Tabletop Teacher

Term has officially started, with all our boarders back this evening. The house is alive with the bumps and crashes of boys trashing their bed rooms. Great to be back in the wing of things! I will be continuing on with the analysi of the Adeptus Mechanicus in Kill Team, but I have a reader request to carry out first: Howdy, I am new to 40k and just staring out with my friends. I am interested in the Chaos Space Marines. I was wondering if you could recommend a good 500pt army that I could put together. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. PS. I was thinking of either Black or Alpha Legion. Matthew Winning First of all Matthew, have you and your friends tried Kill Team yet? It’s a cheaper and quicker way to get started! Chaos Space Marines, now known as the Heretic Astartes, are in somewhat of a poor position for beginners. The models are getting rather dated now, unless you’re going Death Guard or Thousand Sons, and their classic Troops choice is mostly out-performed ...

I'm revamping and re-tooling my T'au army. Although I'm certain the list I've come up with is both competitive and easy to use, I don't think I'll be continuing collecting T'au. Whilst I'll never stop believing in mecha and the sheer coolness of robots, with Crisis Suits now solidly priced as an elite unit I can't form the Crisis Suit Wings that I love from 7th Edition. Firewarriors and Breacher teams are fantastic as Troop choices, and you really can't go wrong fielding them en masse. But I'm here for the Crisis Suits, and infuriatingly I can't fit nearly as many as I can in an army as the old days. But enough of the old bitter veteran moaning, let's see what disgusting fire power we lay upon the enemy! This is not the whole army, but a good chunk of it... weapon choices are all wrong though. The army I had planned started as a Farsight Enclave list, to fit my Mu'gulath Bay Avengers (the poor homeless blue chaps above...

Do you like lightning fast armies? Do you love having the most powerful guns? Do you still want to hit hard in close combat too? Well read on, my fellow space elf players. Read on. This is perhaps the least beginner collection friendly army I've ever written, so calling it a Starter list is a stretch at best. I drew the line at calling it Beginner, simply because of the difficulty in putting the models together, but I think it's a neat way to learn the basics of a the Eldar glass canon style. Typically what can trip Aeldar players up is deployment. Since every unit in an Aeldar army is quite specialised, and with relatively short range weaponry, botching your deployment can leave your Wraithguard running uselessly across the battlefield and your Fire Dragons meeting a sticky end from a Genestealer rush. This army side steps all of that with stupid fast units, and anything slow having non-standard deployments. Rules you need to know (and love): Battle Focus - Th...

Assault army with only a handful of hard hitting assault units. A fast moving force, built around a slow moving infantry core. A unique army, with less unique options than their vanilla counter parts. A deep strike shock force, with no real punch to it's Deep Striking units. Blood Angels are in a bad spot right now. Doom and gloom aside, the BAngels have a lot going for them. The unique units they do have are fairly good, if not the best. They do have options beyond the vanilla Space Marine units, even if the Space Marine units are arguably better. Their troop type is a straight upgrade on the regular Tactical Squad. The BAngels have always somewhat suffered from a bit of schizophrenia. Unlike the Space Wolves and Dark Angels who can justify their unique combat doctrines through their fluff, the BAngels need to compromise between their unique flavour and generally being codex adherent. As such, although many have been sold on the Blood Angels as being the best clo...

Do you know what to do with your models once they hit table top? You may know general strategies, but the actual placement and movements of models is not always clear. Would you like to know more? An intellectual and successful general like yourself probably would! I've written (perhaps far too much!) on how to build an army for patrol detachments . I've based this off my experience in teaching student neophytes how to play 40K in my school club, and believe me when I say I've seen most of the (literal!) school boy errors out there. A lot of guides on how to use models focus on specific units. Having done that myself, I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking you know how your army works based on a thorough understanding of the unit itself. But knowing the strengths ad weaknesses of a particular unit won't help you to understand where to put them on a battlefield. So let me give you some general guidelines. Time for the caveat... all si...

Do you want to know how to build an effective army? Do you want to avoid cheese traps and chasing metas? Then read on, you outrageously good-looking individuals, whether you be a fresh faced Lieutenant or grizzled general. There are a good number of list building guides out there, but I've found the vast majority either subscribe to meta trends or cheese lists. Whilst there is certainly value in understanding the strongest combinations of units in 40K, you'll eternally be at the mercy of rule changes and Games Workshop prices. It will be a never ending game of catch up, and the odds are you still won't have a high win-to-loss ratio. Some list building guides are only focused on satisfying detachment minimum requirements. There is little value in that, beyond gaining the old style 7th Edition Formation buffs.They won't help you understand why taking certain units is good, or even what to do with them when they touch table top. I come to you from a position whe...