The Daemon's Claw

After my last game I had another look at the list. I have never been a fan of radically changing lists each time. This approach introduces too many variables to make an assessment about whether changes in tactics or luck or list are masking improvement in player skill. However I am not averse to changing lists between games and after several games I have an idea about what knights I have used are more effective or not. I have not been very impressed with the Rapid fire battle cannon. It is now the most expensive weapon system by 25% and compared to the other weapons I don't think the weapon is worthwhile. I would rather have one of the other weapons and a carapace weapon. So I have a look at the options and I have worked out that I can get 3 Knight Errants and two Armiger Warglaves into the list and still have a 40 model guard platoon. Here are some shots of my army relaxing on the Ottoman  I think the shots from this angle really highlights the size difference between th...

My Knight codex and models arrived last weekend so I have been building my knight models and getting them ready. I can now build a knight in an evening. I have been magnetising their weapons and torsos. So I burned through collection of magnets. I also increased my magnet size on some of my first lance so their torsos don't fall off. So I now have 6 knights and 4 Armigers. Now its up to the painting stage. I like the knights because they provide some good surface areas to paint in heraldic patterns. I took the knights down to the club and promptly got owned by Pete's Dark Eldar list. I lost the game before it started by losing the roll to go first and losing a knight. Pete then killed a knight in each of the next two turns leaving me with 30 guardsmen and the Armiger Helverin. I was impressed with the Armiger it killed a raider and a Venom and damaged another. Taking a battalion of the guardsmen did what they were supposed to do. I used a command point to give the Kur...

I backed the Terrain crate kick starter from Mantic games back in 2017. The kick starter arrived here a couple of days ago. I got 3 terrain boxes and a set of scifi doors. The terrain pieces look good and some will be useful for all sorts of games. The little horse and carts might be useful in Saga for one of the escort scenarios. The mine carts can be useful for all sorts of things including pulp periods and there are enough boxes to hide the Ark of the Covenant. So loads of boxes and other scatter terrain that is almost timeless. Back when I backed the kick starter I was playing a lot of Frostgrave and this stuff looked perfect. However in  the time of the kick starter 40K appeared and everyone started playing scifi GW games. So the key things with kick starters seems to be the ability to predict what game you will be playing in about 2 years time. I also backed two kick starters from Raging Heroes and during the time it took the models to arrive the end times swept through t...

The Warlords hosted a small 40K event at our club meeting. People had a lot of fun. There were also a variety of other games going on.  Here are some games from the tournament. Here are some Imperial knights beating up on some Tyranids. This was a 3 person game of 30K era marines bashing on each other using an adaptation of the 40K rules for their models. The Thousand sons demonstrated how annoying they are standing there taking hits and not failing saves.  Just to prove the club does play games other than 40K, here was a full thrust naval game. This was a convoy escort mission trying to break past a blockade. The game resembled a ww2 bomber escort mission with the attackers being held off long enough for the convoy ships to slip away. It also demonstrated how difficult it is to intercept ships on a reciprocal vector. You get one head on pass and then its hard to turn around and catch up This was a game of DBMM. Ph...

With the publication of the knight codex I have been having a go at creating the different lists. The club and local region has standardised on 1750 points. So its worth designing lists for that points value to maximise your chances of a casual game. With the changes in point values for knights I can get a lance of three knights, 2 battalions of Guard and Inquisitor Eisenhorn. Alternatively I can slim down to one detachment of guard and add one or two Knight Armigers. That still leaves me with 14 command points. The recent FAQ now gives you 6 command points if you take a Superheavy Detachment with at least 3 Questoris or Dominatus class units. I can then spend 6 command points to upgrade two knights to characters and give them warlord traits and give them heirlooms. So all three knights are characters with warlord traits and heirlooms. I can still use 8 command points during the game. Based on experience this will be spent in the first couple of turns. There is a strategem that a...