it, I declared it my 'best painted army, ever', which is really was, at the time.

The Scourge/Reaver Wanna-be Conundrum

Well, I guess my title could have been more clever.  That's alright.  Let's instead focus more on the content of this article:  Scourges (and how heavily the word 'conundrum' relies on the 'u' shape in its various forms, lol).

It's not what I'd consider a tactica by any means, but instead a question of why exactly Scourges exist, and what advantage is to be gained by using them competitively game-wise in the stead of Reaver Jetbikes, besides their clearly hard-hitting aesthetic presence. 

Don't get me wrong- it might not be considered an argument for scourges- we're just going to explore the question and their relation to Reavers.

Dark Eldar: 17 Games In

Win.

So, I haven't actually gotten 20 games in yet, but 17 is close enough to actually do some more analysis on my army than when I had only gotten 5 games in, right? I know that nice round even numbers are more fun, but I don't really intend to play another 3 games in quick succession anytime too soon, and as such I want to get some analysis on this army knocked out.

As usual, let's first look at the list I'm using:

Blood Angels List Fun

...lol

Hey folks!  After all the madness of going to the Bugeater and BoLSCon, I've been facing a pretty strong feeling of 'meh' when it comes to Warhammer.  I guess you could say that I'm semi-burned out, though my apathy somehow doesn't extend into making new lists up and trying to figure out how to play the DEldar better. :-p

Soon I'll be writing up an overview on my thoughts of the DEldar, after having played them for 20ish games.  But that'll be either tomorrow or Monday.  Today I want to share a Blood Angels list I spammed out.  It has something I've never really cared much for:  namely, lots of Predators.

Let's take a look:

BoLSGamesCon Tournament Report

Kabal of the Awesome Sauce

Hey there folks!  It's the report you've all been waiting for- Dark Eldar take on the world at BoLSCON!  We played 7 games total over the course of Saturday and Sunday, with very little rest in between games.  2-hour time limits were strictly (for the most part) enforced, despite the huge nature of a few different armies (mine included).

Alright, before we get started, here are some relevant links:

My Dark Eldar at the Bugeater GT (full report w/ pictures)
Mirror Match Tournament Report from my Friday Event (lots of pictures)
The Wolfstar at last years BoLSCON (full report w/ pictures)

So, let's start with a (very brief) history of how I've done at past BoLSCONs:

A new contributor!

Hey all!

You may have previously seen me commenting on lots of Xaereth's posts. Well, I am pleased to now be a contributor to the blog. I have known Xaereth for over two years now and we met back in Laramie when it was a pretty happening gaming community. Fast forward to the present, I am still living in Laramie working as a Software Engineer, whilst spending every spare minute I can painting my beloved toy soldiers.

First of all,

BoLSGamesCon Mirror Match Tournament Report (with pictures!)

Hello all, how's it all going?  Today I'm writing some (somewhat brief) battle reports for the Mirror Match tournament that I played on Friday at BoLSGamesCon.  It was a fun time, as it has always been in Austin- I'll give feedback on the tournament itself a little bit later in this post.

It's kind of a shorter report, but mostly complete and with lots of pictures- you'll see.

Now, for those of you who don't know what the Mirror Match tournament is, I'll give you a quick run-down:

• Everyone had the same 1500 point Codex: Space Marines list
• Every single table had nearly the exact same terrain
• We used missions out of the book, nothing fancy or necessarily hard to accomplish at all

Essentially, the tournament is supposed to be able to prove who the best 'pure player' is, since the boards are all the same, as are the lists.

Here's the list everyone used:

Back From BoLSGamesCon!

Well folks, I'm back from Austin!  It was a fun tournament, getting lots of good games in and meeting a ton of new cool people!  It was fun to see old friends as well- cons are great for hanging out with friends from all over the country :)

I played in the Mirror Match on Friday, and it was cool- I'll give the results a little lower, so I don't 'spoil' the result for those who want to read my report.

I then played the GT, and though it was a little disappointing to me in some ways, it was really good in others.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

My Results for the various events:

Off to BoLSGamesCon w/ Dark Eldar- essential items (pictures!)

Well folks, it's that time of year again.  I'm making the trek to Austin by plane this time, rather than driving the 18 or so hours it takes to get there.  I'll be taking my newly painted Dark Eldar- should be some good fun, heh.  Figured I'd post expectations and all that awesomeness.

Here's the army itself at 1850 (no beast squad)

First, here are some links, if you're interested:

Last Year's BoLSCON Tournament Report with lots of pictures!
Dark Eldar at the Bugeater GT Batreps with lots of pictures
Dark Eldar Tactical Analysis for BoLSCON with awesome diagrams :-p

List of essential items for a GT (not including 40k stuff, lol):

Ipod is useful between games, or before the tournament starts.  Also, in transit.  Ever listen to Yiruma?  He's a classical music pianist.  Seriously awesome, if you like that calm sort of stuff anyways.

Mmm... fast food for 3 straight days.  Tums is a must-have for cons.  Seriously- we went through a ton of these last year.

How I painted my Razorwing Flocks

So really, I don't want this to take forever.  Figured I'd take pictures, and I'll explain as we go along, but it really isn't very complicated.  These models took me about 3 hours to paint, including their bases, which is actually far quicker on average than any other models from the rest of my Dark Eldar.  Anyways, here are some pictures, with explanations:

So, I don't have white primer, which would have been better, had I felt like spending another $12 on spray that I won't really ever use.  Here you can see that I painted the middle of them Bleached Bone first, followed up with a layer of Skull White- that way I didn't have to cake on the skull white.  The ones on the top are the bone color :-p

New Layout, New Everything

Well folks, I've been meaning to revamp the blog a little bit, and I guess this is the result!  Some stuff, in a fun Bullet-point list:

• Got a better comment system- Disqus allows people to reply to each other, which is quite nice.
• Sadly Disqus wiped all my previous comments.  Not sure if/how I could have prevented that, but if I wanted to switch, I knew that was likely to happen.  Still quite sad :(
• Got a new blogger 'Template', which allows me to have wider posts, which allows bigger pictures
• The bigger pictures are actually quite a big deal, since I do so many Battle Reports- now you don't have to click on the pictures quite so often when you read them :)
• Added the links at the top, to the labels you might be interested in
• Added labels to a lot of my old stuff, and deleted some labels to a few posts that I didn't find as relevant or useful any more

So, there it is!  Tell me what you think!  Hopefully this makes my site a lot more accessible- I personally like it much better.

If the colors clash, or something is hard on the eyes, please let me know- I want to make sure it's a good change!

Tactical discussion for Dark Eldar at BoLSGamesCon

Hey there folks, how's it going?  Today I want to talk about tactics, as it pertains to winning in a competitive setting, namely:  a tournament.  lol... wow that was a kind of bland start.  But I don't want to start over, so...

As you may or may not know, I'll be attending BoLSGamesCon in Austin this year, for my third year running.  I expect it to be extremely fun, but with the expectation that I won't end up doing as well as I had done previous years (7th overall, then 6th overall + Best Sport, respectively), since I'm fairly new to my army and let's face it- Dark Eldar have a tough time getting 'full points' in a super competitive game using pure battle points- they're just so damn easy to kill.

Despite my own misgivings about tournaments using Battle Points to determine the overall winner, I'm going to this tournament, and as such, need to turn my attention to how I can win in the parameters given.

So what I want to do here today is to go over a mission primer that they've released, look at what my nightmare matchup would be, and how I would approach the game, from a competitive perspective.  This is my first time trying this so hopefully it works well.  Note that I'll be using rudimentary graphics as an aid- they'll just be a little later on.

In Honor of Kyle Doyle

An (extremely) sad thing happened last Friday:  a local gamer named Kyle Doyle was killed in a car accident in Nebraska.  I didn't know Kyle on anything more than a 'we're friends at the same gamestore who enjoy hanging out' sort of basis, but I feel the need to honor him in what small way I can.

Kyle was one of those guys you could describe as the 'glue that makes the club hold together'.  He was constantly running events, teaching new/young players how to play, using armies that nobody deemed as competitive (and winning quite often with them), and just being a generous, good dude all around.

Our standing joke in games went like so:

Dear *Wolfstar*,
Fuck.  You.
Love, Kyle

And back the other way with his (old) Grey Knight Grand Master that could insta-death my Bear Lord :-p

I suppose I could go on, about how fun he was to play, and how good a guy like him is for any club or game shop, but I think I'll keep it concise, as I find this a more difficult subject matter to write on than I had imagined.

Any gamer would be proud to have his legacy- how many people could die right now, and have as many extremely positive things said about them, unanimously spoken, with no sour grapes behind it?  The answer is very, very few.

We'll miss you Kyle. 

Farewell...

Bugeater 2011 GT Report (with pictures!)

Well folks, brace yourselves- you're in for a long one.  This report contains 6 full-length battle reports (including pictures!) of my Dark Eldar floundering their way through the massive field of 44 players in Omaha, NE.  It'll also contain other thoughts on the tournament itself, including format, venue, swag bag, etc.

Myself and my friend CJ made the 9-hour drive down from Colorado (well, CJ lives in Wyoming, and we met up in Cheyenne, but... anyways...) through Nebraska.  We were looking to have some fun at a small, low-key tournament (also, cheap) before we went to the much larger/slightly more prestigious BoLSCON a couple weekends from now.  Before this GT, I'd gotten a grand total of 5 games in with the Dark Eldar, and hoped to get some good, competitive experience with them before the next, slightly bigger event.

A closer look at the exciting Nebraska landscape