Ish

Everyone is the bad guy of the setting.

They come from the Thousand Sons Legion, but are not Rubric Marines. All Rubric Marines are Thousand Sons, not all Thousand Sons are Rubric Marines. The “Rubric Marines” are the piles of dust in animated suits of armor. The unit is called “Rubric Marines,” but fluff-wise the Aspiring Sorcerer leading the squad is not a Rubric Marine. Also, Rubric and Rubik aren’t the same word. Just, FYI... Although the idea of evil undead super-soldier armor being piloted by a multicolored cube is amusing.

I’m looking at it from a “fluff” perspective, not a mechanical one. I agree that vanilla Codex: Chaos Space Marines need a boost mechanically to make them competitive and live up to their “fluff” role as the Big Bad Evil Guys of the setting. (I say give’em all two Wounds, +1 Attack and +1 Leadership. Make their default kit a boltgun, bolt pistol, chainsword, and grenades. That’d make them more or less on par with Indomitus Crusaders Detachment Veteran Intercessors... and Chaos Space Marines have been doing their thing a heck of a lot longer.)

No < Legion > keyword, no Legion Trait... Pax was specifically talking about giving them the Iron Warriors’ Legion Trait. But, as Pax points out, the Rubric Marines in Codex Chaos Space Marines have the < Legion > keyword (p. 133, I double checked myself) whereas the Rubric Marines in Codex Thousand Sons do not have the < Legion > keyword. This seems like 🐮 to me, like running Ultramarines Wulfen or something, but it’s apparently completely kosher.

That’s some 🐄 💩 right there that is.

No you can’t. Rubric Marines have the faction keywords ‘Chaos, Tzeentch, Heretic Astartes, Thousand Sons.’ They do not have the < Legion > keyword.

Seems like this would require a lot of bookkeeping during play.

Yay, but den youse let’s some stinkin’ gobbos drive d’fings! Where’s da fun in dat?

Youse Space Orks don’t got boarboyz no more an’ youse just got dem squiggoths, we’z got roight proper dragons. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice... ...but, um, maybe if’n one o’yer mekboyz was ta go missin’ or somefing, like fallin’ through a portal say? Well, if’n dat was t’happen, maybes my ladz could find ‘im an’ he could build us some dakka. Youse guys would like krumpin’ da Sigmarines. Dey are like Beakies, but wiff proper choppas and dey get back up after ya krump’em so youse can haff an’uvver go!

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse It is very rare for me to say this, but... Believe. The. Hype. A truly great adaptation of the source material without overly burdensome continuity snarls from the comics (but still perfectly enjoyable by a nerd like me that knows the convoluted comic continuity). A heavily stylized art style that manages to strike the right balance between artsy and watchable. Great performances, excellent action (without skimping on quite moments and dramatic scenes). Genuinely funny jokes. If you have the chance, this is definitely one that should be watched in a theater.

Now, if they’d just give the Stalker Bolt Rifle some love... 36” Heavy 1 S4/AP-2/D1 just doesn’t quite have the “bite” that it feels like it should. Giving it the character targeting and Mortal Wound on a 6 rules of the Scout’s sniper rifle would probably be excessive and infringe on the Scout’s niche. Likewise, any change to its rate of fire would just feel off... It is supposed to be a precision marksmanship weapon. Maybe up it’s Damage value to 2? Won’t make a difference for the vast majority of infantry, but it will make it more of a threat to TEQ, Primaris-equivalents, light vehicles, and even make enemy Characters have to think about their maneuvering more closely. Give Auto Bolt Rifles the same AP-1 as Bolt Rifles, but keep Bolt Carbines as they are. Then all three Intercessor weapons all become equally attractive choices, although still specialized for a task.

Inferno Boltguns are 24” Rapid Fire 1 S4/AP-2/D1 weapons, which is pretty nasty for other MEQ armies... Most GEQ won’t really see an significant difference. Rubric Marines are something like 18 points each, so they deserve a nice gun.

I won’t be able to make it tonight. The family’s Fortress-Monastery is besieged by the microbial legions of Grandfather Nurgle.

My plan is to have a 6-point Anglo-Saxon warband as my primary. Maybe make a 4-point Viking warband, for demonstrating the game to new players (and maybe running as Saxons if I ever play a really big game). On my list of “when I get a workshop” projects, I really want to build a 10 mm or 6 mm scale Krak des Chevaliers lookalike and put together a pair of matching Age of Crusades armies. Saga actually word great in smaller scales, you just play the game as written, but with multiple tiny figures on each base. Yeah, sure, they can be escorts for my Thunderhawk. 😁

Ordinatus Aktaeus. I think I just had an orgasm.

Iceboy: “Oi! You iz zoggin’ brutal. But’cha can be my wingman anytime.” Maverork: ”Squig-squirt. Youse can be mine!” Fade to black. Cue Kenny Loggins.

Shoutin’ Waaagh! at da top o’me lungs and runnin’ about da place wit’me fav’rite choppa, ‘cuz Fant’assy Orcs ain’t got no dakka yet.

He’s just jealous that his army isn’t clad in the best of colors.

Plus you don’t get to run around your living room making wooosh-zoooom-wooosh noises while holding Infantry.

The only things likely to "wipe you off the board" that will fit into 1,000 Points are basically Übermensch Special Characters (e.g., Mortarion), super-heavy vehicles (e.g., Baneblade), and Knight Titans. So far, none of us have yet broken the seal on the nuclear launch codes and fielded any of these... And even if they did, these things are so pricey that you'd have almost nothing left to work with for trying to grab Objectives. Your big guy would need to wipe their whole army, their whole army could concentrate everything they had on just you. Sometimes that works well for Godzilla, sometimes Godzilla goes down hard. There's no middle ground. Leman Russ tanks and equivalent heavy-but-not-super-heavy units can be tricky to deal with, but they can be dealt with (a power fist [or equivalent] in mêlée works best or a half-dozen lascannon [or equivalent] at range). What makes them trickier to deal with than Godzilla is that they're generally cheap enough (300± Points) that a decent sized force of other stuff can be put on the table with them.

Strength 5 is kind of this edition's equivalent to Strength 6 under the "old money." Craftworld Eldar got a lot of mileage in 6th and 7th Edition from their ability to "spam" a lot of highly mobile Strength 6 units: Shuriken cannons for everybody! With the revisions to the Strength/Toughness system, Tau's massive numbers of Strength 5 guns have become very valuable in the "new money." Powerful enough to do well against Infantry, but not feeling like overkill when used on massed ranks of GEQs, a threat to MEQs, and decent enough to punch light vehicles and smaller monsters when used in quantity... and just good enough that even a heavy vehicle or large monster cannot completely ignore it. A squad Fire Warriors or Gun Drones probably won't kill a healthy Rhino, but they can probably finish off one that's already been hit by a Railgun or Fusion Blaster. Alternatively, if they don't have anything better to shoot at, they can soften one up in Turn N for a Hammerhead or Crisis Suit to finish off in Turn N+1. The trick to Tau, me thinks, is getting your order of activation right in any given turn's Shooting Phase and your target priority right over the whole course of the game.

That’s what I enjoy about smaller budget games. You can’t quite field an answer to every possible tactical question (let alone many redundancies), so you need to be strategic in designing your list. That’s fun for me, maybe I’m weird. Granted, my decisions are hampered by the limited pool of models currently in my collection. But I’m gonna keep growing it until I eventually have a full Battle Company and some support elements. It’ll be rare that I ever get to use all of it, but I’ll have lots of fun mucking around with combinations.

There's two Imperial Guard players and one Genestealer Cults player, IIRC. All three of whom could put a Leman Russ squadron on the table if they wanted too. Any of us Space Marine players could, in theory, field a Land Raider at this points level... But it'd be difficult to fit in anything heavier than those two tanks (in any of their umpteen variants) at 1,000 Points. I mean, I guess it'd be possible to field a pair of Knight Titans or Baneblades, but that'd be all you could field.

I did say eventually pick up. My problems with the price of this hobby are mostly self-inflicted, caused by trying to feed too many games at once. I've resolved to limit my 2019 purchases to just my Imperial Fists, my daughter's Sylvaneth, and various hobby tools -- an airbrush, new carrying cases, etc. Since I don't have more than one, maybe two, free nights a week there really isn't much point in trying to use them playing WH40k and AOS and Saga and Gaslands and Team Yankee and Necromunda and Blood Bowl... and honestly, typing it all out like that makes me realize just how silly it was to try. My Saga: Age of Vikings army is missing only four Hearthguard and a Warlord. That's a mere five figures... $20 tops. Then I need to paint them; My Gaslands collection is about a dozen cars, all painted and converted (although I want to add a turret to my bus); I'm planning to go back to Detroit this spring, so I can spring my old Empire army from storage and reorganize them into a Free Guilds army and my Ironjawz can just wait `til 2020... Team Yankee and Necromunda and Blood Bowl? Well, I don't actually own anything for them right now anyway. They can wait too.

Having looked over all the currently available Space Marine Flyers, I’m thinking that it’s going to be the Xiphon Interceptor that I will (eventually) pick up. Two twin-linked lascannons and a 60” Heavy 3 6/-2/3 missile launcher is pretty tasty. With no penalty for shooting Heavy weapons when moving and a +1 to hit versus Fly? It’s basically a Predator Destructor with a Devastator Squad attached. For ~220 Points! Plus, it looks awesome.