Balance in 40k

Hellions look pretty badass, but without the Baron...?

40k isn't perfectly balanced. That much is common knowledge; hence the amount of verbiage on forums across the internet about 'which unit is better, hive guard or pyrovores', 'how do I make my list into a super killy obscenity that Stalin would think was overpowered?', etcetera. We've all been there.

But does it have to be that way?

Why can't blast weapons snap fire?

"BBDA Cleeeeeeeear...."

So this is bugging me for some reason.

A horde of Orks is charging. The choppas are swinging with murderous intent. They're only a few metres away, time for a split-second reaction only. The tactical marines fire their bolters and plasma-gun from the hip. They hope the indiscriminate hail of shells will kill an Ork or two.

And what does the dude with a missile launcher do? Whistles Dixie to himself while he carefully loads a krak round into his launcher, and tries for a headshot with an antitank weapon. What the hell, missile launcher dude?

Arcanacon, Game 3: vs Necrons

So, a mere seven months after I played the game, here's a battle report featuring my Dark Eldar's first outing against the new Necrons :)

First, a caveat; my memory is slipping a little, so a few details are probably off, despite my notes. But  the ebb and flow of the game I think is still accurate, and moreover I think I ultimately learned a lot from it. without further ado, the game!

Arcanacon, Game Two

Yup, I haven't forgotten :)

In fact, I've recently upgraded my computer, and even installed Battle Chronicler. Which, by the way, is fantastic!

So a quick recap; I went to Arcanacon in January, a 1200 point 40k tournament. The first game is here, in which I narrowly escaped with a win against my bete noir, the Imperial Guard. So, for the second game I was quite pleased to see an army that I felt would be a better match up for me, Blood Angels.

And not just any Blood Angels, but gorgeous Spartan themed Blood Angels, complete with King Leonidas (acting as Mephiston)!

Here are Dion's Spartan's in all their glory. I actually took this shot while I was walking around in the prelude to round 1, so I was quite chuffed to actually play against them!

What counts as a dark lance?

This might seem like an obvious question with an obvious answer. A dark lance counts as a dark lance. But that's not what I want to get at. After all, the dark lance is not the only dedicated anti-tank weapon in the Dark Eldar codex.  

Blasters are the other obvious go-to, for reasons of both cost and availability. But does a blaster count as a dark lance? It is pretty similar, but only has half the range. And what about the heat lance, which has different capabilities as well as a different range?

Hot on the heels of my ramblings about how many dark lances one needs in one's army of murderous cutthroats, it is high time to look at how the lesser darklights in the book stack up.

How many dark lances do I need?

Ooo, I rolled a 6!

This is a question I often ask. In the aftermath of Arcanacon, where I ran a list that I knew full well had too little darklight (and still didn't score well on comp... go figure), I've decided to run some probhammer on the question.

Courting the Improbable, Part 2

A little while ago I started musing aloud (aprint?) about the nature of improbability in our game, and digressed into a comparison of models who are expected to be good vs models that are expected to be bad, and how the improbable events differ inversely in their value.

Now, I want to look at more systemic improbabilities, which in 6th ed 40k have multiplied to a level not seen since 2nd ed.

The genesis of this line of thinking goes back to my days playing BloodBowl, still my favourite GW game, though unfortunately I lost my board and many of my models. Back in the day, I played it as much as I could, ventured to a tourney a year for a few years running, read BloodBowl stuff on the tubez, etc. And the constant theme was 'minimise your risk'.

Arcanacon, Game 1

Arcanacon hosted a 1200pt 40K tourney on the Australia Day weekend, and I was fortunate enough to be taking part! Although the tournament scores included comp, it didn't have a large bearing on my army selection, as I basically brought along all of the 5th ed Dark Eldar that I have painted (yes, I have been going since the 5th ed codex came out; yes, I am a very slow painter!)

Arc40k

I made it to the Arcanacon 40k tourney last week, for my first 40k tournament in almost ten years! I had a blast, thanks to everyone involved!

I'm working on putting up some batreps with pics, but since I didn't take enough photos for a blow by blow (out of practice, pushed for time... etc), I'm going to try and make some maps.

The bad news is it might be a little while! Check back in a couple of weeks, with any luck there'll be some action.

In the mean time, here are some other pics from the event.

These are my Dark Eldar, on one of the splendid tables available!

 Here are a couple of the beautiful armies that were on show:

Courting the Improbable

Warhammer 40K is, if nothing else, a game of dice. Random numbers generated in certain limited ways govern most of the actions through which we meaningfully interact with our counterparts. So its no surprise that managing probability has a central place in generalship.

Much of the chatter regarding the randomness inherent in our game is focussed on ameliorating or avoiding those times that probability falls out of our favour. For example, take the number of forum posters bemoaning the switch to random charge distances in 6th ed, and the common advice to work with it by getting as close as possible.

But, extremes of probability occur on either side of the mean. Sometimes the dice will simply fuck us. But other times, wild and unexpected success can happen - provided that we allow it to.