The new SM codex has been out for a while now and I’ve been musing over the new units found within.  Here are my basic impressions:

Chapter Master:  He’s really just a regular captain with orbital fire support.  That’s cool, but he can’t take a command squad nor let bikes be troops.  Choosing him over a regular captain is really a matter of taste rather than effectiveness.

Honor Guard:  Cool concept, but lacking somewhat in application.  Their biggest drawback is that they can’t take bikes or jump packs, yet the Chapter Master can.  What, is there more “honor” in watching the guy you are supposed to protect zoom off without you?  They are also pricey.  I see these as more an Apocalypse selection than for regular battles, but then again maybe the idea of a group of power weapon wielding marines turns you on.

Master of the Forge:  I like the conversion beamer.  If you make sure to setup your MotF correctly and shoot at target sufficiently far away he makes for a powerful vehicle killer.  With his beamer at AP1 that’s strength 10 and +1 to any damage roll, a combo guaranteed to make any machine spirit compute in fear.  Be sure to give him a bodyguard of Servitors – who are basically Imperial Guardsmen with S8 power fists and 4+ armor – and have him hang out near some other piece of marine artillery like a Predator.  The end result is a great vehicle killer that is hard to kill and is nasty in close combat which can even fix your own vehicles!

Sternguard Veterans:  The special ammo of these guys is just glorious, giving them a bullet for every occasion.  This makes them quite versatile, especially if you give them combi-weapons.  This allows them to step up and blow away pretty much anything.  No need to rush them into close combat except for a coup de grace.

Ironclad Dreadnought:  This is a unit to use when you have a particular application in mind such as giving him a drop pod and landing him is your opponent’s shorts.  Otherwise, he’s sort of like a close combat carnifex – nasty, but can you get him into hand-to-hand soon enough to be worth it?

Legion of the Damned:  Killer concept and fluff, but not really all that effective for the points.  You basically pay twice normal cost for marines that have 3+ invulnerable saves and can deep strike, but which are slow and purposeful and – most importantly – don’t come with any greater firepower than regular marines.  They fill the same tactical niche as terminators (including the same disadvantages) without adding anything new.  Personally, I’d rather have two groups of tactical marines than one group of these damned fellows.

Land Speeder Storm:  Another unit that needs a specific application (e.g. you take it because it compliments your force, not just to be cool).  Only problem is I can’t think of a really compelling application that would apply in general.  The jamming beacon could be quite nice against some armies, but useless against others.  Besides, it might get in the way of your own deep striking reinforcements.  Likewise, with the ability to only hold five scouts you aren’t really looking at a fierce close combat threat.  I suppose you can use it to capture remote objectives, but when scouts can already scout and infiltrate do they really need their own hovercraft as well?

Thunderfire Cannon:  For some reason I really like the model.  It’s effectiveness in combat is more iffy.  The ability to fire different types of shells for different missions guarantees that it will always have some suitable target.  I especially like the subterranean shells as they can interfere with your enemy’s ability to charge or capture objectives.  The great weakness of the cannon is that it is fragile.  Artillery seems to melt in the rain and the poor techmarine only has one wound.  Thus, you can easily have 100 points go up in smoke with just one well placed lascannon or plasma cannon shot.  It is therefore essential to have the cannon away from the enemy as much as you can and let its 60’ range protect it from counter fire.

Land Raider Redeemer:  An improvement over the LR Crusader for the simple reason it does what its older cousin does, only better.  You’ll want to always use it in combination with an assault unit.  With just the one ranged weapon you can zoom forward 12’ and still blast away thanks to the machine spirit.  Once you are close the Redeemer’s dual AP3 flamers will stagger most any unit thereby giving your own assaulters the advantage.  After that you just go down your opponent’s line shocking his squads before barbequing them.

I like snipers.  They are a cool concept and their ability to wound on a 4+ can be handy (especially against monstrous creatures).  I also need more regular troops choices for my Space Marines.  So, here is a newly painted group of scout snipers.

These aren't the only painted snipers I have.  A while back I finished some Imperial Guard snipers:

I like snipers!

As anyone who has been reading this blog knows I am of the opinion that the new Space Marine codex has – in general – rendered all of the old non-codex SM chapters obsolete.  In particular, I say this concerning the Deathwing as that’s the relevant army I play.  In response to my last post Ron from over at From the Warp asked just what I meant by the Deathwing being “outclassed”.  A battle I played recently provides, I think, a good example of just that.

As it happened on one side of the board the battle came down to two units of his and two units of mine.  Both of us were fighting over the one objective model on that side, although I had the advantage as I started on top of it and was defending.  To win I just needed to keep his units away or for a draw just to keep myself from being destroyed. 

For my two units I had two standard Deathwing 5-man squads, each with a Cyclone Missile Launcher.  He had one group of six assault terminators with thunder hammer and storm shield riding in a Land Raider Redeemer.  The comparative points cost between the two sides is nearly equal as Deathwing terminators are more expensive than the new assault termies.

Here is where the differences between the two codxes start to come into play.  It takes his land raider 4 turns to get into charge range.  That means four turns of shooting Cyclone Missiles at him in an attempt to immobilize him or, at least, stun him enough times to not be able to make to across the board by the end of the game.  Since I am using the old inferior rules for my Cyclones I have a grand total of eight shots to get the job done.  The odds of any one shot hitting, glancing, and then getting an immobilized result is 1/54.  With just eight shots that’s just 8/54 or 15%.  That’s not particular good odds of success.  With the new Cyclones, however, my odds of success would be twice that or 30%.  Again, only a tad under one third chance, but remember a success here is means I’ve won the game.  Likewise, the odds of stunning the raider are just as good, so with the new Cyclones I’d have a 60% chance of stopping or at least slowing them down compared to half that for the old Cyclones.

Nevertheless, odds are that the squad will get into hand-to-hand with me.  If I get lucky and lose no one to the land raider’s shooting it’s 10 against 6, something that sounds on the surface a good match-up for me.  Unfortunately, his assault terminators are packing storm shields – the new wonderful storm shields.  That means no matter what I do even with my power weapons I still have to get through 3+ saves while I only get 5+ saves to withstand his attacks.  This makes a gigantic difference.

If you run the numbers and round off you get the following result:

Combat Round	Models I have	Models He Has
1	10	6
2	6	4
3	3	2
4	2	1
5	1	1
6	0	0

In other words, my 10 guys are roughly equal to his 6 guys with storm shields. Of course, this assumes that I take no casualties from the land raider’s shooting, but the odds say I should lose around 5 over four turns.  If 10 vs. 6 is a draw then 5 vs. 6 is almost a foregone conclusion (as it happened, I lost four to shooting, but was wiped out in CC within 2 rounds).

But, wait, you say – this is hardly an ideal situation for the Deathwing.  Getting through the armor on a land raider is hard with S8 weapons.  If you had some better firepower your odds would have been much better.

True enough.  A Deathwing army has two great weaknesses – low numbers and low firepower.  That is why there is always a temptation to pull in other, non-traditional units to help balance things out.  The Dark Angels codex even encourages this, most particularly the mixing of Deathwing and Ravenwing.

Yet, the only “advantage” that the DA codex has in this regard over the new marine codex is that only the first can take terminators as troops.  The more you go away from this the more this “advantage” disappears.  This is why I say that the Deathwing has been “outclassed” – Unless you insist on a pure force of just terminators then the new codex can clearly do things better.  And, if you stay “pure” then you better get used to always playing from (way) behind.

If the Deathwing did get/could get the new wargear it would in my opinion move the Deathwing from the “only for masochists” column to the “viable” column.  You’d be able to get more firepower while assault squads (with thunder hammer and storm shields, of course) would actually be a good choice.  It would still be a tricky army, but fun.  As it stands the only real reason for playing a pure Deathwing is dogged loyalty to the force (or they are the models you have painted), not because you expect to win very often.

Despite flurtations with Exodites the army I am actually trying to finish currently is regular Space Marines.  I already have a complete Deathwing, but with the release of the new SM Codex it has (IMHO) been thoroughly outclassed.  Therefore, I've been trying to develop a more well rounded force.  This is just one part of that -- a completed Troops choice, namely a squad of scouts.

Click for a larger image

I like the idea of Scouts with shotguns -- two S4 shots after which you can assault.  Give the squad leader a power fist and you have a pretty effective, yet pretty cheap hand-to-hand unit that can inflitrate and scout.  Even better would be another five guys with shotguns, so I figure I'll expand the squad eventually.

While I continue to work on my current projects in the meantime here is another finished model from the recent past -- an eversor assassin.  Not my favorite Imperial assassin (that would be the vindicare), but certainly effective -- and the group 0' eversor assassins you can get in Apocalypse is devastating!

Click on the picture for a larger version:

Inspiration hit me a few days ago and so I sat down and created an Exodite Knight (counts as Wraithlord) as part of my slowly expanding Exodite army.  It needs a few touch ups, but is otherwise done.  Now I just need to sit down and paint it!

Press the picture to see a larger version:

 

As you probably know the FtW Group challenge this month is to create an original 40k scenario.  We here at 40K Origins Labs have been hard at work trying to come up with one that is fair, fun, and balanced.  Progress is slow, but we have come up with a few observations:

No Attacker vs. Defender Scenarios:  Maybe it’s just my own personal experience, but I’ve run into a lot of attacker vs. defender scenarios that just, well, stunk.  I remember a GT (Grand Tournament) from many years ago were one of the games (both 40K and fantasy) required the attacker to race across the field.  The defenders won if they just stopped the attackers from doing so.  After the game I went around and talked with other people about how they did.  I couldn’t find ANY attacker that won.  The problem is that the requirements of being an attacker usually dictate his options – that is, he can only try one obvious tactic to win.  As a result the defender can counter his opponent’s tactics pretty easily, thereby giving him an advantage.

Getting the Right Balance is Hard:  It’s easy to come up with a nifty idea for a scenario, but it’s hard to come up with one that will be reasonably balanced for most any army a player might field.  Sure, some scenarios will favor some types of armies, but this favoritism shouldn’t be so pronounced that one particular sort of army is all but guaranteed to win.

For example, take the idea from above that one side has to race across the board and exit on his opponent’s table edge.  His army is doing a blitzkrieg into the rear of the enemy in order to destroy a vital supply dump.  His opponent must stop him or risk losing the whole campaign.  Sounds good at first, but clearly the attacking force will be more successful if it happens to be one with lots of transports.  That’s okay – a scenario can favor one side somewhat.  However, what if the attackers were an Eldar Saim-Hann force or a Ravenwing?  Considering they could be across the board in two turns could any defender hope to win?  Should the two even bother playing?

A way to possibly fix this would be to have getting across the board be the objective for both forces – you’d have to balance defending your board edge while escaping out your opponent’s.  However, this brings up another point….

Coming up with a Scenario Even Somewhat Original:  The above idea is one taken directly from a tournament I was in years ago.  So are most of the ideas that have occurred to me over the last week.  Usually there are a few minor differences, but I suspect almost every idea for a 40K scenario has been done some place at some time.  Why do a scenario that has been done before?  Problem is that if you try doing something truly unique you’d potentially need so many special rules that game balance would go out the window.

Still, it is just a game and there is something to be said for a scenario that is cool even if it isn’t perfectly balanced.  So, it’s back to the laboratory….

The painting contest over at The Way of Saim-Hann is over and yours truly lost out to the sublime mastery of Ron over at From the Warp.  We lesser mortals must now just drown our sorrows in the beverage of our choice and contemplate our own meaninglessness in the cosmos.....until, that is, the next competition comes along and we end up beating everyone!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

In the meantime here are some extra pictures of my entry -- an Exodite Autarch with Laser Lance on winged dragon.  The last is the entry picture, but if you click it you'll get a much larger close-up image than what was posted at the competition.