The Eldar next week...

Not sure who I'll be playing next week, but doing a bit of painting, etc...  Thinking of fielding:

Eldrad
Scorpions (Exarch w/ sabers, Shadowstrike and Stalker)
Pathfinders
Dire Avengers (8+ Exarch w/Bladestorm in Serpent)
My ancient Vampire class DN (EML/Scatter Laser)
Dark Reapers (Exarch w/ EML/Fast Shot or Tempest/Crack Shot)
Swooping Hawks (Exarch w/ Skyleap and one of the neat weapons)
+ ?

The Farseer kitted out the way I'd use them would be over 150 points, and Eldrad comes to 210 for a version far better in every aspect I think...  So, sadly, seems almost a no brainer for me, unless for whatever reason I am fielding 2 cheap Farseers just for the extra bodies I guess...

The rest?  Well, breaking out some of the REALLY rarely seen things just to give them a shot...  Might surprise some of the lads...  More likely to make a neat multi colored mist as they explode from anything more powerful than harsh language :-)  But might be fun all around...

Conventional Wisdom?

Not sure if I can effectively say that "conventional wisdom" is silly or not WRT 40K...  I've spent the better part of the last few years trying to play and win with a lot of the "sub-optimal" units/armies in 40K.  Some have been a success, in fact I have actually won a lot more often than I have lost.  Now, a fair amount of that is playing in a "small pond" with a fairly limited pool of opponents, but I do think a lot of it was really a combination of surprise and unfamiliarity with so many things that no one in their right mind would choose.  Saying that, there are still a lot of things that "conventional wisdom" is completely correct about in most situations...  :-)  My opinion only per usual...  My Swooping Hawks and Banshees in the Eldar army are still by and large "highly situational" in the case of the Banshees and  "Let's Wait For Next Edition" on the Hawks...  Thinking a lot more about my Eldar force as you'd guess, playing them in the current Gopher league...  Pathfinders are a solid choice, but fragile.  Guardians are not very good and fragile...  Dire Avengers or Guardians in Serpents seem to be the only one worth taking in a modern play environment.  The Wraith Guard are too expensive in general... Effective, yes...  But a "bit" expensive...

For the bulk of the folks there I'll be playing more "fun" lists and seeing how I can make them work....  My Scorpions with the Chain Saber Exarch flanking works out to be a really good flanking unit...  If they actually show up on a side with the enemy close that is....  Otherwise it's a LONG walk for the 150+ point unit...  The Biting blade seems the "let's get Mech armies" to me, and if it were rending or better Power, I'd say it was really good...  I seem to get a bunch of S7 hits that Marines laugh off with him.  But since I converted one of the lads to the Saber variant I've been running that to decent effect...  Tears through IG and even gets a fair number of wounds against T4 things with the re-rolls to mitigate my poor dice :-)  I don't HAVE enough Falcon type hulls to effectively run the standard "Mechdar" force, but I can do a close enough one I guess...  Just don't think it will be too effective against a well built IG or GK/Wolf "we shoot things" force.  Against that, I'll be relying on flankers and reserves to try to bring me closer to even...  Every advantage I can eke out of the force to try to come close to even odds. Pretty sad commentary that I have to rely completely on luck, "focused list building" and good generalship to even feel like I'm in an even fight with a well built "top tier" list.  To be expected I guess, and one aspect where the conventional wisdom is pretty well right on.  To fight the expected "focused build" IG in the league I'll be having to play the reserve game, hope my lads can roll in, shoot something down/up and maybe even survive the counter fire...  Not a game I'm likely to win or even have fun playing I think.  But sadly, I do think I have at least a shot of making it a hard game iff I build specifically for the expected opposition and they oblige by showing up pretty much as expected :-)...  So, to  restate this: To win, I'd need to min-max a custom force against his, he must field exactly what I'm expecting and I'll need to get lucky on the reserve rolls and with my shooting :-)  Yeah, he's a good player and so I'll likely lose or at best make it a bloody draw as my lads get destroyed...  Same thing happens against Mike, but at least we're both usually quite bloody at the end and it is an enjoyable game

Made the most obnoxious "Rock" or "Anvil" unit I could in the army for last night's game.

Eldrad (210)
Wraithguard (Full unit, w/ Spirit Seer/conceal/Spear) (399)
Wraith Seer (Scatter Laser) (205)

So, LOTS of points, but it gives me a T6, Fearless, Re-rollable save, FNP scoring unit I can march across the field and/or camp objectives with.  Yes, better than half of my army at 1500 points and against some forces it may never do anything but die slowly (I'd hope)...  OTOH, if the game revolves around the other side having to come dig me out...  Well, good luck.  Wraith Guns being in the "I Don't Care" class of weapon I really like to field should make even tooled out Paladins think twice about coming over to assault me.  Mind, I ended up playing to a draw against a good Necron force mostly due to several silly mistakes on my part to compound some bad dice for reserves/flankers...  Should have put the damn Pathfinders up on the second level of the building to make them immune to the Scarabs.  Should have been a bit more cautious with the Spiders and War Walkers, but at that point I really needed to blunt the Scarab's fast moving offensive to keep them away from my "home base" objective being held by a few Pathfinders or encircling my Anvil unit.  On the other hand, I should have realized once I killed one of his 3 Heavy Destroyers I could and SHOULD have moved my Wraith Seer out aggressively to dare his Scarabs to engage...  At that point his Spiders were really the only thing that could effectively hurt him, and he easily over-matched them unless all 6 hit him at once...  If I had moved him even one turn earlier he would have tied up the Scarabs and likely destroyed them in a turn or two, but in any case I would not have been drawn off of the 2 (!!!) objectives they were holding in the center of the field :-)  Still, it was a really fun game getting me more used to playing against the new Necrons...  Guessing it will be Tyranids next week...

Eldar on the move...

:-)  Not sure what direction to go with for the league...  But a bit bored with some of the more overpowered forces so Wolves and Grey Knights are definitely taking a breather...  The Dark Angels are powerful but REALLY limited in terms of viable armies, and a LOT less fun to actually play after a while...  IG are also potentially really too powerful coupled with the fact that they require WAY too may models...  Trying to get fully painted armies to the field, and even after watching Zulu again I doubt I could keep that level of interest in painting my Light Rifle Company...  Yeah, the bulk have a "base coat", but still...

In any case, I'm playing Eldar.  Looking at Imperial Armour, I'm really liking what the Eldar get...  The Hornet is what the Viper really should be in the current ruleset.  The Warp Hunter is their version of the Marine Vindicator, and it is I think better in a lot of ways.  Might be a bit overpowered offensively, the "Inferno" template fire mode for the D-cannon combined with the 5" blast for the main fire mode...  Both modes are "D Cannon" for the rule, so 2+ to wound, 6 is ID and 2-4 for a  glance and 5+ for a penetrating hit....  Yeah, I'll still roll lots of 1's, but AP 2 and no cover save is really quite deadly against a whole lot of things....  The Hornet and Jaeger look powerful but really fragile.  The Wraithseer looks like a potentially "fun" option, but with so many choices being made for me by simply choosing the Wraithseer...  Need another HQ AND a unit of Wraithguard...  So, my "Eldar Castle" army would work, but that leaves so little for anything below 1850+...  Eldrad, full Wraithguard squad and the Wraithseer comes to 800+ points...  So, tough to take down in a kill point mission with the potential for a unit of Fearless T6 FNP Troops with re-rollable cover and armor saves... Good luck killing them quickly.  But it makes for a one trick army...  Good trick, but only one...

So, Pathfinders as Troops...  Not particularly resilient, but could be hard to catch if I run a flank with them...  So, one squad, maybe 2...  Storm Guardians maybe?  Dunno, I've never been a fan of throw away suicide troops, and the SG are just not really good at anything...  Jet bikers are amusing, but WAY fragile...  I know, a running theme for Eldar.  Dire Avengers are "eh" at best in my opinion, but I suppose running around in a Wave Serpent can get me a scoring light tank...  I'll field my usual Scorpions and I've dug up some ancient Dark Reapers...  Thinking they might be nice against all of the 3+ armor out on the field at the Gopher at least...  And I snagged a bunch of Fire Dragons to shore up my horde of Aspect Warriors...  For some reason I only ever had a few of them.  Painting a bit on the Banshees, but I doubt I'll field them...

Eh, it'll be interesting at least :-)

January, what next?

Well, I might break out one of the "several" ancient Eldar DN's I have to convert over to be a Wraithseer...  Horribly overpriced it would seem from first glance, but I do sort of wonder what I could do with one...  Rules are "OK", nothing really overpowering it seems, but might be a bit of a surprise hitting the modern tables at the Gopher...  So, Green Stuff and time...  Looks like I'll have a bit of time someday :-)

Glad my wife doesn't wander down to the basement much :-)...  My armies are taking up more of the space as I try to figure out what I actually have...  And I'll probably switch over to Eldar for the next league, so digging them up and fixing various broken things...  I now have 5 of the ancient "Ghost Warriors" to fill out my Wraith Guard...  Good enough for local stuff, but not sure if that would fly elsewhere...  Might, it IS a GW model and it is what the WG started out as...  So, my lads will come out of retirement yet again...  :-)  The Warp Hunter will be a bit of a shock for both turns it survives, but it will be fun I think...

40K these days...

The state of the game…  Yeah, sounds pretentious J…  Now, this is all just my opinion as always, and mostly just based on my experiences and the armies I play.  I am getting the feeling that the game is becoming less and less balanced.  I’d be a bit hesitant to say that certain codices are “broken” or bad for the game, but Grey Knights would be one that I’d say brings it REALLY close.  An entire army loaded out with Power Weapons, Str 8 vs Str 7 for Autocannons and their Psycannons everywhere…  Before the GK’s, the Blood Angels have Rhino Hulls that are just better than everyone else’s…  It seems more and more like an engine that is getting itself further and further out of balance as it runs longer.  I think that there really are “first tier”, “second tier” and “others”… 

First tier I have as: Wolves, BA, GK, and IG…  Of course, only certain “builds” are really the powerful ones, even these armies have subpar units…  It’s kind of annoying on some levels as those are 4 of the armies I play, and I’m REALLY trying hard not to play the “Uber” lists…  Not sure if I could come up with anything other than “I think this is true” to back up my opinion of course.  Well, that and of course I have an excellent record with the above armies.  It is difficult to come up with better lists than some of the “hard” lists I CAN field with a first tier army…  Especially if the army on the other side of the table is not itself a first tier army…  Can still be beaten of course, but the odds are stacked against it…

I enjoy playing Eldar, but with so few viable options, it is an exercise in futility against a well-built “modern” army.  The stuff in IA2 does bring good things to the army, and it is looking like the new IA book (http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff/IMPERIAL-ARMOUR-VOLUME-ELEVEN-THE-DOOM-OF-MYMEARA.html) seems like it does bring a LOT of things that could do a lot to bring the Eldar up to more modern standards…

So, Eldar and Dark Angels (Deathwing or Dual Wing) are my “second tier” armies…  Extremely limited builds, very narrow focus, and not viable outside of that…

Outside of the ones I actually play, I can’t really say where a lot of armies end up…  Tau were hard to beat prior to BA and to an extent Wolves, and now I think they simply cannot compete with the GK or Necron lists…  Orks have their swarms and walkers which are also a bit of a swarm…  They can compete in a somewhat limited fashion against all but the GK I think…  DE are good if built right, but not sure if they are first tier…  Sisters are “eh” these days…

Looking forward to 6^th edition and I am hoping the IA stuff livens up the scene a bit…

IA/next army...

So, what army next J…  I guess I’ll keep painting my Wolves for the moment because I am moving along quite nicely there and honestly I’m actually enjoying it at the moment.  Back to conversion work I guess as my Wolf Guard need their Combi-weapons…  Thankfully it looks like the stuff I picked up at the Gopher will allow me to make a few here and there with Green stuff…  And then I’ll have to magnetize Terminators…

So, I guess I’ll be bringing it up for the local gaming group…  Wanting to include IA (Imperial Armour) rules in our 40K games…  The new editions have been rewritten and split up to indicate if they are 40K or not…  And the IA 2 book does seem to indicate that they are completely legal for GW events, so we’ll have to be sure everyone actually knows what the rules and options ARE…  There are some pretty neat things in the books, and honestly I am looking forward to some new things hitting the tables…

Post Christmas fun...

Picked up the Imperial Armour Apocalypse Second Edition this evening…  Sometimes the Gopher gets in some really interesting things on consignment.  Read over it, guessing I already knew most of the things there but I do think that they are doing it right these days…  Now, they do print that the things labeled “40K” are legal to play in “official” 40K events, and it does look like they’ve fixed all of the more obvious broken things…  Like for instance the Lucius class Drop Pod is NOT legal for Blood Angel Marines J…  Have to admit that was one I WAS planning on putting into a team tournament force… 

Cranked up the bike today, didn’t take her out, but it was REALLY nice turning the engine over.  Maybe this week I’ll still be able to get in a ride or two before I really have to put her up for the year.

Christmas was pretty fun, had Matt and Kaitlyn up from Ft Cambpell along with the wee girls.  Pretty mellow…  Wound up making a normal lasagna for Christmas eve and then a seafood lasagna for Christmas… 

Mkay, pretty much done for the night J  Off to Peoria tomorrow for Christmas with my parents…  At least the girls will probably have fun…