5th Edition Farewell

Matt's Warlord Titan makes it's semi-annual appearance.

Fourth of July, time for BBQ, booze, and Apocalypse. And this time, one last battle with Fifth edition. 5000 points per side, Eldar and Imperium versus Orks, a timeless classic. Mrs. Blackheart took a lean army, and Matt took one model with his 2500 points. A big blue one. I took a whole lot of ladz. I had 146 models to their combined 38. This would be interesting.

Being clever gitz, the Orks went first and quickly revealed both of my cunnin' strategemz. A shield generator, which both of the Stompas stayed close to, and Precision Strike, which give a 2+ to hit any one target to all units shooting at it, like a big blue one. I unloaded a horrendous amount of firepower upon the Warlord Titan. I immobilized it and took away 4 structure points, only 5 to go! The Orks took typically heavy losses, but both Stompas survived, due to the shield generator saving them from the worse of both titans shooting. 

The Orks closed for the next two turns, losing one of the Stompas and a few of the Dreads. The small numbers of Eldar were overrun at great cost to the Orks. The Revenant Titan was brought down some lucky shooting that kept it from moving, and then it was swamped by angry boyz with power klaws. That only left Big Blue.

My last Stompa, Boss Mauler,  was badly damaged but finally got a good roll with the Gaze of Mork(or Gork) and took the last structure point from the Warlord Titan. Big Blue was not about to go quietly into that good night, oh my no.

The ever popular "Before"...

I had moved in close figuring I would have to take Big Blue down the old fashioned way, with power klaws and tank-busta bombs. With no structure points left; Matt rolled on the Catastrophic Damage table and did not disappoint. The mighty Titan detonated in a 27" blast.

...and "After" pictures.

The Mega-Dread, a BattleBuggie, 2 Trukks, 2 Bikers, 4 Nobz, 12 Tankbusters, and 22 Boyz where vaporized. Only my Warboss, a Battlewagon, a Dread and a damaged Wave Serpent survived the fireball.

A fine time was had by all, although Matt was the most affected by my Ork-Fu treachery. He could have recovered from the totally cheesy goodness of the Precision Strike, but the Shield Generator making the Stompas obscured and giving them  a 4+ save was just too much to overcome. 

Fun fact: In 6th edition obscured goes down to a 5+.

My pair of fighter jets where swatted from the sky with ease, I am looking forward to seeing them work in 6th. The current FAQ from Forge World gives Super-Heavies 3 hull points for every structure point, so that means the Warlord will have 27 hull points. Yikes. 

So goodnight Fifth Edition, and thanks for all the fond memories.

Next up, our first 6th edition battle report.

6th Edition Unwrapping

$75.00. 431 glossy color pages. 1 1/2" thick. And heavy enough it should have come with a kickstand.

Well the terrible time of rumors is finally over for now. I unwrapped my copy of the much anticipated Warhammer 40K, Sixth Edition rules about a half hour ago. It is beautiful, lots of new and old artwork. To be fair, some old art done in color and large sized. A few impressive gatefolds and a handy cat-inciting place holder ribbon.

It will take a bit to read and digest the rules to be sure. But here is what I gleaned in a quick thumb through.
Turn sequencing is the same, allies and flyers are in along with the new psychic powers. Hand to hand combat seems to have a lot of changes as does damage to vehicles.
The one thing I did look for right away (and was quickly disappointed) is the "To Hit" chart for hand-to-hand.  It is unchanged. Still maxes out at 3+ and 5+.
I'm still a firm believer that it should go from 2+ to 6+.

On a quick glance I like the new standard missions and deployment types. The Reserves rule has been changed, and for the better I think. Turns two and three reserve units arrive on a 3+, turn four automatically.

The fluff section is huge (101 pages), I look forward to reading it and seeing if anything has changed.
About sixty pages of painted minis, a 30 page hobby section, 50-ish pages of the ideas-for-battles type stuff rounding out with some nice looking appendices.

It will be a week or so before we get in our first game of Sixth, so stay tuned!

The Emperor Protects

Out of da blue and coming fer you

I just added the last parts to my Ork horde, for now.
 A pair of newfangled flyers.

Very nice kits, lots of weapon options. Which makes the rules in the White Dwarf sort of odd in the fact that the three variants have so few weapon options. Very un-Orky. So I'm working on some house rules to fix that. I'll put them up as soon as I get a chance to playtest them.

Next up, the final 5th edition Apocalypse game, this Fourth of July!

Carnage-Asada 2012

Time for the tabletop slaughter and BBQ that is the Atomic Warlord's second annual Carnage-Asada!

This years event was a 15,000 point Apocalypse battle between the Imperial Guard and their somewhat shady Eldar allies versus a whole lot of Orks.

The Ork players (Pete and myself) made two huge mistakes right away. We didn't add enough terrain to the field and created a huge cover-free killing zone in the middle of the tables. Then I decided it would be best to hold the Two Stompas and the Deffcoptas in reserve. Spoiler alert: Bad plan.

My Dread Mob.

Pete's awesome Skullhama anchors our left flank.

Mrs. Blackheart's Eldar

Way too many super heavies.

The Allied forces took the first turn, and Jeff wasted no time in wasting scores of Orks. All three of my Battlewagons and all four Trukks went up in Hollywood-style fireballs.

 It was at this point the magnitude of their deployment error got through the Ork players rum addled brains. By giving the Eldar and Guard forces only one super-heavy to shoot at they were free to decimate the Ork troops for two turns.

Right before all those Orks went boom.

One of our cunnin' Ork stratagems "Rok 'em boyz" was a lot of fun and did a fair bit of damage to the Guard. We will be using this very Orky bit again. At the bottom of turn two most of the Orks were off the table, but here come the Stompas!

Boss Mauler

GunHead

They torn into the Eldar and Guard. The Shadowsord and Baneblade were hit hard. A Fire Prisim, two Leman Russ and a Falcon were erased from the table. Could this turn the tide of battle?

Not a chance. Jeff unleashed the Warhound Lupus Rex on Boss Mauler... 

Two Turbo-Laser Destructor hits, resulting in two chain reactions ending with a Apocalyptic explosion.  

The sixteen boyz and the last Deff Dread standing too close to the Stompa never knew what hit them. 

The Eldar Titan took down Gunhead with some help. 

And that was it for the Ork assault. Then we had great BBQ.

Thanks to all the Warlords for another fantastic Carnage-Asada!

The Orks demand a rematch! This time we will devise our cunnin' plan before we start drinking!