Wednesday, June 9, 2010


Hey guys,
First off I would like to apologize for my recent lack of posts, I'm not going to use a lame excuse like to much school work or lack of sleep, but frankly, I have been going through those symptoms, if you will, and it is only my fault. But anyway, on the upside, because of end of financial year sales, my family has recently purchased a laptop notebook on the cheap and I will also be picking up some jobs on Internet programming, so that the money will be coming in and I will be able to do a lot more hobby.

To get on with it, today I will be debuting a new segment about tournament preparation called "Lock 'n Load". The inspiration for this is that I will be attending the "Lords of Terra" tournament in late July, some Aussie east coasters may have heard of it, and I thought no better way to go through my tournament preparation then to share it through posting thoughts and tutorials about it. So, in this post I will be going through the initial army list build.

The first thing I would recommend would be selecting good troops choices. This is where flexibility comes in. Being able to deliver firepower or hold objectives well. Some examples of good troop units are; 10 Tac marines, 30 Ork Boyz, 10 Plague Marines, 12 Fire Warriors.

I would then recommend choosing your other FOC slots. HQ's, Elites, Fast Attack, Heavy Support. HQ choices are good for either being a hammer unit, eg Farseer and Seer Council on jet bikes, or support characters, like lysander or eldrad. Good elite units are usually good when really shooty, or tank hunty, like Zoanthropes, or really assaulty, like Terminators in a land raider or Nobz. Fast Attack choices usefulness vary from army to arm and are mostly subjective, so I will not touch on any of these and anger anyone. Heavy Support choices are very good if used properly and are sometimes easily broken, like 3 land raiders, multiple long fang squads with missile launchers and relentless and 3 trygons/mawlocs.


Those are my thoughts on army building, so I thought I would show you my first draft of want I am planning to take.

HQ:
Captain Galernus
Counts-as Lysander.
200

Epistolary Librarian (psychic powers Gate of Infinity and Nullzone).
Termi Armour with Storm Bolter.
180

TROOPS:
10 man tac squad.
Flamer, Lascannon
180

5 man Scout squad
Heavy Bolter (Hellfire)
85

10 Man tac squad
Meltagun, Plasma Cannon.
180

5 man Tac Squad
Sarge has teleport homer.
105
Razorback
Hunter-Killer Missile
50

ELITES:
5 man Termi Squad
Assault Cannon
230

Venerable Dread
Assault Cannon, Missile Launcher
185

5 Man Termi Squad
Heavy Flamer
205

HEAVY SUPPORT:
Dev Squad
2 Heavy Bolters, 2 Missile Launcher
150

TOTAL: 1750

Well, that's it for the first Lock 'n Load. Remember to follow my blog and me on twitter @spinner5555.

Till Next Time,
spinner

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Hey Guys,
As I said in the last post, I am trying to hit the blog hard, so hot off the presses, here is a review of the newly released expansion for Warhammer 40k "Spearhead".
Ok, Spearhead is a series of rules based on massive armies of armoured (Aussie spelling) forces clashing into each other on an epic battlefield. At the end of these battles, carnage is the only evidence of living things as everything is destroyed by the crushing strength of the massed armour that has crossed the now barren lands.

The main mechanic of Spearhead are apply named, Spearhead Formations. Spearhead Formations are units of tanks, walkers skimmers or even bikes that tread (or, speed) across the battlefield, decimating their enemies with massed fire power. They move and deploy exactly the same as the do usually. There are many different Spearhead Formations used for different reasons. Crusher Spearheads used for massing tank fire, Monstrous Spearheads for bringing the strength of monstrous creatures and even a Super-Heavy Spearhead to bring the stubbornness of a super-heavy vehicle to the playing field.

Organising a battle of Spearhead is not much different to a regular one. You pick forces, do battlefield prep, choose a mission and deployment, then deploy the forces. The differences aren't the steps, but are actually in the steps, if you get what I mean. First off, the force organisation chart hasn't changed except for the fact that Spearhead Formations are a seperate (Aussie spelling again) part of the chart. You may take one of every type of formation, so you could take 12, although I do not recommend it. The other two changes are the missions, which are based mostly on objective taking, and deployment, which do not encourage close quarter fighting. The missions are all based on objectives and scoring units. In Spearhead, scoring units are troop choices, as usual, all spearhead formations, as expected when trying to promote taking the formations, and all tank and walker units are scoring, wow, sounds like a good marketing strategy for selling models 'wink wink, nudge nudge'. Back on track now to the changes in the deployment, units, including Spearhead formations, now deploy off the short board edges.

I would play Spearhead with probably 2 HQ's and 2 strong Troop choices in transports, 2-4 Spearhead formations, depending on the pints level, and maybe some Elites or Heavy Supports, depending on your army, for tank/armour hunting.

My opinion on this expansion is it seems fun but it will not be regularly played by various gamer groups. It will not flop as much as planet strike but will not be as popular as apocalypse, maybe the same level a little bit higher then cities of death. On 1-10 gamer coolness rating, 1 being playing the "that guy" who is the jerk of the tournament to everyone, and a 10 being blowing up a Leman Russ with a deep striking gun drone, I would give this game a 6. Pretty good, but wont last a long time, only in my opinion. One part I can give a 10 is how Games Workshop produced it. A White Dwarf/PDF expansion in my mind is much better then a 50 page book of nothing that takes a month of no good releases (*cough* planetstrike *cough*).

Once again guys, thanks for reading, remember to follow the blog to your right and follow me on twitter @spinner5555.
Till next time,

spinner

 

blogger templates | Make Money Online