New Army

Our 750 point tourney had a nice finish, with a fairly explosive large scale 3 on 3 game, xenos vs imperials. More on that can be found at one of my friend's blogs at : http://irolld6s.wordpress.com/

I find myself too lazy/busy to comment myself on the happenings. Check it out though.

For our next tourney, my 1000 point list will look something like this:

HQ

XV8 Shas'el - Cyclic Ion Blaster, Plasma Rifle, Targeting Array, Hard-wired Multi-Tracker, Hard wired Drone Controller, Shield Dronex2, Bonding Knife

Elites:

1x Deathrain - TL Missile pods, flamer

1x Deathrain - same as above

1x XV8 - Fusion Blaster, Plasma Rifle, Multi-Tracker (to attach to HQ)

Troops:

6x Firewarrior
1x Devilfish - Multitracker, Disruption pods

10x Kroot, 4x Kroot Hounds

6x firewarrior

Fast Attack:

5x pathfinder
1x devilfish - Multitracker, Disruption pods

1x Piranha - Fusion Blaster, Disruption pods, targetting array

Heavy Support:

1x Railhead /w Disruption pods+multitracker


From my previous list I've added some battlesuits, another devilfish and added multi-trackers to my vehicles to make them more mobile. The Deathrain Crisis suits should be adequate to take on AV12 and lower, freeing up my railgun and fusion blasters for the messy business of any heavy armour that might be on the table, or letting my Railhead lob submunitions the whole game. The second plasma wielding suit should be running around with my commander to take on those pesky space marines and terminators, though the odd game he may be tasked to deal with armour instead. The more I play, the more I feel that the Tau codex is lacking. While there are a great many good options in the list, all of the stuff that makes the army work is tied up on expensive models. That is to say, while many armies can do a lot more with their basic troops, be it to give them weapons to deal with armour or infantry, there is a massive amount of STR 5 guns on just about every Tau unit. While this normally wouldn't be a problem in most armies, the fact that the Tau just can't assault compounds the problem. I could probably keep going on about what I don't like about the army, but there is much more that I do like which keeps me playing it. The thing is that I *like* the challenge that playing the army presents. It takes a lot of finesse and planning to play them well. The army has a very small margin of error.

At any rate, I digress. What I wanted to talk about was that I've started a project on the side. The Tau are coming along nicely and all that's left to paint up for my planned 1750 list is a bunch of Crisis and broadside suits and a tank chassis. These shouldn't take too long to take care of. Short of a few models, I'm 85% ready for the 1000 point tourney - I just have 1 crisis suit and 4 Kroot hounds to paint up, while finishing some of my bases of my old list. My love for the hobby is such that I felt like building another army - Chaos Space Marines. Now while, I feel that the Space Marine Codex is superior, there are a few of these armies already running around in my group. On top of that I have a love for painting and modeling that matches that of playing, and the Chaos Marines are just dripping with detail and modeling options. At first I thought I could just grab a bunch of my loyalist marines that are already built, but realized that the excess of imperial eagles, purity seals and so on makes it a more difficult task than I had initially thought.

So here is what I did: I bought a Chaos battleforce. That gave me 15 Chaos marines, 8 Khorne Beserkers, a Rhino and 5 Possessed to play with. Since I don't plan on running possessed, these parts will be used to modify aspiring champs, build chaos lords etc. While I couldn't use all of my loyalist marines as I wanted, I can and did save some. I'm using extra bits from my Chaos Rhino to pimp out a razorback kit that I haven't put together (the turrets will probably end up being used in terrain, or saved for another project. I also have some spare lascannon bits, and a couple missile launcher marines that, with some conversion, have been made into some havocs.

At any rate, this puts me up to a total of - 18 chaos space marines, 8 beserkers, 2 rhinos, 1 lord. So far.
Tenatively I'll practice with this list:

HQ - Lord /w Daemon weapon and mark of slaneesh

Troops:
9x Marines /w 2x melta and aspiring champ (the lord will run with these boys)
- Rhino/tl bolter

9x Khorne Berserkers /w Skull Champ /w powerfist
- Rhino /w extra armour /combi bolter/flamer

Heavy Support:
Havocs x5 /w 2 missile launchers and icon of chaos glory

Not a very competitive list, but I can use what I have to make it. It shouldn't be too awful at any rate.