ATC Results Post

Well, I saw a lot and learned a lot.  My result was 4 draws and a loss.  I was pretty pleased with that result.  I had several chances to turn those draws into wins but you know how it goes.  I really need to get an "Animosity Happens" bumper sticker made to put on my car.  Good news, though.  Through having some good teammates, we scored high enough to get 3rd place in the tournament!

Team "Not in the Face!"  We won some awesome loot.

For those who don't know the ATC/ETC format, you have teams.  A team captain puts down an army list and in response, the other captain throws down a list.  It's a little like picking teams in a pickup basketball game.

For my part, I had a couple of good matchups and a couple of horrendous ones.  My opponents were:

Game 1:  High Elves
Game 2:  Warriors of Chaos
Game 3:  Warriors of Chaos
Game 4:  Wood Elves
Game 5:  Ogre Kingdoms

Here we are playing.  The tables were done to look like it was all one big battlefield.  Combined with the team element, this was really amazing.  Really well done and cool to play on.  I'm in the blue ballcap in the right.

My list:

Black Orc Warboss with Crown of Command, Obsidian Trinket, Armor of Destiny
Savage Orc Shaman with level 4, shrunken head, fencer's blades
Night Goblin Shaman, level 1, ruby ring
Goblin BSB with Spider Banner, light armor, shield, bow
Goblin Bigboss, dragonbane gem, Enchanted Shield, Tormentor Sword, light armor

49 Night Goblins, bows, musician, standard, 2 fanatics
33 Savage Orc Big 'Uns, bows, standard, musician

8 Trolls
1 Wolf Chariot

2 Mangler Squigs
1 Pumpwagon, outriggas, spiky roller
1 Pumpwagon, outriggas, giant explodin' spores
2 Rock Lobbas
2 Doom Divers

A custom made K'Daii Destroyer from the guy who won best painted.  Amazing army.

Overall, I liked my list.  The savage orcs with bows isn't a bad choice and it throws people who haven't played a really shooty O&G list.  The trolls continued to suck in this list.   I am going to drop them for more night goblins with bows/fanatics in my regular list.  I also have found that the pumpwagons are way better than the chariots, so I'll be keeping them.  However, the strength 5 is so much more useful than the str 4 with no armor saves.  I'll be changing both chariots to have the spiky rollers.  The outriggas is just amazing, also. I think both of those are mandatory upgrades.

This was the Night Goblin army that won best O&G army in the ATC Tournament.  It is not my army!

In game 1, the opponent had a lot of tough units.  He had 2 big blocks of Phoenix Guard and White Lions backed up by a big unit of silver helms and bolt throwers.  We shot each other for six turns.  The big loss came in the first turn, when the Savage Orc shaman miscast and got sucked into the warp.  That hurts, and it happens a lot more than I care to deal with.  I am considering dropping the shrunken head shaman for a regular orc shaman with the earthing rod, just to reroll the miscasts.  Even with that loss, I  came within 1 model of killing the white lion unit and it would have given me the win.

My teammate Keith's Middenheim Empire Army.

In game 2, I Gork-Stomped a chariot to death, panicked a chimera off the board, and wiped out the daemon prince with a rock lobba on turn one.  He charged my Savage Orc Block with a Chimera and Skullcrushers. He managed to assassinate my BSB with a Chimera and I lost combat by one point.  Even with the stubborn crown, I rolled a 12 for leadership and ran.  This changed a rout in my favor to a draw.  It got crazy, with me running my night goblin hero on the wolf into the troll unit, just to give them leadership to turn around and get the hell out of way of combats so that I could end the game.

In game 3, I was extremely tired and made some mistakes.  I also miscast with the orc shaman (2 dice on Fists of Gork) and lost all my spells.  I basically played like crap and got a draw.

My teammate David's Skaven Army. 

In game 4, it was a pretty tough points denial Wood Elf list.  Big block of chicks with 4+ ward saves and a lot of shooting.  We danced for 6 turns and neither of us killed much.

This Wood Elf great eagle few right into my lines and got peppered with goblin arrows, but it was glorious.  'Murica!  This was by far my favorite game of the tournament.  Very nice player and very low key.

Finally, in game 5, I had my butt handed to me.  This was the team that dominated the tournament.  I didn't play the game badly, but I could not counter the maneaters with both Sniper and Poison.  He got first turn, shot my rock lobbas with Skycannons, and used his panic spell to hit my doom divers.  He killed a character a turn with the Maneaters.  By the end, I charged his Maneaters with both my Savage Orcs and the Trolls, but still lost combat.  Trolls broke, but the Savages stayed in.  The scenario gave bonus points for killing characters, so what would have been maybe a 500-600 point loss turned into a 1500 point loss.  It was ugly.  I knew to try and Foot the maneaters, but didn't roll double 6's, so he just dispel scrolled it.  He knew to kill my Goblin BSB with the Spider Banner.  I don't know what else I could have done, but it was a brutal loss.  Kudos to those guys, though. They knew who to match me up with.

My teammate Brandon's Caledor themed High Elf army.

Anyway, it was a great tournament, and I'm looking forward to the Redstone Rumble in Alabama in October!

Next up is finishing painting and getting a display board together.  I have some kind of "Squig Fighting Pit" board in mind.  We'll see.

Update on Squigmania, June 22, 2014

With ATC (American Team Championship) coming up in Chattanooga, TN, I'm trying to get my fantasy Orc and Goblin army painted to a basic standard.  I'm also trying to finish various squiggy conversions.  Every tournament I play, I become more and more convinced that the Orc and Goblin player's best bet is to make the army into a gunline.  It just works better with all the war machines we have.  And the savage orcs are good fighters, but at least the bows give them something to do.  In my last game,  I took a Terrorgheist down to one wound in a single turn with the poison banner and a volley from the savage orcs.  Not bad for a unit that's supposed to wreck stuff in combat.

Anyway, here's my list for the tournament:

Lords:

Black Orc Warboss, crown of command, armor of destiny, obsidian trinket: 260 points

Savage Orc Great Shaman, level 4, fencer's blades, shrunken head: 290 points

Heroes:

Goblin Bigboss, light armor, shield, BSB, bow, Spider Banner: 151 points

Goblin Bigboss, wolf, light armor, shield, Warrior Bane, Dragonhelm: 66 points

Goblin Bigboss, wolf, light armor, enchanted shield, dragonbane gem, Tormentor Sword: 64 points

Night Goblin Shaman, level 1, dispel scroll, ruby ring of ruin: 100 points

Core Units:

35 Savage Orc Big 'Uns, bows, musician, standard bearer: 405 points

54 Night Goblins, bows, standard, musician, 2 fanatics: 232 points


Special Units: 

1 Wolf Chariot: 50 points

8 Trolls: 280 points

Rare Units:

1 Pumpwagon, outriggas, spiky roller: 70 points

1 Pumpwagon, outriggas, explodin' spores: 70 points

2 Mangler Squigs: 130 points

2 Rock Lobbas: 170 points

2 Doom Divers: 160 points



Also, here are some progress pics from my Squigmania army.  If you're wondering about the goblin launching the squig, I'm not sold on it either.  I plan on painting it and tearing it apart if it sucks.

Nob Biker Number 5, Finished.

My First 7th Edition 40k Game...Against Daemons...

Nob Bikers and Deffdred watch a Helldrake fly over.

I was expecting this to be a bloodbath.  I was playing against the new 7th edition daemon summoning factory list and I was...well...worried.   We played an 1850 point game with a Maelstrom of War mission.

My army:

5 Nob bikers
Warboss with bike
Mek with Kustom Forcefield
Deffdred with extra CCW and skorcha
3 Kannons
10 Lootas
2 Battlewagons with 4 big shootas, kannons, grot riggers, and deffrollas
2 dakkajets
1 unit of 19 shoota boyz
1 unit of 20 shoota boyz
Looted Wagon with Boomgun

Opponent's army:

Helldrake
Belakor (the dataslate daemon prince guy)
Daemon Prince
2 big blobs of horrors
2 units of chaos marines
Defiler
Multiple Tzeentch heralds

The Battlewagon let out its one passenger:  a naked mek with a forcefield.  He took an objective, then got immediately eaten by a Bloodthirster.

As I'm new to most of the newer army books and new 40k in general, I was unsure of what most of his stuff did.  I have known my opponent a long time and he's a good friend, so he tried to clue me in on the stuff that I didn't know.  I do notice that 40k Daemons are different from Fantasy in terms of what's good.  In fantasy, multiple skullcannons and nurgle beasts are the best stuff and that's usually all I see.  But in 40k, I notice that Horrors and Daemon Princes are very good units.

We only got to play 4 complete turns before he had to go to work, but it was enough for me to see whether my observations were correct.

First, I was right in that this is the mobility, objective taking edition.  Orks excel at this.  I was taking objectives left and right, especially the ones where you just move to and sit on an objective.

Next, the daemon summoning is about as nasty as I thought it would be.  My opponent had about 20 dice every turn to cast psychic powers with.  Even if I brought a psycher just for defense, it would have been a rowboat paddling in a tsunami against this army.  I was able to weather the storm of spells, but had we kept playing, he would have summoned everything he had in his army box.

Da Red Baron and the Orkpache 'Copta tried their best to take down Belakor the Daemon Prince.  The Jink save combined with shrouding was tough.  I got him down to one wound, but wasn't able to kill him to get the objective points.

Finally, vehicles really did get a boost.  In the games of 6th edition that I played, people shot my vehicles on turn 1.  This time, it's a lot harder to blow them up.  And if the rumors are true of Grot Riggers giving It Will Not Die to vehicles in the new codex, Ork vehicles are going to be even more resilient.

At the end of the fourth turn, I was winning 7 to 5 on objectives, but I think I was going to lose everything but the warboss's unit.  The Nobz were cleaning house.  I had not taken Nob bikers before, mostly because I hadn't built any.  But using all the nobz on tracked wheels that I had lying around (and my new built additional one), I was able to put a unit of 5 together.  This unit will be a staple of my new 7th edition regular list, unless GW nerfs the hell out of them.  They are so, so much better than my regular unit of nobz.

All in all, this is the best edition of 40k I have ever played.  I really enjoyed the mission cards and I think this made the game a lot more fun.  Kudos to GW for (mostly) getting this edition right.

The Orkdeptus Mekanikus holding the line.  Waaaagh!

7th Edition 40k: A New Day for the Orks?

So I broke down and paid my 85.00 extortion fee for the new 7th edition 40k rules.  I also bought the cards.  After the initial sticker shock wore off, I was able to stop hyperventilating and actually open the book up.

Thoughts?  It's pretty good!  Since this edition came out so quickly after 6th edition, I fully expected this to be a cash grab for GW.  I think it's common knowledge that their business model sucks and that it prices new gamers out of the hobby.  And it's not changing anytime soon.

The Good

So what makes this a good edition, especially for Ork players?  Well, first off, the new mission-based system is done really well and benefits the mobility of Ork armies.  With the new mission cards, you basically draw mission cards and try to complete them in a turn. Then you discard the cards and keep drawing throughout the game.  This is a boon to Ork players, since we have so many fast and mobile units.  Most of the cards are "Take Objective X."  We have a lot of units that can hold objectives.

Exhibit A:  The Mighty Lone Deffkopta.

The next good thing is that all units can score again.  Things like our Troop unit Deff Dreds can now hold objectives.  The thing that makes it interesting is that Troops score over other units.  And transports bought for units count in the same category of the unit it belongs to.  So, a Troop unit of Nobz in a battlewagon is actually TWO troop units for the purposes of scoring.  This is an amazing benefit.

Finally, the thing that really helps the Orks in the new edition is the opening up of the force organization chart.  You can take multiple primary detachments of Orks.  As long as you have an HQ unit and 2 Troops, you can open up another primary detachment.  This is wonderful for taking cheap heavy and fast units that no one normally took because they were squeezed for slots.  I expect to see a ton of units made of 1 Killa Kan, 1 Warbuggy, or 1 deffkopta just to split fire or zip to objectives.

The Bad

With all of that, there are some definite downsides to playing an Ork army in the new 7th edition.  First, assault still sucks.  It's been cleaned up, but the game is nearly forcing armies to shoot.  Overwatch, no consolidation into another combat, and tooled up shooty armies all point in the direction of making an Ork Dakka army.  Mine is and always was heavily shooty, so it's not a problem for me.  But taking tons of slugga boyz is not going to be the way to go, unless GW throws in a ton of assault benefits for the new Ork codex.

Next, our antitank got worse.  The new vehicle damage damage chart makes AP3 antitank weapons nearly worthless for blowing up tanks.  Unless you have AP1 or 2 weapons, you're stuck glancing tanks to death now.  And we already didn't have very much low AP weaponry.  The deffrolla is an AP- weapon now, so that's not going to work either.  We need high strength, low AP weapons in the next book.  I am hoping Big Gunz get a lot better.

Finally, the daemon summoning from 7th edition is just nasty.  We can't cast any of it.  Much like Orcs & Goblins magic in Fantasy, we can't take any of the good rulebook lores.  In 40k, we can take the daemon summoning spells from the rulebook, but we also suffera perils of the warp test on any double.  While other armies are going to be summoning whole units every turn, we just die.  Again, hopefully the new codex fixes our problems, but I fully expect to see the rulebook lores being really good and Ork Psychic powers just being mediocre.

The Awesome

Whatever happens, this ruleset has made me very excited to play 40k, which has not happened in a very long time.  In response, I started working on stuff again.  I decided to make another nob on treads.  If I steal from my already made nobz, I can now make a nob biker unit.  I've never played with one of these and I think they were the unit to have in 5th edition 40k and on.  Hope you guys are as excited for 7th edition 40k as I am.

Kniggit Goblins!

Started working again on my Kniggit Goblins again.

For lack of a better name, I came up with the name from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  I love the idea of a big Night Goblin and Squig cavalry unit, but I was disappointed in both the lack of a squig heavy cav unit and/or the Squig Hopper rules.  Thus, I came up with the idea of a unit of Giant Squig riders.  However, buying a bunch of Games Workshop's giant squigs would run me around 300 dollars.  I don't have 300 dollars to spend on this unit, so I did some Googling.  I found some squig-like models on a UK website that were 3 models for 9 pounds (approximately 15 dollars)).  This was a much better deal and I could just convert them to have Night Goblin riders.

The squig bodies are made by Scotia Grendel.  These are available HERE at this website.  Just a word of caution if you're buying them, though.  The models are good but the casts were really sloppy.  The models are resin and there were globs of extra resin all over them.  I used a drill with a dremel tool grinding bit at first and accidentally melted one models face half off.  This was a bad idea.  Whoops.

My girlfriend had a dremel-like tool that's normally used for grinding a dog's toenails down.  I used a finer dremel bit this time and it worked really well.  I managed to get all the flashing and globs off, but I'm going to have to resculpt parts like toenails, belts, and musculature on the models.  All in all, I waited a long time for these models and was disappointed in the quality.  But...they're squigs!  I am using them as a Troll unit.

Trolls Versus Squig Herds

So far, I have not been excited about the Trolls.  People on the internet talk about how great they are, but I can't see how they're that much better than the Squig Herd unit.  They don't have animosity, but the leadership 4 means they have to sit right next to the general.  At the last tournament I went to, I used them and they seem really situational.  Go up against a unit with the fire banner or flaming shots/magic?  Dead trolls.  Going up against a unit that's good in combat or strikes first?  Dead trolls.  The low initiative, low weapon skill, and low leadership means that the trolls have to win and win big in combats.  The squigs at least have a higher weapon skill and initiative.  Toughness 3 and no regen, but still nearly just as good.

It could be that I play against opponents every week who take the flaming banner and flaming magic attacks, but they just die before they do anything.  The big advantages I see for trolls are the faster movement, the ability to kill 1+ save monstrous cav units, and the ability to sit and front of my character bunker and not squabble.  I put squigs in front of my bunker at the tournament and I squabbled at least once every game with them.

Now I just need to make some kind of unit filler for them.

One painted army in just 20 minutes a day!

Well...that's the plan, anyway.  Stephen King said that part of his success in writing was disciplining yourself to do it every day.  I figure painting is not far off.  So since my army conversions are mostly done, I'm going to start to get it painted up.  Next on the table is my Savage Orc unit.  I'm aiming for tabletop ready paintjobs.  This is new territory for me.  Normally, I build, convert, and paint in a glut of activity.  I get a lot done for a week, but don't sleep or do anything else while I'm working.   Then I get tired of working and don't want to even look at my stuff for a while.  It's worked in the past, but I have a lot of unpainted models that need to be finished.

The Savage Orc Big 'Uns unit:

It's around 38 savage orcs.  I liberally used squig models to fill in.  I still have a box of savage orcs to get the unit up to 40 guys and to fill out the Squig Shrine/Araknarok Spider model that I'm planning.  The giant squig I found on Ebay and then gave him some bumps, chains, and the shaman riding on top.  The giant squig represents the Big 'Uns upgrade and fills in for 8 orcs.

A close up, but terrible picture of the unit filler:

In my mind, I have this idea of the shaman praying to Gork and/or Mork to help the squigs grow.  One of the orc gods, in true orky fashion, makes the squigs grow like those pumpkins people take to contests.  Just a grotesquely oversized squig.  These are the things that make me love the Orc and Goblin army.

Cincycon 2014 Tournament Musings...

Now that I've had a few days to recover, I figured I'd post what I learned about my army and the ones I played.

Here are a couple of photos of stuff that I'm finishing up.

The Squigvern:

The first Squig Herd:

My List, 2500 pts.

Black Orc Big Boss, Ruby Ring of Ruin

Savage Orc Great Shaman, Opal Amulet, Dispel Scroll

Night Goblin Bigboss, BSB, Standard of Discipline

Goblin Bigboss on giant wolf, spear, light armor, dragonbane gem

38 Savage Big 'uns, addtl. hand weapons, standard, musician

30 night goblins, musician, banner

10 Trolls

30 squigs/10 herders

2 pump wagons w/ outriggas

2 doom divers

2 rock lobbas

2 manglers

2 wolf chariots

3 units of 5 wolf riders

1 spear chukka


First, I was not allowed to use the Squig Gobba.  The gobba through the last few games has turned out to be a pretty decent shooting unit.  Auto hitting with strength 4 is pretty nice.  Plus, it can fight and anchors your weaker war machines pretty well.  People hesitate to attack a monster with 3D6 attacks.  The downside is that it only shoots 24''.  And when it can't shoot enemies, it shoots your own units.  However, the rules let you pivot the unit during the movement phase, and you measure line of sight in the shooting phase.  So...if you can't shoot an enemy unit, just pivot the squig gobba away from your other stuff.  You still have to shove squigs down its gullet, but it's unlikely to shoot your own stuff.

Anyway, I digress.  Cincycon was a 3 game tournament that capped at 26 players.  There were a lot of people still wanting to get in.  The venue was nice and the terrain was nice.  They had the terrain rules set so that most of it was normal and not magical (with the exception of forsts, which were mysterious).  I have hated all the magical terrain since the first of 8th edition.

I played against Nurgle Daemons, Dwarves, and Chaos Ogres.

Game 1

His list (more or less):

6 Beasts

3 units of 2 nurgling bases

Great Unclean One

2 Heralds w/ locus of regeneration

1 Beast

18 Plaguebearers

40 Plaguebearers

This game was tough.  I lost.  It was a dawn attack mission. Somehow I rolled 8 times to put stuff in the right corner.  He got first turn and ran forward.  On my turn, I did my best to put down the great unclean one.  Foot of Gork was dispelled this turn.   I did 4 wounds with war machines to the GUO.

On turn 2, he failed several charges.  I thought I had a chance at this, but the wolf riders rolled animosity and charged his great unclean one.  Suddenly it went wrong.  Once the great unclean one was tied up, I couldn't shoot him.  At this point, he charged the next turn and I was ground down with not much left.

Game 2

His list (more or less):

2 Runesmiths

Organ Gun

Cannon

Grudge Thrower

Bolt Thrower

Big unit of Hammerers

Big unit of Longbeards

10 irondrakes

3 gyrobombers

Once again, he got first turn and shot lots of my stuff.  I hit his gyrobomber with 2 pumpwagons and killed it.  I had my squigs ahead of my night goblins and the squigs squabbled.  My general was in my night goblin unit, so I couldn't move much due to the general's leadership being stuck.  Note to self:  put the bunker behind the trolls...

Another thing I learned is that the spellbreaker rune is nasty.  And he had two.  He killed the foot of gork on the first turn, which definitely hurt me.  After I slogged for a couple of turns, I managed to hand of gork the trolls at the organ gun.  But another lesson learned:  only two trolls go into combat with the organ gun.  And due to the entrenched rules, I had a hard time hitting them.  The gun hung on for a couple of turns too long.  He managed to charge the side of my trolls.  The trolls ran but got away.  I managed to kill all his war machines and he killed all of mine with the miners that came on the last few turns.  It was a draw.

Game 3

His list (more or less):

Big unit of bulls

Big unit of ironguts

2 ironblasters

3 sabertusks

Firebelly

Slaughtermaster

I could have won this one, but it was not meant to be.  The mission was Watchtower, except that you could blow up the watchtower with a character you nominated on a 5+.  I nominated my boss on the wolf.  For the life of me, I could not blow the thing up.  Also, I cast foot of gork nearly every single turn and did maybe 6 wounds.  The foot kept scattering and then wandering off.  My trolls were run down by Bulls with the Firebelly.  Then the squigs were charged and they whiffed combat.  Then they blew up.  Those two combats happened on the last turn.  Had either held, it would likely have been a draw.  But no.  The thing I took from this game and the other two is that I need more anvil and less hammer.  I am putting nets and more goblins in the night goblin unit.  I am going to run it right behind the trolls.

All in all, the tournament was run well and I had fun.


One of the best things that came from this tournament was the flea market.  I got the old Idol of Gork campaign book from years ago for ten bucks!  I'm excited.  My friend Todd said he'd get his empire army out for this one, so I'll post it when it happens.

Thought I would post some pics of my 40k Ork army.  The army is named "The Orkdeptus Mekanikus."

The background is that the Orks saw a forgeworld and thought it was the coolest thing ever.  But would any self respecting ork boss build a forgeworld?  Well...no.  An ork would find a good one, krump the people running it, and now the orks own a forgeworld.

As for building it, this army is a labor of love.  I started orks when I won a tournament and won an Ork Warboss that the store owner painted for me.  I loved the model so much and began building them.  All in all, I've been building, converting, and painting this army for 10 years.  It took a ton of bits, searching ebay, and prowling through friends' bits boxes to get it the way I wanted.  Here's some pictures of the army as it is now.