Munkie

I might hop on this if it's not too late. I need a chance to check it out though.

He was just scared of that one (and only one) piece of skyfire in our cumulative 12k. How did that lonely quad gun survive anyway?

I might make an April one too. My birthday is in April so maybe I can use that for leverage...

Yeah I definitely wouldn't recommend the SC on a minimum squad. He seems awesome if your maxing them out. I grew up playing 40k with a guy that regularly fielded 20 roughriders with his IG. He really got some mileage out of them.

I'm at 38.7 p/l. So I toss out about 20% less B.S. than fluger! Impressive, considering I feel like most of what I say is utter nonsense.

Speaking of things I forgot, Shae's Flyrant should've been striking at initiative 1 on the last turn because my thunder hammer wounded him in the previous assault phase. They would've struck simultaneously and I may have taken his last wound, thus netting another 7 VPs. Too many things to keep track of on two boards!

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The Ld test is specifically tested AFTER deployment but before first turn. You can scout them up the field with that gear, but you can't Outflank with them.

Wow thanks for the in-depth reply! Very useful stuff in there. I've been ruminating on that battle quite a bit for nearly a week. It's frustrating to feel in control of a battle and yet see it slip away inexplicably at the very end. I realize I did make a few mistakes, despite my strong opening turns, that ended up having fairly severe consequences. 1. I used 2 units of skinks to screen my blocks. While this isn't a bad idea in general, I knew he was gonna put all his fast cav on the flanks, so I didn't really need counter-chaff in the center. I should've intentionally left them open to invite a charge from his BG and CO knights. Either of my blocks should've handle either of their units so there's no real reason to waste time trying to harass them with skinks. 2. I mis-managed my magic phase pretty severely I think. I swapped Soul Quench for Searing Doom turn 1 to handle his knights but Soul Quench would've been fantastic throughout the game to whittle down his shooting units. Basically, I wasted dice trying to put big spells on threats I could probably handle. MSU requires MSS (multiple small spells). 3. I mis-handled his shades. I actually left them a spot on my flank to bait him into rock-dropping range. But realistically, the only way terradons will survive to drop rocks is with the combination of vanguard and going first. This happened, but I was very conservative on my vanguard move so couldn't quite get over the shades to make the drop. I left them nearby in case I had an opening to drop rocks, but the shades ended up just dashing up and peppering them to death anyway. Since I bitched out on the vanguard, I should've just pulled them back to my center to support my blocks. Having a flying unit nearby would've been really handy for blocking escape routes when he did his swift reforms. I didn't see that move coming, but hopefully I won't be making that mistake again. All-in-all I think these kinds of lists will continue to be a tough matchup for me, but something that is still possible to handle as I improve. At least I feel better telling myself that. While I totally agree with this, I'm having a hard time finding the points for that. I am 10 points over the min core, so I cannot make room there. The terradons are my most mobile element so cutting them for mobility seems silly. Obviously, the largest chunk of points I have is the Slann and TG. I can't really cut the TG down much while still being able to protect the Slann reliably, and I can't trim down the Slann enough to free up the 150-180 points that 5 CO cav would cost me. So that leaves the Steggies, but I don't want to leave dinosaurs in the box! Maybe I could drop one unit of terradons, and nickle and dime my way to that unit? Not sure, I'll think about it. At any rate, since I'm realizing that my loss had more to do with my strategic failures than list inadequacies, I'm not feeling so much pressure to change the list. Still food for thought though, because it would be nice to have a place to hide my Scar Vet. I am considering changing to the Wandering Deliberations (knows sigs from all 8 Lores) instead of Focus of Mystery on my Slann too. I've got a few games under my belt with the High Magic, so I kinda wanna take this for a spin. It would save me 5 points too... I've got another game scheduled on Tuesday with Sherbert. I dunno what army he's using (hopefully not his Empire cuz...cannons), but I'll report back with thoughts and revelations regardless.

First of all 8" range for a template is a pretty big misnomer. Yes, it's 8", but if you're paying 10 pts (on top of the 20 point "extra body" tax) so you can tag one guy with a str 4 AP D6 template, you're doing it wrong. Let me rephrase, "your liquifier guns should never be in range." I like liquifiers, but if you put them with wracks, you are literally doubling the cost of the squad so that it can have confused roles. Venoms cannot, absolutely CANNOT operate in the range in which liquifiers are useful without dying. Venoms are a fairly cheap way of delivering haywires where they need to go (but understand that both the venom and the squad are guaranteed to die), and are great long range saturation. This was true in 5th and is doubly true in 6th. If your opponent gets liquified by a 5 man squad in a 2 HP, open-topped vehicle, then they deserve their fate because they either chose it or forgot to stop it. Terrible waste of points against a non-idiot, though. Also hex rifles are bad-- especially with only one of them. They are an expensive AP 4 sniper rifle. Sometimes the special rule will come into play, but it will be so rare that it certainly is not worth 15 points. It will not factor into the decision of whether or not your opponent comes to you. Not. Ever. I love DE to death, and I dearly hope their next book can cope with 6th better. But right now, you've got to take very efficient units to do even okay with them. Start spending points on extras and fun units and you are choosing to lose with them. As sad as it is, it's also unfortunately that simple. If you're okay with that, then have a ball! Nearly everything in that book is fun. But if you're building a semi-competitive list, you must choose very wisely.

I love wracks in venoms, but they will never be in liquifier range. Keep 'em cheap and let venoms do what venoms should (park as close to 36" away from their target as possible).

As far as how to use them, they are far more effective as counter assault units. Since guard tend to be a little more defensive, sending them out ahead will get them killed. Instead, punch FMCs that get to your tanks.

So I got to play against DE yesterday and I'm still trying to figure out what to make of the battle. My opponent had: Supreme Sorceress on Peggy Hero BSB on Cold One 20-25 black guard 9 CO knights 2 units of dark shards (13 and 14 I think) 3x 5 dark riders 5 Doomfire Warlocks 2x 5 shades Hydra 2x Bolt Thrower VERY mobile and very shooty list. I knew with 4 units of fast cav and 2 scouts, he was going to try to overwhelm my flanks. So I put my blocks in the center with a unit of skinks in front of each block, then I had each flank anchored with skinks in a pond on one side and skirmishers and priest in woods on the other side. My steggies were just inside each of those units, I figured Sotek's shotguns would be good at erasing all those fast cav units. Then I had my terradons behind my flanks. Luckily I got first turn and the first 2 went really well. I killed all of his warlocks with some lucky rocks from one terradon unit, and I killed 11 of 15 dark riders in 2 turns too. So I quickly got control of the movement of the game. I still had chaff and he did not. My opponent pushed up with both the black guard and the CO knights and I did the same with my blocks. Then the damndest thing happened. Once I got close with my blocks, he just swift reformed with both units and ran back just the way he'd come. He realized neither unit could realistically take on either of my blocks (I'd whittled his BG down to about 12 or so), so he didn't bother. While his reasoning was rock solid, it was incredibly anti-climactic. Not a single close combat happened throughout the game... In the end, I had only fully killed his doomfire warlocks and one unit of riders. He managed to kill my 3 skink units, both my terradons, and one stegadon (got a lucky -2 Toughness debuff and it still held on for almost an entire shooting phase). Other than not failing the the 2 charges I attempted that game, I'm not really sure what else I could've done. He didn't want to commit to combat, so it wasn't going to happen. It's as simple as that. So I lost, but not even remotely convincingly. But I don't know what I could possibly have done to make the game any different. If we rematch and he gets first turn, I probably WILL lose convincingly. He'll be able to blast a lot of my skinks off the board turn 1 and then I will again have no way to come to grips with him. I just don't see a way I will ever have a good fight against an army like this and that's kind of discouraging. Is it a problem with my list? A problem with my tactics? I don't see any problems, just an inescapable conclusion. If my opponent is faster than me and doesn't want to get caught, I can't catch him. If they have more shooting than me, I'm basically guaranteed to lose, because I have no way of leveraging my strengths. Am I wrong?

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypography/ht/umlaut.htm That's what I found and it works. The usual Ctr;+Shift+: method doesn't work on here, unfortunately

I totally agree with your perspective here. Nobody is finding gold yet and that's worrisome. But, FWIW, I started a thread on this very board about a month after the Tau book was out, asking if people thought it was top tier. I was told almost unanimously "no". Average was the general consensus. Some things in 6th need to settle before they're properly assessed. But people are looking hard for that "something" and not really seeing it. That doesn't bode well.

Yeah, sorry, I was just being inflammatory. I couldn't help it.

True. They probably would've rolled the bus if he tried to shoot that anywhere north of Fife.

Kaaaaeeperpiiiiiick! That game ended on exactly the note it needed to because [big bad swear word] that guy. No head phones in the world will let him hear what he wants right now. *edit* Apologies. That was inappropriate.

Yeah! What makes it worse, Tyranic War Veterans have access to mycetic spores!

Don't get me wrong, nearly every unit in the book got some change or another, but a lot of them still operate the same way. Guardians are better, sure, but nobody really notices since DA are still the go-to due to their lower starting cost (wave serpent tax). I'm glad you like Hawks and I agree that they got better, but I still don't like them. They kill vehicles on turn 3 or later and kill guardsmen and other eldar pretty well. I need vehicles killed when I need them killed, not half way through the game at the earliest, and nobody ever needs to include guns to kill guardsmen because every other gun out there does it too. Admittedly, Spears got better but still need a lot of support to make them really do what they are supposed to. But everything that is bad in this book was also bad in the last one, usually for EXACTLY the same reasons. Scorps and Banshees are assault specialists with no reliable way to make it into assault, etc. They changed a lot in that book, but not what models people commonly take (aside from the new ones they released). It just feels like they put a lot of work into it for about 60% of the book and then said "f* it" for the last bit and didn't bother to fix most of the units that needed it. The tyranid codex feels much the same way, only worse. They removed or hamstrung the 4 best units in that book (Doom, Ymgarls, Pods, and Tervigons) and gave them almost nothing in return. And an army that occasionally, randomly, decides to lose you the game through no fault of your own, is just bad game design. Look at the Orks, they manage to be random and potentially detrimental, but not so detrimental that units destroy themselves! A nob might pistol whip a boy to keep them in line, and a Shokk Attack Gun sometimes teleports into CC with a blood thirster, but they are silly and small. A little more effort, and I feel like they could've captured the feel they were going for, whithout it all being sooo detrimental. For as necessary as synapse is, I feel like they should've made it 18" range in this book.

Ironically, this is actually my complaint against the Eldar Codex too. They changed quite a bit, but nothing that needed to be changed. Everything that was bad in the last codex is bad in this codex. Everything that was good in the last one is better in this one. A powerful codex, but a really half-assed change. But really, the only significantly changed books from start to finish are Tau and Demons. Everything else feels like a reboot of what it was. Could? Yes, GW could have made their own but, for some unknown reason, they never did. They realized that since they hadn't released a model for a pretty important unit they created about 4 years ago, probably everyone already found their own way to take care of it. Some people built their own, some people bought from other parties--like Chapterhouse Studios. Basically, GW would have to edge their way into a niche market they themselves created with their own short-sightedness; or, they could undermine the sales of a competitor who throat-punched them in court a while back. So... they went with the second option. But really, we shouldn't be that surprised. In the past 4 years or so, they've really stepped it up when it comes to making sure they've got the models to support the codex. It used to be that you had to scratch build good chunks of your army because they simply didn't make models for them, and that doesn't really happen anymore. So in keeping with that policy, they had a choice to make that choice. And as petty as it was, it was probably the right choice financially. Gamble on your own sales, or hamper your competitors? Not really a choice at all, unfortunately for nid players.

Do you know that it'll be able to cast multiple bound spells a turn? I hope so, do you have info we don't here?

I couldn't not picture Badger from Breaking Bad holding that camera. Seriously, the exact same voice...

Noice!

I'm definitely excited for some new Dwarf action! I'm hoping they get some options strategically, though. They tend to get a little dull after a few games. The tunneling machine and new 'copter give me hope in this area. Not sure how I feel about the Anvil going back to a bound spell again though. It didn't work before since the opponent could use all their dispel dice on the one and only spell per magic phase, so hopefully they don't go back to that. Maybe it'll cast several spells a turn? When's it rumored to come out?

Just talked to my girlfriend and she'd like to attend as well.