Unit Reviews: Imperial Armor Aeronautica

I had been relatively impressed with the Badab War 1&2 releases as well as Doom of Mymeara- while not without their flaws (such as the Siege and Tyrant lists), they were a real notch up in terms of rules-writing for Forge World, offering a lot of pretty decent options to players looking to do something unique with their armies without being either over- or underpowered in most cases; it seemed that FW was trending upwards in their understanding of the game and attempts to make their products balanced and usable for everyone. Unfortunately Imperial Armor Aeronautica basically wrecks that trend. Its units vary widely from incredibly broken ("Hi, I'm a flyer with a 2+ cover save!") to utterly worthless (110pts for a twin-linked Burst Cannon and a Markerlight.)

If that were the worst of it, though, it would simply be another early-type Forge World book. However, this time around it really seems that FW simply doesn't know what any of the rules do.

Forgeworld in?

The rumor mill never rests...and it looks like the latest rumors put some FAQs/erratas out in the near future to make Forgeworld 'mainstream' 40k. This is basically to remove the 'with opponent's permission' clause and bring extra releases into the tabletop realm we play.

How this is done is key. If Forgeworld is actually balanced appropriately and rather than becoming the area for crazy experimental designs, this could work. Things like specific campaign armies, extra units or armies entirely, etc. would all be welcome changes. Dread Mob Orks, Eldar Corsairs, extra Tau units, etc. are all lovely examples of this.

Then there's the stupid stuff. We can imagine a quick FAQ/nerf bat to that but what about the Achillies? Titans? Super-heavies? Super-heavy fliers? Are these going to be canon as well? D-weapons? If these are kept I imagine Forgeworld for tournament purposes will be kept the same or perhaps with some modifications (i.e. no super-heavies, titans, etc.) - you'll just see more of this in your casual gaming scene.

If this is Games Workshop's attempt to bring extra balance to 6th edition (i.e. re fliers), could work. May not work. We shall see, though I'd rather they take what they had and balanced it there and then tried to introduce extra things. But that's me :P.

Thoughts? Opinions? Written abuse?

Email in: Pure Deathwing with Forgeworld options

"Kirby,

First, let me say how much I enjoy your blog.  My employer has lost hours of productivity from me due to you fellas.


I am building a 2000 pt. pure deathwing army for casual 40k in my nerd cave. I've read all the threads about how doublewing is the way to go to be competitive and I agree but speeders and power armor just don't fit in with the fluffy theme I'm going for here.  I'm basically trying to limit myself to terminator armor, land raiders, and dreadnoughts.  My friends and I allow Forgeworld units in our games because, let's face it, the models are too cool!  So what I would love to hear your opinion on is, could Forgeworld units (Contemptor, Land Raider Achilles, Storm Eagle, Mortis Dread, etc.) provide the necessary tools to make a pure deathwing army work?


Below is what I'm currently considering:

Email in: Vaylund Cal

"Hi Kirby,

I've just recently started reading your blog and it is very informative and fun to read. I have a question regarding one of the commanders from the second Badab War book. Could it be worth playing Vaylund Cal? I know the points are quite high but look at that stat line. The only bad thing I can see there is the low attack value for a commander but with his servo harness he has his 2 servo arm attacks so on the charge its three STR 10 and two STR 8 attacks. Also flamer and TL plasma pistol give him good (if short) range attacks, I'm seeing him running with a TH/SS termie squad in a LR crusader. Could only be better if FNP applied to any squad he joined.

Imperial Armor Rules Updates for Tau

It appears Forge World has updated some of the rules for units, particularly a number of Tau and Imperial Guard ones. Most of the IG stuff is largely meaningless changes, but the Tau units open up a number of interesting options.

Remote Sensory Tower

Not only a Markerlight in the Troops slot for a reasonable cost, but also lets you reroll misses if you're within 6" of it. That's pretty solid for 40pts, especially if you know you're going to be clustered up on a static point of defense. If you aren't fielding Tetras in your FA slots, you would definitely want one or two of these.

Imperial Armour List Review: Corsair Eldar

IA11 included, as seems to be the standard these days, an alternate army list in it, this time for the Eldar faction. The last several books have had middling-to-poor army lists, though sometimes not without merit, but as a whole I have generally been happy with most of FW's recent standalone units but unimpressed with the lists they create.

Thus it was that I was rather surprised to find that not only is the Corsair Eldar army extremely different from the vanilla Eldar one, in many ways it is significantly better than its "official" companion. Now, admittedly, this is not a huge achievement given the state of Eldar these days, but I think it's fair to give FW some credit where credit is due on this.

In any case, let's take a look at this interesting little list we've been given.

Email in: 1500 Eldar

"Hi,

hope things are good and the new year is treating you well, I’ve recently got back into 40k as I find myself with a lot more free time on my hands than I use to have, and after a very good Christmas (lots and lots of models from Santa) I’ve been playing about with my eldar list. 1500 points.

IA:8 Elysian Army List Review: Part 2

In Part 1 we went over the majority of the Army List, touching on HQ, Elites, and Fast Attack. Part 2 we'll close out the Army List review by going into detail about the two sections that showed the most change and additions: Troops and Heavy Support.

Oh and if you're wondering about the photo at let, it's a photo looking out of the side door of a modern day Valkyrie as it flew this author over the beautiful sands of Iraq.

The first section you'll notice a lot of changes and additions in the Elysian Army List of IA:8 is in the Troops section. It all starts off similar to the C:IG counterparts - Elysian Drop Infantry Platoons consist of a Platoon Command Squad, 2-5 Drop Infantry Squads, 0-4 Heavy Weapon Squads, 0-3 Special Weapon Squads, and 0-1 Drop Sentinel Squadrons. Yes, you can attach Sentinels to Platoons, potentially giving you the ability to field A LOT of Deep Striking MM Platforms. I digress.

IA:8 Elysian Army List Review: Part 1

Dark Knight Curon

After a much needed break following NOVA, I've decided to get back into blogging again. Why a break you may ask? Honestly I, like many in the competitive scene recently, was just burned out from 40K so took a step back. Now to keep some interest alive in the hobby, I decided in October to finally drop some crazy cash and revamp my old IA:4 Elysian army with some new shiny models. It also helped my old models disappeared into the warp storm that is my parent's basement. Oh well.

Anyway, since my army is about 90% put together (and 0% painted) I've decided to re-look the IA:8 army list. Initially back in 2010 I wrote this , but after reading Puppy's recent IA Army List reviews I decided I'd go back and do a more in depth review of the Elysian Army List in IA:8. This will be a two part series. This will be the first part and will detail on HQ, Elites, and FA. Though it may seem random, it's primarily due to the fewer "new" things in these sections as opposed to Troops and Heavy Support which have some new and significant changes.

Death Korps of Krieg Army Review

As part of a semi-series looking at the Imperial Armo(u)r books and the unique forces you can field with them (such as the Armored Battlegroup, Siege Regiment, Dread Mob, and Tyrant's Legion), I'm picking one of the most popular ones this time around, partly because I've gotten a request to do so and partly because it's pretty sweet.

The Death Korps of Krieg, originally printed in Imperial Armor 1 and eventually given an update that is available online, is supposed to represent a massive, entrenched foot army that uses heavy artillery support and rock-hard soldiers to hold the enemy off. Although it is superficially similar to a normal Imperial Guard army, much like the other Forge World lists some small changes make critical differences in how the list can function, so let's go through and take a look at things.

(Oh, and to stave off the inevitable complaints: no, I am not "missing the point" of the Imperial Armor books. Good rules are not incompatible with good fluff. Taking an honest look at the rules associated with something does not magically diminish its other aspects; it's simply an assessment of how useful these rules are in the game and whether they do what they say they do.)

Roland Does: Specialty Games

I've decided to add a new little subsection here into the 3++ Realm and begin discussing two of my favorite Specialist games out there: Necromunda and Infinity. The Specialty Game series will go through the ins and outs of the games, Army Lists I'm tinkering with, and some background. Hopefully by the end of the series I'll may have sparked some interest amongst you all in checking out some of these other games. They both offer very different game mechanics from 40K and and can be more tactical for different reasons. Plus, they offer a break from large and long (2+ hour) games as at most they'll have less than 15 models (usually) games go by quickly allowing more to games to be played on a given game night. Also the fewer the models the quicker and easier painting and converting becomes as you have less to work with, and more time to spend on each model.

So the first part in this series will be on Necromunda. I'll point out GWvsJohns posts in Part 1 of the Necromunda guide, but to hold you over until then...check out my gang as it slowly forms!

Imperial Armour Army List Review: Armo(u)red Battlegroup

Continuing with my series reviewing the army lists Forge World has put out, this time I'll be talking about the Armored Battlegroup. Back in the bad old days of 4E and early 5E, when the IG codex was basically a joke and vehicles were still regarded as bad, this was supposedly a list to fear. it could take LOTS of TANKS, for crying out loud! How could that not be broken!? Um, yes. Having actually seen the army in play myself... it isn't very good. Wasn't and isn't. Thematic, sure- nothing says "The Imperial Guard" like ten Leman Russes rolling down the field, but being that Forge World's expertise at balancing things is... less than stellar, it's not a huge surprise that it falls short in some odd ways.

Imperial Armour 10 Review: The Badab War, Part 2

So, having finally gotten my hands on Imperial Armour 10 once more and having time to actually read through and assess it all properly and write up a review, so I'm gonna do this. IA9 was definitely one of their better books, my thoughts on Space Marines aside; it's got good rules (aside from the Secessionist side of things) and is reasonably interesting, but the fact that it's only half the war- and the less interesting half, at that- meant that I was only moderately impressed with the fluff side of things. However, the fact that FW had managed to put out a good set of characters that brought a lot to the game and were balanced for normal use was a huge point in its favor- if IA10 can manage the same, it will end up being a very cool book.

Unlike the last book, I'm going to go a little more in-depth on some of the non-rules stuff here, because frankly it's more interesting to me. A lot of people complained that I "missed the point" by focusing on the rules side of things with the other reviews, but really I think that is itself missing the point- good rules and good fluff are in no way mutually prohibitive; in fact, they dovetail nicely with each other- good fluff with crappy rules is just discouraging, since your cool and awesome guys end up getting killed like punks. Likewise, good rules with bad fluff can be uninspiring and bland, making it hard to muster the energy to devote oneself to the ordeal of assembling and painting a complete force. There is no excuse for poor rules writing in FW- the company is hardly on a demanding schedule in terms of book releases and they are experienced players, albeit probably not terribly competitive ones. However, I find it strange to think that they cannot find even a single person amongst their team who can make good rules assessments or at least read on the internets what is good and what isn't- indeed, they could probably get hundreds of nerds who would jump at the chance to assist them for free, and some of those would even be competent at what they do.

Forge World in Tournaments: Yea or Nay?

What say you?

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=82982

More specifically, what do you think about allowing Forge World lists into GW tournaments? Good idea? Bad idea? If bad idea, is it due to balance or lack thereof? Are there truly balance issues with Forge World armies against normal Codex lists? If so, can you give some specific examples?

Kirbs bullied me into sending you this. It's supposed to be an article on the Three Plus Plus.

Thanks for your time,

Katie D

Kirby, didn't your mom ever tell you not to bully the girls? :P Australia says no.

If you've read my reviews of the Imperial Armor (I'm sorry Armour) lists so far, you probably have an inkling of my opinion on Forge World: even more so than Games Workshop they are a model company and make no attempt to make balanced rules for their models. However, they usually err on the side of caution, which is good, so very few of their lists or units are unbalanced. However, there are a few things you probably shouldn't allow:

Discussion: Massacre at Bellerophon's Fall

"Hi, Kirby. I have a request of yourself and the Pink Army.

Myself and some friends are playing out a Badab War campaign, using the Imperial Armour books. We are currently in Phase I of the campaign, and will be playing out the 'Massacre At Bellerophon's Fall' scenario at the end of March. We have already played a 'dry-run' of this scenario, and it is quite clearly a very difficult one for the Loyalist player to win. 

I have attached a PDF copy of the scenario, though I suspect that you cannot legally publish this on your website, so I will summarise the scenario below:

The Loyalist player deploys fist, anywhere on the board, but not within 12" of any table edge. Unless they have the ability to deep strike, no Loyalist forces may be held in reserve. The Secessionist player then deploys their forces anywhere outside the Loyalist deployment zone as long as they are not within 6" of an enemy model. As much of the Secessionist force as they wish may be held in reserve. Unless deep striking, Secessionist reserves may enter from any table edge. The first turn is decided by a roll-off, with the Secessionist player adding +1 to the roll if they have fewer units on the table than the Loyalist player. 

Imperial Armor Dread Mob list review

Since folks seemed to like my review of the IA9 Tyrant's Legion list, I figured I'd work back through some of the other lists. I'm gonna do the Dread Mob list first, probably followed by the Elysians and eventually the Krieg and perhaps some of the others. However, these will be contingent on me actually getting a look over all of the books and having the time to go through them in detail, so we'll see. A caveat: not only have I not played this list (or against it), I also sit in a minority position as far as Orks are concerned. If you think Orks are super-awesome, you'll obviously have some disagreements with me there.

In addition to talking about the Dread Mob list presented in IA8, I'm also going to talk about the additional Ork units available to the standard list that the book adds- some of them are actually quite relevant, which is something of a surprise for Forge World, but I suppose makes the higher-quality portions of IA9 something less of an outlier.

Adepticon Gladiator: Breaking the Broken

Adepticon is coming up, and Gladiator is part of that. A horribly unbalanced, often poorly-designed part of that. It's basically 'Ard Boyz (2250 pts), but with people also allowed to field superheavies and Forge World nonsense. Oh, and they like making "wacky" scenarios that grossly favor one army or another under the guise that this "balances" things.

So how do we break this nonsense? Well, we don't have the missions available, but if we design an army with decent flexibility we can take advantage of whatever garbage they give us. We do, however, want to design as devastating an army as possible with what we're given, so that means looking over the "special" units we have available and seeing what we can break the worst.

Email in: How to Make the Trains Run on Time

Hey, Kirby and everyone!
I really, really love IA9, and especially love the Tyrant's Legion list. So much so, that when a player asked me if it was any good, I instantly had to stop and think- well, is it? I love the feel, I love the fluff, I've won games, I've lost games, but...
I'm really biased. My problem is I'm simply too biased in my liking of the Tyrant's Legion; I just can't think objectively when my mind fantasizes about Retributors with their cheap meltabombs, 40-man squads with four flamers at 150 points that grant 3+ saves, access to the vanilla marines Heavy Support, autocannons on chimeras, the potential for dev squads in chimeras, Arvus lighters with guns strapped to them, and even the Sergeant-with-an-extra-wound ultra-cheap HQ choice.
Is the army any good, would you say? Am I just too enthused by all my cannon fodder? What are the best units in the book?
Sorry if this is a lot to ask, especially about a Forge World army and one for whom you may not even have read the rules... but I'm really curious: am I blinded by beauty, or is there substance within all that style?
- sofacoin

Email In: 1000pts of Elysians (IA8)

Hi Kirby & co ! Your blog has quickly become one of my preferred W40K blogs thanks to the topics covered and the lack of emo-bitching. I enjoy your codex reviews, army analysis and concepts discussions.

I’ve gifted myself with a FW present for Christmas, and will likely spend 2011 building and painting an Elysean Guard force, using the IA8 list. After a careful reading of Dethron’s review, here’s what I’ve came up with at 1000 pts (painting those dudes and birds will take time, so let’s start it small but manageable).

HQ: 60 pts

Company Command Squad, Vox-Caster

Troops 1: 285 pts

Veterans, 2 Metlaguns, 1 Heavy Flamer, Vox-Caster, Demolitions doctrine

Valkyrie, 2 Multiple Rocket Pods

Imperial Armor 9 Review Part 2: The Tyrant's Legion

Okay, so unlike the characters from the previous section, the Tyrant's Legion is a stand-alone list with unique units designed to represent the mix of Astral Claws and inducted humans that comprised the bulk of Huron's forces. This combined-arms style is the main draw for the list- other than that it is rather weak, but might be of interest to players wishing to have a unique army or looking to representing an unusual force from their own fluff.

One interesting aspect of the list is the Tyrant's Due rule that the various Space Marine units in the list possess; in short form, this rule allows you to claim a +1 to any cover save gained from friendly troops being in between you and a firing unit, which is pretty nice. On the downside, the intervening unit suffers d3 casualties (no AP), which is more of an annoyance than an actual disadvantage. Their heavy/special weapons selections are also a bit different: specials are more restricted (grenade/flamer/melta, usually) and heavies are a bit different (no lascannon/multimelta, added heavy stubber.) Heavy Stubber is, unfortunately, pretty universally overpriced at 10pts- at 5pts it would have actually been quite good, but when it has to fight for space with the Heavy Bolter (strictly better) and sometimes Autocannon (fantasic), it's really no competition.

On to the list!
HQs