5th edition nostalgia – Combined Arms Podcast

Shamelessly stolen from The Independent Characters – listen to them!

6th Edition is less than two weeks away! The Gamers Sanctuary hosted a tournament yesterday and it was a great time. We had nine people show up and fight it out using Adepticon rules. Tournament results:

1st Place: Bill M. (Geneguard) with his Salamanders
2nd Place: Mike Hernandez with his Imperial Guard
3rd Place: Scott Tucker with his Grey Knights
Best Painted: Your humble editor… methinks it was a sympathy award, but I was proud to take this home

Charlie don’t surf!

The missions are always interesting and super challenging. For me, they take 40k to another level. You actually have to think about what is happening and how to get to the objectives. GS staff managed to put down enough terrain to make it less alpha-strikey as well.

Mike H.’s Imperial Guard. Glad I didn’t have to play this one

Josh’s Star Phantoms

Scott’s super well-painted Grey Knights with CONTEMPTOR FORCE

I love the object source lighting on his librarian

Tau4Eva’s… Tau

Geneguard (Bill)’s Salamnders with Vulkan Heman.

I managed to go 0-3 with three very close losses. My first game I lost on the primary objective to Josh’s Star Phantoms 2-1. The Stormtalons were more of a threat than they were an actual performer.

Battle Markers… will have a writeup on these soon. SUPER AWESOME.

Stormtalons make great flankers

I tried to take the objective at the end but it wasn’t to be

My second game I lost on the primary objective to Adam’s Tau (Tau4Eva). He had me ‘outshooted’ the entire game and it was a tough loss. The Stormtalons became immobilized in an area where they couldn’t really shoot (my fault for trying to get them cover saves… damned if you do, damned if you don’t!). They did manage to shoot through some doors and blow up some things.

I probably should have spread out my Talons more in this game. There wasn’t a whole lot of terrain on my side of the board to hide behind and Tau got first turn

My third game was against Eldar. I lost this one again on close objectives… my Stormtalons again missed a lot of shots and I wasn’t able to take down his transports, which really cost me the game. I also immobilized my LRC on turn two. Stupid!

All in all it was a really fun tournament with three close games, and eight out of the nine armies were fully painted. I would say many of us FC40k crew brought ‘fun’ lists with stuff we just wanted to try out… a great time with friends.

This Saturday is Gamer’s Sanctuary‘s monthly 40k tournament and most likely the last one using the 5th edition rules. I have decided to exit 5th edition the way I started and bring my Tau. The last few tournaments have been fun with my Blood Angels. But I really do not want to spend another day of Marine vs Marine battles. I have played my Tau lately but with several Imperial Armour models. So playing a tournament list will feel limited for me now with base Codex units. Tau of course have suffered a bit during 5th edition as the codex was last updated for 4th edition. But I wanted to go out with a bang, so we will see how it goes. Tau can still do OK versus mech armies which is typically what people bring to tournaments.

I have a hard time explaining this game to my non-40k friends. I tell them I play an army that has not been updated for the current game system rules. I hope Game’s Workshop surprises me with more frequent updates for all the armies after 6th edition launches.

I started playing 40k with 5th edition, so this will be the first time I experience a rules change. I am looking forward to experiencing the game again as new. Speaking of, I dug up some old photos from my first and fourth games of 40k. My buddy Joe had a cool game room setup for playing Heroscape and we used a lot of terrain from that system. He was a veteran 4th edition player, but he was new to 5th at the time we played. I can still remember the first game against his Orks. He won on kill points 3-2. After a few games of close losses against his Orks, he decided to dig out his old Space Wolves and beat me with them. It took me awhile to get a win against him, but I loved the sense of newness of the game and really enjoyed myself despite losing. So here’s some looking back before I look forward to 6th. Once upon a time in September of 2009….