We need guns. Lots of guns.
I've been using various assault oriented BA armies for quite a long now, and decided that it was time for something else. Both because I've played them for long enough, and they lose against an army with lots of firepower. So, something shooty it was to be. Mike Major told a story how he had been shot to pieces by the Eldar, and Atte Roine then demonstrated by a quick sample army how the Marines can field even more firepower. I fiddled a bit with this, and came up with the Void Hounds army I took to the GT.The main feature of the Army is of course the firepower. Maxing out on lascannons and plasma guns. Even if the lascannon devastator squad is terribly expensive, it's very good at shooting tough targets to bits, and can be screened by the tacticals for at least a round or two. The chaplain and the dreadnought are there to grab any enemy assault troops which make it through the firestorm, and usually perform quite well in this role. The "dirty trick" of the army is the missile launcher squad's Razorback, which is there solely for land grab operations during deployment. Originally I had a third devastator squad, with heavy bolters, but it very often got shot or assaulted to pieces if deployed in the middle of the table, and I decided that I need something in the Heavy Support which I can throw away if need be. Besides, a Razorback is not that bad a buy at all.
The Colour of War
My assault marine army is bright blue and yellow, and I decided to go for something completely different. I experimented a bit, and came up with a gray and reddish brown colour scheme, which to my eye looks pretty decent, even if it's not very bright.
The whole army arrayed for display. The scroll on the right is the army list. The colour in real life is close to the one in this one, as opposed to some of the detail pictures. Picture by Jimmy Murphy.For background, I decided to go for a wolfish theme, as the transfers and Space Wolf accessories are easily available. For somethin extra, I scrounged a bagful of Mk6 helmets, and gave every marine, bar the metal Attack Bike drivers a beaky look.
There are small details scattered around the army, such as dead Dark Eldar bits here and there, matched backpacks on the squads and the already mentioned Space Wolf accessories. There's quite a few conversions in there too, ranging from the more complex running lascannon marine - which you can find in the first detail picture - to simple cut'n'poses. All the weapon barrels have holes drilled in them, a feature which makes them look much, much more bussineslike for relatively small amount of work.
Also all of the models have a squad id number on the righ shoulder pad - something which looks nice, but also makes playing with them really easy! A feature which definitely will be included in all of my future armies. The devastator squads have the reddish lower legs, whereas the tacticals have grey, which is a good way of identifying between these two squad types.
Pictures showing some of the details in the army. In the last two pictures the colours are off, but you can still see some of the conversions, accessory bits and the dead Dark Eldar. Pictures by Jimmy Murphy and Jorge Mäkinen.The chapter name, Void Hounds, was chosen to reflect the wolfish apparel of the troopters. I purposefully avoided the word "Wolf" and its close relatives, as I used the basic Marine Codex, and making a Wolf-chapter with something else than the Space Wold Codex just did not seem right. But the name is good, and in my mind matches well with the not too aggressive colour scheme.
The colour scheme was easy enough to paint. I assembled the models and textured the bases first. Then everything was sprayed black and the marines drybrushed with a darkish gray, then with a lighter gray and finally the brighest of the highlights - armour edges, helmets, backpack exhausts - were picked out or highlighted by blending with even more lighter gray. Then all the areas to be redish brown were painted with scorched brown, then with scab red and finally highlighted lightly at the edges by lighter mix of scab red. The trick with the scorched brown is that it covers much better than red, and privided a good background to paint the red onto. Finally the metal parts in the weapons were painted black and then with boltgun metal, whereas the armour joints were painted with tin bits, and and the eagle first with tin bits and then with burnished gold. To finish the models off, the eyes were painted first with white and then with red gore. Bases were drybrushed with bestial brown and then lightly with bleached bone. To top things off, space wolf transfers were used for the chapted badges, and numbers from various sources as the squad id.
Game One - Chaos
David Sharp. Kill 'em all, let the Emperor sort them out. The last of them dies on turn four. Though the army had some potential in it, David didn't really use it well. Instead of a Land Raider rumbling across the board to disgorge Terminators & a Chaos Lord, the Land Raider spent the game on his board edge, shooting twin lascannons at Tactical Marines, and the Terminators died messily while trying to advance aganst two tacticals and a Land Speeder. I would probably have been in real trouble, had the tooled-up Chaos Lord and the Terminators made it into close combat. Clansed the table, 20-0.
Army selection judging
I Got lucky by having been placed to a table by the window. The highlights did show a bit that way, and apparently the judges liked the army list presented on a canvas scroll, plus the dead Dark Eldar all around. Full 60 points.
Game Two - Blood Angels
This one could've been messy, fight to almost last man game. Fortunately I got to both deploy first - and grab land - and go first, killing his two Land Speeders and one of his three Rhinoes. After that, it was a pretty normal game with me sitting mostly in one corner of the table and him braving the hail of bolts, plasma and lascannon beams. He did a tactical mistake by deploying his most hard hitting unit - a Sanquiniary High Priest with an Honour Guard of nine - far away from the others, especially the Death Company. This way I got to shoot the Death Company and the Chaplain to bits on turn two, and the Honour Guard and the SHP on turn three, leaving most of my squads intact at the end. 17-3.
Game three - Omega Marines
Against the most agreeable man Richard Bamford playing his Codex Marines. As if by Fate, he had exactly the same conversion of a Chaplain with a Jump Pack I had. The special edition Marine Captain, whith the power axe changed to a Crozius Arcanum, and the Combi-Weapon descarded in favour of a bolt pistol. I lost a game against him in the 1999 GT, so a retributuion was in order. Take & Hold, and I lost the roll to defend.So I bring my entire army on the table, line up the squads and try to shoot various things with moderate success. Of course the Land Speeder misses with the Multi Melta, as usual.
For the next two turns after this the dice practically hand me the game. Anything he tried failed. To hit rolls, to wound rolls, armour saves. Most of the things I try succeed. After lots of not so effective lascannon fire, the missile launcher squad blows up his LR Crusader. His second Land Raider goes on the next turn. His only Take & Hold egligible squad fails an easy morale check on turn four and falls back. The game ends and I hold the objective with the Whirlwind by a margin of one inch. A very good game against a very nice chap, mainly decided by the Whim of Fate.
Game four - Chaos
Against Darryl Trainor, who really gives me the run for my money. After my first turn of pretty effective shooting we're both quite convinced that I'll win the game. Two turns of standard stuff, with him getting closer and me shooting and delaying things.Then comes the third turn, and the Murphy's Luck drifts to the table. I see that I have to kill his dreadnought, four chaos marines and preferably a Rhino too. I shoot 8 lascannons and 4 missile launchers at the dreadnought, score 4 penetrations and 3 glancing hits. With these, I get 7 shaken or stunned results (of course it has extra armour). I even fail to kill the chaos marines or achieve anything better than shake the Rhino. This means that Darryl gets to assault a lot of things on his turn four, drive a few squads off and kill more marines on turn five.
I did make a few 7+ morale tests in the righ places, and tied up his Lord and Retinue for the two turns. Fortunately for me the game ends after turn five, and Darryl has all his things on my starting quarter, while I have an attack bike hiding in each of the neutral zones and four tactical marines on his otherwise empty starting quarter. This scores me a massacre, but damn was it close. Had the game gone on for one more turn, it would've surely been a 13-7 game.
Game five - Dark Eldar
Against the nice, sharp Jens Christian Donslund with an effective, but very reasonable and absolutely gorgeous DE army. He made clever use of two webway portals, deploying one Haemonculus and a bodyguard warrrior squad as near my concentration corner as possible, almost on the table quarter, and the rest of his force spread across his deployment zone. He left his Dracon's Raider, a bunch of Wyches in a Raider, three Reavers and a Talos in reserve. He gets to go first, moves things towards me and kills a total of one Marine with fire from a Ravager. On my first turn I make a desperate attempt at shooting the nearmost warrior squad and the Haemonculus dead, but fall two kills short. I also move things to delay his Lord when they eventually come, and decide to sacrifice the lascannon squad to give me the chance to shoot the DE afer they decimate the devastators.Comes turn three, and his Lord and a Talos fly onto the table. They fail to kill the Dreadnought with shooting, and the Lord and Incubi assault the devastators and the Talos grabs a Tactical Squad. Devastators die messily, and the retinue consolidates into an attack bike. On my next turn the Chaplain and Dreadnought come to the rescue, and to my utter surprise everything the Dark Eldar manage to do is kill the attack bike, while the Chaplain and Dreadnought decimate a few Incubi. Next turn, the Reavers appear and after shooting up the Whirldwind charge in with the Talos. The combat goes even more badly for the DE, who fail to score any wounds, and the Talos rolls an 11 against the Dreadnoughts side armour. The brave Chaplain and his Big Brother again kill two of the foul Incubi, and Jens rolls 11 for their Morale Test. The Incubi fall back 12 inches(!), just enough to crash into my Land Speeder and get wiped out. This was the turning point of the game, and with his most mobile and dangerous close combat unit destroyed, the rest was mopping them up.
To add insult to injury, his Wyches come to the table on turn five, charge a Tactical Squad and a Scout Squad and kill one stalwart defender of the Humanity. The Marines retaliate, kill two, the Wyches fail their Morale Test and are run down by the Scouts. Thanks for visiting. At the end of my turn five, not a single Dark Eldar remain on the table.
All in all a very good game, with good tactical play involved. As so very often, luck had a lot to do with the outcome, but it was very challenging and enjoyable nonetheless.
The End of the Day
The amount of firepower a Codex Marine army can put out is truly terrifying. The durability of Marines, and the more expendable bolt gun 'smurfs combine to make the army very good in war of attrition. The only thing they are really vulnerable to are flanking assault maneuvers, with a mobile unit which can cut through several small marine squads at once (Chaos Lords with tooled up retinues, DE Lords and their Incubi).I do have to admit that the army is so powerful (read: beardy/cheesy), that it's not really suited for casual games at home. Playing with it against anything but a well-honed tournament army commanded by a good general is also not very challenging or fun. Simply deploy according to plan and roll the dice.
On the other hand, in my opinion, tournaments are also about coming up with the most terrifyingly effective army, and pitting your baby-monster against the other players' creations. As such, the Void Hounds served their master well.
The whole tournament was a very enjoyable event, as always. The atmosphere at a Grand Tournament is something not encountered anywhere else, with over two hundred gamers from all over the globe gathering together for their favourite hobby. The tournament gets better and better every year - food at the canteen had evolved a lot from previous years too!
This year I both got to avenge last defeats, and meet new people and put faces to names in the 'net. Pete Haines did a wonderful job as the Chief Umpire, and I do have to admit that I have a lot to learn from him about how to handle difficult rules questions and arbitrations. Suberb work, from all of the organisers!
Blood is Everything.
Obey Your 'Thirster.
tube@cc.hut.fi