Moving on and letting go. When to sell an army?

The downfall of many, the economic boon of a few.

There comes a time in most of our lives with this hobby (hopefully) when you realize it may be time to clean off your hobby shelves and get rid of some things.  Luckily for us the emergence of the internet has provided us with several fantastic engines for moving our plastic crack off our shelves and into the arms of others.  Ebay, Bartertown, the Dakka Swap Shop, and numerous other places provide great resources for the sale/resale of miniatures both painted, unpainted, and even new in box.  There are several catalysts to the revelation of needing to sell some miniatures, and today I would like to discuss a few of those.  More after the break.

New Poll: Grey Knights

Pretty simple really.  What are your views on the new Grey Knights?  Most people have seen either the leaked copy, or black box copy, and if not it is fairly easy to glean the rules from various threads and articles around the net.  I think the cries of "OVERPOWERED!" "CHEESE!" "THE SKY IS FALLING!" have tapered off at this point, which is really pretty early considering all the rabble we've endured from the other codices.  But Grey Knights is still a serious codex that demands attention, so what are your thoughts?

Check out the poll and throw up an answer, then let us know here what you think in more detail!

Thinking about Ard Boyz/Sons of Russ- Loganwing, ya, I may be nuts.

Got this off Lexicanum.  Wouldn't want to mess with him.

For those of you who have been following CnC for a while, or who have combed through the backlog of articles, you probably already know about my love for (obsession with?) Terminators.  I play Salamanders, so obviously I have a bunch of the TH/SS variety, my CSMs are based around two squads of Slaanesh Terminators with Lightning Claws, and I have over 25 Wolf Guard Terminators.  The only Marine army I own with out Terminators are my Blood Angels...  I should get on that...  Or start a Deathwing army now that the new FAQ is out...  My Bank Account hates me right now...  The problem with my SW is that despite loving my WGT (Wolf Guard Terminators) I rarely field more than 10 at a time because they are so expensive points wise on a per model basis.  I have kicked around a lot of ideas for fielding the full Terminator Loganwing at 1500, 1750, 1850, and 2k.  Every time I wrote a list I didn't want to use it because there were too few models or I just didn't feel the power was there, shooting wise or staying power wise.  Then they announced the dates for the 2011 Ard Boyz and I got to thinking.  What if I took Loganwing at 2500 points?  Read on after the break.

Grey Knights: An FAQ nightmare?

Are these arguments going to be overkill?

Following up the theme from yesterday where we discussed problems with the RAW interpretation of the Dreadknight and teleport homers, I thought I would bring our attention to the numerous other problems with the Grey Knights codex.  This could indeed be a real FAQ nightmare if some of these interpretations end up being rules lawyered to death!  Read on after the break for a synopsis of the GK nightmare!?

Dread Knights can ride in Storm Ravens!

By now most people have seen the new Grey Knight codex in their FLGS or have at least read rumors about it.  It would seem that giving a Dread Knight a personal teleporter makes the Dread Knight go from being a Monstrous Creature to Jump Infantry.  It does not say "moves like" or "count as" but becomes Jump Infantry.  This means that by RAW (rules as written) the Dread Knight can embark upon a Storm Raven gunship.  I know this may come as a shock to you but I have read the wording in the codex and I re-read the entire BRB trying to get an answer and a majority of other codices looking for precedent to debunk this.  None exists, you can embark a Dread Knight with personal teleporters onto a Storm Raven.  As a result of this I want to put forth a new poll, I love polls.  Basically do you think GW will fix this with an FAQ or will we see a return to 4th ed GW where they made no mistakes?

Dealing with Grey Knights, First Thoughts.

After taking a look through the new Grey Knight codex and looking online at several forums etc. it has become clear to me that 1. Grey Knights are going to be a meta buster and 2. There are some who have taken a head in sand approach to this news.  Since I don't have any immediate plans to buy or build Grey Knights (although I am sure I will at some point) I have been looking at the codex with an eye to taking it down.  I'll go into detail after the break.

March 40k Tournament Lists

Hello Everyone!

As requested, here are a sampling of about half the lists from this month's 40k Rogue Trader Tournament. You'd think with a bonus tournament point up for grabs to everyone who brought a copy of their list for the T.O. to keep would be enough of an incentive to get more than half the field to bring a spare list. Alas, the age of the iPad has me fumbling through people's digital notepads more and more often. How about a 40k army builder app, Wolflair? I'm just saying... (make it for Android too!).

Juggernaut Technology notwithstanding, here are the lists, presented with their final placing in the tournament (including soft scores and player voting) and without comment:

Chaos Daemons: A Critique

Sand here! Between playing my newly acquired Rhul army (Warmachine Dwarfuses) and rebooting our local Warhammer Fantasy league, I haven't had much time to post up on here. Expect that to change for reasons that will be addressed at the end of the post!

Now many of you may be thinking: "Chaos Daemons? They're too random." I'm not going to entirely disagree. Originally a Warhammer Fantasy army, I decided to try my hand at 40k when Dis reminded me that they work for both systems. Having played Chaos Daemons for the past 4-5 months - tournaments, the escalation league, pick up games, you name it - I've developed a fairly complicated love/hate relationship with them. Are they strong? Are they weak? Unreliable? Despite the common grievances displayed across forum boards and real life, the innumerable games I've played with Daemons have drawn to one conclusion: they're playable.

Hardly Noticed Pre-Orders

Greetings 40k Fans,

Did anybody else notice that two more models entered the Grey Knight Pre-order section?

I've been checking the "what's new today section" of the GW website, hoping to see some new Dark Eldar pre-orders (after the incoming dark eldar tease). Instead GW snuck in two new GK minis.

March 40k Tournament Wrap-up

Hello everyone!

Our March event is in the books and it was a blast! This was the first time we tried the alternate 1500 point / 4 round format, and it went surprisingly well. We packed four rounds of battle into just over eight hours, and ended right around the same time it usually takes us to do a three-round, 2000 point event.

We had a field of 18 players, representing a the majority of the armies in 40k. We were only missing Tau, Necrons, and Dark Angels from the mix.

New Poll: Tournament Prep.

This poll is just for fun.  Basically what do you find you do most to prepare for tournaments?  It has almost never failed that I always stay up late the night before to prep for an event and last night was no exception.  However this time I also play tested my lists and wracked my brain for countless hours trying to figure out a Space Wolf list to play at 1500 points that didn't make me feel like I had no chance of winning.  I finally figured out a list and then realized despite having over 8000 points of Space Wolves I needed to finish 6 models!  That's what I get for never having built enough Wolf Guard with Combi-melta/Powerfists.
So what do you find yourself doing the most to prepare for a tournament?

The Anatomy of a good player

I have been part of a few discussions lately about what makes someone a good player.  Last night we had the semi-final round for our first 40k league of 2011 and looking at the top four and the outcomes of last night's games got me to really think about what makes a good player good no matter the system.

The top four looked like this:

Chaos Space Marines
Orks
Chaos Daemons
Imperial Guard

I came to the conclusion that game system doesn't factor in.  If you play Warhammer 40k, Fantasy, LotR, Warmachine, Hordes, Napoleonics, Flames of War, or any other table-top miniatures game there are certain things that make up a "good player".  More after the break.

Grey Knights up for Advance Order!

Check it out guys!
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat440160a&rootCatGameStyle=wh40k&utm_term=other&utm_medium=email&utm_content=image-link-body&utm_source=e4300002-en_US&utm_campaign=GreyKnightsAdvanceOrderNewsletter-en_US

I know I am excited even if I am not sure about building a Grey Knight army.

Well, we now know what the Dread Knight and other models look like so what do you think?

A Painting Primer

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first and probably only official Dis' Painting Primer for Rogue Trader Tournaments (tm)!

Over the past ten years or so that I've been officiating events, I've had plenty of conversations with tournament players after an event that revolved around painting scores, and the impression that I always get is that the painting criteria is something of a mystery; nobody is sure exactly how to get all the points Lately I've started to see larger events with more complicated judging criteria put their checklists online, but at the local level it may still be somewhat obfuscated. Since it's not supposed to be a mystery (that I know of!), here follows a breakdown of the points you're looking to earn at any given local tournament that uses anything resembling the old GW-style RTT system from its heyday in the early 2000s....

Tournaments: 1500 points. Non Marine Dominance?

With the 1500 point Swiss Tournament this weekend at our FLGS and the 1500 point playoffs for the current 40k league this week I have been thinking about and playing a lot of 1500 point games and lists.  In preparation for the tournament I have been building/testing 1500 point Space Wolf lists but for the league I have been playing my Imperial Guard.  This has led me to several conclusions about 1500 point games.  I wrote an article previous to this about writing lists for the Swiss tournament which you can find it here.  A lot of my assumptions about 1500 point lists for my Marine armies have proven to be true.  I have begun to think that perhaps 1500 point games actually favor the non-marine armies.  More after the break.

Dark Eldar from the Ground Up: The First 1250 Points

Hello everyone!

Despite having an early February birthday, I’m not a big fan of the ‘Monday of Months’; it goes by too quick, the end of the month paycheck is short, and the lack of time to get things done is never quite so pointed. It has, accordingly, been a hectic few weeks but I’ve finally managed to return to the keyboard for the next installment of my trials and travails with the Dark Eldar!

I’ve gotten a number of games under my belt with the dark kin, averaging about two games per week through January and February for the store’s campaign, with a drop-off near the last couple weeks motivated primarily by the fact that I needed to fade back a bit in the standings (since no league organizer should ever have a chance of winning their own event!). Admittedly, these games were mostly small-points affairs, up to 1250 points, but I’m confident at this point weighing in on those elements of the army that I used and to present some thoughts on how the army would expand.

Tournaments: 1500 point Swiss Style Events

Unfortunately at 1500 your list won't be this versatile.

Variety, so they say, is the spice of life and I tend to agree with this statement.  Our FLGS has decided to change up our tournament schedule a bit and run the March 40k tournament as a 1500 point Swiss style event.  Those who aren't familiar with a Swiss event just need to know that it is basically just a 4 round event that is designed to be able to give you an undefeated winner in a 16 man event.  A lot of people complain that with 3 round events you don't get a true winner and that "soft" scores play to big of a role.  This argument has merit of course but the flip side is a 4 round event will have to either be played at lower points or take up more time.  It is simply easier, and better in my opinion, to lower the point level rather than significantly lengthen the over all event.  So our FLGS dropped the point level to 1500.  I set about building 1500 point lists for all the armies I own: Space Wolves, Salamanders, Blood Angels, Chaos Space Marines, and Imperial Guard.  I quickly realized 2 things.
1. I couldn't just "dumb down" one of my 2k or 1850 lists.
2. I wasn't going to be able to take all of my favorite units.

So I was presented with several quandaries no matter which army I had loaded into Army Builder.  This prompted me to start thinking about several criteria for building a 1500 point list.  More after the break.