Conquered the Word!

Okies, It's been a while, so I'm going to re-cap a little.

A few weeks ago we had a small tournament to decide, who would be the commander for the forces of order and disorder for a planet strike campaign, after a decent run of games, I was chosen as the Disorder leader and my mate Dom as the Order leader.

So last weekend we had the campaign, and safe to say, the forces of disorder are now in control of the planet. The campaign was set up so that there were 3 tables, 2 tables with 6000pts per side and a central table with 8000pts per side. (So 20000 points per force, roughly.)

So the commanders split up the forces equally and created a rough game plan for their forces, the first 6000pts table, was a daemon summoning in a ruin in a dense forested area (Disorder defending mission.) This table, featured a large Khorne force against a force of Grey Knights, Space Marines and Imperial Guard. This table went quite well for the Chaos forces after roughly 15 Grey Knight terminators and their glorious leader, deepstriked and died in a less than spectacular assault on the ruin. This led to a victory for the forces of Disorder.

The second table was an Imperial Basilisk battery defending trenches on the outskirts of the central city. (Order Defending mission.) This table featured, Tau and Imperial Guard trying to hold off the immense horde of Tyranids, after an absolute barrage of shooting prowess, the Tyranid hive fleet was driven back, leading to a victory for the forces of Order. (Boo!)

The third table, was a neutral table (no attackers or defenders), simply put, this was a plant a banner in the central of the planet, the longest time spent standing in the centre, declared the winner. This was where I featured with the Word Bearers and a size able Slaanesh CSM force against Space Wolves, Salamanders, Eldar, Dark Angels and Tau. After an early rush from the forces of order they managed to get their standard bearer onto the central objective, but was gunned down before he could plant it, and after some defiler barrages and vindicator support the centre was clear for the daemonic hordes to reach the middle and plant the flag, also grabbing the Order banner and sneaking it back to some dank infested pit to defile and enjoy later. This lead to a spectacular victory for the forces of Disorder, despite being heavily outnumbered.

So the forces of Disorder claimed the planet and an enjoyable weekend was had, as you can see from the photo's found here: *Coming Soon*

Also, now I bet your thinking, he hasn't painted anything and while he is the best and most handsome commander ever, he's gotten away without painting again! Well suck this true believers!


Now I bet your thinking.... WTF? but don't worry all will become clear soon, also my Vindicator won the poll, so it will be painted next, so please keep reading and don't forget to..... aah you know the rest by now.....

Spread the Word!

Work or Word?

Hello again mes ami's. So it's time for another blog, well I should say its about time I get one done. Yet again I've a rather particularly handy excuse for my sloth, hey I always do.

Work. That thing you need to do to get money to buy the shiny devices that you want, for me in particular right now, it's to get me more Warhammer, in particular doing what I can to get my Orc's and Gobbo's going, and continuing to build up these Word Bearers.


So I've been working a lot of overtime lately, (Pink days on the calendar.) see I don't just make that stuff up. So it's taken away a fair bit of my time, time I should be painting obviously. So I worked this weekend, both days, and meant I was too lethargic to bother myself to paint. So I didn't get a lot done, but now it's Monday again and I'm back into the swing of it, and I've finally finished the second Word Bearers Marine squad, I've gone for a slightly brighter tint of red with these, as I don't want every squad to look identical. Anyways you can check them out below, follow the link-age. Also these are quite poor as they were taken with my Dad's Camera as mines was rather dead, I'll take some ones in daylight with my camera but for now, you get the idea.....

Check Em Out!: Word Bearers Squad 2

However, I now need to up the ante, I have a very large scale fantasy game coming up in February and it's fully painted armies only. So I've nearly 2000 points at least (not got an exact count yet) of Orc's and Gobbo's to paint, also I'd hope to have these guys done before then, although I can't see it happening much. Also as of January, I'll be away for 8 weeks on a work related course in England, meaning I'll be unavailable for painting etc, although I'm sure I can squeeze a squad or two with me and some paints, will see. So as you can tell I've got my work cut out for me, and to add to that I've got even more overtime coming up in December, meaning.... correct-a-mun-do. Less painting time, so apologies for my low blogging speed over the coming months, but I'll be here, trust me...... the Word has to get out there.

Getting A Word In.

So, it's been a week now since my last post, so I figured it was time to bring you up to speed with whats been going on.

I spent the first part of this week finishing up 5 Word bearers of my next squad, only 2 and a bit more marines and I'll be posting them up, so look forward to that. Then I spent the rest of the time fixing up the rest of my unpainted word bearers, as some of them are old csm's built by a friend I bought them from, so I had to trip a few shoulder pads off to put the word bearers shoulder pads as well as changing a few weapons to make my squads make sense.

The way I've been doing my Word Bearers squads are 10 models made up of:
1 model with Icon, 1 Aspiring champion (Power weapon or fist), 2 Special weapons models, 3 models wielding bolters and 3 models with bolt pistols and close combat weapons.

I do it this way so all my weapons are on display and it looks good. Also once I get one more set of 10 Chaos Space Marines, I'll have 60 (maximum normally allowed) and I'll have the set up where I'll have:

2 squads with 2 plasma's, 2 squads with 2 melta's, 2 squads with 2 flamers, 3 AC's with Power Fists and 3 AC's with Power Weapons. All of the squads will have an Icon of Chaos Glory also, this means that I can have any combination of weapons as and when I need them. Now I know what most will say, what about heavy weapons..... well I've never put them in a standard CSM squad and never will, and if I ever decide to, I'd just use my havoc's if I weren't using them :D


So once I'd finished working it all out and correcting it, I took a well earned break, and bought myself a well earned treat. The new Mega Paint set. Which I couldn't be any happier with, great value and storage, although arriving the day after my usual hobby night (Thursday) sucked :P

So my hobby night was spent touching up some word bearers and watching some mates play D&D, I had the occasional input, although not logical input. It was nice to be able to put my 0.02 USD into conversation for a little while because at the end of the night I couldn't even get a word in.

So, onto the weekend, now why didn't I do any hobbying you ask? 3 reasons:

1. Friday, I went home from work and had to go to a talk about F1 technologies with the head of the Brawn F1 team, and I received an award at the end of it for my college work, so I got to meet the speaker, which was awesome.
2. Saturday, I spent my Saturday organising my new Orc's and Gobbo's army, so technically I did hobby, and I will blog about that army too so keep an eye out.
3. Sunday, Torchlight, a PC RPG, developed by Valve, which is nothing short of amazing, it's like a fusion of Fable and Diablo.... which is what I intended my first child to be like, although there would be some monkey island in there too :P

But hey at least I got stuff organised and had fun, so just to keep you informed also, the last 2 poll results were Bikes and Obliterators, so I am currently ordering 3 Obliterators and 5 CSM Bikes. So remember your word counts and please, keep reading the blog.

Getting The First Word.

So this is something new for you to read over, my first blog based on gaming rather than hobbying, but let me explain the where's/whens and whys of the whole weekend.

I help organise events and tournaments for a local war gaming club called the Northern Knights, I was planning a Planet strike campaign with some other higher ups, and then I thought that we could have an event based on choosing the commanders of said campaign, through a 1000pts singles tournament, a kind of fight for reputation amongst your factions, because at our club it's generally the same 2 guys who are in charge and I thought It'd be a great chance for anyone to take up the responsibility, also this tournament would give me a chance to help some of the newer players learn the basics.

So the tournament was split in 2 sides, the Forces of Order had a tournament amongst themselves to find a Commander and the Forces of Disorder had a tournament to determine their Warlord.

Just like to say for those who can't be bothered reading, that the pictures I took, too few I believe, can be found here: Weekend Photo's

I spent the first hour or two of Saturday with 4 young, relatively new gamers, and using my old tau army and elements of my old marines and some new ones I acquired, to set up a standard 1000pts game and ran them through it. Since there were 2 actual tau players amongst them they assumed those roles and the other two players (one was SM and the other IG) took control of the Space Marines. I gave them the benefit of my experience and taught them how to use the armies to a decent extent as well as any other helpful tips. Also they all went on to play very well and generally do quite well for themselves, just goes to show, with the right words you can achieve anything ;)

Then it was time to Spread the Word! My list was basically comprised of: 1 Chaos Sorcerer, 2 Full Squads of 10 Word Bearers, 9 Thousand Sons, 1 Obliterator and a Dakka Predator (AC, HB's)


My first game was against an old rival, my greatest enemy, and one of my best friends. He is a follower of the Dark God's also, but of a more perverse nature. Slaanesh.
His list was basically, Daemon Prince with Lash, 3 squads of Noise Marines all with Sonic weapons and some Blastmasters, a Defiler and an Obliterator.

This game did not go well, my decision was to let him march to my AP3 weapons and try and wipe him out, I used buildings to keep my marines safe from the Battle Cannon and pick it off with my Obliterator. Sadly this did not work.... the fear of the cannon kept me in position while the sonic/inferno shootout raged, safe to say I didn't weather the storm that well.... thanks to the lash prince. Enough said. I lost this game 6-3 on kill points, but was glad to get something out of it, and only really disappointed in myself, Adrian is a veteran player and very good at what he does, just means I have to try harder next time :D

Disappointed and slightly angry, I turned my rage upon my next opponent, another servant of the Dark Gods. Dave. Yet again a very seasoned player and good friend. His list was roughly: Kharn, 3 squads of 5 Khorne Bezerkers, 1 Obliterator, 1 Defiler and 5 Khorne Havocs.

This game went well for me, I learned from my last game, I can't fear something like a cannon, that's not how we Word Bearers do things, we Attack, Attack, Attack until there is nothing left of either us or our enemies. So I took first turn and prepared to face off against the shootiest/stealthy Khorne I've ever met. I made my priority the Defiler/Havoc's after all charging out to those was not a great idea, after enough AP3 shots and some focused fire on the defiler, I was clear to flush the lurking Khorne out of the buildings they were hiding in. Only to find them try to counter charge me when I got close but fortunately he didn't quite reach me and I was free to gun them down, although my Predator was popped :( The only survivor of the Khorne forces was Kharn, who had stayed in the same building not moving all game, unfortunately I didn't get enough time to bring him down, so he escaped to slaughter another day. My first victory with I think 7-1 on kill points.

That was my day wrapped up, I had 3 more opponents to face on Sunday, (2 Nid armies and 1 Dark Eldar force.) but I decided to rest up and head to the pub with the guys. Hilarity ensued.

Sunday carried on smoothly, although my head was not, my first game of the day was against Mitchell, a Nid player with a decent amount of experience under his belt, his list was roughly: 1 Tyrant with Tyrant Guard, 3 squads of 20 Termagaunts, 2 squads of 3 Warriors and a Carnifex. (I think.)

Now Nids is an army I fear greatly, I think everyone does to an extent, but a lot of my most memorable and enjoyable games have been against them. So I knew in my experience the best thing to do was aim for the synapse. After a few turns of stationary shooting most of the synapse were gone and the Termagaunts began fleeing, this instinctive behaviour however did nothing to save my poor predator, the Carnifex (only other unit left) charged my predator and mauled it in a melee of pure destruction, (6 penetrating and 2 glancing hits.) He then managed to reach some of my word bearers but they managed to scrape a wound or two from him and fled, however they managed to rally and gun the final wound from him at the end, meaning yet again.
A victory on kill points can't remember the total however.... the predator now feels like a cursed unit for me as it's survived nothing so far :P

Next I moved on to face..... more nids..... damn..... I love nids.
So my next player was one of the youngest players on the Forces of Disorder, Brodie, now I have one thing to say about him. For his age, he is one of the most accomplished gamers I've played against, and I would have no shame if he'd annihilated me, at one point I was pretty sure he was going to. Brodie's list was roughly, very roughly: 1 Hive Tyrant with 2 Tyrant Guard, 1 Carnifex, 3 Warriors, 1 squad of Genestealers, 2 squads of Termagaunts and a hoarde of ripper swarms, think it was a squad of 9 or 10.

This was a fun game, my table was very open in the middle making his run to reach me very costly, after wiping out the shield of genestealers around his tyrant and fex, I focused my fire power on the hive tyrant and guard, eventaully wiping them out in turn 2 or 3, this just left me the task of fighting to through the swarms protecting the warriors, removing the last of the synapse. After more shooting from all my army at the rippers, one ripper swarm base was left with one wound and 3 Termagaunts hid behind a forest surviving trying to save a kill point. I made an effort to flush them out, but in doing so my Predator became immobilised. A victory again wih all my units still standing and losing no kill points, I didn't think things could get any better. I think this was a 6 or 7 kill point win can't remember.

My last game of the day was against Eoin, another very young member who usually plays quite well, roughly the same age as Brodie, he was using a Dark Eldar list, his list was: 1 Archon plus Incubi Retinue, Raider with 10 Warriors, 3 Squads of Warriors, 8 Wyches, 1 Talos, think that was it.

This game went very well, I managed to use my first turn to pop the raider and wipe out the squad of wyches, whilst the dark eldar set their dark lances into a better position I tried to take the fight to the enemy, but my predator became shaken in the process. The turns to follow were purely a Wych hunt (see what I did there) I managed to successfully hunt the rest of the warriors down and execute them. The Talos eventually fell to a combination of Obliterator fire and AP3 weaponry. Leaving the Dark Eldar wiped out, and my Predator no longer shaken, meaning I'd not lost a single model or kill point. This is to date the best I've ever done in a game, but I'd like to give credit to Eoin, he was generally unlucky with the dice gods (his archon even Overdosed on drugs and lost a wound) and didn't have as much cover as he'd probably have liked to utilize.

So 4 Wins, 1 Loss, 0 Draws and what came out to 28 Kill points in total, taking me 5 Kill points above Adrian, who came 2nd even though I'd lost to him.... and Dave came 3rd Even though he beat Adrian, weird how it works out. So anyways I was labelled the Commander of the forces of Disorder. Huzzah, This Dark Apostle couldn't have been any more pleased.

The forces of order commander for the planet strike turned out to be a very good friend Dominic and his Daemon hunters army. (a Pure Grey Knights Force by the way). With another close friend Niall coming second with his shiny new Space Wolves.

So overall a great weekend and learning experience for my Word Bearers and our club members, all of which were fun and enjoyable so thanks to everyone who showed up and get ready for Planet Strike my evil minions ;)

My next unit will be posted soon so please keep reading the blog and thanks to everyone at the weekend, I'd say more about it but to be honest my memory sucks and this blog is long enough :P