Battle for Piscina IV: Dark Angel Army Lists

After hours of pouring through The Purging of Kadillus and cross referencing the novel with the original Storm of Vengeance campaign pack I have constructed the following RECOMMENDED army lists. For the most accurate recreation of the events these are the forces you should ideally have. Due to time constraints it is understood that people will most likely have forces that diverge from the below suggestions - but let it be known that purists will be rewarded heavily. Also understand that during most scenarios you will only be commanding a portion of your recommended forces and certain optional forces would be completely unsuited for the scenarios so do your best to stick as closely to the recommendations as possible.

This is the first wave of Army Lists. Army Lists for the Imperial Guard and Ork forces will follow shortly.

Master Belial, Company Master
Personal equipment:

Power armor, Bolt pistol, Plasma pistol, Frag grenades, Krak grenades, Displacer field (4+ Invulnerable save), Power sword. (130 points)

Recommended forces:

Lexicanum Hebron (up to 145 points)

Venerable Dreadnought Revered Venerari (up to 165 points)

Command Squad Vindictus (up to 150 points)

Razorback (up to 85 points)

Scout Squad Arcanus (up to 100 points)

Deathwing Squad Adamanta (up to 225 points)

Predator Caliban's Wrath (up to 150 points)

Total: 1150 points.

Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas, Company Chaplain
Personal equipment:

Power armor, Master crafted bolt pistol, Frag grenades, Krak grenades, Rosarius, Crozius Arcanum, Power sword. (130 points)

Recommended forces:

Veteran Squad Exacta or Tactical Squad Peliel/Lemeal* (up to 200 points)

Assault Squad Zaltys (up to 300 points)

Devastator Squad Heman (up to 270 points)

Ravenwing Support Squad (up to 100 points)

Total: 1000 points

Master Chaplain Uriel
Personal equipment:

Power armor, Frag grenades, Krak grenades, Rosarius, Crozius Arcanum, Power sword. (100 points)

Recommended forces:

Tactical Squad Andael (up to 120 points)

Razorback (up to 80 points)

Ravenwing Squad Validus (up to 250 points)

Ravenwing Support Squad (up to 300 points)

Predator Hammer of Judgement (up to 150)

Total: 1000 points

Interrogator-Chaplain Sarpedon
Personal equipment:

Power armor, Bolt pistol, Frag grenades, Krak grenades, Rosarius, Crozius Arcanum, Power sword. (120 points)

Recommended forces:

Lexicanum Acutus (up to 145 points)

Apothecary Nestor (Independent character) (up to 40 points)

Assault Squad Menelauis (up to 295 points)

Devastator Squad Scalprum (up to 270 points)

Deathwing Squad Vigilus (up to 225 points)

Total: 1095 points

Lexicanum Charon
Personal equipment:

Terminator armor, Storm bolter, Psychic hood, Force weapon. (145 points)

Recommended forces:

Techmarine Hephaestus and servitors (up to 150 points)

Tactical Squad Azraeth with transport (up to 240 points)

Tactical Squad Dominus with transport (up to 240 points)

Deathwing Squad Malignus (up to 225 points)

Total: 1000 points

Veteran Sergeant Naaman
Personal equipment:

Scout armor, Master crafted bolt pistol, Frag grenades, Krak grenades, Melta bomb, Statis grenade, Teleport homer. (65 points)

Recommended forces:

Scout Squad Naaman (up to 150 points)

Scout Squad Damas (up to 150 points)

Tactical Squad Nemeaus with transport (up to 250 points)

Ravenwing Squad Aquila (up to 235 points)

Predator (up to 150 points)

Total: 1000 points

Optional forces:

You can still participate by bringing a 1000 point force from Codex: Dark Angels, but understand that certain options are not suitable for certain scenarios. The closer you adhere to the recommended forces the better.

If Ya Want Sumfin' Done... Part 1

The Purging of Kadillus by Gav Thorpe skips over the opening engagements between the forces of Ghazghkull Thraka and the combined resistance of the Piscina Free Militia and the 3rd Company of the Dark Angels. At the end of the Prologue, Tauno is on watch and sees a dust cloud approaching Kadillus Harbour and after readjusting his magnoculars multiple times discovers that there are endless columns of Orks approaching on foot. He then promptly drops his magnoculars like a chump. The book picks up with the 1st chapter being The Tale of Boreas: Dark Cathedral. This is a great snapshot of what is referred to as "Ghazghkull's War" in the original Storm of Vengeance campaign pack from 1997, but it skips over the whole opening engagement.

SoV (Storm of Vengeance) also ignores much of that initial onslaught but it does kick things off with If Ya Want Sumfin' Done, a scenario where Ghazghkull lays claim to a coveted objective that the Imperial forces do not understand the significance of at the time. A small elite force of Orks led by Ghazghkull himself breaks away from the main assault on the city to seize a small geothermal plant inside the northeastern end of Kadillus Harbour. Master Chaplain Uriel and Lexicanum Charon move in to intercept the Ork forces but fail to hold the power plant.

This is a really important battle because it helps to set the tone: we are being overwhelmed. One of the exciting things I'll be doing with the Battle for Kadillus event is to flesh out that initial invasion of Kadillus Harbour and the bloody city fight that is alluded to but remains largely undocumented in either SoV or PoK (The Purging of Kadillus). Ghazghkull's forces surged into Kadillus Harbour and then dug themselves in once they had been cut off from reinforcements. The 3rd Company of Dark Angels and the Piscina Free Militia were unable to root them out initially, and the Orks had laid claim to key objectives like the Dark Angels Basilica, the city's orbital defenses, and of course, the geothermal plant. Though we will see tables with all of these key objectives assembled between now and April 19th, 2012, this week I began work on the table for If Ya Want Sumfin' Done...

My starting point begins with this scenario map out of SoV. As you can see it is a 4'x4' gaming area with a couple of diagonal city blocks and a couple of horizontal city blocks with the geothermal plant centrally located on the western edge, if that makes sense. Now one of my pet peeves with GW's representation of cities is that you have a bunch of free standing buildings scattered all over the place and they don't form blocks. A couple of years ago I began work on my own city table that utilized giant movement trays for the buildings themselves so that I could swap buildings in and out and so that I could set up my table in blocks. I've elected to use the same construction ideas of this table.

One of my major concerns when laying everything out is ensuring that all of the city blocks are spaced far enough apart to allow for "real" traffic but to be tight enough to block lines of sight. I decided that the ideal width between most buildings would be 2 Rhinos wide - enough space for 2 normal sized vehicles to pass each other.

Now the idea of a square movement tray to set up blocks is fairly easy to understand. You cut a bunch of squares and rectangles and put your scenery on them. In my case every base is 12" wide no matter how long it is, and it has a 1" border of sidewalk all the way around. This means that if I build scenery pieces that are 10" wide I can drop them onto my movement trays at a whim. The problem I ran into was that when setting up a table with diagonal city blocks my squares and rectangles would be hanging off the table edges; which is both unsightly and prone to people getting caught on the scenery and knocking it around. To deal with the issue I cut a variety of city block sections that are half squares or half rectangles with a 45 degree diagonal edge.

The sidewalks, as mentioned, are 1" wide. I cut them from standard foamcore and glue them down with white glue.

You will notice that I left a square gap. Scattered throughout my city blocks are 1"x1" gaps. I have left those behind so that I can put in street signs, overhead lights, or whatever other details I want that can be swapped in and out.

Just like other miniatures I put every building on a pink or blue foam insulation base. These vary in thicknesses based upon what I am doing. This allows me to incorporate basements or craters into the buildings I build and it allows me to swap scenery pieces in and out of a base as often as I like.

Here the pink foam base is cut and set inside one of my diagonal trays. You'll notice that I've cut card into 1"x1" squares and glued them down on my foamcore sidewalks to create the effect of sidewalk squares. You'll also notice that some of them have cracks or that there is an incomplete section. This is because I try to waste nothing if I can, so off cuts will eventually just become battle damaged sidewalk/curb.

Here I had an already assembled GW city building that Matt Weeks donated to my table construction efforts. Like the sidewalk there are cardstock tiles cut and glued inside and outside the scenery piece to add to the level of detail. These sorts of details will only be added to and accentuated as the process of building the table continues.

Finally here is the culmination of several hours work. All of my diagonal hard board bases are cut. I've started test fitting various pieces of scenery that have already been assembled and painted for previous projects and at least half of the table's bases for its city blocks are accounted for. Now begins the hard work of constructing and painting the buildings. These will be largely intact as its made very clear throughout SoV that damage to the geothermal plants could cause catastrophic mass destruction.

More next week.

Catering to More Relaxed and Narrative-based Players

There has been a lot of talk about narrative vs tournament gaming recently in blog-land and though nothing has or even can be "resolved", I've been trying to come up with ways to make tournaments more fun for casual players and for narrative events in a convention type setting to be more involving and that really push the limits of our hobby skills. These are some of the ideas I've had over the last year.

Handicapping Codexes

This is an idea I haven't put much thought into the nuts and bolts mechanics of it, but since so many people are collating data these days on the major tournaments it seems like it would be feasible to rank the codexes themselves and implement a handicap system similar to in bowling. The idea being that if we perceived each codex as our team mate, and some team mates perform better than others, we can rate the quality of our team mate (i.e codex) and give a marginal benefit to those who willingly bring a weaker codex to the tournament. By giving good players a bonus for going into a tournament with an inferior codex it might increase diversity. Sure, it might just expand the pool of net lists as people scramble to exploit every advantage, but you might see some of those top rung competitive players taking a chance on a weaker codex rather than selecting the power codex of the week. It'd have to be fleshed out and it wouldn't take into account the nuances of different builds but I think the idea has merit. If in 2009 I hadn't born witness to 5 tables in a row at Adepticon where every player was playing leaf blowers except me I might have actually played in one of the tournaments at Adepticon 2010.

Variant Tournaments

I've mentioned before in a previous article that the most fun I've ever had at a tournament was playing in a Cities of Death tournament several years back in Kenosha, WI (KWars: The Consuming Darkness run by Equinox). I liked how using a variant rule set turned things upside down. Suddenly the 3rd Edition Ork Codex was viable again and no one had all of their tricks and strategies all worked out. This tournament also sticks out in my mind because it had a narrative that linked each battle to the last and the scenarios were all really unique with random elements - the sort of thing the hardened tournament player often dislikes unfortunately.

All the way back in 2nd Edition I ran a tournament at a gaming store in Buffalo, NY that used the Arid Terrain Rules written by J. Michael Tisdel (Citadel Journal 16). Some people were irritated that they weren't well versed in the unique rules and had a hard time with how little cover was used, but the games I played in 2nd Edition using those rules were some of the most memorable games I played. I actually revamped these rules for the current edition but have yet to give them a whirl. Variations like these can really refresh a stale gaming environment in my opinion.

I would love to play in tournament that used alternate FOC's, used Attacker/Defender scenarios, or that used other restrictions, sidebars, or unique special rules. Some would argue that these types of alterations tamper with 40K, the tournament dynamic, and army balance making things too unpredictable. I think they make them more interesting and force you to adapt to a host of environments and tactical challenges. To each their own I guess but its these sorts of changes that really keep you on your toes.

The Narrative "Play"/Historical Re-enactment

After Adepticon 2010 I realized that since I wasn't happy with the tournament events taking place and the environment they created, I needed to step up and start running events that correspond with what I would like to play in. Originally I was going to just run a tournament akin to what I described above. I had worked out a lot of the ideas in my head and thought I had a winner of an idea, but it was still just another tournament to have its restrictions exploited for the sole purpose of victory. I decided to look into what types of narrative events other conventions like WargamesCon were doing, but it seemed like they were basically just huge Apocalypse games that featured any hodge podge of armies. I wanted something with more depth and attention to detail.

There are close to 1000 40K players who will converge in Chicagoland for Adepticon, maybe with an event of that size its possible to re-enact an entire campaign in a day and do it in the most lavish way possible? No proxy armies, no counts as stand ins, and no competition - at least not in the traditional sense. What if we ran a campaign and treated it much like a play where each person has a named character and their forces to control; where each person tries to emulate the story in the most spectacular way possible with their best painting and conversion work to most accurately capture the most minute details? Would that appeal to others the same way that it appeals to me? This is often too difficult to pull off in a game store or at a small convention in grand scale, but the sheer size of Adepticon could make it possible and with enough interest could really put a spotlight on a different aspect of our hobby that stays in our houses or appears on Dave Taylor's blog. (He has done fantastic work capturing the forces of the Gaunt's Ghosts books if you've never looked there.)

I pitched this idea to Matt Weeks, one of the Adepticon organizers and I'm going to try and pull it off this year with a well known and recently resurrected tale. I've spent the last month dissecting the 2nd Edition Storm of Vengeance campaign pack and The Purging of Kadillus by Gav Thorpe to find the best way to break up the scenarios and characters so that participants can select a role and spend the next 5 months painting and converting 750 points of models to represent the Dark Angels, Piscina Free Militia, Goffs, or Bad Moon Orks that took part in this classic conflict. The details still need to be worked out but rewards will be given for painting, accurate detail, and spirit. Each person would play 4 games of various sizes and pairings utilizing adaptions of the original scenarios as well as others developed from other areas of the novel and color text from the original campaign. This is all assuming people respond to this sort of uncharacteristic event. Hopefully there are enough people interested in re-enacting this conflict, because if it goes well I'd love to try and flesh out other novels and classic conflicts to really challenge people's hobby abilities (as well as my own!) and really promote narrative play.

I think all of these ideas have merit but its really up to everyone who wants to see something different let your organizers of your regional events know what sorts of things you'd like to see or volunteer to run something yourself that embodies the kind of gaming experiences you crave.

On a final note: This post breaks our personal record for the most posts in a single year of blogging. Way back in January I set the goal for 50 this year t0 clearly crush our previous 46. This is post number 47. Congrats to us!