Brawl in the Fall and First Chaos Thoughts

So this last weekend I took the marine bikes out to this event in Fresno.  I went with couple of guys from the Zero Comp team and had a great time.  The had donuts and free drinks and snacks later in the afternoon.  Everybody walked away with a door prize of 'debatable' value but it was still a nice touch (I got a little resin terrain piece).   A box of dice and some poker chip objective makers and a shirt were nice hand outs at registration as well.

The terrain on all the boards was good, maybe a few didn't have much variety but it was still fine.  The missions were ok.  They basically had the Primary objective was for win/loss/tie, and secondary objectives were only to break up the standings.  I guess it works, but it just seemed like it made the game a little more one dimensional than how most 6th editions games have been trending.  I've been liking the fact that there have been multiple avenues to victory vs 'just do this and that is all that matters.'   But at least there wasn't some horrible mission that was cooked up that made no sense.

The overall tourny ran really smooth and it was a ton of fun.  I had three fun games, and my only disappointment was my round 2 and 3 opponents had nearly identicaly Tzeentch Daemon armies.  Both games were super difficult and I lost one of those and managed to eek a tie in round three.  My game 1 was against a Draigo GK list and bikes are just a horrible match up for them so that was a solid win.   So 1-1-1 and a lot of fun this past weekend.

As for the bikes themselves they did great but the Tzeentch daemons were a bear.  All that two wound and lots of AP3 flamers that are quite fast is hard even for a mobile army like the bikes.  My kingdom for a Nullzone Librarian this weekend.  I've thought about adding one before, but it would mean cutting somewhere.  I still like the Aegis, and I still like the Farseer, so that would mean cutting attack bikes.  I might give that a go for future 1750 but who knows when I'll get back to the bikes again.

Why you ask?

Well the new chaos book is out and of course there is a lot to think about with it.  First off I do like where most of the direction of the book has gone.  It feels like it brought a lot of flavor back to the army.  I think there are several really great builds that you could chose to move in if you are a new chaos general.

However for a lot of guys with the cult troops I think there is largely disappointment.  I think Nurgle may have made out the best in the sense that they are largely unchanged.  I think Noise Marines can work... but do you pull off all your sonic blasters and run them cheap or do you deal with horrible salvo rules.  And Zerkers on paper look like they hit like a ton of bricks I'm just not buying it.  It is the same old 'lots of attacks when you charge, dead every other turn.'

Which leaves the 1ksons, which is of course my army.  The sons are probably just as good as they were last edition, which is to say not very.  The good news is in general the loss of 4+ cover throughout 6th is helpful but there are still plenty of ruins out there.  They can't overwatch due to slow and purposeful but at least they got rid of the silly sorcerer commands rule.  They did keep fearless and gained Vetrans of the Long War.  The Aspiring sorcerers can only be level 1 and seemingly have to take the Tzeentch pychic powers.  While not horrible the primaris power is really only useful against hordes, the flamer goodnes is two warp charges, and the remaining two powers are... well I'm not sure.  Taking str 4 hits to roll on the boon table sounds more entertaining that competitive.  The Str8 Ap1 shot is a beam so that is a little more interesting, until you realize that shooting at a vehicles just wastes all your AP3 fire.  All in all they often will likely just be torrented down as before and are not worth the extra points for what they bring to the table.

Ahriman is also probably not greatly improved.  He is now a tad cheaper and mastery level 4.  This is neat, and he can still fire 3 different witchfire powers a turn.  So much like before that would be great if it was the same which fire power, but it is not often when 3 different witchfire powers are going to be horribly effective against the same unit.  He can't even attempt multiple Boons to try to create some super character.  So I'm not really sure why else to take him other than to be fluffy.  Maybe a few test games will show me the light, but otherwise you can save 100 pts and have a cheap MoT sorcerer to make 1ksons scoring.

So I'm not horribly sure what to do.  I did pick up some cultists and a Dark Apostle to give me another HQ choice and some cheap scoring bodies.   As is usual with a release the challenge is always how much of your old stuff do you want to rotate out for new stuff.  When you only have one or two armies maybe it is easier to just keep adding to your force, but most of my armies are heavy on theme.   So if I'm going to end up tossing most of my non 1ksons out just to try to make 1ksons work, you have to wonder whether it is worth while.  In other words if I'm going to end up taking a bunch of new stuff and have to paint it all up, why bother keeping the 1ksons theme at all?

Iron Warriors or even and Abaddon Black Legion army is looking very nice these days...

I'll try building up a list with what I've got and see about some games in the next two weeks before I get too doom and gloomy over my boys in blue.

I can always get back to finishing the details on my bike army!