Thursday's edit

Recorded and Edited a group discussion between Neil and myself and the Gamer's lounge guys.
Edited Neil Kerr's interview, interview deals with his spot on the Scotland ETC team and him playing daemons.

Termagaunt Weapon Upgrade or Downgrade?

Termagants come standard with a Fleshborer for 5 points. They have 3 weapon upgrades, Spinefist at 1 point, Spike Rifle at 1 point and Devourer at 5 points. Two of these, I would argue are really weapon down grades. Let me show you why:

30 Termagaunts shooting MEQ’s with Fleshborers, hit half the time, 15 hits. Toughness 4/Strength 4 they wounds half the time, 7.5 wounds. The average space marine will save 2 out of 3. Average shooting from these Termagaunts will kill 2.5 MEQ.

30 Termagaunts shooting MEQ’s with Spinefists, hit half the time, and reroll their misses, 22.5 hits. Toughness 4/Strength 3 they wounds 1 out of 3 times, 7.5 wounds. The average space marine will save 2 out of 3. Average shooting from these Termagaunts will kill 2.5 MEQ.

As you can see there is no improvement for spending one extra point on Spinefists. The unit did however cost 30 points more over the stock standard 30 man Termagaunts unit.

The only times Spinefists do better are against toughness 3 targets, where best case scenario, your 30 points buy you 1.25 extra kills.

Spike Rifles give you an extra 6” range at the cost of 1 point, and a significant reduction in damage potential, as seen in the chart below:

Devourers, at a cost of 5 points each, will give a significant boost in damage potential, but doubling your squad cost to 300 points, from 150. As seen in the chart below:

Your Devourer squad will outshoot 2 30-man stock Termagaunts, yet I am sure the average Tyranid player would rather have a few less shots and double the wounds.

All in all, I can’t think of any occasion that would warrant using anything but the stock Termagaunt weapons.

Sandbagging a Multi-Assault

It occurred to me that one of the most commonly misunderstood portions of 40K is the multi-assault. It is probably the area where I get the most questions from our podcast either via e-mail or on forums. Mainly, this is because we talk about multi-assaulting so much, but I also get a lot of feedback asking how that is done.

In the near future, I'm going to make a couple of videos to show how multi-assaulting actually works out. Maybe like a multi-assault training video?? In any case, an idea that occurred to me today about multi-assaulting that is definitely worth a quick discuss is "sandbagging" a multi-assault.


Sandbagging in a multi-assault is the idea of using a very powerful assault unit to force morale checks or fearless wounds across MANY other units while taking minimal casualties. In a perfect scenario, it would work like this:

The Perfect Scenario

Unit A is a glass cannon unit capable of destroying any and all in an assault but incapable of taking much return fire. (E.g. Harlequins, most demon units, genestealers etc.)

Unit B is a tough as nails unit capable of tarpitting other units in the assault phase. (E.g. Plague Marines, Plague Bearers, Nobz, stuff with a 2+ save)

Units C, D, E, and F are all something fairly wimpy in a HtH, say... Tactical Squads with no power fists? Maybe some normal Sisters? Anything Tau? You get the idea.

Here's how it works.

Step #1: Unit B multi-assaults into units C, D, E, and F at the same time. You would of course require a wide front and have your opponent close together. This works best against armies which naturally stay close together for support like Necrons as a best example.

Step #2: Unit A single assaults into unit C, hopefully at such an angle as to prevent much of Units D, E, and F from putting any models into BtB contact with Unit A.

Step #3: Unit A beats face on unit C, hopefully wiping it completely or as much as possible. Let's pretend all units involved are 10 man squads. Let's say that Unit A completely wipes out Unit C before Unit C gets to swing causing the combined A+B force to now be leading combat by 10. Unit B now swings, dividing attacks against D, E, and F with little effect, maybe killing 1. (A+B = 11, C+D+E+F = 0). Now, D, E, and F all swing back BUT BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE MUCH IN BTB WITH A, MUST ALLOCATE SWINGS TO B. Since B is tough as nails, D, E, and F don't do much damage, maybe 2 wounds to B.

Final Score: A+B = 11 C+D+E+F = 2. A+B wins by a whopping 9 points.

Step #4: D, E, and F who are still mostly intact now must starting taking leadership saves at -9!!!! If they are fearless, D, E, and F will all now take 9 extra wounds!!!! Either way, you have now officially sandbagged an assault.

Enough with the Perfect Scenario

Stuff is not perfect in 40K! The perfect scenario is what you strive to achieve. More realistically, everything won't come to place like that. The key points to take away are:

1) You can use your own units to "lash" together your opponent's units into a giant multi-assault.
2) You can do very, very bad things to your opponent's units in a multi-assault just because one of your power units got to stomp all over a small fraction of your opponent's units that were part of that assault.
3) Scenarios such as this only occur through smart positioning or forcing your opponent into bad positions.

Last but not least, think about how you can apply this same concept to taking down beefy independent characters! See below.....

Does the independent character or monstrous creature that you need to take down in an assault remind you of this????



What is we applied the principal of Sandbagging a multi-assault by lashing that monstrous creature together into a multi-assault with something much more squishy?

Let's say we want to kill a Tervigon in an assault who is T6 with 6 wounds. The problem is, dealing with his T6 and 3+ save is a pain for all except a Power Fist. So, you get you a 10 man Grey Hunters pack together, take a deep breath, and get ready to get stuck in. BUT WAIT! HOLD THE PHONE! There's a 20 man squad of Termagaunts near that Tervigon! Hmmmmm..... So, you Sandbag the Tervigon.

Step #1: Your Grey Hunters multi-assault such that the Fist ends up on the Tervigon and the majority of the rest of the squad ends up with the Termagaunts.

Step #2: If you got another squad sitting around, assault the Termagaunts. If they have a fist, do the same thing. :P In this case, I'll pretend like you don't.

Resolve the combat. Just making stuff up... let's say your Grey Hunters kill 10 Termagaunts, and the Fist puts 2 wounds on the Tervigon. That's a little above average but not out of the realm of possibility by any means. They return fire. The Tervigon kills 2 Marines, and the Termagaunts kill 1. About average. So, now what happens? You just won combat by 9! And guess what?? Fearless wounds don't have anything to do with the toughness of the model! That Tervigon (who is fearless because of Synapse) now takes an additional 9 wounds, which he will fail 3 of on average meaning you just did 5 wounds to him this combat (almost dead!). Even better, the Termagaunts now take 9 wounds likely killing 7-8 more which means they are just about wiped out as well.

You can negate that high toughness or beast of a character with a sandbagged multi-assault.

Sunday editing

Finished editing Nathan Fluger's interview, it should be present on episode 27 talking about his shooty Orks.

Interviewed Jeff Dunster and his highly unusual penal legion IG army.

We had a round table about comp and the need to fix codex with Bill & Jay from the Gamers Lounge with Neil and Myself.

Da whistle is gone...

Finally managed to remove an irritating whistle from my interview with Nathan Fluger. Now i can get to the real editing part of it.

Still in Queue:
Rob Harvatt
Big Jim BDJV
The Professor from BattleZone
Blitz from BattleZone

Progress for Thursday

Finished both interviews with MJayc50, next up Nathan Fluger. Nathan writes a column for the bloodofkittens.com blog called the ork defense force. He talks about his ork list and his local gaming scene.

The Battlezone

I interviewed the gents from battlezone each separate, Blitz and the professor. Check out their podcast at http://www.thebattlezone.libsyn.com/. Their interviews should make the show in a few weeks.

I also interviewed our own MJayC50 from the forums. He is playing for Team Wales. He talks about the Space Wolves he is bringing and also has a rebuttal to an article DarkWynn posted on BOLS.

Finished editing an interview with Mr. Dandy himself, from www.Mrdandy.com, we ordered several battle wolves from him, and decided to talk to him about his process etc.

Interview Schedule Friday, July 9th

Finished editing the second part of Rob Madeley's interview on his cavalry Daemon list. He, incidentaly, just made 1st in the UK on rankingsHQ. He is still looking for players to play against for his USA tour, coming soon.

I recorded and edited a short interview with Mike Brandt from the Nova open.

Next up:
Rob Harvatt
Nathan Flugger (still looking for a good audio editing program)
Big Jim, BDJV on our forums.

Finished Rob Madeley interview 1

Finished Rob Madeley's first interview, he is currently ranked #2 in the UK, and is looking to tour the USA and play a 40k game in every state, including Hawaii and Alaska. Currently working on his second interview.

Still in Queue:

1. Rob Harvatt, Australia Masters Winner
2. Big Jim, BDJV on our forums, and Author of the Galaxy in Flames blog http://galaxyinflames.blogspot.com/ and regular contributor to the Space Wolves blog http://space-wolves-grey.blogspot.com/
3. Nathan Fluger, Orc player on the west coast and contributor to bloodofkittens (http://bloodofkittens.com/)

Finished Nick Rose (Darkwynn) editing

Finished editing Nick Rose (Darkwynn) interview, next up multipart Rob Madeley interview.