Back-to-Basics: Breaking Bubblewrap in 6th edition

Be warned ye Internet users of slow speeds, beyond be pictures!

Bubble-wrap was one of the most common tactics seen in 5th edition. It was pretty simple too - protect your more important stuff with crap stuff by putting it in front. This ensured no assaults could get through past the first unit without dealing with it or in some way bypassing it. A lot of armies used this concept as part of their core tactics such as Tau, Tyranids and Imperial Guard. The great benefit for such armies was, bypassing it wasn't very easy and good bubble-wraps were often very resilient to shooting which made combat the best way to deal with it. This meant the main army behind the bubble-wrap was protected and allowed the shooting units to continue shooting and the assault units to be protected and thereby make appropriate counter-assaults.

How to: Making cobblestone bases with greenstuff

A couple people requested something along this after my Menoth bases were posted so here it goes! It's pretty basic and straight forward but I'll do a step-by-step.

Tools needed:
green stuff
a base
hobby knife (or some other sharply pointed instrument)
sculpting tool (you want something at least three times as wide as the knife blade with a blunt edge)
a rock
water - remember to keep everything wet!

How To: Loganwing

Dakka

A list we mention a lot on 3++ is Loganwing yet we've never really done an article looking at the army. Let's rectify that ^^.

Loganwing is one of the premier foot lists in 5th edition for a number of reasons. The most important is mobile firepower thanks to Terminator based Cyclone Missile Launchers. There are static firepower elements as well (Long Fangs) but the majority of the army is based around units which can move and shoot missiles. This is very important to provide tactical depth to the army and not only allows the heavy weapons to be moved into advantageous positions to fire (i.e. side shots, avoid cover, get Line of Sight) but also pressure and/or react to the opponent's army.

Beating the Army: Grey Knights

Stop saying Grey Knights are overpowered. All of you! Right now! Stop it, stop it, stop it! Arrrrgghhhh!! I don't care if you play Grey Knights or if you play against them. I don't care if you're a tournament player or a casual player. Just stop it, right this instant. Grey Knights are not unbeatable. They are not meaningfully better against the field as a whole than any of the other well-written 5E codices. They have certain advantages and necessitate a different playstyle in many ways, but they are not some sort of magical win button that you can just press and never lose a game again. They're just an army, like any other.

This article will probably be even longer than my previous Beating the Army, god forbid. I intend to go over the weaknesses in GK units and overall strategy and explain, in general and in detail, how to beat them. I also intend to post a follow-up discussing strategies for different armies to fight them, since some armies will naturally struggle more than others at the task. However, being that I still don't want to make this infinity words long, I will only be talking about MEQ-focused GK armies and will be excluding Coteaz lists; they have issues of their own, which I will discuss in another article. Someday.

How to: Adeptus Custodes Conversion

G'day. MBG here from Spikey Bits Blog, with my first post on Kirby's blog! A quick diddy about me is that I am an avid hobbyist, and run a bits service called Spikey Bits in the states. I also was the founder of another called Battlewagon Bits, as well.

So the other day I was cutting up some bits because I was getting ready to expand our bits catalog and a sweet conversion idea hit me outta the blue.

I was working with the Dark Angel Veterans, and Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard kits, and had them arranged in piles in front of me.

Things to know for those beginning WarmaHordes

A lot of the times when I start a new game I enter into in to it with certain preconceptions I have about games based on games I have played in the past. Usually these preconceptions will transform into actual knowledge of the game system. However a lot of times these result in pain and heartache (and Night Elf melee Hunters!) before you reach a point of comfort with a new game. Here are some basic things that one should know as they get into WarmaHordes so they can make educated decisions right from the start.

1) When deciding on a faction to start off with make sure that they fit your play style.

I started playing WarmaHordes with Cryx. I love undead. I would say that 90% or more of my movie collection involves either zombies, vampires, or some other miscellaneous undead-ish type monstrosity. If Ed Wood came back to life and decided to co-direct a remake of the Twilight series with Uwe Boll I would probably be the first person (maybe only person) in line to see it. I also happen to like shooting heavy armies. Which is a major problem as when was the last time someone was worried about being shot by a zombie? You could name a couple of Romero movies where a zombie used a gun, but that is the exception and not the rule. Generally the undead are the ones being shot at and not the other way around.

How To: Breaking Bubble-wrap

A common defense against assaults and close-ranged weapons such as meltaguns is the bubble-wrap. This is where infantry protect more important targets, whether they are tanks, weak in combat, counter-assault units, whatever, by placing themselves in front of said units. Correct placement forces opponent's a set distance away from these protected units (i.e. out of melta range) and stops assaults on these units by either being in the direct path of the assaulting units and  too far away for a multi-assault/no gaps between bases. Any unit can do this but there are some armies such as Tau, Tyranids and Imperial Guard which have units acting as dedicated bubble-wrap. This helps their army function at its peak capacity for as long as possible and dictate gameplay as much as possible (shoot more for longer in the case of Tau and Imperial Guard and counter-assault for Tyranids).

We've discussed this a lot on this blog and the benefits of using it. The question now is, how do we break it? There are several options: shooting, assault, multiple singular tank shocks or a combined tank shock wedge. We'll look at each scenario.

The Art of Reserves - Part 1

Dakka

Reserving is a key part of Warhammer 40,000 and something often overlooked. It's one of the key reasons why going first doesn't generate an automatic first turn win, allows for tactical flexibility and combined with special rules such as outflank and deepstrike, can significantly alter the way things unfold on any given tabletop. In this two part series we're going to look at the benefits and cons of reserving and when one should reserve or not reserve their whole army. In the second article we'll look at more common applications of reserving such as individual units deep-striking/outflanking and how the different deployments affect reserving as a whole.

So let's take a deeper look at what reserving does and the pros and cons of doing so. Without any reserve bonuses your units come on in the following order:

Turn 1 - n/a
Turn 2 - 4+
Turn 3 - 3+
Turn 4 - 2+
Turn 5 - automatically

How To: Grey Knight Acolyte-spam Part 1

I've had several questions about this list type so today we're going to take a look at not only building the list but how to break it. First, we must establish the premise! Coteaz. Small acolyte squads in Razorbacks. That was easy. Let's explain. By using Coteaz and small acolyte squads to make scoring Razorbacks you are applying minimal points to get six scoring units, a good HQ and six Razorbacks with Fortitude (LasPlas is preference for being able to sit in backfield). What this gives you is a bucket load of points to spend on goodies in the rest of the Grey Knight list, something that Grey Knights rarely have due to their increased point cost across the board. The obvious downside is weak scoring whenever you break open one of their tanks and bleeding Kill Points in Kill Point missions. Let's look at this concept more in-depth, do a list building exercise and then how you might tackle it not only as the general but the opposing player as well.

I'm going to split this post up into major sub-headings so you can skip as you see fit. It's pretty long. I'll first expand the Premise concept and look at Acolyte options. I'll then look at unit options (briefly) to put around them. Following that will be an example list of my own with some links from others I've found and liked. This will explain a bit on playstyle/deployment/etc. Finally we'll take a look at how one can defeat an army like this when it deploys across from you on the tabletop. Edit: This was split into two posts. Part 2 will be the next post! Got too long sorry.

How-to: Setting up terrain the right way

This wasn't an article I was planning on writing, but someone in our chatbawks (you should all go there, it is full of sexy ladies and sweet advice from rad dudes) brought the subject up and it seemed like a useful idea, so here we are. I've talked in the past about how terrain setup can drastically change how matches are played, but there's never really been a good "here is how you do it" post, here or elsewhere to my knowledge. So let's start with the basics.

How To: Blend Highlighting

So with days to go until Event Horizon and me still madly painting my army I thought I'd do a post on one of the main techniques I use - blend highlighting. Now with a dual-action airbrush and a lot of practice, this technique is apparently very easy and it certainly seems so when you watch the videos of people doing this. Unfortunately for me I didn't get my airbrush in time for this army so had to do my bog standard paintbrush highlighting. What this basically is attempting to do is replace the 'standard' single line highlight as a sharp contrast to the primary color with a graded color shift. Something like this...

This ultimately gives the highlight and overall model a much smoother finish and look more 'natural', at least in my opinion of what pretty Marines and Eldar are going to look like before they head out to throw dice at each other =D. The end result of this technique looks like this on my models...

How To: Tervigon Spawning

This was promised a while ago after my time at Centurion. I do deliver..finally! So Tervigons are an integral part of many Tyranid army list. Whilst they aren't essential they are a very good Troop choice thanks to their MC status and high toughness/wounds count. What really makes them shine however is their ability to spawn and buff Termagants. There are two main schools of thought here: spawn early and quickly to take maximum advantage of potential continuous spawns or use the Tervigon as a transport and wait until later in the game to spawn and release Termagants into your opponent's lines. We'll look at both of these as viable tactics on the tabletop and examine when they are their most useful.

But first! some basics we need to outline with the Tervigon. On average you should get roughly 14 22 spawned Termagants per Tervigon. You have a 44% chance of rolling doubles on 3D6 so if you have two Tervigons in your army you will most likely get three spawns and upwards of 30 termagants. These numbers vary greatly though. At Centurion for example I pooped out my Tervigons all but once on their first attempt and regularly got fewer than 10 Termagants. This is obviously against the grain in terms of statistics but it does happen. At the same time, Loriness spawned over 70 Termagants in his last game and I myself have spawned 111 from two Tervigons in one game. It varies and this is one of the reasons why spawning early can be bad. We'll reach that later.

How to Guide: 40k Urban(ish) Bases

Hey Folks!

This will be the first part in a series of basing tutorials for 40k, fantasy and warmachine. These techniques can be used for any number of game systems as well.This first one will be for an urban 40k style.

How to Guide: Ogryn Ripper Guns Tutorial

Hey Folks,

Miniature Wargame Conversions here, but you can just call me MWC. Im here to share a nice easy way to make Ogryn Ripper guns for all the people that have made their Ogryns from Warhammer Fantasy Ogres. Im short on words but big on pictures. But ironically my pictures aren't that great.. Lol..

How to: Building With Battle Points

Alright, let's talk about battle point missions.

To start with, a tournament that uses battle points is NOT the uncompetitive fluff-love fest that most people make it out to be. I understand the problems with it, and no, it's not as fair/balanced as pure win loss draw, but it's the best way to do a tournament with a weird number of people.

For instance, 25. You can't just W/L that up the pyramid to one winner. Even worse is if you have a much large amount of people, like, say, 50. What, as a TO, are you gonna do, tell 14 players to get lost? It's the best system for running large, nebulous numbers of players.

Now, that doesn't mean it runs perfectly. Let's take a look at some reasons why:

Vindicators are Alright and Other Crazyness

The Vindicator is really quite underrated. Also, it’s a problem that I’ve been mulling over for quite some time.

I started out using vindicators, and they might be my favorite tank. I love the design. I love the concept. What I never really liked, however, were their rules. For what is ostensibly a siege tank, the vindicator sure seems to be equipped with paper armor, especially against canny opponents who can get those side shots off.

But I liked them. So I kept using them. Even after a brief stint running dakkapreds instead, I came back to the trusty Vindicator, and eventually mastered them. The key is in a few rules you should try to NEVER break.

It’s important to understand a few things about vindicators, before we go into their use:

Bubble-wrapping 102

We all know what bubble-wrapping is. If you don't, click that link. The skinny of it is you protect your more important units with less important units. This stops assaults, melta range, blocking, etc. and is basically an extra force field for the protected unit if you like. There are rare exceptions where the bubble-wrap is more than just a defensive layer and can also be a very potent and scary offensive threat (i.e. TH/SS Terminators). Building good bubble-wraps against units on foot or in normal tanks isn't too hard. Even with tank shocking and the assault vehicle ability, it will take two vehicles to actually punch through a bubble-wrap and be able to disembark troops which are capable of assaulting. The same must happen if you want to shoot at the unit from close range and without cover. This is done using the V technique described in the Advanced Blocking post with the opening pointed towards the intended target (I might do a more in-depth article on this later too come to think of it...). Obviously if the tank shocks break the bubble-wrap unit all the better but most good wrap units are at least Ld9 and often with a re-roll.

However, not everything in the Warhammer 40,000 universe rolls around on tracks and uses their feet. Many units have the Jump Infantry, Jetbike, Jetpack or Skimmer rules (or can even teleport!?!??!) which allows them ignore whatever they are moving through. The important areas for these units are where they begin and where they end up. Terrain is an important factor for they begin and end up as they will have to take dangerous terrain checks when beginning or ending in terrain. For bubble-wrapping purposes however, all you need to know is where they are going to end up. This is how you block and bubble-wrap against units which 'move over you.'

Back to Basics: The right tools for the job

Hi lads and ladettes,

Last night I learnt a valuable life lesson that I wish to bring to you all to consider.

Sometimes in life, you get to a situation where the following saying applies:
"It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail" - Law of the Instrument

I found this out first hand last night attempting to cut some PVC pipe with a hobby knife.
Long story short, hobby knife + PVC pipe = hospital trip.

So enough rambling, what did that teach me? WTFudgemuffin is that supposed to represent? -->
Uhh, its a Kirby, with a hammer? Kirby's blog, hammer reference in the intro. You do the math.

It taught me that improper application of a tool can lead to pain and anguish, and a result that is not what I wanted.
It also taught me to go and buy a damn Pipe Cutter.

How to Run a Platoon

I've seen a lot of people trying to run platoons, and I gotta say, I'm not really impressed. There seems to be a lot of this going around:

Platoon Command Squad + 4 Meltaguns + Chimera
10 man squad + autocannon
10 man squad + autocannon
Commisar + Power Weapon

Let me be clear here: this is not good. A 21-man guard squad is not going to be the bubble wrap you need to stop enemies from getting to you, the PCS does the job worse than vets and are much less survivable to boot, and you have hardly any offensive power in the squad itself! If you're looking to block, investing in vets is a better option and gets you more killing power. (The squad above is worth 2 meltavets and change.)

So what is another way to build a platoon? These kind of squads are "cheap", but not really good for their points. We don't want to try and use them to spam chimeras, because vets do a much better job of it. (Since they can pack 3 special weapons per squad, and have the awesome BS4.) So, what does the platoon excel at?

Now, I don't want to give the wrong impression: the platoon is actually a pretty powerful choice if used correctly. The trick is in maximizing all your options. So let's take a look, and we can figure out what the best (or at least a very good) way to run a platoon is.

Cutting Corners: Where to Get Another 100pts for Your Army

There's one thing every list needs, above and beyond all the usual stuff that we talk about. More than anti-tank, more than suppression fire. More than mobility, or anti-infantry, or bubblewrap. More than counter-assault or deep strike defense; more than even scoring units or anything else, lists always seem to need more points.

I'm going to tell you how to the rarest of tricks, namely how to get those points (without cheating.)

Scrounging for points is nothing new- every list builder ends up doing it sooner or later, and usually more of the first than the second. Most codices (sorry, Necrons) have a lot of cool toys in them and it's hard to fit everything you want in, but at some point it comes down to brass tacks (or, as the accountant above might tell you, down to terrible brass thrones atop an infinite plain of war) and you need to start making cuts to your list so you can fit it into whatever point level you're playing at. This is hard, because there are always some really useful units that you want to keep in and upgrades you just can't live without. But you chop away and finally pare the list down to... oh what the hell, you're still 100pts over? This is just not fair, there's nothing else you can cut from the list without ruining it!

Calm down, friend, I'm here to teach you where to get those last hundred points, and probably from places you won't even miss them. Learning to artfully snip away the dead weight of a list isn't easy, but it's something that comes with time and practice.