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.

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!

Roland's NOVA Experiences: Games 3 & 4

Roland here again to get into my third and fourth games from the NOVA open a month ago. As always, the BatReps will be short and hit the highlights, followed by my quick analysis of how I played.

As an aside, this is a photo of Sandwyrm's AWESOME IG army, which my camera phone does poor justice too.

And now, without further ado....Games 3 & 4. My list is, again, here

Roland's NOVA Experiences: Games 1 & 2

Hey all! So after three weeks of work, modeling my Necro gang, and a general break from 40K in general, I'm finally going to begin my overview of my 8 games at NOVA. I remember most of the details of the games, but many of the individual play by plays are lost to time. Thus, these will be quick battle summaries where I hit the highlights of the games and then discuss briefly (ala Stelek) how I feel my Deployment, Army List, and Tactics went in every game and where I failed and could have done better. Additionally, these overviews will generally be devoid of photos as I by and large got too caught up in the games to take photos. Game 1 was the real exception as you'll see as I managed to take photos about once a turn. Anyway, without further ado, here is my army list (I'm abbreviating everything so if you have a question leave it in the comments and I'll reply):

Roland's NOVA Thoughts: Part 1

As promised (and yes I know I'm about a week later than everyone else. Sue me, I work a lot), I'm going to do a quick run down of the Good, Bad, and Ugly from NOVA 2011. But before I do mine, I direct you to my good pal Gramps' review here, for he covered a lot of what I wanted to cover, and so I'm going to touch on some things I saw he left out. Without further ado:

The Good:

1). The Players - I had an phenomenal weekend playing with a group of great guys. All were fun to talk to and game with. This weekend epitomized the Gentleman Gamer archetype we long and crave for in this hobby (and the archetype that GW aims for). In all 8 of my games there were never any rules disputes, arguments, whining, moaning, groaning, or other conduct unbecoming of a gentleman. Even when my dice abandoned me in 2 games and I was getting stomped, I just laughed it off and shrugged my shoulders with the "oh well" look. My opponents did likewise, and even after our games we often would hang out between rounds and shoot the shit (regardless of whether I won or he did). So kudos to Mike for encouraging an atmosphere of competitive, yet friendly, play.

Necrooooooooooooooo-Mundaaaaaaa!

Sooooo I'm in the midst of doing my NOVA write up (Gramps hit up most of my "Good, Bad, and Ugly" points in his article so my first article will go over Battle 1 and touch on a few things I have in addition to what Gramps said. In the interim though, my gaming group and I have decided to take the next few month or so off of competitive 40K and start a fun and relaxing Necromunda Campaign. What is Necromunda you ask? Well GWvsJohn wrote some excellent basic intro article earlier linked here, here, here, and here. Basic gist of it is a 40K "skirmish" game where you control a "gang" of anywhere between 3 and 12+ Gang members. Like the 5th Ed Battle Missions scenario "Kill Team", every model you have is basically an independent character - they move by themselves, don't need to maintain coherency, and can shoot whatever they want. Since most gangs are between (usually) 8-12 gang members, games go by quickly, with the average game lasting maybe 90 minutes.

Roland's Tourney Experiences: Gigabytes 2500 Tourney

Before I get into the awesomeness that was the Gigabytes 2500pt Tourney, I want to give you all a public service announcement. You see that fine looking chap to the left? Yes that one who's flipping us off. That's Kirby, the Evil One. Not the Pink Happy Go-Lucky Kirby, but the Pink One's evil twin. He's evil. And he cheats. Don't play him. EVAR. Ban him from your tourney's. Remember folks: Chris Kirby Cheats!

Ok announcement over. So the Gigabytes 2500pt Tourney. I'm going to go over the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, like I normally do, and then I'll follow it with a quick Lesson's Learned from my perspective for I learned A LOT from this tourney. I'll gloss over my 3 games briefly before the Lesson's Learned portion for the turn by turn play wasn't as important as what I took away from it. Without further ado, let's delve into the realm of THE GOOD.

Sizzle In the Summer 2: Games 1 & 2

Hey all! Roland here again. Time to get into the games and talk quickly about them all. I didn't take photos during my games because...well I was busy having fun and playing and didn't feel like taking out the phone to take some photos. So the only photos are generally overview photos taken by the organizers.

Game 1 vs. John
Army: 2000pts CSM comprised of (IIRC) Khorne Lord (Bloodfeeder, Combi-melta, Plasma Pistol, etc), Slaanesh DP w/ Lash, LR with a full compliment of Berzerkers, TS with a Sorcerer in a Havoc Rhino, PMs in a Havoc Rhino w/ 2 PGs, Defiler with CCWs, 3X Obliterators
Mission: VPs (Primary), Objectives (Secondary), Table Quarters (Tertiary).
Deployment: Dawn of War

That what the board looked like (though that's not our game). I had the bottom half of the table above, he had top. I believe he started his TS rhino behind the ruins in the top left, I started my GHs with RP in a rhino behind the bottom left pillar of the Landing Pad (LP). His turn 1 he moves his LR on right behind the LP, shoots under neath the pad at my rhino, and wrecks it. He forgot to move on the rest of his army turn 1...I reminded him during shooting if he wanted to, but he accepted the mistake and so everything was coming on from reserve. My turn I rolled in everything but the Scouts who were outflanking. My DP with Lord and Termie retinue dropped in right between the LP and the citadel on the right side of the board. My RB squad came in rom the bottom right and took the objective at the base of the citadel. Behind them ran in a LF squad. A speeder zoomed in to the right of the bottom tower, while a LF squad ran into the towers. To the left of the tower is a small ruin which my last LFs ran into, while they had a GH squad move on to their right (to the left of the tower), and a final squad moved on to the left of the LFs in the ruins. My last speeder zipped in 12" from the bottom left edge up to the ruins near the middle-left, giving them a nice shot at the TS rhino in the ruins. Shooting was simple (and ridiculously lucky) - left speeder immobilized TS rhino and the AC WG shot the side of the LR and immobilized it.

Sizzle In the Summer: Roland's First Tourney

So Summer Tournament Season is here and with NOVA being right around the corner, I finally decided to try and get my Wolves familiar with the tourney scene. Here begins Roland's Tale of Tournament 1 for the Season: Sizzle In the Summer.

Sizzle In the Summer was the second tournament organized by our Local Gaming Group, the Columbus Gaming Group and, as I'll get into shortly, a very well run and organized tournament. Some details before I go into the standard Roland Good, Bad, and Ugly review style for the tournament. It was a 2000point, 4 round tournament initially slated for only 12 players. There was such a great response that they expanded it to 14 and had to put several more on the waiting list due primarily on space constraints (you'll see in the photos). That's the long and short of it, more details will come shortly (missions, terrain, players, etc) as I get into the thick of it.

Oh and before I forget, yes I'll do a quick game summary for you all. And I'll have my list up at the end. And soooo, let us begin..

Roland Does Crowe...hilarity ensues?

As some of you know (or not...) I've been tinkering the past few weeks with a pure Crowe list. I started off with what I thought was an awesome list, but then I scrubbed it once I realized Crowe wasn't an IC. I went through the standard moaning and groaning of "Oh why Crowe must you suck and not have IC status so I can attach you somewhere?!" which was prevalent a few weeks back amongst many in the forum-sphere. Yet after much thinking and contemplating (and of course trying to make a list with a GM), I decided to revisit Crowe and see if it was in fact possible to make a decent list. I also did some reading up on Stelek's concept of 4+2 and realized that it would actually work really well with a Crowe/Purifier list. And so begins the journey into the inner workings of Roland's mind and his (feeble? awesome? EPIC?) attempt at making a solid and diverse Crowe/Purifier list....


When making a Crowe/Purifier list at 2000pts there are many methods with which we can shape and build the army. Kirby has shown one method, whereby we take mid-size Purifier squads in Rhinos backed by Psyflemen Dreads/Ven Dreads as the predominant driving force in the list. I decided to go a slightly different route with armor saturation. Either way, we need to start off the same with HQ. HQ wise, to make this list true pure Purifier, we need Crowe so...

Roland's Wolves: Squad 1 Emir's Bane

Why yes Kirby those ARE leather bound books. Many of them :) do they smell of rich mahogany? Sorry inside joke, anyway after about 4 months of off and on again painting I've finished my first squad of Grey Hunters, Emir's Bane. All that's left is some minor touch ups I noticed in the photos, paint and glue the banner in place, cut a template out to do their left shoulder emblem (I'm going for a claw reaching for a crescent moon and star) andddddd finish their Rhino. Which will basically be this weeks project along with starting my next squad, the Masters of Roos Tertius. As for the models, I used the same color scheme and paint scheme found here, and I think it came out well giving them a weathered, worn look which is what I'm going for. I mean they've been away from the Fnag for years upon years and thus no Blood Claws (they've all died or grown up), and a lot of older warriors. Before I paint the next squad I will be doing a test model to find out whether I like the look of the doing the Devlan Mud wash before dry brushing (which I've been doing) or after dry brushing. I think if I do it afterward, it will give them a darker look and feel, so I may reserve that for the REALLY old guys: the Long Fangs, the Lone Wolves, Wolf Guard, and perhaps the Scouts. Anyway without further ado:

Email In! 1850 IG Armored Company

Hey all! I recently got an email from one of our readers asking if it would be possible to do an army list review of a pure Armored Column IG list. I figured since I'm so awesome and I like doing themed "pure" lists with IG, I figured, "Well hell, why not? Pure Mech and Tanks seems like fun!" So began my initial research and list tweaking for this young gentleman and that's when it struck me: "Pure" Armored Column lists are extremely difficult to make, and to make competitively, especially if you try and replicate the style and type of list found in the old Armored Company rules. For those newer readers and players who never got a chance to experience a true, old school Armored Company, I'll summarize what made it some powerful: HQ's were tanks (well Command Tanks), Elites were either Tanks Ace's (basically BS4 tanks) or squads of Storm Troopers, Troops were individual tanks (and for each Ace or HQ you could get up to 2 tanks...so if you had 1 Command Tanks and 2 Aces, you could have 6 Tanks as troops), Fast Attack were Sentinels, Recon Squadrons (Hellhounds and Salamander Scout vehicles...which are AWESOME by the way), and Armored Fist Squads (basically a basic IG Squad in a Chimera), and Heavy Support was either additional Tanks (yay!) or Artillery Units (Basilisks and Griffons). You also had some pretty cool doctrines to upgrade your tanks with (my favorite were the ability to fire your sponson weapons at assaulting units as if the sponsons were I10 and the ability to add +1AV to your side armor to a max of 13.)

NOVA Open: Roland's Cast His Lot

Hey all! This is going to be a realllllllly short post as there's not much to say other than:

I FINALLY BOUGHT MY NOVA TICKET!

I don't know which other 3++ Authors are going (hopefully some so we can converge and have a 3++ beer drinking and gaming session), but hopefully some of them are so we can fully represent the Pink Army.

With all that said, how many of you, our dear readers, are going to NOVA Open this year and what army/armies are you bringing? Personally, I've decided to go with my Space Wolves b/c:

a). My Elysians are sidelined in a basement somewhere
b). I've been working on my Wolves for too long NOT to play them
c). They're the only army I've been playing for the past year.

So now I've got about 5 months to finish painting and modeling the army, somehow find about 10 more Long Fangs with ML's, and let's not forget those 6 TWC models I need. Any help in finding/acquiring these would be much appreciated :)

As for my list, it's a fairly straight forward and typical hybrid Space Wolf list. Do I expect to do super well with it? Not really. I'm actually just hoping to pull out a solid 2-2 on Day 1 and go from there. Anything better than that is just gravy. Onto the list! (this is based off memory too so points may be slightly off)

Fail Mail Part Deux: Ronald's Revenge!

Hey all! Roland here back with another (delayed) installment of "Fail Mail". Our hero and favorite, lovable, failure at life Ronald has returned with more awesome stories! Only this time (as you will soon see) it seems he's been doing his research, as the game detailed below demonstrates a much improved sense of play. So without further ado, his email will be in italics, and my awesome commentary in GREEN...the color of WIN.

Hey Kirby, Roland, and the rest of the 3++ Crew! I appreciate all the feedback and response from my first email BatRep I sent you and figured I'd give you all an update on how things have been going and ask for any input you may have for my most recent game. Granted it was a Vassal game, but I haven't had a chance to hit up my FLGS recently and have been getting my 40K fix online. So without further ado, Game 1: 2000pts vs. 3++ Jumpy BA, Pitched Battle, Capture & Contol

I'm going to use his BatRep to highlight some of the discussions and posts we've had here on 3++ in the past week, specifically SneakyDan's article linked here

Before I get into the analysis, here are the photos from the game. Mind you this was a FAST game against one of Ronald's good friends and fellow competitive player. We're going to use this game to reinforce some of Sneaky's points from his article and highlight some new ones.

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

Roland's Space Wolves: Trial Models

Hey all! So I've been quite busy this past week and seeing as everyone else was posting Hobby articles and modeling photos, I figured I'd jump on the Hobby train and show you the progress I've made thus far. If you look to the left, those are my 5 test models, about 90% done. The minor things left are to correct a few error spots, add writing to the scrolls, paint on my custom unit badges to the right shoulders, and of course glue the arms/weapons on. But since we like looking at minis, here are some more pics (I'll get into detail over colors/washes/etc. shortly)

Roland's Space Wolves: The Beginning

Hey all! So now that I'm back from Iraq it's time to start my WIP piece on my Space Pup army! As you can see to the right, I was quite busy with my deployment money while away, and managed to score around $300 worth of SW models off eBay. This is the first of many where I'll go into painting and conversion work, and I'd LOVE to have feedback from you all with areas you think I could improve upon or fine tune, especially in the realm of painting, for that is where I...suck. A lot. Here is a quick rundown of the swag I scored:

1X Mark II Carrying Case (Foam uncut/shaped);
1X Unopened box of Wolf Guard Termies;
1X Unopened box of Grey Hunters;
1X Drop Pod, disassembled; 1X LRC assembled (with some minor add ons needed); 4X Rhinos / RB's (with a AC turret, TLLC Turret, and TLHB turret); about 5-6 Grey Hunter Sprues; 1X Vehicle Sprue (incomplete); 5X Scouts (with 1X MG); 1X Dread with MM and DCCW; and a bunch of Greys and Termies. More to follow as I show some pics.

Email In: Elysian Air Cav @ 1500/2000pts

Woohoo! My first Army List critique! I got this email in from Xanadu and I figured, he being an Air Cav enthusiast like myself (and having the $ to drop on such an AWESOME, but expensive Army), I'd give him my undivided attention and try to help him tweak his list a bit so he can get the most bang for his buck. I'll post my comments below in...dark green, because it's the anti-Pink :)

FailMail: Famous VassFail Lessons and BatRep

Well folks, I received this in an email from one "Ronald Lendurad". It is a sad tale of epic playing failure and is full of shame. If you ever meet this "Ronald" make sure you mock him endlessly for this battle and never give him a chance to live it down, for it is truly....hilarious. With that said, "Ronald" did tell me about himself. Apparently he's a moderately competitive player who's rusty and out of practice and decided to warm back up to the game with 1750pts match on Vassal, seeing as his nearest LGS is very, very far away. I am going to ruthlessly critique his BatRep in hopes to provide some of the newer and younger players some invaluable lessons and "Don't Do's" that we, the experienced veteran gamers, sometimes take for granted. And so, without further ado, I present to you...FAILDAR: A Vassal Experience.

This was my....I mean "Ronald"'s initial set up. He's the Space Pups in the bottom right. He said the Mission was Seize Ground, they had the 3 Objectives you see above, and Deployment was Spearhead. His opponent had first turn as well. His opponent was wielding the mighty and feared "FootDar"! Army lists were basically:
Footdar: 5X minimal Guardian squads with either EML or BL, 2X WW squadrons with Scatter, Eldratar, 1X Squad of Harlies