Obama 2012

Now that I have your attention, BoLS just opened up the Blood Angels painting challenge on their site.  Lauby has an entry that is currently trending pretty well in the polls with his Baal Predator (look left [then look right then look left again; it's now safe to cross the street]).  Make sure you head over there and vote for him.  His Baals are always smooth.  But seriously, the paintjob on his entry makes me feel bad about my own meagre abilities.  Compare your life to his and kill yourself.

The entry is under his real name, John Laubersheimer.  Now whether you remeber that as John Lubricator or Lauberbommer or Lauberscheimer or Labrador or Rock Laubster doesn't really matter.  Just remember that his name is the longest one in the poll.

Good Luck Lauby.

The above image was taken by and from John L.  or J. Laubersheimer and used without permission.  If he has a problem with me promoting his work, he can fuck off.

Goatboy on balancing your army

Well, it's Monday again and that means I have to be positive. Luckily Goatboy from BoLS has given me something to live for*. If you haven't read it yet, he put up a pretty solid article on why spamming** units is a perfectly sensible thing to do. I'm not sure if that was actually his intent, but there's some really good food for thought in there. Don't believe me, go read it. I think his deliberately unfocused list provides a lot of support as to why spamming is not the end of the world, even if he does provide valid justification for all of the choices in his force and can cover multiple rolls across different parts of his army. Just because his choices can cover multiple roles, doesn't mean that it is as efficient as a list comprised of several of the same/similar choices. For his fire support, for example, I think he could stand to expand the theme of combat squading with razorbacks to get long ranged support. But then again, that would defeat the purpose of his post...

One thing that I really like about his post, was that he was able to work in some pretty choice self-deprecating humor. I liked that he took some shots at his recent detractors. If you want to put goat in the name of every army you make, I say go for it!

But anyways, you should go read the article. If you're into staying happy, though, don't read the comments. I think Dingareth go a few good (IE, not retarded) knocks in early on, but the rest of the comments thread has pretty much degenerated into a puddle of pure piss (alliteration win!).

====================================================================

*so I will hold off on taking out my entire marketing project group, saving 1 bullet for myself :)... for now.

**I don't know why, but that term bugs the shit out of me...

...and the leafblower you rode in on!

So I'll let you all in on a little secret: in spite of having a high speed Internet connection since 1999, I've never really had the opportunity to spend too much time on the Internet.

You're a Veteran all right...of pissing me off

+++warning, serious amounts of caps lock ahead. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*+++

WTFUCK man, BoLS has let Mr. Footdar himself, Reece "I'm undefeated" Robbins, write for them AGAIN. Just get it over with and make him a permanent fixture of your site so I can stop reading it and move on with my life.

First go read this PILE OF SHIT if you haven't already done so. Then come back. I'll be waiting**.

Well that was painful. Reading that was about as much fun as sticking my dick into a nest full of angry hornets***.

Let's start at the beginning shall we. I've always found that to be a good place to start. Reece, your title has NOTHING to do with your article. Thank you for giving it the title that you did, though, it gave me a lot to go on in titling my own post.

How BoLS Didn't Get its Game Back

Sweet merciful crap! BoLS, take a look at your user comments and adapt. You always praise Privateer Press for listening to their target market- maybe you should do the same. I know that half of your deal now is to make controversial posts that drive user comments which in turn drives your ad revenue, but come the fuck on. By having contributors like Robin fucking Reece you are setting the hobby back years and are going to start losing readers. Maybe you should change your operating model back to giving useful advice.

I swear to god I didn't set out with the mission to rip on BoLS on a daily basis, but they make it so hard not to these days. Especially when they decide to bring Robin back for round 2 of his epic series on failing at life: "Winning with Eldar in 5th Edition Part 2" What's professor Reece have for us today? Mechanized Eldar- great that's hard to fuck up, load up on firedragons, fireprisms, and waveserpents and go to town. Well somehow he figured out how to do it though and gives us a list with 1 big ass firedragon squad, some howling banshees, striking scorpions (wtfuck man?), and a bunch of jetbikes. Well at least there are 3 fire prisms in there right. Check it out. It's incredibad.

So, his list writing is shit. Maybe his tactical advice is better. HA- it's not. Favorite quote:

The first thing to consider when making a list in 5th edition in my opinion
is always the same: how will I win games?

....and the first question I have for you is: how the fuck do you win games?

Well Robin, thanks for not explaining how the hell your firedragons are going to live long enough to take out heavy armor. Oh you couldn't explain it because they won't. Thanks for not explaining how this army can even deal with heavy armor- fireprisms and a lone firedragon squad are not the answer. If I were using this list and somebody plopped down a pair of land raiders, I would run to the hills. He also doesn't bother to explain how his unsupported jetbikes are going to make it through the game to hold an objective other than making sure you tank shock threats out of their way or hide them. He can't even explain the tactical decision that lead him to take 2 close combat aspect squads or how he intends to use them. All the real tactical advice he gives on that front is to use your prisms to pop transports (but wait didn't you say your prisms were going after heavy targets...oh no) and charge your aspect warriors in. Why bother doing that if you could stay out of harms way and shoot them?

There is a useful nugget of info buried in there about target saturation being a good thing. It is, unfortunately you don't have any. To succeed at target saturation you would really need to have more skimmers and more redundant units, by which I mean 3 smaller units of firedragons. As it stands now, he presents nothing but obvious, easy to deal with targets. Robin, do yourself a favor and learn some sound tactics and focus on your lists before you present yourself as a scholar of 40k. If you're going to present a fluff army, state that it is. Don't masquerade some clusterfuck of a list as a competetive entry, that is just embarassing.

Friday Night Internet Fight Round 1

Well boys and girls, Friday has come and with it what I hope will become a regular feature over here at “Dick Move”- Friday Night Internet Fight! Internet fights are hilarious. Watching two anonymous people whip their junk out and fight each other in cyberspace is just too damn funny in its futility. In this column, I’ll be digging up the nastiest or most amusing fight that I can find in a wargaming forum, and putting it on display for all to see. Hell, maybe I’ll even start a fight or two or answer your hate mail. At the end of the article, after my own witty commentary, I’ll put a poll up letting you, the reader, decide who, if anyone, wins the internet.

In Reece Robbins’ guest article ”40k Tactics: Winning with Eldar- Foot Edition”, we are introduced to the most competitive Eldar list I have ever seen and shown definitively that Mech is not King in 5th ed 40k. Oh wait, that isn’t what happened…hilarity ensued…hell yeah! If you are living under a rock and didn’t happen to catch the article, let me spare you the torture and sum it up in a one sentence executive summary. ‘Hi my name is Robin and I claim to be an experienced gamer who never loses in a competitive environment, so check out my winning build that just might be the least competitive thing that most of you have ever seen that I win with all the time.’ For fuck’s sake, I don’t know who to feel worse for, Robin for believing in himself or the readers that seemed to take this article to heart. Anyway, some of you have asked why I didn’t immediately rush out and give this article my official mushroom stamp of approval when it got published. The answer: it’s too obvious. If you read this monstrosity and thought it was a good idea, I truly pity you. For those of us who know better, you don’t need my crackpot, lurking ass to tell you what you already know. Moreover, if this whole blog just consists of me trolling every single BoLS post, it isn’t going to be a very interesting ride.
Ahh, but I digress. While I didn’t comment on the article itself, for the previously stated reasons, I managed to wade my way through the 200 plus comments for the post, and find this gem. Here we have a nice fight between Metalstorm and dude, with special cameo appearances (spoiler alter, it’s just some random guys). The names have not been changed to protect the innocent, but I have changed their avatars for my own amusement. If I have something to interject into the conversation, it’ll show up in red.




metalstorm

I love how we finally get a long and insightful look at an unconventional ~Except that lots of people out there run shitty foot eldar because they are stupid or can’t afford 50 grav tanks~ way to approach an army like Eldar and people immediately jump to tear it apart. I for one was getting VERY sick of seeing nothing but min/max power gamer lists getting posted on here and I find this to be a big breath of fresh air. ~BoLS Min/Max? When has that happened exactly?

I would like to see articles this long written about other 3rd and 4th edition armies that are struggling to survive in 5th edition. (Necrons much?)

Obiviously this list has issues with mech~Duh, Obiviously~....but who doesn't besides melta-spam players~Hmm I don’ know, maybe fuckin’ Tyranids and anybody with an autocannon or god damn Eldar players that are smart enough to bring a good mix of weapons to the party~. As long as those Wraithlords deploy 12" in, they shouldnt have any problem reaching tanks with lances in turn 1 and 2. Maybe the Mech players and the Melta players should go and play somewhere else so the rest of us can enjoy 40k.

People on this forum needs to be alot more open minded to stuff like this. Even if this list isn't super competitive...it looks fun~no, it isn’t and it doesn’t~. I would love to play against more armies like this, and not because I think it would be an easy win.

Anyway, more in depth looks at unconventional army builds please BOLS!

dude
If you think BOLS posts min/max power lists than you very uneducated. ~Friday Night Internet Fight Club rule 1- don’t talk about Friday Night Internet Fight Club. Rule 2- if you’re going to call someone uneducated, check your fucking grammar!~ I'm glad the fluff bunnies have an article to make them feel superior, but an article on actual tactics this is not.

metalstorm

I'm going to make a few points here.

1. I find it adorable that you said "you very uneducated."~You call it adorable; I call it a sign of the downfall of western society caused by failing educational systems.

2. I'm guessing you would never bring a list to a game that you know would likely lose, because losing isn't fun, winning is fun, the future is war. 40k after all is a super serious game.

3. I was simply trying to point out how everytime an article gets posted with a list in it like this, a pack of wolves always jumps on to tear it apart and generally misses the whole point of the article. In this case, "how to run foot eldar."~Fun fact, metalstorm- the whole point of this article was to make a competitive Eldar army. Mission not accomplished.

4. You probably drive an F350 with a pair of balls on your hitch? ~Zing?

maddoc
PLEASE tell other people how to have fun or what fun is PLEASE! ~Man, you totally missed a golden opportunity to make an awful comparison of metalstorm to the Nazis, thanks for not doing that.


dude

1. thanks my mother feels the same way ~que?

2. I played WH for a year and lost more games than I won. Now i play CSM and fair slightly better. ~yeah, probably with an emphasis on the slightly, way to pick a winning codex, dude.

3. That's not the title. It's called "Winning with Eldar". I don't feel this is a way to win. Winning is fun, but not at the expense of your opponent. My three trophies for best sportsman can attest to that. ~Apparently waving your dick around is also fun

4. No I drive tiny little Hyundai accent around Philadelphia ~Yeah, that’ll show him…

kaptinscuzgob
I find bragging about your sportsmanship trophies to be a hilarious paradox ~Thank god we get some kind of epiphany at the end as Gob points out this super irony.

Well, that’s our first fight. Sound off in the polls and let us know who you think the winner is.

Also, if you participated in an internet fight, send me a link and I’ll see if you’re worthy of making next week’s round of Friday Night Internet Fight.

Dick Move Poll: Has BoLS peaked...in stupidity?

First thing's first, I will try my damndest not to make this blog a non-stop rant about the asshatery that is Bell of Lost Souls (BoLS). Having said that, my first official article here comes straight from the mouth of madness that is BoLS.

In a recent article entitled: "BoLS poll: Has Mech peaked?" the renowned blog asks the question of whether or not the new Deff Rolla ruling will be the end of mechanized armies in 40k. Well, let me answer your question with another question: are you fucking kidding me?

The poll from BoLS can be found here.

The Orks FAQ referenced here and in the BoLS post can be found here.

Here is a little background on the problem at hand. Since the release of the newest Ork Codex, Ork players around the world have stuggled to take out vehicles. Specifically they have struggled at taking out armies with lots of moderately armored targets, such as Imperial Guard melta Vet lists or Mechdar lists, and armies with heavily armored vehicles like Land Raiders. The problem stems from Orks not having any melta weapons and no ranged weapons that are (reliably) over S8. It doesn't help much that Orks are rocking that super fantastic BS2 on most units either. Kannons, rokkits, and very rarely boomguns are employed in tank killing rolls. These options are ok against lighter targets like chimerae, but really start to turn up the suck against AV14 targets, as they can't penetrate them. Also, remember that Orks excel at missing their targets. In close combat land Orks get tankhammer armed Tankbustas or power klaw armed Warbosses to deal with vehicles. Are either of these viable? Tankbustas, certainly not. They will get shot to shit since they can't be given a dedicated transport- well not that Ork trukks are worth a damn anyway. Warbosses on bikes with power klaws, on the other hand are pretty scary. Too bad you can only squeeze two into your army.

This is where the deff rolla enters the equation. GW has essentially ruled that ramming and tank shocking are the same thing, meaning that this piece of kit can be employed against vehicles. D6 S10 hits on the ram looks pretty damn scary on paper, but how does it actually fare? Well, we'll look at this by evaluating the deff rolla battlewagon in a vacuum and also compared to some common mech match ups.

By itself, you get an open topped AV14 front vehicle with no ranged weapons, a big transport capacity, and a deff rolla for 110 points (or 2 Chimerae if you apply the current exchange rate). At the end of the day this means that you get a big vehicle with a giant target painted on its side at a points value that will reduce the number of other useful units that would help you get some target saturation like warbikers, buggies, etc. The open topped bit here hurts a bunch, as any S8 weapon can now be relied upon to blow it up. Now who is commonly totting a lot of S8 weapons these days....oh that's right everyone. So, at a minimum we probably also need to bring along the 'ardcase upgrade, elminating that pesky open topped rule. Add this upgrade and we're up to 2.27 Chimerae at the going exchange. Oh and we still have no ranged capability at all and probably want to put some ballbustas like a powerklaw warboss or tankbustas in here. Well this is getting expensive. How many vehicles are you going to be able to ram over the course of the game with this anyway?...well at MOST six, and that's assuming that you aren't sniped from across the table on turn one by someone who actually brought good units.

let's go ahead and look at some match ups.

Space Marines- For the record we'll be talking about land raider armies here. Deff rollas actually hold up pretty well against these, assuming that the heavier weapons on them don't kill you before you ram. In any event, your opponent will only be able to bring a few raiders to the party, so assuming you're smart and have some powerklaws running around as well, you stand a pretty good chance at blowing up raiders. Now the terminators or tactical squads inside the raiders will rip you a new one in the assault after you blow up their ride, but it's a pretty good trade off- a 125+ points unit for a 250+ points tank. Plus, after your ride is blown up, you'll have the next turn to charge in with whatever you were carrying and do some damage to some marines/terminators. If you think I'm wrong on this, feel free to pull a dick move and let me know.

Imperial Guard- As a guard player myself I can say that at 1750 points I would be bringing between 12 and 18 AV12 vehicles with me. Let's not also forget that 4-6 of those will be brimming with meltas and 2 of them will be vendettas. For the sake of argument we'll say that you're as smart as the average BoLS reader/contributor and have sunk a shit ton of points into 3 battlewagons with deff rollas (yes, I know that you can actually squeeze six in, but that would mean less nob bikerz or lootas). Let's see here 18>3 last time I checked and unless everything I know about space and time is wrong, you won't be killing more than one of my tanks at a time with each of your wagons. Well good luck wading through my target rich environment. It also bears mentioning that if you actually roll a chimera to death, it is full of melta vets or melta command that will microwave you next turn. Nice job, you just wasted 125+ points worth of ramshackle orky goodness to take out a 55 point transport. Good one!

Mechdar- In addition to the same target saturation problems you get with the above (again this list will be made up of at least 12 vehicles), you have some speed issues to deal with. Eldar are amazingly fast, in case you were unaware. They will run circles around you and still maintain an ok rate of fire. Good luck catching up to a fast skimmer with your slow ass battlewagons. Even blowing more points on a red paint job will not be likely to improve your game. In the very unlikely event that your opponent has pulled some sort boner that resulted in you actually ramming a wave serpent to death guess what.... there's a 1/3 chance that it was full of fire dragons who will melt you back into scrap metal in their turn.

Tau- Typically you'll see a semi-mechanized build with these guys. All of their armored assets will also be surrounded by a meat shield made up of Kroot. Behind this wall, lots and lots of twin-linked railguns. These will kill you before you get through the Kroot. Thanks for playing. Note that if you do make it through the kroot, all of the armored stuff will simply outmanoeuvre you and run away.


Let's review and answer the mech question for our loyal BoLS Subscribers. Does one minor rule change that makes a shitty army marginally less shitty change the entire established universe? NO. If you crapped your pants or sported serious wood when you read the FAQ ruling then you are truly a moron.

'Wait I was told there was going to be a poll.' Well, guess what- it's pointless to have a poll when the only answer is "fuck yeah."