Next Week in the League

Mkay, so with the remaining teams being :

Mike and Son... Inquisition and DE's greatest hits... Crap tons of Dark Lances, Uber missile launching Predator hulls and lots of skimmers to get in the way... Honestly not sure what to do here. I have bunches of Sentinels (5), and 2 Leman Russ hulls so I could go Mech Guard with Command, 2 Vet squads in Chimeras, 2 squadrons of Scout Sentinels (multi laser or autocannon and HK missiles) to flank and hopefully get some side shots or just shots at the night shielded skimmers of doom. Or I can run BA, SW or Eldar... But I see us having to fight a reserve game against their gun line. With Wolves I have Scouts that can appear in their back line, BA have assault troops that hit from deep strike... Eldar, well I guess I can Pathfinder, War Walker and Spider up to see how many Str 6+ shots I can put on their stuff. I DO have a Fire Prism, but Wraithlords and Avatars would die quickly I think against them... Wolves might be the answer with a Land Raider loaded out with a Rune Priest and the 24" Enemy skimmers/jump troops/deep strikers treat all terrain as dangerous. Raider will draw a crapton of fire, but it might keep the other things alive. The Exorcists are not a real threat to the LR, and ramming the LR into their midst will deliver as assault group... 'course, I'm also tempted to do something silly like Eldar with Hawks to assault the DE Raiders

 

Tom/Joe: Tom's Marines and Joe's Chaos forces.... Well, a command squad kitted out with Plasma guns, Vets w/ Melta, Vendetta flanking and I can bring a Colossus (Str 6, AP 3 Ord blast, only fires indirect) to deal with the inevitable groups of Marines hiding in buildings for the 3+ cover save (Tom's Tech Marine). The Drop Pods with his Sternguard and DN's I think will lose out against the cheaper IG... Farseer w/ Mind War, doom or guide? I know that specific things dying would make a big difference, and blocking or making their Psych powers hurt themselves would rock...

 

Jamie/Ted: Tyranids and Orks? Or Marines with a heavy DN element... Jamie tends toward a horde of wee tiny peons and a group of really big nasties. So, likely my IG Mech force? Though my Wolves and BA have also done quite well against him. A horde of Orks? My wolves and BA have stood them up and beaten them in HtH... I'm fairly sure that an IG gunline would also do well there... Though the same could be said of an Eldar gunline with Farseer support to off the power claw guys and let the Wraithlord(s) just eat them a few at a time... 'course I could run an IG version of that with armored Sentinel(s)...

 

Mkay, so long rambling way of saying I can bring pretty much anything :-)

 

Mkay, back to building my army… Found some templates to build some "Space 1889" type Airships. Aphid class airship will be my first attempt as a Valkyrie or Vendetta class skimmer. I just cut out the main hull of the vehicle, and it will look like this… More or less :-)  This picture is from the "Space 1889" site:

So, much longer, not quite the wingspan of a "real" Valkyrie, but it fits the Praetorians a LOT better I think. I'm not doing it completely to the plans, not quite so long I think, but I'm hoping it looks decent when I'm done with it… So, I'll play the Praetorians as an Infantry company, with Mechanized and Air Assault elements. Sadly, I CAN field something like 9 of these Vendetta/Valkyrie airships (only difference really being the armament, the Vendetta is just 3 TL Las Cannons while the Valkyrie is more of a mix) in a legal IG force… I plan a squadron of 3 perhaps all told for my army, then to build some Chimera hulls for the various Armored "things" like Hydra squadrons, artillery and of course the actual Chimeras…

New League, starting over

We're running a team league at the Gopher and I'll be partnered up with one of the Eldar players, Dave Hahn. I'll probably at least start off running my Praetorians at the 500 point level and likely 750 as well. Since those levels are not requiring us to actually field a "legal" army (don't need to field the 1 HQ, 2 troops), I can pretty much tailor my list to cause the most damage in the shortest amount of time… Here's my "legal" list:

Company Command section (2 GL, Las Cannon, Master of Ordnance, Chimera) 160

Vet Squad (3 Melta, shotguns, Missile Launcher, Chimera) 165

Vet Squad (3 Melta, shotguns, Las Cannon, Chimera) 175

 

And here's my "It's my 500 point 'All Stars' list":

Company Command section (4 Melta, Chimera) 145

Hydra 75

Leman Russ Battle Tank 150

Vendetta ( 3 TL Las Cannons) or Valkyrie (rocket pods, multi laser) 130

 

 

The first has all BS 4, standard Mechanized list, not a lot of imagination or thought required. On the other hand, I'm not totally screwed if it comes up "Dawn of War" deployment like it did for me ALL last league, except that last game. I see them reserving a LOT and then just driving around shooting things up… Hull Heavy Flamers probably… With the second list I can't win any games with it, but I CAN throw a LOT of firepower down range… Will be counting on either wiping the other team off the field or Dave's Eldar holding objectives… Or I could field the Vendetta/Valkyrie and a bunch of Sentinels for an outflanking army…

Well, on another note altogether… It appears as if I’ve actually stopped drinking again. I don’t think it was a conscious decision or anything at this point, I just pretty much stopped. I think it was because I could feel my self control slipping more and more as the stress level increased…  Kind of amusing watching “Being Human” or any Werewolf movie/show and identifying so well with the Werewolf. It’s really frightening living with the knowledge of just how much havoc and destruction (physical and emotional) you can cause if you slip even for an instant. Henry Rollins had a quote that went along the lines of “I look at my hands and see the scars. I cannot forget what I did to get them”… Not an exact quote, but I have his books on a shelf in the basement somewhere and not in a searchable electronic format… But I think he just says it a whole lot clearer than I ever could. As time passes, I can see some of the scars starkly against the tan of the normal skin, and every time I look at that hand I remember why it is scarred and why the knuckles are ever so slightly deformed from the breaks over the years… Some are not so obvious, bones that were broken and my knee that will likely never really recover to the level of the other one. Places I’ve been and things I’ve done. Lots of stress this year, it keeps pushing me closer and closer to the edge

Anyway, I’m working on changing jobs. I’ve been at the Math Department for 8 years now I guess… It’s become something of a dead end position over the last 5. There’s been two years of pay cuts, most of the rest static or “minimal raises”. Yes, it was a big raise coming over from GSLIS, and there was one year I got another big raise, but that was a while ago. So, I guess it’s time that I got back to a “Management” position. Done that a while ago, and I have to admit that I burned out in 1994 playing Army. The life or death decisions being made on the fly are a “bit” different than the fairly trivial ones I’d have to make in an IT department. So, in order to move up and more importantly preserve my sanity, I think it is time to move on and up. I am hoping to get moved over to Atlas, the College level IT department. At the very least I’ll not be on my own there, they have a fairly complete set of skills over there, and it will make the job a whole lot easier… Failing that, I guess it is time to start sending out the resume of doom…

Up to 1000 points...

Playing in a team league… Random partners, so not at all sure what will be fighting alongside my lads. So, I’ll be fielding 1000 points, and making sure I have a “complete” force that can stand on its own. In this “flight” we randomly roll for partners, etc., then we can pick our lists after opponents have been determined…

So, if I’m facing off against a Marine force:
CCS (Master of Ord, Las Cannon, 2 x Grenadiers in a Chimera)
2 x Vet Squads (Meltas, one LC one ML, Chimeras)
Leman Russ (LC in hull)
Colossus or Basilisk
Scout Sentinel (Missile Launcher)
Vendetta Gunship

Facing off against a horde force:
CCS (Master of Ord, Las Cannon, 2 x Grenadiers in a Chimera w/ stubber)
Vet Squad (Meltas, missile launcher, Chimera w/HS)
Infantry Platoon:
PCS (4 x flamers)
3 Squads (GL/AC, one Commissar to deploy as a big blob more likely than not)
Leman Russ (HHB)
Hydra (+ PHS)
Valkyrie (Rocket Pods, Heavy Bolters)

Ah, up to 750 points for the Team League tomorrow...  Looks like I'll be bringing out a (proxied) Colossus.  Seeing WAY too many things just hiding in cover all game, even Marines.  Thinking of one of my old DI's with the "No Problem...  No Problem what so ever"...  Mind SSG Berry was a REALLY big guy, so he could pull that off sounding like a pissed off Darth Vader :-)

Other units I'll be bringing will be the Command Squad all loaded out, a Platoon Command Squad (4 flame throwers), a Vet Squad with the standard loadout (Chimera, Demo upgrade, 2 Meltas) and the line Platoon with 2 squads w/ melta/heavy weapons.  A Commissar in the PCS and the Platoon to keep things going the "right" way...   A bit light on vehicles for me I think, but we'll see who I get paired with and if it works out...

Just a quick shot of the "steampunk" Sentinel along with some of the lads in progress...  Second pic is the ancient "Death chicken" class Sentinel along with one of my Vets in progress...  Marine Scout shotgun, different color uniform for the squad to differentiate them from the Line Dogs :-)