Soggy’s Road to NoVA, Part 4: Two minutes to midnight

Hi friendos, in this series we’ve been tracking our progress towards the NoVA open which is now less than a week away now. As previously you can can check out far more talented and organised people here.

In my last post a month ago, time seemed plentiful. Let’s see how I squandered it.

Warhammer 40,000

A few weeks ago Corrode hosted a 2000 point 40K tournament in Bristol. I am a sucker for peer pressure and ended up getting in on the action. Over the 6 weeks I’ve been painting up a Tyranid Genestealer battalion to support my army, although these weren’t going to be ready. This was my first non-local club event and with two days notice to submit my list, I took the hardest thing I could think of.

I came last (of everyone who played all 5 rounds) , so that went well.
On the other hand Lyle, the mate I came with, placed first – So I suppose we average out 😀
Despite getting roughed up a bit, I had a blast and got to play new factions, armies and meet lots of cool people with the odd goonslam along the way.

It did lead out to a bit of hobby burnout on 40K and resulted in loads of valuable time wasted on Warframe. That said I still did manage to crank out a few models including a Nexos, 5 Abberants, the Swarmlord and another 15 genestealers.

I’m hoping this weekend to try out playing Tyranids for the first time so I won’t be going in completely dry at NoVA. That said with all the new Space Marine rules I think I’m in a somewhat worse position.

Adeptus Titanicus

I was lucky enough to get in my first games of AT this year on the weekend, reminding me how much I love this game and how much I am out of practice. Some practice is better than nothing and it gave me a good chance to review the list I want to play next week.

Crusade Legio from July WD - Click to expand

Lupercal Maniple - Click to expand

The main lesson I learned on the weekend is that Warlords are not my cup of tea. Warhounds however, are my spirit animal. Let’s go over my train of thought.

• The Lupercal legio lets me take up to 5 Warhounds, which has me sold right already. It comes with the bonus of being able to resquadron up any members of the maniple each turn, allowing me to change my number of activations allowing for some serious alpha strikes. It also gives squadron members +2 instead of +1 on combined attacks.
• What’s a Reaver doing in here? The Dauntless Legio trait lets me sub in a Reaver as a Warhound and gain all benefits of the replaced keyword. This lets me squadron a Reaver up with the wolf pack, allowing the warhounds to strip shields and the Reaver to focus on what is left
• The Macromagazine upgrade gives all my warhounds an additional 2 shots each which can explode to ensure I can drop shields on the heaviest of targets. It also comes with the “bonus” of adding +2 to the catastrophic damage table. Allowing them to take someone down with them when they inevitably go down.
• Elite Magos is an autoinclude, boosting the warhounds 50% in the repair phase and helping them from going thermonuclear too early.
• Strafing run is a hillariously good strategem and I used to it perform the killing blow on a Reaver on the weekend. I think it’s an autoinclude.
• The Acastus knight banner are there as they are filthy, but really they are my long range support and are there to act as a fire magnet while I get close or clear off some banners.

At the higher brackets I am torn between taking a Warlord or some Cerastus knights. I’ll mull over this a bit more.

What’s left?

I still really need to make my mind up on my Narrative list. This is something I will flip-flop over on until I’m in the air and no longer able to print off another list.
I have a load of models that still need basing and general touch ups across the board, but considering both forces were assembled this year I think I’ve done a good job.

It’s crazy to think that in a weeks time I’ll be in the States for the pure reason of slamming hams and I love it.