Fantasy 40K, Round 2

In passing, I mentioned a fun exercise some friends and I had conducted previously that we called "Fantasy 40K."  The concept emerged as an amalgamation of other favorite pasttimes.  Namely, 40K (obviously) and fantasy football, with some other odds and ends likely contributing.  Essentially, we held a draft in which we pooled all the units in 40K, with the intention of filling out exactly one slot for each space on the force org, plus two more troops and two dedicated transports.  Each player would have to fit everything they picked into a 1500 point army, and we invoked the "Rule of Cool" to govern it all. 

 

I walked into the draft with a plan and walked away from the draft very pleased with the following list:  Ork Boyz, Tau Crisis Suits, Tyranid Mycetic Spore Pod, Grey Knight Interceptors, Blood Angels Death Company, Dark Eldar Haemonculus, Eldar Jetbikes, Grey Knight Dreadknight, Blood Angels Rhino.

 

The vision of the list is to use the Crisis Suits and their Orbital Relay to bring in the Haemonculus in the Spore Pod on turn two.  The Haemonculus drops a webway portal, then dies horribly as he's really the only thing on the board at this point.  From there, everything emerges from the portal and the fun begins.  That's the plan anyway, and we all know how plans go.

 

I managed to get in a game of this shenaniganery (shenaniganry?) on Tuesday and thought I'd spare a moment to talk about it.  My opponents list included Nemesor Zandrekh with the Stormlord, plus Bloodcrushers, Grey Knight Terminators, Blood Angel Assault Marines in an IG Vendetta, Eldar Rangers, a Chaos Marine Obliterator, a Chimera, and a Drop Pod.  We rolled Capture and Control with Pitched Battle, and I took the first turn.

It's a little bit of a proxy-fest.

I hid my Crisis Suit as far back and out of sight as I could.  It's always fun to spend three seconds to deploy a single model and it makes for a quick first few turns.  Unfortunately, nothing could stop his Vendetta from picking off my lone guy after a long scout move.  With that, I had to adapt my plan and hope some things broke my way.  I failed my initial reserve roll for the spore pod, but also failed for everything else except my Rhino and my Jetbikes. My opponent responded by committing his Terminators forward and wiping out my Jetbikes.  This was bad news since they accounted for one of my only two scoring options.  

Turn three opened more productively, as my Death Company, Orks, and Dreadknight all walked on, while the Haemonculus dropped in next to my opponent's objective.  Between the jump packs and the Waaagh, I managed to get three units into the Terminators, which more than did the trick.  The Orks jumped into the building containing my objective, while the Death Company and Dreadknight received a counter-charge from the Bloodcrushers.  It wasn't until after the first round of combat that I actually took the time to look up what Dark Excommunication did, and at that point, I realized the valuable lesson of always knowing your rules.  

In turn four, I hopped the Interceptors out of the webway portal, with the intention of assaulting the Rangers controlling my opponent's objective.  I thought I'd pour a few shots into them just for the heck of it and ended up killing two of the Eldar.  My opponent promptly spoke the magic words:  "It's leadership ten."  He promptly rolled box cars, and fell off the board in the following turn.  With no scoring units left near that objective, all focus shifted to mine.  I shunted the Interceptors back to try and take down the Vendetta, but just couldn't manage it.  My Dreadknight held off the Assault Marines to protect the Orks, but with the Vendetta contesting on the bottom of the turn, the game ended in a draw.

I was a little disappointed not to come away with the win, but we both had a really great time.  This goofy method of getting in games has proved to be extremely enjoyable.  Hit me up if you're interested and I'll point you towards our ruleset.

Hobby Update and Fantasy 40K

Work continues apace on the Land Raider.  At this point, I've advanced to the stage of my process in which I go section by section over the vehicle to ensure each one looks the way I want it.  This could be clean up, detail work, highlighting, or whatever.  I kicked off this afternoon with the assault ramp.  While that may be a very small section, I like to take my time and make sure there doesn't have to be any follow up.  Additionally, it means I'm free to really dig into the details, such as each of the individual feathers.

At the same time, sometimes it's good to have something else interesting going to break up the monotony.  Or I have ADD, which might be more likely.  I banged out a single out of production Khorngor as the test scheme for the rest of the unit.  I'd forgotten how easy it is to paint single rank and file models.  Or maybe it seems that way after the long odyssey that is the Land Raider.

It's a pretty straightforward paint job.  Brown on the fur.  Silver on the armor.  Heavy wash for that grimy, dirty look.  Really, the interesting part was drilling holes into the marble tile for the base.  Because these models are the old metal design, they use slotted bases.  While I could just clip the metal parts off, the contact points with the base would be pretty flimsy.  Instead, I left the parts directly beneath the feet untouched and sank them into the base.  I used a little too much glue, resulting in a good bit of frosting, but he's sturdy, which is what I really want and I'll be on the lookout for this with the rest of the unit.


Finally, some friends and I got together for a goofy, little exercise.  We held a fantasy football style draft for all the units in 40K.  We had to take one HQ, Elite, Heavy Support, and Fast Attack, two Transports, and three troops and fit all of them into a 1500 point list.  I had the second overall pick and drafted the following:
1. Ork Boyz
2. Tau Crisis Suits
3. Mycetic Spore
4. Grey Knight Interceptors
5. Blood Angel Death Company
6. Eldar Jetbikes
7. Dark Eldar Haemonculus
8. GK Dreadknight
9. Blood Angel Rhino


I like my draft.  Honestly, I got pretty much everything I wanted and it works better together than you might think at first glance.  Can you spot the fun strategery?