Favourite Mission Poll Result

The poll for your favourite mission has been running for a fortnight and is now closed. The results are as follows:

Annihilate 33%
2 Objectives / Capture and Control 21%
3 Objectives / Seize Ground 15%
4 Objectives / Seize Ground 9%
5 Objectives / Seize Ground 21%
Kill Team / Kill Zone 21%
Table Quarters / Occupation 9%
Move to opposite deployment zone 6%
Battle Missions 27%
Homebrew Missions 12%
Narrative Campaign 15%
Other 3%

Clearly, annihilate is by far the most popular type of mission out there. It's simplicity is its strength. But in second place is Battle Missions -- it is possible to hypothesize from this that the basic missions are getting very worn very fast and that variation is the key to entertaining play. The securing of objectives has a strong showing (particularly the high numbers of objectives), as has kill team / kill zone. I'm especially excited by the strong showing and popularity that the 200 point version of the game has.

I am in the process of getting together a large variety of mission types and intend to use this poll result as inspiration. Tomorrow, I will post what I have so far on primary missions. Stay tuned!

Shadow Sword: Part X. Las Cannon Highlighting and Finishing

The Las Cannons for my Shadow Sword are now essentially complete.

Painting-wise, I've gone around the sharp corners of the las cannon turrets with (a medium thickness) mechrite red followed by a thin line of blazing orange. The washed bleached bone has had a hexagon of pure bone colour applied around the edge, but that is all -- the wash itself remains un-adulterated. The boltgun metal has been touched up and highlighted appropriately, but not excessively and the searchlight got a coat of pure white followed by yellow (the pure white coat is there to ensure the yellow remains looking vivid).

The last step was to pick out each and every nut and bolt with blazing orange. I intend to replicate this step on the entire tank and perhaps add a final wash to be suggestive of some rusting. I may even add a few runny oil marks as I did on my Verdus Prime necrons. With all those bolts to be highlighted, I've got my work cut out for me!

Statistics: How Many Bloodcrushers of Khorne?

And to finish off our examination of the elites section of the daemons codex, we finally turn to the Bloodcrushers of Khorne. Once again, in order to answer the question we will consider what role we want the bloodcrushers to play on the battlefield. For me, it boils down to icon-bearing, anti-infantry, anti-monstrous creature, and anti-elite troops, with perhaps a smattering of light tank busting. Let's have a look at each of them.

Icon Bearing.
This purpose boils down to survivability. How many standard bolter shots (fired by marines) can an icon-bearing bloodcrusher take? Well, the marine will need 3+ to hit, 5+ to wound and then the bloodcrusher to fail its 3+ armour saving throw. That amounts to 0.074 wounds per standard shot. Or put another way: 27 standard shots will be required to take two wounds away from the bloodcrusher and remove him from the game (on average). Plaguebearers eat you hearts out! (yuck on second thoughts). Even against plasma shots, they'll take 5.4 shots to kill. So the bottom line is that bloodcrushers can make reasonable icon bearers.

Anti-infantry.
As usual, we'll put a bloodcrusher up against a squad of 10 space marines, with a power fist equipped sergeant. We will assume that the bloodcrushers get to charge in (which I hope is the case for you experienced players out there), meaning that furious charge is active. Given they might take some bolter fire on the way in, they have probably lost 1 wound already.

The bloodcrushers strike first with 4 attacks, hitting on 3+, and killing on 2+ (hell blades are power weapons!). That results in 2.22 wounds taken by the marines from a single bloodcrusher. Hence an unit of 4 or 5 should be readily able to alpha strike a tactical squad.

If the marines get to strike back, then they hit on 4+, wound on 5+ and cause a wound when the bloodcrusher fails its 3+ save. That means 0.11 unsaved wounds per regular space marine trooper. The bloodcrushers are not bothered at that level of pain. End of story.

Anti-Monsters.
Let's put a bloodcrusher up against a daemon prince of Nurgle to see what happens. They strike simultaneously (assuming the bloodcrusher charged in). The Khornate daemon hits on 4+, wounds on 3+ and makes it stick when the prince fails its 5+ invulnerable save. That gives 0.89 wounds on the charge.

The prince hits on 3+, wounds on 4+ and makes it stick when the bloodcrusher fails a 5+ invulnerable saving throw. With 4 attacks, the bloodcrusher takes a similar (0.89) amount of wounds in exchange. They're evenly matched, remarkably.

To take out the daemon prince in an alpha-strike, 4.5 bloodcrushers would be needed. Two would be needed to win the combat on the charging round.

Anti-Elite troops.
What about terminators? What about with a storm shield? Let's have a look.

The bloodcrushers strike first, hitting on 3+, wounding on 2+ and downing terminators when they fail their 3+ invulnerable save. With 4 attacks on the charge, that means 0.74 wounds. Therefore 7 bloodcrushers will be needed against a squad of 5 storm shield terminators to alpha strike them. Striking back, the terminators would hit on 4+, wound on 2+ and make it stick on failing the bloodcrushers 5+ invulnerable save. They take 0.55 wounds from 2 such attacks. Hence to statistically go better than a draw against 5 terminators, we will need at least 4 bloodcrushers.

Light tank busting.
Against AV=10, the bloodcrusher on the charge will have 4 Strength=6 attacks hitting (assuming the vehicle was not moving). Half of them will at least glance. Without going too much further, it is safe to say that even a modest number of bloodcrushers can pose a threat to light weight tanks.

Summary.
It looks like 4 or 5 bloodcrushers in a squad should be enough to handle most situations described above. Their only draw-back is that they don't move as fast as fiends of Slaanesh. But hey, in a daemons army: you can have both and play tag-team.

Statistics: How Many Flamers of Tzeentch?

Flamers of Tzeentch are known to be a "glass hammer". That is usually meant in the sense that you'll get one hit out of them before they disintegrate (due to enemy fire!).

So, what role do I have for flamers on the battle field? There's two broad roles really. Firstly: tank hunting, and secondly: elite troops hunting. Combined with their jump infantry status, they should be able to let rip one volley before perishing horribly. So let's have a look at how they do.

Anti-Tank.
Their main weapon is the template attack. It will automatically glance anything with an armour value on a 4+. Take two flamers, and I will statistically glance once. To get a reasonable chance of a high glancing result, about 6 flamers will suffice.

Anti-Elite Troops.
When people think of elite troops, they will often think about terminators. But plague marines are also a kind of elite troops due to their quasi-terminator saving throw and high toughness.

In one of the Warpstone Flux contests a while ago, we saw that flamers of Tzeentch were simply excellent against plague marines, even in small numbers (poetic justice or what?!).

Against terminators, they fare slightly worse due to the 5+ invulnerable save that the terminators have. Even so, a small squad of flamers can really take the fight out of a squad of terminators due to the breath of chaos. The statistics are a little hard to work out given the vagaries of template weapons, but from play experience, slightly less flamers than the terminator squad will be needed (i.e. about 4 flamers is often enough to take out or severely weaken 5 terminators, assuming optimal flamer template placement).

Survivability.
How many bolter rounds can flamers of Tzeentch take? Fired by marines, standard bolter rounds hit on 3+, wound on 4+ and kill on 4+. That's 0.167 dead flamers per shot; or 6 standard shots to down them. So in some ways, yes: they are something of a glass hammer.

Summary.
Even 3 flamers can pose problems for tightly packed marine squads. Taking a few more for anti-tank and anti-elite jobs ... and I think that 4 or so flamers is about the right number.

Statistics: How Many Beasts of Nurgle?

Beast of Nurgle are tough. And it's also tough to know how to play them unless we're using a mono-Nurgle Epidemius list.

Overview.
There are two basic, interlocking points that need to be made about beasts of Nurgle.

(1) Firstly, they are like having 2 plaguebearers on the board, wrapped in in one miniature. That is to say, they have the same statistics line apart from the wounds column and attacks column. They have 2 wounds instead of 1, and d6 attacks instead of 1. Point for point therefore, they are more deadly than plaguebearers in combat due to the extra attacks.

(2) The downside is that they're not troops. They cannot sit back on an objective and hold it -- they can only contest. But they are very good at sitting and contesting! To see this, simply check back on my plaguebearer analysis. Three beasts of Nurgle will suffice for an entire game of contesting (as long as they don't get charged).

For tar-pitting, three or four beasts will be needed against a typical space marine squad (again going by the plaguebearer analysis).

Anti-Monstrous Creature Role?
So, do beasts of Nurgle have a role to play against monsters? Let's put them up against a daemon prince of Nurgle and see what they can do.

The daemon prince will attack first with 4 attacks, of which 2.66 hit, and 1.33 wound. The beast will save a third of them with the invulnerable save (feel no pain won't work against monstrous creatures), leaving 0.89 unsaved wounds. If the prince charged, then let's round up and say 1 wound total.

The beast will get an average of 3.5 attacks against the daemon prince. Of them, 1.17 hit, 0.58 wound (no poisoned re-rolling here!) and 0.19 stick. Hence 5 or so beasts will be needed to just draw even. I think I prefer a large pack of plaguebearers to be honest.

Summary.
They're like plaguebearers, but have slightly more attacks at the expense of not being able to hold objectives. If I'm going to take them, I'll do so only in a mono-Nurgle list. But if I were to take them in a mixed daemons list, then I would take about 4 or 5 -- i.e. about half of the number of plaguebearers that I would put in a pack, due to their similarity to plaguebearers.

Statistics: How Many Fiends of Slaanesh?

Continuing the daemons codex review, today we turn to the Fiends of Slaanesh. Many daemon players swear by them and many opponents swear at them. Why is that? Let's have a closer look and address the question of how many fiends should a daemons player include in a squad?

What is it that I want to achieve with Fiends? Well, there's the anti-infantry role (obviously), the anti-tank role, the anti-monstrous creature role, the all round anti-other army role (almost joking), the hit and run role, and the moving fast to contest objectives role. I'm going to ignore that last point and take it for granted that you're going to move fiends quickly. That is one of their best points and one of the strongest reasons to field them. Combined with the hit and run rule, these guys can pose a problem for many opponents across the board.

Anti-Infantry.
I'm going to take my usual approach of setting them up against a squad of 10 marine. They will take a round of bolter fire before charging in to the squad (whose sergeant has a power fist, of course). The marines will hit on 3+, wound on 4+ and take a wound off a fiend on a failed 5+ save. That means an average of 2.22 wounds before the fiends get the charge off. That translates as one dead fiend. On the other hand, if the daemon player is worth his or her salt, they should take zero wounds on the way in due to their immense movement and charge range potential.

In melee, the fiends will strike first with a remarkable 6 attacks each. They will hit on 4+, wound on 3+ (rending on a 6) and the marines will make armour saves where appropriate. The results in 2 wounds, 0.5 of which will be rending.

The marines get a 3+ save against the 1.5 normal wounds, resulting in 1 wound caused in total per fiend. In exchange, they will suffer attacks from 8 regular marines (assuming the 9th regular marine perished rather than the sergeant), resulting in 4 hits, of which 2 will wound and 1.33 will stick. The power fist is likely to cause an additional 0.55 wounds. That's almost a dead fiend in exchange.

Therefore the fiends need to number more than 1 in a unit to win a combat...! Ten are needed for an alpha strike. But a few less than that is usually a good number. Dare I say that six(!) is about the right balance for this anti-infantry role. The fiends stand a good chance of killing plenty of marines and taking very few wounds in exchange. Don't forget to hit and run at the right moment once you're done!

Anti-Tank.
With a strength of 5 and rending, the fiends can be very damaging to opposing tanks. They can penetrate AV=13 and glance AV=14 at best, so there's not a tank in the game that is invulnerable to their claws (at some level).

Below, I give a table of probabilities to glance and penetrate a given AV value, assuming that there's a single fiend that gets 6 attacks on the charge to the (non moving) vehicle.

AV=10: 6 hits, resulting in 1 glancing and 1 penetrating hit
AV=11: 6 hits, resulting in 1 penetrating hit
AV=12: 6 hits, resulting in 0.33 glancing and 0.66 penetrating hits
AV=13: 6 hits, resulting in 0.33 glancing and 0.33 penetrating hits
AV=14: 6 hits, resulting in 0.33 glancing hits

Of course, it is very unlikely that the fiends will go for stationary or immobile tanks. So the above values should be halved if the tanks have been moving (but not flat out). I wouldn't recommend targeting flat-out tanks unless it is near the end of the game.

So if I want to penetrate AV=13 that is moving, I will require 6 fiends. But since the fiends will target the rear armour of a tank, we're mostly looking at AV=10, 11 or 12. The chances of penetrating these tanks therefore increases, but again (and from play experience) 6 fiends is about right. And did I already mention that's a fluffy number to have?

Anti-Monstrous Creature.
The main problem with figuring out how good fiends are against monstrous creatures is what creature should I put them up against? With infantry, I like to consider marines as the opposition (and therefore assume that eldar and guard miniatures will be easier!). In the absence of a good and obvious choice, I elect to put them up against a daemon prince. This is because it appears in two codices and is probably more common than carnifexes. Trygons might also be a good alternative, but let's stick with daemon princes.

The two creatures strike simultaneously (I=5).
The daemon prince strikes on 3+, wounds on 3+ and the fiend has a save of 5+. From 4 attacks, the fiends will suffer 1.19 wounds.

The fiends hit on 4+ and wound on 3+. But let's be evil and say that it is a daemon prince of Nurgle with T=5. They now wound on 4+ (rending on 6). The prince has a 3+ save against normal attacks (assuming an iron hide for a daemon's codex daemon prince) and a 5+ save against rends.
From 6 attacks, 3 will hit. Of those 3, 1.5 will wound (0.5 rending). After taking saving throws, the prince suffers 0.67 wounds.

If the prince has 4 wounds, 5.97 fiends are required to take it out on an alpha strike (let's round that up to SIX!). About three will be needed to win the combat. So again, not only is 6 fluffy, but it also works against monsters!

Summary.
Take six of them for flexibility: they can alpha strike a Nurgle daemon prince (and pose serious problems to other high toughness targets), they can penetrate tanks readily and they will easily win against standard marines. And six is fluffy.

And finally, none of the above assumes the unholy strength upgrade. Said upgrade will only improve the situation! Remember also that it is the sheer speed of these guys that can hurt opponents -- maximize this advantage!