Taskmaster part deuce

Alright, so this week me and mah buds spent a little coin, gettin the manager to really understand how much we love this hobby. The discount we get for doin all the work we do, really payed off. So we each got massive orders. Then we hit up a game, and well, had a great time. Had another guy show up, he brought his orks. We did a three way battle, and it ended up that we each got the best possible outcomes for our armies. The orks all died, the black templar purged the bejesus out of both my guard and the orks, and my imperial guardsmen, survived, mostly by winning. So there we have it.

Taskmaster!

ok, so, my local hobby shop, leaves a lot to be desired. No warhammer pieces. No players. Nothing but RC cars for grandpa's to halfheartedly give to their grandsons, who might play with them once. Ok so maybe not that bad. But no warhammer at least. SO. My friend and I have taken it upon ourselves to undo this injustice.

Step one! get our game onnnnn!
Today, we marched in with our armies, and some terrain. And played a game! that's right, we just did that! so despite a few crotchety old ladies giving us a hard time, I mean surprisingly rude really.

Well the game was fun, my friend just converted his black templar to mech and I pretty much decimated it, they got traffic jammed on one side of the board, buying the rest of my army time to move up and defend the line.

Some people stopped here and there, only two guys seemed really to be into it. The store manager loooooved us tho. I mean, loooooooooooved us. The guy's tryin to get us in there once a week. Which works for me. and we get discounts! which is always, ALWAYS a good thing.

Now we have to wait and watch our nest egg grow

small battles

why is it that small battles are better than big battles? well, you can fit in more battles for starter, which is always good right? but also it provides something else. It makes every unit count more. It makes the troop choices matter, and it makes the flavor of your army even more concentrated. People tend to shy away from small battles in the simple minded mentality that bigger is always better! no. No it's not. Most of the time, sure. But here, smalllllllerrrrr is the way to go. Not only this, but it makes the gametypes matter more as well. See, in a larger game, the gametype takes a backseat. And everyone kind of focuses on destroying the crap out of eachother. More of a annihilation no matter what mentality. Sure objectives kind of matter, but in a smaller game, more special rules can be slapped down. For instance, ANY mission from the battlemission's book, and I'm dissapointed with the ammount of flavor in those missions, so I combine at least two of them, sometimes as much as four, to make one battle. and smaller battles make it matter more. they really do.

in the end, how many points we talkin? well, it depends on what you're goin for. Kill team for me, is a blast. Warhammer in half an hour, always enticing. But what matters here is what you want. I would base it on how much time you have, or if you just wanna try a new unit, then whatever it takes to fit it in.

So there we have it, keep small, keep it complex.

simple units

so I was playing the other day, with some vendettas, and I was just in awe of how little skill it took to use. It was just, zip around the board, and blow up whatever I hit. 3 twinlinked lascannons make for a very, very, potent shooting phase. for only 150 (I run mine with bolter sponsons, because door gunners are sooooo cool) I get a powerhouse. Now not that I haven't used them before, or that I haven't heard the hype, it was just particularly effective against my friends black templar army. Then that got me thinking of other units that just require hardly any skill. Now, some of the pessimists out there will sneer and say, you play imperial guard, everythings a simple unit >:I while I disagree, I will save that for another article.

So other simple units:
vindicator
leman russ
devastator squad
any apocalypse unit
and ork boyz or similar horde rush armies.

These all share one common factor: extremes. There's no middle ground. And that focus of what to do, makes them so effective. With a tac squad people don't know if they are gunna hold objectives, or assault, or anything in between. So they lose clarity, while a unit like a vindicator is straight up. Ork boyz are probably the least flexible of all of these. But that also makes them one of the best. Get enough boyz, you WILL win. I've played games with orks, that I literally couldn't kill all of them even though I had two great turns of shooting before they broke my lines, and even though I had straken, priests, commissars, and every other trick in the book to make my men good in close combat, nothing worked, and we lost. There were just too many boyz.

Now these simple units are often ridiculed, for example thunderwolf cavalry, nob bikers, both are infamous and truly hated. As well as the vendetta and valkyrie. Every single army has that one simple unit, that is truly hated. Even tau... well... maybe not. Anywho, the thing with simple units is, when you're getting your ass kicked by them, just remember, you're smarter than them... weak punchline, but one I will stand by none the less.