update on my doings

So a mixed update today of how things are going.

Mount and Blade warband

So almost a month and no post... well that is again Diablo 3's fault... I've been grinding through inferno and farming some gold, although I’m in a bit of a cba with that over the last few days so i've got into mount and blade warband after reading the thread on DakkaDakka forums from the start... eventually (last Thursday) I weakened and bought it and got it for the weekend just passed... and i'm loving it.

Dropzone Commander

So I've been neglectful in my blogging recently...

Which cards? The two resource humans.

So moving on to the two resource cards for the humans we have four contenders... I'll talk about them with my own experiences.

Single Resource Human cards discussion

So beginning my human side card reviews I’m going to look at the one resource Ally cards available. Do note I’m still learning the game, but am trying to get as much info into my head as possible, hopefully none if it is wrong or misleading... if so let me know so I can edit it properly.

My progress in deck making

So it’s been about 3 weeks now of playing shadow era and I've slowly been testing some decks / cards. Originally I was running Boris as he was my first hero and thus I felt more confident knowing his hero ability, but i wasn't getting too far with him in gaining rank. I do think this may have been due to my card choices as the deck did have a lot of 2/3 card numbers which meant I was relying on more luck to draw certain ones. And even adding jewellers dream for some resource gains I found it tough to begin my attack in board control by turn 3-4.

Building a deck quick and easy part 2

So in part 2 of making the deck we are now deciding how to polish off the already mostly made one from part 1.

Building a deck quick and easy part 1

So for this article I’ve decided to focus on the basics of Shadow Era, and how to make your deck better once you begin playing some games. For the experiment I created another account and picked the Boris deck for beginning with (Do note I am making the assumption what I say for the Boris deck holds true for the other decks you can pick in the beginning).

Shadow Era Class Decks, the shadow guys

So continuing on and this time I'll be looking at the Evil or shadow side hero decks.

Shadow Era Class Decks, whats inside human edition

With the physical cards coming out soon I've been so over excited with the decks option in their shop for purchase and picked one up giving me a total of 10 decks, each with 60 cards inside.

A peek at the upcoming Shadow Era cards

Well since I've been raving on about this game and the decks I thought I'd fire up some pre-release information plus photos of the cards. posted by Kyle the owner of the company, I'm not sure yet if they will be MTG / Pkm size or the smaller YU-GI-OH size... either way they look crisp clean and well produced, and with 200 cards in the beginning set combined with 20 hero choices (Included in the 200) you have a wealth of deck options to work with.

Changes... oh those changes....

Well things have definitely been different for me in the last week, and lets just say my gaming and blog are going to be changed due to it. 

Chimeras, overpowered or a metal box protector for the men?

Thought I'd do something a bit different, and since it’s a dedicated transport it couldn't be a blob guard unit review... or could it be.

Blob Guard in Combat Patrol?

So your friends or local shop has some combat patrol going on and you wonder what to bring, ...blob guard maybe. So how would they do?

Lisburn league progress v.3

So more games played, and more changes to the rankings in places.

Blob Guard choices: ...Rambo! ...sorry Marbo

Moving on to the Elite section of the guard codex I'll be looking at the loner who has a peeping fetish.. thought you may know him as Marbo.

Blob Guard choices: Vendettas and Valkyries

So we now move on to the final entries from the fast attack section of the codex... the fliers.. both of which bring very different roles to guard armies. 

Blob Guard Choices: Rough riders. nay

So for this instalment I'll be looking at Roughriders as part of a Blob guard list (And also a quick mention of any roles in a mech list they could play).

Lisburn league game 4: Vs ImperialJ with Imperial guard

So Saturday just passed I got down to lisburn for my 4th game of the league, originally it was to be against Cmdr Dante and his Blood Angels but due to it being my wife's birthday and the game only beginning at 11ish I knew I was tempting fate. So rearranged him for another day and played ImperialJ (John) from the forums. This meant I was facing a mirror match. Guard Vs Guard... hum this can either go very right or very wrong depending what we both bring.

Mini Blob list (1500pts)

Was hoping to get up the Lisburn league game vs ImperialJ but with being off work sick and all (And my list being saved on work computer along with details). So I decided to throw together a 1500 point blog list for a change to the usual 1850.

Battlecannon Blast list.

So a little bored in work at the moment and decided to throw together a list for upsetting S7 and lower weapons, even S8 grumbles at this list possibly.

Lisburn league progress v.2

So with more games played and a few people who are nearly finished their games or have finished all 6 games I thought I'd throw up the league table again to show how the various armies are coping.

Blob Guard choices: Bane wolf and friends, their hot!

So in this next instalment of choices for blob guard lists, I'm going to look at hellhounds, bane wolves and Devil dogs.

Lisburn league game 3: Vs Ciaran with Eldar

So Saturday just passed I got down to Lisburn for game 3 of the league, Vs Ciaran and his Eldar. Since we’d missed out playing each other in the previous league he had wanted a match in this one so I happily accepted.

Easter Break, and Damn you blogger

How I loathe you sometimes...

Handy little orders ref sheet

Came across this during the week (I didn't make it and can't remember who did sadly so cannot give credit to them) and found it quite handy just to have around, thought I'd fire it up since I'm a little busy with work and behind in my other main post for the week.

Agressive Straken / Creed Blob Guard army

So another idea to toss out for others to oggle which was inspired after a simple comment from Dakeryus who mentioned ''Did you ever think of adding in Creed and let the blob scout 6"? A blob 18" from the enemy table edge before rolling a single dice would be pretty upsetting''.

Practise game Vs Necrons, those filthy robots.

So last Saturday I got a couple of games Vs Rowan ‘Now you see me’ Sheridan who wanted to et some ETC practise with a List he is thinking of.

Outflank guard, 'Eye in the sky, and feet on the ground'

So randomly I got the urge to throw together a guard army which is able to go full reserve for a different little mind project. The aim was to have nothing on the table turn 1 if I wanted and also to have various deployment options to keep the enemy guessing during their deployment phase if going first.

Blob Guard Choices: Sentinels, ''stamp stamp stamp''

Continuing on with my reviews for units I'm now into the fast attack section and looking to firstly cover the stampy options. The Sentinel...

Lisburn Gaming Club's Birthday

So Lisburn Gaming Club is now coming up (Information Here) to its second birthday which is taking place on the 7th of April.

Death squads: Stop the Launch part 2!

So well overdue as I kept putting up other posts related to tourneys and more interesting things at the time.  But here it is, part 2 of the Launch.

Gunline guard, Blob style

So randomly putting together lists and I remember a great piece of advice from a guy Mark (I believe that was his name) said down at Warpcon about including both Straken and Creed, and instantly refreshed the army builder to begin building a list using these two special characters.

Building the Battlefield, the right amount of terrain?

A slightly different topic this time, terrain on the battlefields...

Quick build guide: Mech Guard with bells and some whistles too.

So something slightly different and light hearted today... creating a quick mechanised Guard list Duce style in 5 easy steps (For me assume all hull weapons become heavy flamers, The extra anti horde being accessible via chimera hulls is just something I’ve grown to love, saving me points on flamers and the likes, as well as really not making small squads of CC Xenos want to rush my lines).

Lisburn Gaming League progress overall

So with 2 games down I was sitting nicely on top of the league at the time of originally typing this , but over the weekend just passed Ciaran and Nathan played and Ciaran jumped to the top of the table. Damn him for stealing my short lived thunder... 

Lisburn league game 2: Vs. Shane with Eldar

So I managed to get a game vs. relative newcomer to the club Shane and his Eldar (. Turns out I’ve met Shane before at the Q-con doubles event years ago and him and his guard friend played against me and my Blood angels friend (I was marine bikers using Khan, friend was DOA angels. I pop tanks he assaults contents and I cap objs... worked nicely bar GW interference). Anyway, it was good to find this out and get a good old Eldar interfering with imperial worlds they think they own game going.

Arkham Winter of War final thoughts

So with Arkham over (while ago now) I've been pondering my list, was I happy with it? I'd say so... was it perfect? Very much not...

Imperial Armoury, new Imperial Guard bitz store opens up.

Firstly to give credit for this useful information I found out about this on Apocalypse 40k Blog and even though today was to be a post free day while i worked on tomorrows I just had to repost it for more publicity.

Arkham Winter of War round 5

So round 5, I’m trying to claw my way back up the table now after a filthy Philip took my points only to draw......

Arkham Winter of War round 4

So Day 2, I’m sitting ok after day 1 and pull Phil Johnston, nice... another good guy who I’ve never got to play at events... looking forward to this game actually. He’s running his wolf list of old which looks great (chaos looking wolves, blood crusher thunder wolves etc).

Arkham Winter of War round 3

So with a good game in my favour Vs Dale I match up against Fellow Lisburn gaming club member Crazy who is running a mixed GK army.

Arkham Winter of War round 2

Round 2, and after a poor first round showing for myself I pull Dale Fisher, the son of spreadsheet happy Jonny Fisher. Dale’s still learning the ropes but has come on a good amount, and his army shows this.

Arkham Winter of War round 1

So Round 1 and I draw John Stowe... damn it after the Jan thing of smack talking I learnt not to ask for these sort of matches yet I still get them.  It’s not the worst though John’s a great guy and I’m expecting some horrible learning lessons about facing Necrons.

Lisburn league game 1: Vs. Nathan with Horde Orks.

So I managed to get down to Lisburn (11th Feb.) to get in my first league game and decided it would be a good time to use the list I would be using for Arkham tourney, and since this happened before the Arkham tourney I'll fire this up first to keep the order of events proper.. Turns out poor Nathan had expected a Blob list and this threw him a lot.

Free time? Never looks the same as on the packet

So even with the week off I've barely got to do any of the non house stuff done that I was wanting, its funny how you take time off to work for personal things and think you can get some gaming and painting done only to find out you can't... Damn you extra free time, you're a lie.

Codex marines - List Types / Themes

I doubt I’m saying anything new or unheard of but since I did the codex marines units reviews I thought I should just fire up some common tactics / list builds people use so people can get an idea of how they work... there will be many more homemade list themes, like shrike and scouting termies, 'thunder bubble' lists to name a few. anyways, on to some of the general list themes:

Lax update week, aka im off work and being busy (lazy).

Just a heads up i'm off work this week and sorting some stuff which has been put on hold for months as I just couldn't be bothered doing before. So instead of tactics i'll be dog proofing our garden, and instead of lists I'll be building a power hose.... Joy...

Arkham Winter of War tourament tomorrow

So the next Arkham is tomorrow and Jonny ''J65'' Fisher aka the top tourney organiser in N.I, hated in Munster and all round jammy dice roller looks again to not disappoint. Sadly though with Its_Pug aka Chris dropping out I'm the only guard player once again!

Midfield Guard army? DOW friendly for sure.

So working through some different Imperial Guard lists I tried making something to take full advantage on the FAQ changes, more specifically the deployment for Dawn of war, but while still trying to keep the army competitive in other deployments, below is what I managed to come up with for a first draft.

Guest Article: Irish Gaming and the Guard Psychosis

Firstly I'd like to thank Paul for writing this for me, he didn't have to, but the fact he did shows why he’s one of the loveliest gentlemen around in Ireland. I proudly present his article on Guard in the Irish tourney scene:

Warpcon Final thoughts

So Warpcon is over, and it’s been my second tournament using Blob guard at, also being one of the biggest Ireland usually gets I believe. What did I learn?

Warpcon Game 5

So final game of the day, I need the final push in points after drawing with Colin in game 4. I draw Rob (I believe that was his name) who is using space wolves, hopefully this could go my way. His list was:

Warpcon Game 4

So Day 2, I’d not bothered to check where I was sitting after round 3 as it would no doubt get me frustrated, although I did get to meet the guy I would be playing today, Colin from DGG (I believe that is his club).

Warpcon Game 3

Game 3, I’m clawing back some points but I’m still right down in the rankings, I draw Ian who is playing Dark Eldar... uh oh... and arrive at the table to see it’s a venom spam list... uh...oh this could go bad really quick.

Blob Guard Choices: Platoon Command Squads

Another sidestep from the Warpcon results to fire up this small article I had lying about.  

While I've already discussed platoons i decided it might be worth mentioning the platoon command squad separately in a short article.

Warpcon Game 2

So Game 2, and I’m sitting on a big fat Zero points, I was in two minds come this stage, one being damn it I’m so screwed being so far behind the top guys, and the second, hopefully now I’ll have a better chance of good matchups and gain back some ground. It seems poor Jimmy who was my next round opponent was in the same boat having lost 0-20 vs. Rowan’s Necrons.

Corporation Armoured Division, a cheap Blob army option!

Interupting my warpcon match reviews as I couldnt resist putting this up...

Warpcon Game 1

So second tourney using the blob, bigger field of players, slightly different army compositions, there were loads more BA and the new Necrons getting their first tourney, this would be a good test for my list.

Lisburn Gaming Club League kicks off!

So Lisburn are kicking off their next league, and I cannot wait!! I’ve signed up as guard for the obvious reasons and notice so far I'm the only one playing them... awesome I’m a minority again!

Experimental Blob hybrid list first draft

I was musing over making a partial mech list which centred on Blobs and added in some heavy support and finally ended up with this list for a first draft. Not the best I'll be honest but it actually looks like there could be potential.

Warpcon tomorrow. Board the landers men for tonight we dine in the car!! (On the way down)

So Warpcon starts tomorrow and I'm heading down with Rowan 'Reroller' Sherridan, hes kindly offered to drive because my car is about as practical as paper underpants during wetting yourself... (Thanks Rowan). Looking forward to this and as soon as Rowan reads this no doubt he'll begin to regret it.

The new HQ's thanks to the FAQ?

Sitting looking through my guard codex the other night and I still got lost in how many good unit options there is in that book. I think I noticed at least 2 unique unit types I wanted to begin reviewing in all the sections. Then I remembered the FAQ changes which lets the techpriest and priests become your mandatory HQ’s and tried to figure out when they would be useful for an army more than a CCs or a Lord commissar... So far I’ve not found a situation.

Blob Guard Choices: Artillery & AA

So moving on to the final heavy support choices, the Artillery (Including Hydras)... each one of these adds a different element to your army, so which in my opinion work in Blob lists?

Secret Weapon items arrive for over the weekend!

So my package arrived from Secret weapon this Friday just past... and Boy was it worth waiting for!

Death squads: Stop the Launch!

So as mentioned I got to play a game of Death Squads over Christmas, and decided to do one of the themed missions continuing on with my squad after my match in Lisburn with Ciaran. With the extra funds I bought a replacement guy for my one who died, and decided to theme it up a bit to add a Harker type add-on as well as the two priests I just finished for my blob guard as it was already stacked against the team.

Creating a ‘Competitive’’ list for 40k, how’s it done?

Actually it’s much simpler than most people think... while it does require the payer to be ruthless in their points spending and it is straight forward enough to allow most players to come out with a solid basis to work from. I’ll use codex marines as an example first (I thought they'd help me get my points across easier than a guard list as their the usual beginners army it seems).

Any requests? and pictures of priests.

So as a quick post today I'm wanting to know if there is anything Readers want covered in the next few articles or if not I'll continue on my random path of throwing up a mix.

The New guard FAQ: what it means for Blob Guard.

So with the new FAQ's appearing I'm going to break what i was intending to put up and look at the guard updates and comment on the ones I think may be of benefit for Blob Guard lists.

A look at: Codex marines - Special characters

With Today being quite busy I've not had enough time to do th entire post 've been working on, so to fill the gap here's the Special characters breakdown I had saved to tie you over.
 

Heading to Warpcon. Hum now what do I take?

So after many pesterings from Rowan I'm now going to Warpcon, tickets booked (Thanks Rowan) and my transport now sorted for getting down to the event (Thanks Rowan) I'm planning my list. I think for certain I'll bring the Blob out again, it proved so much fun at Arkham, but now the problem... 1850 points... hum 100 more points to play with... interesting...

Blob guard list on the cheap...ish

Wanting to make a Blob guard list can really be daunting, even for a painting sicko like myself. the number of bodies, weapons and such compared to most other armies can really pile up... and I know this first hand after having 152 models in a 1750 point list, an that includes heavy weapon teams as 1 model! and with Ireland's point levels going up to 1850 to work alongside the ETC it could get even bigger...

Blob Guard Choices: The Russ’s... part 2

Continuing on with the remaining Russ variants the next one I’m going to look at is...

Blob Guard Choices: The Russ's... part 1

Ah, another weekend done (Damn it) and another Monday blog post, I’m going to Continue the reviewing theme in the heavy support section, and this time I’m going to discuss the use of Leman Russ tanks in a Blob army.

A look at: Codex marines - Heavy Support

Moving on to another codex marine post as I'm still working on my next few guard ones, this time I'm covering the Heavy support options in the codex.

Blob Guard Choices: Deathstrikes and Manticores

Continuing on with my reviews of the units in the codex as part of a Blob army this time I'm going to look at one of the new GW muti use plastic kits. The Manticore, and the lesser known Deathstrike...

I'm Back! and what I got up to over Christmas.

After my Christmas break... which I don't believe was 10 days as it went far too quickly!! I’m back to blogging. Now to get back into the swing of things and remember how to keep writing articles... The break was well needed and allowed me to get quite a bit of game related and real life related stuff done.