'Ardboyz: Round One - Fight!

So we had a pretty good 'Ardboyz here at the Midnight Judges. Didn't make a tremendous showing in terms of numbers, but then half the people who pre-registered didn't show either. As a former redshirt I definitely felt the pain of the organizer. Those of us that did (Qustav with his Tyranids, Tyri with his Eldar, and me with my Steel Talons) at least made a good showing of ourselves. I'll let them post their own details, but without further ado, the write up!

Game 1 - Loot Counters Steel Talons vs. Traitor Armored Company.

I almost had to laugh. 2/3 of the games have kill points and I drew the armored company on the objective holding one. He had no allies, so he had no scoring units. That said, I still had to win this, and he was determined not to let me do better than a draw. Barring some unfortunate luck with powerfists (in one turn I rolled 1s for every single penetrating hit) this would have been a massacre.

As it was I got a major victory. Squad Bedwyr (double meltas) and Squad Thelonious (double flamers) held an objective a piece, Squad Lazarus having been blown apart along with my Librarian, and Squad Petrus-Postumus' last man sniped by a lascannon on the last turn as he desperately clung to an objective. Even so, all of my devastator squads, one vindicator, and the tank hunting dreadnought were still kicking, and he had, I think, 3 mobile tanks left to fight, and 2 were Hellhounds with no guns. All in all a pretty solid victory for the Golden Company.

Cheers: Revered-Brother Bran for proving that rending can still work by blowing the tracks off of his command tank and then ripping it in half in the assault phase, and just generally terrifying the heretic into forgetting all about half of my troops choices.

Jeers: Brother-Sergeant Lazarus. With Might of Heroes I expect a powerfist to do more than shake a stationary tank. I also expect to get more than 2 penetrating hits out of 4-6 attacks!

As a brief aside, having my opponent's friend nearby was really annoying. I'm pretty okay with people watching my games. I don't even mind if they bring up different rules interpretations, or remind my opponent of something like "Your Lictor comes with Flesh Hooks, so he is I 6 when charging into the ruins." I do mind when he gives tactical advice, suggests targets for shooting, and generally tries to play in a tournament he's not in.

Game 2 - Annihilation Steel Talons vs. Tyranids (Qustav)

We were pretty sad about this one. We were matched up through the swiss system, so there wasn't much we could do, but it was still sad. Qustav has a pretty tough nid list, taking full advantage of scuttlers and Monstrous Creatures alike. I didn't fully agree with some of the choices of the list (I don't like his 2 units of scuttling termagants), but he's got good synapse and good scary fexes.

The game started off pretty poorly (I hate Dawn of War and they used it for 2 missions, more about this later) so he had all of his genestealers and tyrants out and I had no devastators. If my rhinos hadn't been keeping him really far away with deployment push, I would have died real fast. As it was his flyrant quickly made itself a nuisance. Twin devourers with all kinds of upgrades dealt 11 wounds to my 10 man double plasma. I of course promptly failed 5 saves, killing both plasma gunners and the powerfist sergeant. Grr. Happily I completely annihilated a Genestealer squad with vindicator fire, and pretty heavily shelled another, but there was cover close to me, and that nearly got me killed.

Highlights of the first 3 turns were killing all but one genestealer squad, and of course the death of the Flyrant. Aside from that I basically withdrew, playing a conservation game. The second half killed off a carnifex, and chased off both units of termagants in the last turn of the game.

That last genestealer unit was a pain. I shot them with demolisher cannons till there were about 4 left. They charged and shook one of them. My vindicators promptly backed up, shot them, leaving two remaining. They were too close to my devastators, so they had to die. Squad Aodh (the plasmacannons) were even within rapid fire range with their bolters. My plasmacannons weren't terribly accurate, but still got two hits on two genestealers. Double ones. 8 bolter shots later one genestealer was still alive. On his turn he promptly ran over to a vindicator and with 3 hits rolled 3 sixes to rend right through my armor. To add insult to injury the vindicator died, but didn't have the courtesy to blow up and kill that loathsome bug. Cost me a battle point too

Final Result Massacre to me

Cheers: Brother-Captain Aurelius Aquillus in his first newly converted outing killed a Flyrant single-handedly!
Jeers: That damned Genestealer!

Game 3 - Get dat Jelly Donut! (Deployment zones/Kill Points) Steel Talons vs. 200+ Orks

Yikes. 180 boys, with Ghazghkull, a Big Mek with a forcefield, and an irritating habit of overlapping to give them all a 4+ cover save anyways. And because this was modified dawn of war that all started on the table, and none of my heavy weapons did.
He also started 24" on, with the first turn. Gulp. So I dutifully lined up my tactical squads to face down the area he was going through (the terrain funneled him a bit) He ran forward and I hopped in my rhinos and ran for it, abandoning my objective. A couple of vindicators rolled up to give him something to play with in a different direction from my troops, who were all running towards where my devastators had come in. Then he Waaaghed.

I wasn't actually expecting this that early, but Ghazghkull did get into contact with a rhino, and his boys did rip apart my vindicators, so I can't say it was a terrible move, by now though his boys were very spread out. Ghazghkull ripped apart the rhino, sending Squad Petrus-Postumus tumbling out, but honestly that was okay. Every squad that could blew apart as many orks as they could, opening up the charge for Aurelius and Cwethan who killed enough orks that Ghazghkull ran away and was killed. This is when the Ork player lost some of his cockiness about his chances. Honestly though he was still in a pretty good place. He'd left a pretty sizable rearguard for his objective (60 orks!!!) and he had mine. I had gotten 4 kill points for Ghaz and company, but he'd done the same for my vindicators.

The rest of the game basically consisted of me trying to bring down as many of his small expensive squads (kannons, deffkoptas) while holding off his big squads with rapid fire and heavy bolters. Not Missile Launchers and Plasma Cannons because Snikkrot jumped both of them. Last turn of the game he finally finished them off, and my heavy bolters gunned down all but 3 of them. They promptly passed their morale to my chagrin, as did both units of deffkoptas which my drop pod and rhino had forced to take tests. This turned out to be extra unfortunate because we tied on kill points, and because the objectives didn't matter unless you had both, we ended up with a draw. Oh, on the last turn I drove rhinos up to one of the objectives, thereby frustrating his victorious ambitions.

Cheers: Aurelius for chasing off Ghaz, and beating back squad after squad of orks, also for attracting the attacks of 15 orks in the last turn and surviving them all.
Jeers: The mission. Dawn of war is balanced because of the relatively small numbers. The modifications that they made give tremendous advantage to horde close combat. Very few armies can reasonably handle that amount of bodies, and if he'd done a better job blanketing the map, he very well could have won.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like 'Ardboyz

Hoping Kill Points won't be used for the win.

Don't have my exact list here with me, but here's what it's looking to be:

Brother-Captain Aurelius Aquillus (Master with thunder hammer, storm shield and other fun wargear)
Chief Librarian Cwethan Rathk (Epistolary with Fear of the Darkness and Might of Heroes)

Squad Gilbertus (8 man tank hunting Devastator squad with 3 Missile Launchers and a Lascannon)
Squad Aodh (8 man tank hunting Devastator squad with 4 plasma cannons)
Revered-Brother Bran Tank hunting Venerable Dreadnought with Drop Pod, A. Cannon and Heavy Flamer)

Squads Lazarus and Petrus Postumus (8 and 10 man Tactical Squads in Rhinos, Vet. Sarges with P. Fists, 2 plasmaguns a piece)
Squad Thelonious (8 man Tactical squad in a rhino with 2 flamers and vet sarge)
Squad Bedwyr (10 man tactical squad in a drop pod with 2 melta guns and vet sarge with p. fist)

Dagda's Hammer and Ogma's Maul (2 Vindicators with PotMS)
Squad Ghalib (8 man devastator squad with 4 heavy bolters)

17 Kill Points... ech. 5 of those are rhinos or drop pods which used to (cue whiny aside) give up 58 victory points at the max! (end whiny aside)

The whole army still works on my tried and true hammer and anvil theory. I set up a solid firebase (devs, vindicators) and try to crush my enemies against it with my cavalry (rhino squads, drop pods). It's a pretty direct plan (though one with a surprising amount of room for finesse), but one I stick to against all but the killiest assault armies. When that comes up I just circle the wagons and use the rhinos to harass while getting the most bolter shots that I can.

Haven't fought some of the weirder armies with this yet. Haven't fought a nob biker list or hell, even daemons with the marines yet. That said, in a lot of ways they play pretty similarly to my Eldar who have, and so I'm pretty confident of killing the xenos and purging the heretics.

I think my stock against horde armies has gone up with the new blast rules, and so I'm not as worried about them as I maybe should be. A horde ork army duffed me over pretty well at Adepticon Gladiator... though in some ways that seems like a hard thing to have avoided while packing the necessary anti tank to fight an armored company with a baneblade, or a hierophant, or a titan. Sigh... Gladiator lists have a lot of options for killing you dead.

I'm a bit worried about outflanking units (and my favorite/my most hated Nob ever, Snikkrot), especially scuttling Genestealers at the moment. Mainly because if I want to be out of a potential off the table charge, they narrow my deployment zone to a foot across. Not great with the whole 4+ cover save from my own models bit.

As far as missions go, anything that's not kill points I'm not too worried about. I've got the speed and the staying power for Seize Ground and the speed and objective clearing shooty for Capture and Control. I'm going to usually want to put the objectives in the open, but that will vary enough that I'll deal with it on a case by case basis.

I don't think there's a lot of preparing I can do for the weird things that the missions might end up being, but 4 mobile scoring units should help that out a lot I'm hoping. It may not be a windrider host, but the Talons should get the job done.

Back in Black

So, it's been a couple of months since our last update so I'll sum up what happened. I got fired from my job at GW, and so we took kind of a moratorium on 40k till 5th ed. That said, we're back.

I really have very few complaints about the new rules, my big one is that I'm not a huge fan of kill points and don't see what was wrong with Victory Points as a mechanism, but hey, my Marines don't get entangled, I can kill Tyri's Falcons, and my Orks can run when they're not Waaaghing. That's some good stuff.

We're still coming to grips with a few things, especially the new way of allocating wounds. I think I'm going to end up loving that, but in the meantime it's slowing down the games a bit.

Current plans are gearing up for 'Ardboyz and my first heartbreak of 5th ed.
My Ork army is all about the 200+ models. I have plenty of trukks and a decent number of bikes, but really for me it's all about da boyz. That said, 2500 points of boyz can't be reasonably played in 2 1/2 hours. Hell, they can barely be deployed.

For this reason I'm going Marines, at least for the first round. They had a lot of success at last years Ardboyz, and did pretty well at Adepticon. I'm going to be mixing in some more anti-personnel for the myriad of troops choices, and watching my flanks for genestealers with scuttling (shudder), but overall I don't think my army will be that changed from last year. Until round 2 when the new codex trashes my double flamer/melta/plasma squads that are the core of my army. So if I get to round two it may be with Eldar... or Orks if I can scrape together enough Nob Bikerz and Battlewagonz.

Next Years Matchups

So we here at the Judges are doing a bit of planning ahead for next year's Adepticon, and it looks like we'll be bringing 2-3 teams up. Now assuming that normal unavoidable flaking occurs we're looking at 2 teams. So we've decided to avoid the nightmare that is coming up with one gigantic 8 person themed team and instead decided to do two theming opposing forces. So we're trying to work out what to do.

Current ideas include:
Battle for Macragge (4 Tyranid Players v. 4 Ultramarines and Ultramar PDF Players)
2nd War for Armageddon (4 Ork players v. 4 armies of some mix of Blood Angels, Salamaders, Ultramarines, Ork Hunters, Steel Legion etc)
1st War for Armageddon (Khornate Demons and World Eaters v. Space Wolves, Grey Knights, and maybe some Imperial Guard)
Some Daemonic Incursion as yet to be determined. (Demonic armies of all 4 powers v. Daemon Hunters and Witch Hunters)
Siege of the Emperor's Palace (Blood Angels, Imperial Fists, White Scars and either Custodes or Imperial Army v. CHAOS!!!!!!)
Betrayers of Isstvan V (Alpha Legion, Night Lords, Iron Warriors and Word Bearers v. Raven Guard, Salamanders, Iron Hands and.... one more army from the same list?)
Something with the Eldar? Maybe against Slaanesh? Maybe Ichar IV against the Tyranids?

So a year to collect and paint 1000 points is a good amount, so I'm personally not worried about starting a new army like for the World Eaters last year.

So, Judges and (both) loyal readers lets have your thoughts. We'll put votes to this in some official capacity at a later date, but for now shoot down ideas or post some new ones, 'cause we want to get some really nice display base style theme points next year, and that means starting early.

Chaos: How Teurtullian Got His Groove Back

After over a year and a half break in 40k, jumping back with my fellow Judges to kick ass and chew bubblegum has wrenched me out of my non-40k stupor. Naturally, after playing Chaos since the beginning of third edition until I quit almost two years ago, I'm inclined to raze some planets in the name of the ruinous powers. In review of the chaos codex, I've found that this lust is well sated with a handful of terrible evils that seem to be both a mix of 3rd edition's standardization and 3.5's fluid character customization. Come along with me as I raise forth the banner of terror for the Mysterium, a renegade chapter of Space Marines who act as fell watchmen for a fortress world along the Eye of Terror's periphery.

Here's my immediate reactions to the Chaos Codex as a whole:

• It's Cheaper When You're a Thief
  Chaos space marines have some of the most points-efficient units I've seen in Warhammer 40k. Currently, trait-marines and regular space marines aren't granted the luxury of hot-swappable bolt pistol, close combat weapon, and bolter kits. Chaos, much like the current Dark Angels or Blood Angels, has these options. In addition to this, your standard Chaos Space Marine squad can take an icon in worship of the Chaos powers. This icon conveys the effective benefits of the mark to that squad, often for far cheaper than the previous analog in the revised 3rd edition codex. In addition to this, this icon allows you to demon bomb ala 3rd edition word bearers, with the caveat that lesser daemons are nowhere near as terrifying as full-on Bloodletters (more on this later).
  
  
• Substituting One Evil for Another
  Curbing the absurdity that revised brought to the Chaos Codex, standard HQ choices have been toned down substantially in this reprinting. Daemon Princes can no longer wield daemon weapons, and all heroes cannot select veteran skills and "daemon traits" (which no longer even exist now). In contrast, daemon weapons have become extremely more powerful, as mastery no longer exists. Sure, a 1/6 chance per-charge to suffer an armor-ignoring wound is scarier, but not taking a Perils of the Warp attack rocks my socks. Particularly, because now every Chaos HQ has an invulnerable save of at least 5+. The reduction in strength (awww, no more entering my opponent's deployment zone 1st turn through basic movement?) is met with an equal reduction in price: non-special characters are usually around 150-180 points depending on configuration, allowing you to specialize in your army.
  
  
• Play Nice Now, Children
  Chaos army selection is no longer limited by mark. Tzeentch and Nurgle units can run and skip together with glee. This allows you some extremely fierce combinations of units, allowing verbatim Black Legion to shine.
  

With these in mind, I'm attempting to create a Chaos force that suits my play style. I love mobile, percision armies, and the options the new codex gives me are stupendous.

HQ:
Until recently, this has been the hardest choice for my army. Naturally, Abaddon the Despoiler is always an option. At 275 points, he beckons you to use this anti-tank, anti-infantry, anti-everything monster with a cheap 90 point 3-man terminator squad for terrible terrible things. However, as I'm first designing a 1750 point list, 275 is a lot to ask. I'm sticking true to my roots here, and using a Daemon Prince.

As you'll read in the upcoming Adepticon reports, the Lash Daemon Prince is definitely Chaos' flavor of the month (next month's is Rocky Road). People all over Warseer have brought up just how terrifying having a powerful Monstrous Creature with an anytime "Word in your Ear" psychic power is for the last two months. Doing everything from killing bike squads with forced dangerous terrain checks to dragging units into close combat range is scary, scary stuff. For me, my Slanneshi Daemon Prince also serves the purpose of target acquisition for my shootylicious army. With 2 Vindicators, 2 Rhino-mounted 1k Sons squads, and a Missile Launcher-filled Havoc Squad, his tugs will lead to some very scary death. Hopefully.

Troops:
Troops rightfully serve as the core of my army. Using a trick out of the Space Marine codex' toolshed, I've opted to save points on a heavy anti-tank Las-Cannon havoc squad by kitting my 10-man tac squads to wield the weapon whose pronunciation is the most hotly contested in Warhammer 40k. Noting the strength of the hidden powerfist, each tac squad comes replete with an aspiring champion with p.f. If the best case scenario comes to pass, you're taking down an enemy vehicle or character model by sneaking from your squad and instant killing/destroying them at strength 8. Worst case, you'll make your enemy's close combat victory a pyrrhic one. Also, the squad packs Plasma Rifles, to trim out intermediate-range enemy heavy infantry/light vehicles. The Icon of Glory is cheap as hell at 10 points, giving the squad Mark Undivided. Sure, I'm effectively paying an extra 10 points over their old points cost. But with the ability to hot-swap for 2 CC attacks at whim is well worth it.

Testing out my 2-man Thousand Sons squad configuration's been very rewarding. 2 squads of 9 rubric marines and 1 sorcerer ride in two Rhinos. Each sorcerer carries Doom Bolt, effectively adding on another 2 18" inferno shots to the already prevalent 18-shot (on Rapid Fire) storm of STR 4, AP3. Pulling up next to a squad, dropping out of a fire point 2" away, and blasting away can ruin a space marine squad. The sons can also pack Personal Icons, allowing you to Daemon-Bomb a squad of Lesser Daemons while inside their Rhino to clinch an immediate combat. Unfortunately, given the vulnerability these armorless guys have, it's less of a terrifying threat and more of a clutch maneuver for the squad. Still, some fun can be had by using some old Word Bearer tricks. Packing combi-meltas on my rhinos add a sleeper hit when I pile out. Because people often ignore Rhinos, you can clinch a side or rear-arc shot on heavy armor with some misdirection and strategic chicanery. Aurelius's Rhino Tactica here is also an invaluable aid to my strategy, and learning how he uses these things for great justice gets me so much utility out of these now cheaper workhorses

Heavy Support
Damn it feels good to be a Chaos army with Vindicators. With these puppies now legal for all flavors of Chaos, you can mix things up to have all sorts of madness. Using Lash allows you to pull enemy units into intermediate 24" range for your demolisher cannons, and melt faces with blasts of siege-weapon awesomeness. If anything's left, I'll have my prince waltz on in and polish things off. The scatter risk to the prince is negligible with proper factoring for the scatter effects. With luck, you might not even have to move your tanks.

In the older codex, a squad of havocs with tank hunters and auto-cannons ripped the shit out of nearly anything for a reasonable points cost. Now, veteran skills are the way of the dodo. But non-las-cannon havocs are still mighty. I pack a squad with 4 missile launchers at 1750, allowing me to trim heavy infantry and still tank hunt to reasonable levels of threat.

In total, I feel that the Chaos Codex has allowed me to create a more well-rounded force that capitalizes off of specialty. This seems to be the contrast to 3rd edition's specialized armies, and shall prove interesting as more Chaos commanders take the field in 5th edition and beyond.

Death to the False Emperor, skulls for the skull throne, and long live Windows Vista: the profane nature of Chaos is just too good to pass up for this returning 40k player.

Brief Adepticon Overview

We'll post more details about exact scoring once the good folk at Adepticon recover from their fun fun weekend of horrible business and post the final scores for the tournament.
That said we had tons of fun and are definitely coming back next year (hopefully with 8-12 people instead of 4). None of us won any trophies but all of us had some really great games.

We'll all post summaries of the different games in later posts but I'm gonna go ahead and spoil the endings a little bit.

In Gladiator I went 2-2 with my Steel Talons Space Marines while Qustav went 3-1 with his Nidzilla list Hive Fleet Bilius (kudos there).

In the Team Tournament we didn't fair too amazingly with our Pre-Heresy Marines going 4-3-1, and getting tanked by one team of sore losers in sportsmanship really hurt us in our overall standings.

The Invitationals weren't quite as kind to Qustav who went 1-2 with a similar list, while I managed to barely eek out a 3-0 with my Marines, which I was pretty contented with and which contained one of my best and definitely closest games in a long time (a big thank you to Chad there).

All in all it was a great trip (even though they lost Tyri's registration which kept him out of some of the tournaments) and something I would definitely recommend to everyone else out there.

Coming soon, thoughts on next year.

Work in Progress: Nurgle Warband

For my first post, I wanted to talk about my current project. I have been slowly planning, assembling, and painting a small Nurgle-themed force. I'm not much of a converter, so the troops are basically just a mix of chaos space marine and plague marine bits, which shouldn't be confusing as all my troop choices will be plague marines. But that does mean they are mostly without boils, guts, etc. I am instead focusing on making the armor look as nurgly as possible.

For the paint scheme, I tried to go for a weathered, rusty effect that suggests a certain lack of upkeep - i.e., that these marines have not washed their armor since the fall. I start by painting the armor catechan green with a boltgun or tin bitz trim. Then, a generous wash of chestnut ink, trying to pool the pigment near the armor trim. Finally, drybrush with camo green to dull down the shine. The power fists and swords have sort of a lacquered bone theme: a coat of chestnut ink over rotting flesh. Pretty simple. Here's a sample where you can see the steps from first coat to inked and based model:

I haven't done much work yet on my Chaos Lord. He still needs a saddle in the back (about all the modeling I can manage with my limited green stuff skills) before the model is primed. Here he is on his daemonic steed:

Lastly, I am still deciding on the name for this warband. I'm currently leaning towards Children of Despair, or maybe the Sons of Pestilence. Any thoughts?

-Wintermute

***Next up: Updates of the fully painted squads, as well as my WIP daemon prince, chaos dreadnought, and chosen.***

Tactica Rhinos:

One thing that I flat out cannot wait for is when the Marine codex inevitably gets redone in the manner of Blood Angels and Dark Angels, and my Steel Talons (DIY Iron Hands Successors) get cheaper rhinos with smoke launchers already attached. I mean seriously. Rhinos are something I already love to death at 58 points (because really for 8 points you should always take Smoke Launchers and Extra Armor) because of how versatile they are. Just a few things that Rhinos can do with impunity are:

1) Actually get you to the enemy.
2) Tank Shock, Tank Shock, Tank Shock
3) Kill important single models
4) Block LOS and LOC

1) Get you to the enemy: They don't have the speed or resilience of eldar tanks (probably the best in the game), but if you set them up out of LOS (always do this) they really don't need to survive very long. Here's my basic plan of action, which for some reason I frequently see people not get.

Step 1) Drive forward and pop smoke. Now unless they have a truly obscene amount of anti-tank or you are silly enough to take only one threatening looking vehicle that is a pretty handy thing. For three points (or soon, free!) you get a turn where the chances of dying are dropped by 66%. Anything else that happens to your Rhino is okay. The biggest part of its job is done. As long as it doesn't steel coffin all over your men and entangle them, anything else is fine.

Step 2) Hop out of the unmoving transport. This will get you a surprisingly good charge distance. Most people expect you to be charging 12" from a transport. Instead you are charging nearly 15" because of the disembarking movement. I can't come close to counting how many surprise charges I've gotten because of this. If you're planning on shooting you can drive the tank up before hopping out, but an important thing to remember about this is that aside from being able to spin around to change the access point's location, you haven't gained any movement over the charging folk.

Step 3) Profit. Your squad is basically in the enemy's deployment zone and is free to run amok either blowing them away with point blank bolter fire with a rhino covering their back or just charging on in and killing everything.

The important thing to note here is that you never stay in an unsmoked rhino that can be seen. Armor 11 isn't wet paper, but if the enemy has a box cutter you're still in trouble. You can take the wounds as power armor is pretty damn tough and even a fast moving full squad will only take about 2 casualties from their tank exploding around them. What they can't take is the entanglement.

2) Tank Shock, Tank Shock, Tank Shock!

Make your enemy hate your rhinos. Most armies in 40k have pretty good morale. I can't think of one off hand that doesn't have easy access to Ld 10, re-rolls, fearlessness or what have you. Not everyone will take these things though so you will see a lot of 9s and 8s. If you ever find yourself going up against small units of orks, guard without officers or tau without ethereals or command nodes just laugh for a bit, the rhinos will more than pay for themselves.

Even if you're going up against a scary unit like Harlequins though, keep in mind. Ld 9 has a 1/6 chance of failing. That's not a lot, but you can keep doing this basically every turn until your enemy hates your empty rhinos enough to shoot them, and even then, he only needs to fail once. Don't forget you can Tank Shock 6". If your enemy has good close combat anti-tank it may be worth giving up the storm bolter, but never forget that you've got the option.

3) Kill important single models

By this I don't mean assassinate enemy HQs. That is immensely funny when it works, but usually a waste of your time. What you're trying to do is find the places where causing a single wound benefits you the most. A single storm bolter is not a very intimidating amount of firepower. But when your enemy is a casualty away from being knocked below 50%, it's excellent.

Oh, and unless you really have nothing better to shoot at, forget the rear armor of vehicles. I know that you've killed the Falcon of Invincibility before by doing it. It doesn't matter. One time in Monopoly I got a hotel on Boardwalk and cleaned out my little brother in one turn because of it. Illinois still gets landed on more. Needing a 6 to glance and then another 6 to
destroy renders the whole thing pretty unlikely. If all you need is to stop it from shooting, you've got just under a 1/3 chance (assuming both shots hit, which is a silly assumption) and that's not quite terrible. But I'll still say that shooting for those min-maxed squads is gonna be your better bet.

4) Block LOS and LOC

This is the moneymaker as far as top players are concerned. For 35-58 points getting mobile cover is amazing. You can use Rhinos to choke off firing lanes allowing you to concentrate on one section of the enemy. Blocking LOC (line of charge) is a little trickier. The main mistake I've seen is when people try to use the rhino as a speed bump. They stick it out close to the enemy that's not gonna be able to charge this turn anyways. All this does, even against an enemy that doesn't have a good shot at killing the rhino up close is give them an extra 6" of movement, especially if your opponent is clever at his order of charging models. Where the rhino is golden is that last second save. Your rhino makes a full 1" ring around itself impassible terrain for the enemy in the movement phase, and does the same thing in the assault phase as long as they don't charge it. If it's turned side towards the enemy that can mean a whole lot of runaround for those angry angry genestealers which can give you that whole turn of close range rapid firing to cut them down a bit more.

This post is starting to feel a bit long, so I'll close with this. Rhinos are not something you forget about after the squad is gone. Transport is an important job, but you can get so much more out of these tanks. One game that I brutally misplayed against a very skilled Eldar player went from Victorious Slaughter at the Top of turn 3 to less than 100 points from a draw at the end entirely due to 2 rhinos and 2 drop pods that relentlessly tank shocked his units, stayed within 6" to keep them running till the end of the game, shot them below scoring and when they finally died exploded all through his ranks.
Never forget to use them.

-Aurelius

1000 Points of Pre Heresy World Eaters

So I figured I'd start off the site with the project that the Judges have been working on most recently. In the Adepticon 40k Team Tournament we'll be bringing a team of Pre-Heresy World Eaters, Emperor's Children, Death Guard, and Thousand Sons.
For myself I'll be bringing the blood crazy frothing maniacs. The list I'll be using is Blood Angels; I considered using chaos marines with the icon of Khorne, no Berzerkers to help show the difference between then and now, that kind of thing, but I ended up going with Blood Angels to show the whole pure thing a little better.

Brother-Captain Ehrlen Gak: A Chaplain with Bolt Pistol, Power Sword, Frag Grenades, Melta Bombs, a Conversion Field (Rosarius), and a Jump Pack. 125

Veteran-Squad Menin: 8 Veteran Assault Marines with Bolt pistols and Chainaxes, Jump Packs, and frag and krak grenades. Two Marines have Power Swords and Sergeant Menin has a Power Fist. 280

Assault-Squad Fleiste: 10 Assault Marines with Bolt Pistols, Chainswords, Jump Packs and Frag and Krak grenades. Sergeant Fleiste has a Powerfist. 275

Assault-Squad Wronde: 10 Assault Marines with Bolt Pistols, Chainswords, Jump Packs and Frag and Krak grenades. Two Marines have Plasma Pistols. Sergeant Wronde has a Powerfist. 305

Berserk Squad Wrathe: 3 Berserks with dual Chainswords, Jump Packs, Frag and Krak grenades and Bolt Pistols 15

The main thing I see as controversial is using Chaplain rules to represent Captain Ehrlen. My main thinking on that is that when you read Galaxy in Flames and actually meet him he doesn't come across to me as the kind of commander who is constantly monitoring everything about his army and basically controlling it like an extra appendage. He gives orders, but he mainly seems to be all about the charge, and of course he dies by being dragged down and ripped apart by superior numbers. Seems like a chaplain to me.