Assembling my army...

Given that I plan to flesh out my battle force with detail and description, I've figured that one of my first tasks must be to come up with a standard battle list – an 'all comers' force that I can use for a variety of purposes. (There is another reason for this; another of my New Year's Resolutions is to 'go on the road' more for battles, and if I have a standardized force then I can have it ready to transport without any messing around...) One of the great challenges of 40k is to come up with a force that is competitive against any army, but my primary concern was an army that was fun, and followed the background properly.

Given that my background details came from Space Crusade, I took a look at the components. It boiled down to three Tactical Squads, three Scouts Squads, and three Tarantulas. Immediately I resolved that my usual force would have to include these elements; that's a pretty good basis for a battle force in any case. I decided to optimize my force at 1,500 points, my local meta usually fights at this size, and going for this points level seemed logical. So – I had my troops, essentially.

At this point I then looked at my list to see what I wanted to take; this boiled down to getting out my favourite models, and looking over my favourite parts of the army list. I never think that a list is truly complete without a Captain; regardless of the 'fluff', a Space Marine force needs a leader, so that was my primary HQ, and a Librarian is always fun. I've been a sucker for psychic powers since Dark Millenium. There had to be an Inquisitor, also...and if he wasn't also a psyker, well, I was missing a trick. At this stage I really wanted a Techmarine...so he went onto the table as well. This is a bit of a controversial choice, I know, but damn it, I love the model!

I wanted some elements of heavy support, of course. Now, I've been a fan of Devastator Squads even when they were far too expensive in 5^th Edition; today I consider them a must-buy. I went with a load-out of three missile launchers and a plasma cannon. The Sergeant will give the Plasma Cannon a ballistic skill of five with his auspex, and the Inquisitor will usually be providing the Devastators with a Divination-based re-roll, which seemed to nicely mitigate the disaster of 'Gets Hot'. For extra boom, I took a Whirlwind – and added a Storm Bolter to it for safety. I've used this figure a lot, and it's been attacked at close range often enough that a Storm Bolter would have been handy, not to mention the disaster that 'weapon destroyed' otherwise represents.

Back to the troops, which needed transport. Rhinos are of course the usual stand-by here, but having used them an awful lot, I wasn't convinced. I didn't want to transport everything into battle in any case; I wanted to split into combat squads, and an idea was evolving. Four Power Armour squads – four characters. Each squad could be led by a character to serve as bodyguard, and to give each one extra muscle. Heavy Weapons teams at the rear to provide fire support and hold objectives, Attack teams at the forefront to secure objectives in the mid- to late-game. The Tarantulas gave me the idea – Razorbacks. I rationalized that my Techmarine had probably attached the Tarantulas to Rhinos for extra mobility at some point! I wanted one Veteran Sergeant, and gave him a Power Axe; the others I left as they were, though one of them got a Plasma Pistol for extra punch. For heavy weapons, I went with two Missile Launchers and a Heavy Bolter, and for special I took a Plasma Gun, a Meltagun and a Flamer, considering that a reasonable mix.

Scouts came next. I'm a traditionalist with Scouts; I don't like the 'Sniper' variant, probably because I've never had any luck with them! Land Speeder Storms can be good, but used singly have a tendency to die gloriously. Looking at the old loadouts, it seemed to be Combat Knifes, Bolt Pistols, Bolters, and Heavy Bolters. Perfect; I had to pick up a couple more squads, but it was worth it. I ended up with two 'Assault' Scout Squads with Combat Knives and Bolt Pistols, and one 'Tactical' Scout Squad with Bolters and a Heavy Bolter. I can infiltrate those ahead of my battle force to cause nice surprises to my enemies...

That was pretty much it! No tanks, not really, just APCs, but a character-heavy force was exactly what I was looking for. I can make a lot of detail out of these – there are five characters I can go to town on, counting the Veteran Sergeant, and seven squads to detail. In addition – I think this is a pretty decent, balanced force, with a good amount of anti-armour and anti-squad heavy weapons, decent mobility, and potentially nine scoring units. That's going to be a handful to take down in a battle...I just hope it is enough to do the job! Naturally, this could well be subject to tweaks and alterations...but here is my fifteen-hundred point battleforce.

Headquarters

Captain (Power Sword, Artificer Armour)

Librarian (Force Sword, Psychic Hood)

Inquisitor (Psyker, Power Armour, Force Sword)

Techmarine (Servo-Arm)

Troops

Tactical Squad (Veteran Sergeant, Power Axe, Missile Launcher, Plasma Gun, Razorback )

Tactical Squad (Flamer, Missile Launcher, Razorback)

Tactical Squad (Plasma Pistol, Meltagun, Heavy Bolter, Razorback)

Scout Squad (Combat Knife, Bolt Pistol)

Scout Squad (Combat Knife, Bolt Pistol)

Scout Squad (Bolter, Heavy Bolter)

Heavy Support

Devastator Squad (Missile Launcher x3, Plasma Cannon)

Whirlwind (Whirlwind Missile Launcher, Storm Bolter)  

Relaunch...

Well, welcome to the relaunch of my Warhammer 40,000 blog, a collection of battle reports, ponderings, musings, reviews and comments about Warhammer 40k. I'm hoping to be posting on this blog at least semi-regularly, certainly after every game; one of the resolutions I have made for 2014 (and yes, I know that I am writing this in 2013) is to not only play 40k more regularly, but also to keep up my blogs a lot better than I did this year. The fact that my posting in 2013 represented a substantial improvement over the last few years is more of a testament to my failures before!

Primarily, I'm an Ultramarines player. I have an Ork army, and as a result of the recent Codex: Inquisition sourcebook, I have an Inquisitor as well, but most of the time I play Space Marines, and God was the new codex an extremely welcome one! I already don't know what I would do without it, and the Ultramarine Tactics have been key in several battles. Something I have toyed with in the past – and now mean to seriously do – is to come up with an extended narrative for my army. I'd like to be in a position to properly remember past glories, and put them into some sort of context.

Recently, I was listening to a few Overlords podcasts where there was some interesting discussion about narrative army lists, and I think we're going to be doing a lot more along those lines in the year to come – in any rate, I mean to – and so I decided to come up with a theme for my army. This is one I have played with, one that goes right back to my origins in 40k – Space Crusade! And its expansions, and Advanced Space Crusade. This already gives me an interesting backstory that I can explore in future posts, giving a 'past' to my battleforce. I already know that they need to be something a bit exceptional – Renegade Ultramarines. If only because half the time I am fighting other Chapters...

I fought a pair of battles this weekend that have really kicked things off. Both of them were with the same opponent, playing essentially the same army, and had all of this in mind. I wanted to field-test Codex: Inquisition (I've loved the idea of Imperial Agents sub-lists since the Black Codex, and nothing has changed for me) and he was interested in an all-Terminator force – as well as field-testing the new Inquisitors! My list consisted of a Librarian, Inquisitor, pair of Tactical Squads in Razorbacks, Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon, and a Devastator Squad. A thousand points a side; I was facing a Dreadknight, fifteen Terminators, a Vindicare Assassin and another Inqusitor.

Already we have an interesting narrative here, and the game really gave us a basis to work on. Two Inquisitors fighting it out does not happen every day. Every month, perhaps, but not every day. Given that one had Ultramarines and one had Grey Knights, it was apparent quite early on that I was not on the side of orthodoxy. I haven't gone into any detail about why my force has decided to go rogue, but I think I can find some interesting titbits in my chosen source material.

Tactically, I realized right at the start that I had to knock out as many Terminators as possible. If they got into close combat in any sort of numbers, I was finished. My opponent began to march across the battlefield, but made what I considered a tactical error; he chose to shoot instead of run in the Shooting Phase. His storm bolters made almost no impact, and it gave me a critical extra round to attack. Both of my Psykers were using the Primaris Powers of Divination and Telepathy; my Inquisitor was basically just sitting with the Devastators while the Librarian's goal was to survive long enough to use his Psychic Scream. The only real threat was the Assassin...but he turned out to be as effective as throwing rocks at the Librarian. Some of the Terminators actually made it, but by the time one reached my deployment zone, he was the only one left. The game ended with one Terminator in my deployment zone, one running away next to the Inquisitor. The Dreadknight had been killed by the Scream – one look at my Librarian had evidently been enough!

I lost, two points to none. I'd not had a chance to claim any objectives, and my opponent had managed First Blood and Linebreaker. I rather think I had a moral victory here. Nevertheless, all part of the narrative, and we decided that 'victory' in this case meant that he had been able to get word of the survival of my Inquisitor – for it was apparent he was the source of all the trouble – back to Grey Knights Command, who promptly dispatched a second, almost identical force. We left the terrain as it was, and kept the same sides of the table for the battle, reasoning that my forces had probably dug in. Indeed, I hardly had to move any of my forces, just put the casualties back onto the table, though I did make a few tweaks.

This battle was a total whitewash. For the Ultramarines. One Tactical Combat Squad – with bolters, a plasma gun, and a plasma cannon – killed four Terminators (for the loss of the plasma cannon Marine) – and that rather set the tone. The only serious threat to reach my side of the table was the Dreadknight, and here we really had an epic. I'd managed to scream two Wounds from him the round before his charge, and a lascannon had taken another one. With no other choice – and my enlarged Tactical blob by far the largest thing left on the table, he charged. I fired everything, all the bolters, missile launchers, everything in overwatch. Nothing had any effect. All that was left was my Inquisitor with his bolt pistol. I rolled a six to hit, a six to wound, and my opponent rolled a one for his save.

Yes, the Dreadknight was taken down by my Inquisitor with a Bolt Pistol. This is the stuff of which legends are made, and why I keep coming back to 40k.