Two years later....

Wow I can't believe it's been over 2 years since our last blog post here!! To be honest I think that Covid has just removed 18 months without any memory of it so we'll just call it 6 months!!!

Anyway I hope that whoever reads this is well and doing ok after the historical pandemic we have just/are currently living through. Our apologies for not contributing to the Games Workshop universe in any way over the last couple of years but a lot has happened - just not much in the way of Warhammer!

I (James) have just been working solidly. I am a teacher in a special school so we have been in full time all the way through but just much busier as the extra Covid responsibilities and risks have increased our workload.

Steve has also been working solidly in his school as he has had to be bringing the school up to date tech wise for online learning and working from home.

Dave has been involved in his own engineering career and has been doing lots of GW stuff but has focused on his own projects and Instagram page (@dave_the_dr) and getting involved in the community as he lives in Nottingham and we haven't been active at all!

Rich has been an international jetsetter! He now lives and works in Jordan and has a new family home in Orkney!!! This has obviously impacted his hobby time!

Anyway so here we are and I thought I'd try to write down some updates as to what we're up to as and when, to both keep me interested in the hobby and also to hopefully provide some interesting content to read for others. It's been such a long time since I was involved with 40k I thought it might be interesting to share a little of my journey back into it over the coming months.

I have to say that it's a scary prospect to reintegrate back into 40k as things have changed so much since I last played and it's a quite intimidating prospect to get updated and get back into the game. I wonder if many people feel this way and if GW lose any custom because it's a difficult game to get back into once you're out?

There's no doubt that the volume and speed of releases are incredible but just how alienating is it to those, like me, who haven't properly played since 5th, 6th or 7th edition? I did get the 8th rulebook but only played a couple of games. On the plus side I have been playing Necromunda with Steve which is absolutely brilliant and I'll also be bringing our progress on that side of things too.

If anyone wants to chip in and help or offer their experiences please comment below and I'll gladly bet a conversation going.

I look forward to posting again soon,

Adios!

fourdadsoftheapocalypse.blogspot.co.uk – A blog about Warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy by four Dads

Taurox Prime - Why I chose it and tips on building it

A Change In Army

A new year and a switch back to 'The Emperor's Feth' my first and favourite army in 40k! After a couple of years getting a Blood Angels army in tabletop condition a change was well needed and I am now ready to return back to my Astra Militarum army which needs a serious update as I haven't played it since 5th Edition!!

Some of The Emperor's Feth

I began my Warhammer 40k experience by total fluke in the week that 5th edition was released and played competitively all through that edition. You can check out the story of how I started in 40k and chose my army here.

Since 5th I played a little in 6th, less in 7th and then have played a lot more since 8th was released. However I have only played with Blood Angels so far in 8th edition and am in need of a change, so back to 'The Feth' I go.

The Emperor's Feth

My army actually still stacks up to some extent from 5th edition, but to compete and achieve a brigade detachment for some juicy command points it definitely needs a couple of additions. If you want to see my current Astra Militarum army and units there are some pics in the Gallery.

To get to a brigade i'm going to need some more elites but mainly troops as I only have 3 troop squads at the moment. I do want a couple of extra standard troop squads but I don't want to start back painting with something so dull. The alternative is to paint some Tempestus Scions which I have always loved the look of but back in the day they were not worth the points. Now however they are resurgent and powerful too for their points cost. With Deep Strike, orders and the ability to take 4 plasmaguns in a squad for 100 - 150 points is fantastic!

The Best Units in Astra Militarum, 8th Edition

Hi folks,
I've been researching the best units in Astra Militarum (AM) pretty heavily and have come across some incredible resources, plus indulged my love of a good spreadsheet and done a little analysis of my own. What you'll see here is a summary of the most popular units in the top 18 ITC lists of 2017 for AM and some links to the resources I have been digesting. My data on AM comes from the US ITC tournaments which were numerous and diverse in terms of meta to produce some results I think are worth taking some instruction from - these are lovingly compiled by the guys at Frontline Gaming, all credit to them for collating this info.

To begin with, AM have done very well in 8th Edition ITC tournaments in 2017. They are in the top 5 factions across 2017 which also include Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Orcs and Tyranids. This is a big swing from 7th Edition which featured Eldar heavily, alongside Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Tau & Chaos Daemons. No doubt as each faction gets a new codex next year we will see more changes.

My addition to the great work from Frontline is to collate any AM lists that got a top 3 placing at 20 of the ITC 8th Edition tournaments last year and list out the units I found there. I sorted the units into 'buckets' of battlefield roles and then listed the top 3 (or less where there wasn't enough diversity!) to produce the units that people find most optimal and voila....

The # denotes the number of times this Unit appeared in the lists and the % indicates the percentage this unit represents for all the entries for this battlefield role. So what does all this tell us? Well there are some really dominant units:

8th Edition and the Horus Heresy - a gaming crossroads!

I’ve played a few games now and feel I’ve seen enough to give a view, at the least from the perspective of the Imperial Fists anyway. I used to play friends who had 40k armies at 7th no problem. My army was fairly well balanced with theirs and the difference in genres didn’t seem to affect us at all. So it was with some trepidation I tried out my army with the Horus Heresy fandex (which is too casual a description really for the great work that the guys have put into this - take a look at http://heresy30k.invisionzone.com/topic/10351-the-8ed-heresy-project-legiones-astartes/) against a Blood Angels and Imperial Guard Army. 

General thoughts on playing 8th from the Horus Heresy

- it’s got the potential to play fast, although because we were still learning the rules it wasn’t much faster than 7th, but the potential is there.

- the psychic phase seems much simpler - I’ve not used Psykers for a long time so it’s difficult for me to compare. But compared to 7th I picked up how to do psychic stuff in no time at all so it’s got to be better than before. 

- templates gone - I like this, much quicker all around both as it doesn’t mean you need to worry about bunching up squads and it’s quicker in the shooting phase to play with largely similar results (although see my comment later!). 

- no scattering for deep strike - yippee!

- turn 1 charges - yippee!

Beautiful Models v Time - The ultimate rivalry

You might well talk about Man Utd v Liverpool, The Bengals v The Steelers or The Yankees v The Red Sox but I think it is universally given that Beautiful models v Time is the ultimate rivalry in history.

The greatest rivalry?

I came up against this particular rivalry once again in my life the other day. This time of year (September - December) is generally my busiest time. It is the start of a new school year, we have many birthdays through October and November in our family and then Christmas hits. During this time of year I get precious little hobby time and when I do I need to be very efficient and focused in what I do. It is usually in these situations where I hate Games Workshop the most!

As you may know I have been working on expanding the Death Company for my Flesh Tearers army this year. It has been an incredibly slow process for me but I have been grinding through them as the year has gone by. Finally I had got the main torso's finished and in my hour spare I thought I could make some good headway on the arms and weapons and they would be very close to getting on the table.

Finished torso's on the Death Company

40k Flesh Tearers v Grey Knights - 8th edition comment on the Grey Knight Codex

 The last time my Flesh Tearers played against Steve's Grey Knights was well back in 7th Edition and I got well and truly tabled in about 4 turns! I was determined to get my revenge as Steve wanted to try out his brand new Grey Knight Codex for the first time.

8th Edition 40k game - Flesh Tearers v Deathwing

After 4 wins on the bounce my Flesh Tearers were challenged to a 100 power game against a very elite force - the Deathwing!

This I was not looking forward to as I was running my normal super mobile themed army - remember this is not a power build but a Flesh Tearer army I have slowly painted up over about 3 years that, in my eyes, totally fits their background. Mostly jump pack assault troops with a sizeable death company and a few terminators to bulk it out. The Land Raider and Baal Predator have no long range effectiveness being equipped with flamestorm cannons! Basically the army does what Flesh Tearers do - run at the enemy and hope for the best!!

The problem is that although my army is themed for in your face close combat, it's not particularly good at it. I have got assault marines after all! So coming up against about 30 terminators, a land raider and some knights who will literally walk into my lines and shout "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!" Scares me rather a lot!

The Deathwing assemble

8th Edition 40k - Flesh Tearers v Orks - comment on the game and rules

Rolling on for my 3rd game of 40k in 8th edition dad Steve challenged me to pit my Flesh Tearers against his Orks. He obviously wanted revenge for the loss his Blood Angels took last time and has put his faith in the dirty xenos greenskins - fool! I think Mephiston will show him the error of his ways!!

Pre-amble

This was going to be interesting. I had only ever faced Orks before in tournaments at Warhammer World where I was running my Emperor's Feth Astra Militarum army. These battles never ended well for the greenskins as 2 Manticores and a bunch of Leman Russ's tended to take care of them by turn 3! Now however I have a smallish more elite army that is mainly assault based - not a good match up for a dedicated assault army with lots of bodies that will effectively run me over.

Game 2 - 8th edition 40k - Thoughts and comments on the new system - Blood Angels v Blood Angels

For my 2nd match up I managed to get a game with dad Steve for the first time in a while for a head to head with my Flesh Tearers v his Blood Angels in an all assault clash!

This was always going to be an interesting battle as we both have a good amount of assault troops and so I was really looking forward to how the new assault phase works and how devastating it would be after the rumours I had heard that it was vicious. This would also be Steve's first game so we kept it fairly simple by using the same armies to help each other out with getting to know the new rules.

The Mission
We decided that we would keep it simple playing the standard Only War mission with 4 objectives and the battlefield was set up with an average amount of terrain (below)

Battlefield

The Armies
The two armies were 1500 points and assault based to the point that I brought absolutely no long range guns at all!!
I had a power level of 97 to Steve's 95 so we were fairly matched.

The armies

8th Edition - First Game and thoughts on the new rules and stats - Dark Angels v Blood Angels

4 days after release and I could hold my excitement no longer and managed to get together with a friend for my first game!! I acquired a 40k 8th edition rulebook on my 40th birthday which happily coincided with the release day of 8th edition - Bonus!

Index & List Building
The day of the game I nipped out to my FLGS and picked up Index: Imperium 1 book (I wanted 2 to play my Astra Militarum army the Emperors Feth but unfortunately they had sold out so Blood Angels it was!) to get an hour or so to pick an army list for a game of 1500 points - I don't quite get the power levels yet!

My first impression of that book was definitely one of complication as it certainly had a load of stats - 220 odd pages of them - blimey. However a lot of them are for different armies or are repeated and after using it alongside the game you quickly find the reference pages at the back.

Rulebook Pictures - Warhammer 40k 8th edition

Hi all.

I have stumbled across some pics of the new 8th edition rulebook.
What do you think?

James

Shadow War Armegeddon - Prelude to 8th Edition 40k?

The release of Shadow War Armegeddon has certainly piqued interest in the Warhammer 40k community. The box looks amazing with some amazing terrain and 3 kill teams (2 x scout marine squads and 1 Ork squad) included.