Necrons... dun dun dunnnnhhhhhhh

A new threat arises....

So I have been acting like a little kid lately--saving up money from my birthday, Christmas, and extra jobs to buy my next new toy.  However, as I am also masquerading as a "grown-up", my toys are more expensive and of the plastic crack variety.  The new Necron codex has caught my eye and I plan on building a 1500-2000 point army list to act as a foil to my Ultramarines Second Company and Honorguard.  I have the devious goal to try and get my friends hooked on plastic crack too, and I think the best way to do this is through intro games with two well-painted, evenly matched armies.

More Honor Guard... Almost done

I took some time yesterday to base/model a few more Honorguard to fill out my 2K list.  I now have four Terminators, and 10 PAGKs that are ready for some paint.  Once I finish them and another Pysback, I will have my 2K list completed.  I still have a box of PAGKs and Sang Guard ready to be turned into Interceptors/Purifiers, but I do not have a list that utilizes them just yet, so they are on the backburner.  In the meantime, I plan on building up a 2K Necron army.... dun dun dunnnnnnn  

"Improved" 2K Honor Guard List

Future Thrawn Model

After doing some playing around with Army Builder, I am leaning towards tweaking my 2K Honor Guard build.  While Draigo and five Pallies can survive pretty well at 1500, I think their effectiveness is somewhat suspect at 2K, where an opponent can throw a lot more firepower at them every turn.  Torrenting them down actually comes into play.  At that point, I either have to commit to a full ten-man unit or drop them completely.  Because of this, I am looking at switching out for Termies led by Thawn (aka Chapter Champion) and supported by a Librarian.  I lose some of the flexibility of Grand Strategy, but gain more bodies, another Razorback, and a teleporter for the Dreadknight (which should make him more of a legitimate threat).  Here is what it looks like:

More Honorguard Battle Summaries

Chapter Champion and TDA Honorguard

I have been playing a lot of Minecraft lately, so I have been on a bit of a 40K hiatus.  However, the "semi-local friendly gaming store" hosted another 1500 tournament this Saturday.  I am starting to really get into the 1500 scene... it's cheaper and does seem to allow older/themed armies to compete better than at the higher levels.  I decided to bust out my Ultramarine Honorguard (Counts as GK) again and here's how they did:

Tournament Overview
The tournament was a three-round RTT-like tournament with Battle, Painting, and Comp Scores.  There were about 20 people with a solid mix of armies.  I saw IG, Marines, BT, GK, Eldar, Orks, a couple of Necrons, and a couple of DE.  Noticibly absent were SW and BA.... two tournaments in a row without them.  The missions were based on normal missions (KP and Sieze Ground) with slight "Christmas Theme" twists.  The games were broken down into Major/Minor/Tie with 2 bonus points per round.  Unfortunately, not a single one of my opponents had an extra army list, so I am going from memory.  My army consisted of:

Draigo (Chapter Champ)
5 Pallies with 2 Pyscannons, 2 DHs, and Brother Hood Banner
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback
2 Pyflemen
1 Dreadknight with no upgrades (CALGAR!)

It's a really weird/unbalanced army, and I was really worried about the DE lists floating around.  I almost busted out my normal Space Marine army, but ended up just saying "screw it."

Honour Guard Update!

Chapter Master Calgar... ready for a fight! (In his DK armor)

I finally sat down and cranked through a lot of my modeling/painting backlog in the last couple of weeks.  My lovely wife was kind enough to Greenstuff cloaks for my models, and I was able to block off time to focus on painting.  These pictures are pretty terrible, but show an update of my progress:

Honour Guard at 1500 RTT

So I finally was able to take my Honour Guard (Counts as GK) out for a spin today in a 1500 RTT.  It was super small (10 people), but was still fun as normally I spend my time playing just one other person/army all the time.  It was definately nice to have an opportunity to play other armies.  It was a very suprising meta, as here were at least three Chaos Space Marine players and a Necron player, but SW, BA, and DE were all not represented.  I think some of the normal heavy hitters were at 'Ard Boyz.

My list was:
Draigo (Chapter Champ)
5 Pallies with 2 Pyscannons, 2 DHs, and Brother Hood Banner
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback
5 GKSS with Pyscannon and Pysback
2 Pyflemen
1 Dreadknight with no upgrades (CALGAR!)

Recon Tournament Prep

From the PtGRtS Event Calendar

When: July 23 - 11:30am
Where: Main Store - Carousel Center Mall
Prize(s): Store Credit
Entry Fee: $10
Details:
Who says you can't choose what to play before every game?
Players bring up to 4 different 1850 point lists and chose which one to use before each match.
Each list may only be used one time during the event.
Players roll off to determine who chooses their list first.

So I still have to clarify details, but I am assuming the lists have to be from the same codex (if not my Blue Angels are coming out!), and there is no limitation on how similar the lists can be. Basically if you bring 4 of the same list, you are sacrificing flexibility for playing a familiar list each game. That is just my assumption though.
So for now, I am planning on sticking with Vanilla Marines because I don't have enough Assault Marines, Baal's, Furiouso Dreads, or Stormravens to make multiple BA lists. That and I plan on taking this as an opportunity to use Calgar. There are two ways to go about making lists for this event:

1. Gear lists towards countering specific army types (e.g. having an anti-horde, anti-msu, anti-melee, etc)
2. Gear lists towards specific missions (a troop heavy army for Sieze Ground, outflankers for Cap and Control, and KP denial for Annihilation)

At this moment I am leaning towards gearing for missions, as I KNOW I will face one of each of those in the tournament, while I may not face certain armies or hit the same army type all three games. I can build three dedicated lists for the missions and have a list dedicated for a certain matchup I might face (I'm looking at you GKs). Here's my general archtypes:

1. Downsized version of my standard Vanilla Marines
2. A more MSU-style Marines list (both these lists are for the objective-based games)
3. Double LR 10 TH/SS Termies (KP Denial)
4. List 1 with Calgar (for giggles or another KP denial threat)

I'll post specific lists later, but hopefully I can make it work. Most of the armies are pretty similar though, so that will give my opponents a slightly easier time selecting their army lists. I've got plenty of time to think on it though.