Goatboy’s 40k Thoughts: Ard Boyz Round 2
I went by my local store to check out the second round of Ard Boyz this year. I saw a lot of IG and Valks running around, as well as a good amount of Chaos and other power armored armies. I didn’t stay till the end, but I know an Ork, Chaos and IG player were in the top 3. So congrats to all of them and especially Darkwynn for representing Austin by winning third place. I wish I could have been playing, but oh well it just meant a nice Saturday versus a stressful head scratching day trying to figure out missions, hehe.
From the top lists, the biggest visible seems to be mech across the board. Whether they are Battle Wagons, Rhinos, or Chimeras full of IG t-shirts, each army seemed to love pushing boxes of plastic around. So what does this mean for the average player? Make sure you have ways to deal with mech. I know we all know about this, so I won’t go into it. Just know that Melta is the key for Tiger Victory!
Now I saw some mistakes some of the mech players were doing. Most plastic boxes have holes you can shoot out, so that means you should never get out unless you have too. Too many times I saw guys pop out, shoot an assault element of the opponents army, and then toasted by the assault coming at them that survived the initial onslaught. Unless you are carrying weapons that can kill 10+ guys in one shooting phase (Doom sirens, heavy flamers, etc) then there isn’t any point getting out and giving your opponent a method to do their job. Even if your vehicle doesn’t have a way for you to stick a gun out, there is no point in getting out unless you can deal with the threat 12 inches in front of you completely in the shooting phase. I saw too many guys trying to pop out and get all 4 melta shots, when really 2 was all they needed. This works for just about every army and is one of the few things that can create advantages in the game, especially versus a superior army.
Another trick you can do, which is pretty sneaky if you are assaulting a squad and want to try and keep that squad into combat into the second round (And thus safe from shooting) is to assault the squad with your regular guys, and leave your fists/power weapons/ etc touching a rhino or so other vehicle. You can dump those auto killing hits into that, leave the regular attacks with the squad and hopefully let them stick around to allow you to smack them during your opponents assault phase. Yes I know you have to assault as much of the squad as you can, but if you are smart about it and block your units method of moving around, you can easily multi assault and keep your guys safe from any return fire. This helps especially with IG and other armies that run lots of vehicles to ride around in.
Also another thing I saw was questions on objectives. I like to make my objectives on terminator bases. It ensures that the size is large enough to look like an objective, as well as helping to standardize the playing field. Nothing is more annoying then someone with teesy-tiny objectives that try to use their smaller size to really hide them. I know you can use the ones from the template set, but I like to create some that fit the fluff of my army. What do you think on objective size? I know it isn’t something that is demanding of the 40k community, but I wonder if anyone else has thoughts on that?
As usual here is some stuff I painted this last week. I changed my job’s schedule, so I now have a bit more time to mess around and finish up work. With a wedding, new job duties, and commissions my life is pretty busy right now haha. But I did finish up my 3 Battle Wagons for my Bolscon army, as well as some new IG work you can see down below. The Sentinels are for a large order from Spain and the guardsmen are from another local IG order. I know there isn’t any grass on the Sentinels or Guardsmen, I was waiting on a response from the clients to ensure they got what they wanted. Fun times for Full of Monkey in the coming months.
~I’d love to hear what you guys are seeing in the Ard Boyz around the country, and if you are seeing the slow but sure rise of mech armies. As usual, shoot me an email at [email protected] if you have any questions or thoughts. Look to my blog for the Bolscon army list later on this week. I want to do a bit more testing to really feel how it should work.
