Tabletop Teacher

So we've had a look at Background Lore, the Troops, and Key Elements to the Blood Angels army. Now let's look at getting you your first 500 point patrol! If you don't want to think about it, and are just itching to get into games, the Start Collecting Kit from Blood Angels will give you enough for just under 500 points. In brief: Terminator Captain with Thunder Hammer Baal Predator with Twin-linked Assault Canon and Heavy Bolter side sponsons 5-Marin tactical squad with Combi-plasma and plasma gun 5-Marine tactical squad with Power weapon/hand flamer sergeant and a heavy or regular flamer I'm not going into detail on that force though. Each individual component is fine, but they don't work well together. The Captain is slower than the Tacticals, and wants to get into melee. He's the only one who can Deep Strike, but suicide missions aren't great for your Warlord. The Tacticals would prefer to get some  But that's not to say it's a b...

You'd think it would be the same chart as the Bolter , just with every shot buffed by -1AP. The maths makes it a little different though: ** For the bolt pistol use the chart in the Bolter Selector page . Hellfire really rises to prominence for the Bolt Rifle. An AP-1 weapon wounding nearly everything on a 2+ is special weapon territory... the nearest comparison is a Tau cyclic ion blaster! As with the bolter: If using a doctrine, treat the toughness bracket as being one higher. If target is in cover, treat armour save as one higher Dragonfire has a little bit more use here, but you're still better off ignoring it except for exceptional circumstances.  Really don't underestimate this weapon. A full squad of 10 Intercessors, without any Kill Team options, can cripple a 5-man Terminator squad and have double the wounds. And do it for about 50 points less than the Terminators! Auto-bolt rifle/carbine coming up! Thanks for reading. If you liked wha...

Bloggers and Youtubers often say how grateful they are for comments and likes. Usually it's just because it makes them more search engine optimised. I, however, could not be more grateful for comments since they give me access to the 40K community. I have a full 24 hour job in the boarding house, and so my hobby time is far, far less than most other Games Workshop commentators. What little time I do have for hobbying is usually spent  indoctrinating my children into being nerds playing with my kids. So whenever you guys drop me comments revealing new information, it saves me the time spent digging through forum posts and 2 hour videos to get to interesting information. My unending thanks goes to Lemondish, a routine commenter who has revealed some great information about the Deathwatch Codex. They have driven development of my analysis spreadsheets by a huge margin over the past few days, and I could not be more grateful. Thank you Lemondish! Here's what he revealed: ...

Have you ever wondered which is the optimum ammunition to use for your Deathwatch Veterans? Would you like to know what is best to use in any situation? Don't worry. Teacher made a cheat sheet. I spent a day making this. Don't judge me, I was pinned in the boarding house and couldn't get on with anything more meaningful. I'm not convinced it's very clear though, and there's a few secret pointers for you dear readers, which the people who don't click the link on social media will know. If using a doctrine, treat the toughness bracket as being one higher. If target is in cover, treat armour save as one higher Dragonfire only has application in very specific circumstances... as far as I can tell, only Toughness 1-2 models with camo-cloaks suffer slightly more. So effectively, you have the perfect tool for killing Ratlings. Quite why the Deathwatch has an ammunition type for dealing specifically with abhumans says a lot about the Imperium. I...

Here's a list taken from Faeit212 , who got it from miniwars, who got it from 4chan. Yes, this is quite the chain of whispers, but it looks fairly legitimate and I have no reason to doubt the image. What we can draw from this is that your default weapon for Veterans is going to be the Stormbolter. There is no question of it. As a 2 point upgrade you double your number of shots, and the ability to use Special Issue Ammunition just means you can tailor the units role on the fly. The Deathwatch shotgun, barring a discounted points cost or upgraded Special Issue shells, are now rather redundant, only having a somewhat niche use in Overwatch defence. Even then, a slight increase in points (133 up from 120) will get you better far better results. Taking 4 stormbolters and a Frag canon gives you all the Overwatch and autohit potential of 5 combat shotguns, along with 4 stormbolters. Equally, Stalker boltguns are redundant as well. Stormbolters can do a similar role (2 shots out...

These are about the only Stratagems from the recent Warhammer Community reveal you need to know about, turning the otherwise lacklustre power of bolters into something terrifying: This is great! It's like Veterans of the Long War, which makes the shooting from Rubric Marines and Stormbolter Chaos Chosen a cheap and devastating tool. Combined with Special Ammunition, Reivers in particular can pop up and put in some truly devastating damage: Grav-chute into position Load Vengeance rounds Enable the appropriate doctrine Enjoy power armour shredding fire Re-roll any 1s if you match your appropriate Mission Tactic Target This turns Bolt rifles into 1 Damage plasma guns against Terminators! You could also mimic Chosen by fielding Stormbolter Veterans, for 20 shots wounding on 3s! But the uses don't stop there. By taking the Deathwatch shotguns, you now have a weapon that can: Wound Dreadnoughts (T7 vehicles) on 4s, doing 2 damage each Gives you flamers with...

Primaris Kill Teams are here, with some nifty special rules to make the very best of Your Dudes! The latest drop over at Warhammer Community shows us some of the special rules attacked to each unit type. Let's look at some neat tricks (and some minor criticisms) that you can get out of them. Intercessors There's not much more to discuss about these guys beyond what their Special Issue Ammunition gives them, which I went into detail over before . A minor criticism though, is that it appears that you need five Intercessors to form the backbone of a Primaris Kill Team. That's fully in-line with other Kill Teams needing 5 Veterans. The difference here is that Veterans have access to a wide range of weaponry, whereas Intercessors appear to only have the bolt rifle variants. Again this is in-line with standard fluff, as Intercessors are supposed to be specialised into line-holding bolt riflemen. Crunch-wise, it does make them a bit bloated as a unit. Special ...

It's been a good long time since I've pumped out a BREAKING NEWS! rules analysis post. But I have to admit, the Deathwatch Codex has me all pumped up! The Deathwatch are the Space Marine equivalent of the SAS, Navy Seals, or any other modern day elite fighting unit. They have a specialised role in the Imperial forces; the hunting and destruction of xenos. Whilst that might be as simple(?) as dropping in the path of an ork WAAAGHH!!, sometimes it might be vicious street fights against a Genestealer Cult in a hive city. Whatever battle they're in, if they've been called in it's more than just a bug hunt. I would argue that they're more important that the Grey Knights, in that... well I could justify it a number of ways, but mostly it's because Deathwatch were some of the first models I painted for the Space Marine Field Police . I remember those wild, heady days, when you could drop pod behind an Imperial Knight an unload 8 lascanon-grade shots into t...