Two days until tournament, a revelation and Warmachine Mark II first impressions

Two days to go! Man am I excited. I went to the LGS to pick up some paint and I think I saw one of the competing armies. It was a splendidly painted Tallarn IG force. I hope I get to talk to him this weekend to tell him how great his army looked.

As for my list I have been going over and over in my head and I think I have settled on something that I can live with:

1K

HQ

Primaris Psyker ( Tim )

Troops

Vet Squad
x2 Melta
x1 Flamer
- Power Weapon
- Chimera
- Hull heavy flamer
- Pintle mounted stubber
- Extra armor

Vet Squad
x2 Melta
x1 Flamer
- Chimera
- Hull heavy flamer
- Pintle mounted stubber
- Extra armor

Vet Squad
x2 Flamer
x1 Heavy Flamer
- Power Fist
- Demolitions
- Shotguns
- Chimera
- Hull heavy flamer
- Pintle mounted storm bolter
- Extra armor

Heavy

Econo Russ
- Battle cannon
- Hull mounted heavy bolter

Punisher Russ
- Hull Lascannon

As you can see it really hasn’t changed all that drastically... I have dropped the primaris psyker in order to fit in a lascannon on the punisher and to give a couple squads a little more punch when it comes to melee.

If there is one thing that has me a little iffy its the flamer squad. While it looks good in my head I just don’t know how effective its going to be overall. The flamers are nice for ‘Nids and the melta grenades will be helpful for suicide rushes against LRs and other such toughies but the issue will be getting them there. The Chimera is great for getting you where you want to go but not so hot when it comes to assault.

Which brings me to the revelation. I understand how chimeltas with hull heavy flamers work now. I have been a disciple of The Back 40K for quite a little while now and it was after reading posts by SandWyrm that I was introduced to the concept. He runs a heavy mech vet squad as well but the main difference was that he puts 3 meltas in his group where as I take a flamer.

This, unless the tank is popped, is inefficient. On paper the flamer appears to give the group more flexibility allowing it to take on hard and soft targets simultaneously but drawing LOS from the hatch on the back of the Imperial Guard's version of an El Camino is just awkward. Also, you don’t really NEED another flamer because one COMES WITH THE TANK. To maneuver around to get the max potency out of a flamer in the back you have to sacrifice the heavy flamer in the front which just dosent make sense. This was a real facpalm moment for me, let me tell you. I am definately going to have to make a changes once I get past this tourney but thats a post for another time.

Finally, I picked up the Mark II version of the Warmachine rulebook this week and gave it a good skimming. I don’t have any experience with the system so this was all virgin territory to me. The first impression that I got was "steampunk pokemon". They give you a general or "Warcaster" that has control over these steam punk robots called "Warjacks". You can allocate focus points to these metal monsters to allow them to do special attacks, run farther, take out the trash, etc. On top of that you can add support units such as long gunners, battle zealots and other magi to help you enact your favorite Robot Wars fantasy.

All in all it looks like a cool system. The models are well detailed and the rules, while complex, didn’t completely fry my brain when I tried to take them all in. I think the most attractive feature so far is that you can buy one starter set of a faction and you are ready to play their "duel" game type. While I have so many other Warhammer projects on the table right now I can see myself picking up a starter set in the far future. I will probably go with Cryx as they have the most internet memes rolled into one. They are robot, zombie pirates that want to bring about a robot zombie apocalypse in the name of a great dragon..... you cant go wrong with that.

GV