Sanguinary Guard

Pic From Gamesworkshop

In my personal opinion I not a fan of this unit. Despite it popularity i observe among player i have never gave this unit a chance. Its a nice looking model but i find it difficult to actually uses them. The reason why is

a) They don't do a whole lot in close combat and their survival rate is dependant to what the enemies are armed with.

b) They are expensive to be DOA into enemy lines to deal damage.

One big issue is lack on invul save. In the eyes of AP2/Ap1/power weapons they have the same survivability of an assault squad.

Their Glave Encarmine is power weapon regardless so odds wounding T:4 and above enemies are not alot. They can get powerfist but that add to already high point army and no alot of model or invul safe to keep Power Fist guy alive.

As mention of being expensive as DOA unit.their primary weapon is their Angelus Bolter which is nice taking out 4+ Sv unit but against MEQ and Elites it is another bolter. They can replace it by buying infernus or plasma pistol which can be effective but they are other unit that do more bang for their buck. From effective Assault Squad to Sternguard with Drop Pod or Honour Guard with Jump Pack

A special wargear they have is a death mask which must be purchase. It nice that any enemy in assault make Ld test and if fail cost them to be WS:1. It nice but odds are people arent gonna fail leadership that alot. Therefore feel like an expensive wargear.

Another option is to get Dante and make Sanguine Guard troops. Its nice being able to field 9 Sanguine Guard( 6 from troop and 3 from elites) squad but you aint gonna get alot of stuff with so much point going to Sanguine Guard and Dante.

Overall they are just too expensive to throw away for any drop and hard to justify their cost for a frontal assault unit.

Baal Predator Tactics part 2

Alright i am not gonna make any excuses for myself for not writing anything for a long while. So i guess it better i start typing. So before I start, a meme picture is in order.

I did a part 1 for the Baal Predator a long while back (You can read it here).Looking at it now they were more things that I didn’t consider during the time I wrote that which I explain later in the article.

During the early stage of using the Baal Predator I use them as Vindicator escorts. Which a pair of Baal Predator guards the Vindicator side armor. This restricts the Baal Predator mobility hence not using their full potential.

Nowadays set my Baals into individual tanks over the battlefield which actually performs better. Since they have scout special rule, if you are going first you can flatout during your scout move then move 12”. There high chance you already be in range of your enemies. Alternatively you can simply outflank and create this uncertainty on your enemies game plan as they fear a possibility of your Baal hitting their flanks.

The idea is that you should take advantage of this mobility to either exploit weak point in your enemy lines or simply provoke your enemy into over committing forces to take them out.

Twin Linked Assault Cannon and Heavy Bolter sponson is the way to go!!
- Pic from GW

Forget Flamestorm cannon, that weapon is just a one trick pony. Experience player will just scatter their men. After burning a small amount of model they destroy it by shooting its side armor or assault it.Assault cannon are a more practical option.Especially with heavy bolter sponson you can stay away 24”-36” and lay down like 10 shots (4 from ass can 6 from HB sponson) per turn.

You can take out infantry and Monstrous Creature. Thanks to rending from Assault Cannon you even have a shot on taking out vehicles and elites. The general discipline is to always keep moving and shooting. Especially if facing assault unit move 12” if you have to.

The Perils of "balance" list

Smurf is grim for smurf knows the odds

Some time ago I had a discussion with Redeye about the aspect of playing a "balance list", the suppose 'normal' way of fielding an army instead of the min/max approach.

The main issue is try as we might, it is hard to conjure up memory of any playing a "balance" list, kick arse and lives to tell the day when the said player stand atop of his/her enemies' smoking corpses. The main problem of being "balance" seems to be 2 folds.

1. You can do everything, but good at nothing.
2. Good at nothing is in essence meaning you hold no edge over your enemy

Meanwhile looking from the other side it will be like:

1. Edge list will focus on what they are good at and play accordingly
2. Against a "balance" list, primary threats are easily identified and resources are invested swiftly to neutralize them.

For example suppose you played an mix/max list of landraiders and terminators, automatically you will scan for where the serious armour/terminators threats are in the opposing army. That would mean say against another imperial army you would just want to look at where the meltas and lascanons before you reached the line and after that it will be on the look out for CC death stars and plasma guns/demolisher canon after you breached the line. Everything is clear cut, you can obvious like say ignore that landspeeder which is armed with two heavy bolters for the moment.

Where as being "balance" say you have 50% of units in your army being able to do decent AV job and 50% of them don't, it will actually be like fighting with 50% of your army the whole time.

The same seems to apply to the basic law of operation in reality, imagine going to a job interview and telling your interviewer you can do everything but aint particularly good at anything -- it will be like asking for a general worker's job.

So thought of the day? Get an edge for your army!

WIP - Getting Ready for serious Purging

What can be better than a psycanon? How about 4 psycanons which can shoot with no line of sight?

On the center, hybrid model Justicar

The On Going Daemon Hunting Business

Picture credit: The Lord Inquisitor

I have been playing a Mordrak list lately. I found the grand master to be really worthy of his points, the shenanigans you can pull with him can be endless due to the wide variety of options the codex offer.

Here are the basic plan layout:
-Attached a Librarian with Mordrak and his ghost squad
-DS the gang first turn into a cosy strategic location
-Survive one turn of shooting / abuse ( which won't be a hard thing to do, since you can stack ghost knights' stealth USR with shrouding to have 2+ cover sv)  
-Next turn, summon the rest of your army with "The summoning" spell
-Havoc ensured, purge well, brothers

Details to consider:
-Upgrade your librarian to a level 3 psyker for extra insurance getting rest of your army into position
-Get teleport homer for your librarian (D'oh)
-Have elements of rest of your embarked in vehicles equipped with warp field stabiliser so you can summon 2 units with a single spell
-The Might of Titan spell is essential for hand to hand anti vehicles operation

Grey Knight Librarian

Have the fella done on Sunday night, I decided to use blue on his "inner hood" and loincloth as it is the colour use by standard Astartes librarian to remain the link. I might add detail motifs on the loincloth in the future but that is for another time.

The big =][= on fella's back work double as an oversize deco and/or a teleport homer, just like how the Inquisition would make their war gear look like.

I also like my librarian looking closer to the illustration in the codex then the one GW suggested using, then again this is simply a matter of taste.

Hmm.. close enough!

Now DIe!

Purgation Lords Assemble!

Quoted by Cheng himself, "Not pictured: The horde of power armoured marines on the other table." The awkward moment when you realised you really have lotsa stuff and is still buying

There are few moments as hectic in the hobby as an apoc game, marines are called back from all sectors, half built dreads are hastily assembled and sent to the front, parts are located here and there or may be it is me being messy as always.

This apoc game was played sometime ago, my fellow brother in arms Cheng recently choronicled half the event in his pretty blog. If you are the type who likes to read about big battle reports (with sexy mini pictures and indicators) go check it out.

In the meantime, personally I am hoping you guys can leave comments at his blog to hasten up part 2 of the big fight.

It is hammer time, but we need more hammers!

As I am rolling on my daemon hunting business it became apparent having terminators as troops that are equipped with grenades is a bliss, it also became apparent that you will need more daemon hammers to dish out str10 punishments to any nasties you will be encountering.

This is then again GW's infinite wisdom on sly marketing come into play -- you only get ONE daemon hammer per grey night terminator box, but they left you with plenty of nemesis falchions, bless the throne. To add insult to injury, directly using a space marine terminator arm with thunder hammer will make your grey knight look a bit .. awkward, as they simply carry and configure the weapon in different ways, not to mention the arm piece look totally different.

A quick if not obvious solution to this little crisis is to cut the standard thunder hammer, using the pinning method to join with cut lower half of a nemesis halberd and vola! DIY cheap nemesis daemon hammer. Also note the blings from the new power armoured grey knight shoulder pad can be cut and glued to the hammers, providing the almost compulsory =][= on your improvised hammer if you desired it.

Originally a space wolf hammer on the left and a standard thunder hammer on the right

A hobby drill in this matter is the essential tool for achieving this, without pinning the hammer simply won't hold;  if you don't have one yet but wish to venture in this hobby I would strongly recommend it.