[40K] Allies fur Alles – Stratological Approaches

I know some of you don’t like Yes The Truth Hurts, but I’ve found Stelek’s postings on Allies to be quite restrained and helpful. In particular, there’s this one on the importance of mixing and matching different statlines across your detachments, with a suggestion for how many troops, vehicles and flyers of varying types it might be advisable to take.

As I’ve said a few times now, I don’t tend to take Stelek’s suggestions wholly on trust for actual gameplay, not least because he plays for big e-cred stakes while I play for peanuts and bellybutton fluff. That said, the way he thinks about army lists and the advice he gives on what’s needed at different points levels can be good for blowing away the cobwebs and thinking about things differently, like it was for my Cryx way back when. It’s certainly helpful for collection planning, as you start to ask yourself “right, so how many dudes who can shrug off autocannons and heavy bolters do I have? how many cheap dudes who I don’t really care about? how much mobile cover can I throw out? how far can I get up the board in one turn?” I also think I agree with his assertion that Allies are for 1750 points and up, unless you have a very cheap, very focused Allied contingent that’s just there to plug a hole in your army’s tactical capabilities and cost not lots.

As for what actual stuff to take in those slots, Mr. Stelek’s general approach would seem to be ‘stuff you couldn’t normally get, in sufficient quantities to force choices‘. The list he’s showcasing uses its Allies to provide cheap and flexible long ranged firepower, with the Tau capacity to point, click and delete a couple of vehicles per turn supplementing the antipersonnel firepower and melee threats of the Chaos force. Like the man says, the list in itself probably isn’t viable, but the idea is that you look for something that your Allies do better and then take enough stuff to do that well. That’s why I look at the Necrons and think “cheap blobby Troops that can sit at the back and not waste perfectly good gauss shots”, “guns with decent ranges”, “stuff with decent Initiative and Attacks scores” and “psychic powers”.Maybe Skyfire too, since Night Scythes are indeed the bomb but I don’t own any yet and £70 for two is a bit steep for the pocket at present.

Perhaps some inexpensive proxies…

40K – Allies Fur Alles – Von’s Crons

So, last week I dragged myself onto Skype to discover that my lacklustre 40K Correspondent has actually played some sixth edition 40K at last, and while he won’t be blogging about it (something about proxies, unpainted miniatures, non-existent records and so on), it did at least start a conversation.

Von: Did I tell you I have been thinking dire thoughts of Allies for the 40K thing?

Lexington: No! Polate most extra-ishly, plz.

Von: Does sir have time to give any thoughts on Allies which he might have? I say so because, well, there’s bloggin’ in this.

Lexington: A co-article, as it were?

Von: Yeah. The sort of thing we said we’d do when you joined.

Lexington: We’re bad at that. Anyhow! Allies for your Cybermen, or Allies for Alles?

Von: Well, I figured I’d talk about my particular predicament first, and then if you had anything broader to say (you know, as a man who owns multiple armies and such). Although I like Allies fur Alles as a series. Maybe we should do that. Talk about the various reasons for taking Allies, and use our collections as a case study.

Lexington: I like this.

M:tG – Creating The Monster

It’s all this bugger‘s fault, him and the rest of my so-called friends from the good old days. These rascals like a spot of Magic and have roped me in, on a strictly irregular and casual basis, and so I took my two decks away with me on holiday. I wasn’t quite expecting it to end up like this.

Beasts from the East – One Man And His Lord Tyrant

As well as running a friendly, well-stocked brick-and-mortar and online shop (for all your guilt management needs), the good people at Dark Sphere Games have a rather spiffy gaming space that’s half an hour’s walk from my place and draws a decent Warmahordes crowd of a Monday night. It’d be churlish of me not to give it a go, really, and so I’ve popped up and been rocking the Skorne for a couple of games. One of these was my first with the good Lord Tyrant Hexeris since, umm, actually since I acquired him two and a half years ago, and it proved to be a strange experience after Morghoul.

WFB: Revamping Lord Ruthven

So!

I have now played a game or two with the Vampire Counts. Here’s the 1500 point list I used in the one that wasn’t a total embarrassment (and considering I forgot to set up 90 points of my army or enforce the taking of any Fear tests for the first four turns, imagine how embarrassing the other one must have been – or just click the link, y’know?)

Here’s the list I ended up using (badly).