Let's Talk Tactics: More Cityfighting

I've been having regular games with a player new to the hobby of 40k: My friend of 10+ years and now my newly-promoted manager at work. I got him into playing 40k recently when I gave him a 1500 point Space marine force to call his own (yes it was very generous, but I knew that is the only way I would get him hooked). Now, at least one night a week, we try to get together to have a game. We almost always play Cityfights because it purposefully unbalances the game. If we played the same 3 scenarios out of the standard rulebook, our games would stagnate quickly. To get to the point, my friend has brought a fresh pair of eyes to the cityfighting aspect, and has taught me a few things about successfully navigating the ruins.

The method is there for a reason-
It may seem ridiculous to follow all the rules for deploying a unit at a time, rolls for who chooses stratagems first, and so on. Soon, however, you will find that there a great deal of importance in following those mundane rituals. It is all about either anticipation, if you go first; or reaction, if you are going last. My friend is good at holding his cards close to his chest. I was not exactly thrilled, when declaring the last stratagem, that he declared he was taking Tank Traps. For that game, I was taking a heavily mechanized IG army, so Tank Traps really threw a wrench into my strategy I had been forming. Since he knew we were playing a High Ground mission, he cordoned off the streets leading to the objective building with tank traps so I would be forced to disembark. He was playing footslogging SM, so he had no trouble beating back any attempts on the building that were made by my IG on foot, allowing his squads to secure the building for 5 turns. I only barely forced a draw by bombarding the units into oblivion in the last turn.
If I had been able to react to what he was taking, I might have put a thorn in his side by putting razorwire or other infantry-inhibiting barriers on his side of the board, to counter his limiting of my mobility. Or I could have chosen something like Preliminary Bombardment, which might have either damaged/pinned enough units that I could have secured a foothold before he did.
When deploying, it is imperative to place your units carefully within your quarter. Since your Troops choices deploy first, they are the least able to account for other units you have to deploy. Most of his units that could seriously hurt my transports were in the Elite, Heavy Weapon, or Fast Attack slots. This allowed him to see where my troops were going to be deployed before he chose where to deploy his more specialized units. Luckily, the reverse is the same for me: I was able to see where the bulk of his troops were going to be and I was able to deploy my tank in a position where he could drop some serious hurt on them.
It's a balancing factor (one of few in CoD) to follow the pre-game method. Use your head, and try to force your opponent to go first when possible, so you can better react.

FTW Collaborative Post Contribution: Must-Have Units

Ron has asked us all to come up with some of our "Must-have" units, no matter the reason for it being a "Must-have". Since I play three different armies, I came up with one for each army.

What drew me to tyranids was the Carnifex. The idea of a creature the size of a large tank hurtling through lines of space marines was just too good to pass up. Add to that imagery the Carnifex's ability to crush tanks in CC, and I could see no other alternative. I guess it's "Nidzilla" for me!



In a Imperial Guard army, one of your greatest strengths is the number and flexibility of your troop choices. Yes, tanks are cool, and yes, they may win you the day in a killpoints game, but in the other 2/3rds of the missions you play, you will find the abundance of scoring units beneficial. I never meet much success in games where I field less than 3 Veteran squads in their Chimeras. You can sink plenty of points into them, but I like to keep the whole squad with its transport around 170 points. That is enough for 1 doctrine, a few special weapons, and a couple upgrades to the transport. Generally you'll see one of my veteran squads look like this:

1 Meltagun
1 Plasmagun
1 Grenade Launcher
Doctrine: Demolitions
Chimera with Dozerblade and pintile mounted Heavy Stubber

They work pretty well, having a meltagun for dealing with armor, a plasmagun for dealing with high T baddies or even light vehicles, and the GL for throwing a blast template at hordes or cracking a tough nut if necessary. The Demolitions doctrine has saved my butt more than once. I usually have to get pretty close to some hard vehicles to use the meltagun, so if the transport goes down at that close it usually puts them in range to assault with their meltabombs or even the demo charge in a pinch. I definitely get my points worth out of Veteran squads that are kitted this way.



Lastly, for my Blood Angels, I must simply ALWAYS take a chaplain of some fashion. Some of the special characters serve the same purpose of reigning in the Death Company marines, but I don't have any of those SCs. Therefore, I find a way to stick my plain ol' chappy in every BA list I write. I don't like the idea of my hard-as-nails Death Company marines chasing around an empty rhino.

Much Ado about Imperial Guardsman

Today I had the day off, so the entire morning I spent getting some paint to plastic on my box of unfinished Guardsman. I might have a game with them in the afternoon.

I drybrushed and painted some 11 heavy weapon bases, including 3 lascannons, 3 autocannons, 3 mortar bases, and 2 missile launcher bases. For those of you that remember my post on getting the most out of your heavy weapon sprues () you will notice that I used the same technique for all the heavy weapons except the mortars. I still have more to construct, such as the heavy bolters and another missile launcher (all required more tripods and bipods that I hadn't acquired until just recently).

Well, now I'm off to make an army list for this afternoon's game against some vanilla Marines.

Until next time,
--FP135

Carnifex Update: 10/21

I finished painting my carnifex today. Just need to finish the base and give it a clear-coat.

I hope all the genestealers look as good as this turned out! I am quite pleased with the result.

Until next time,
--FP135

Tyranid Project Update: 10/20

Getting some work done on the Tyranids, finally. I've been painting this Carnifex tonight, in hopes that by tomorrow I might have him completed. Work has picked up for me a lot at the moment (the holidays are hard on portrait photographers) but I hope to start getting some games in when my work schedule stabilizes.

Same method of operation for this as my Hormagaunts. I start by primering black, then highlight the carapace with Scab Red, and following that with Bleached Bone for the majority of the fleshy bits and exoskeleton. It is worth noting that I used a 50/50 mix of Blood Red and Sunburst Yellow for the adrenal gland bunch on its dorsal carapace, followed by a Sunburst Yellow drybrush. After the Flesh Wash it will really look interesting. I still have another layer to go on the bleached bone, but this is where I am stopping for tonight. Tomorrow, I plan to finish the highlighting with a bit of Blood Red, finish the Bleached Bone, and finally douse the model in an Ogryn Flesh wash, which really adds to the macabre grimdark feel I want for my army.

I hope I am not too tuckered out from work tomorrow, I wanna see this thing done!

Until next time,
--FP135