Welcome back, friends and readers, to my ongoing blog of hobby progress and diary! That’s right, for some reason you are back and reading The CollardHammer Special. This week has been a little quiet on the hobby front, with me not quite getting round to finishing the group of skeleton warriors I started. I did however get round to building my second unit of Imperial Navy Breachers for the Imperial Agents and played two games of 40k, both with different lists and detachments. This is going to form the bulk of this week’s blog, so unfortunately if you do not enjoy a dissection of the worst army in 40k, this may not be the post for you. Another slightly annoying aspect is that I forgot to take many photos in either game, so this post might be a little light on images. I also spent a considerable amount of time playing Total War this week, which did not help my productivity.
Anyhow, I am rapidly running out of words, so I am going to leave it here for this week. Apologies that this has all been gaming talk, particularly as the dataslate is likely to invalidate most of what I’ve said. Until next week, may the balance hammer not crush any of your dreams, as it has mine!
Firstly, my Trello board:
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| At least all the building is done I guess? |
As I mentioned above, I didn’t manage to move anything into the completed column this week, which was a little disappointing. However, I think getting the Breachers built was a good move, as it has reduced my backlog of models that haven’t even made it off the sprue. While obviously not ideal, the assembled models can be used for games, and the second unit of breachers has existed on my crusade roster for a while now. This was really the main impetus to get them built. If you read last week or some of the other previous weeks, you’ll know I’ve been playing Imperial Agents in Veiled Blade Elimination Force, and it sucks. It’s a real indictment of the game that I’d rather play that than Adepta Sororitas, but there will be more on this later. Building the breachers has opened up a somewhat viable build for Imperialis Fleet, a detachment that feels like it has at least some upside.
Moving on to my first game of the week, I played against Blood Angels with Elimination Force Agents. We played a crusade mission in which I had to do an action to ‘flip’ objectives from my opponent, with each of us scoring at the end of the game based on how many objectives I had primed. Since I was playing VBEF, my list consisted of all 4 assassins, a rogue trader, an inquisitor and some chaff infantry. My opponent was playing a mix of shooting and melee MSUs (many small units), with no vehicles. Things really unravelled right from the start, when my Eversor Assassin, even in his rage mode, failed to kill 5 Intercessors and promptly died to the Sergeant’s thunder hammer. My Vindicare also failed to make any impact, with quite an unfriendly terrain layout and poor deployment by me. With 300 points of my army having essentially no impact, I unsurprisingly lost. This game really convinced me of just how heinously bad the detachment is. I think the ‘upgrades’ the assassins get came up maybe once in the 5-turn game and cost approximately 150 extra points. I would be surprised if they aren’t updated to be much cheaper, if not free, in the balance patch this week.
My opponent asked me why I was still playing the army, so I think here is as good a place to respond as anywhere. Frankly, the Imperial Agents crusade mechanic is better than the Sororitas in pretty much every aspect. For Sisters, you pick a character to undergo special trials, that usually take 3-4 games to complete, in order to unlock special Battle Traits. Unlike in 9th edition, these count towards the maximum number of traits you are allowed, and all require you to discard miracle dice to activate. This realistically means that your crusade mechanics lock you out of taking fun and interesting relics or acquiring other, more interesting traits. Coupled with the fact that miracle dice are hard to come by at the minute, the mechanic feels genuinely abysmal. It wasn’t great in 9th, but at least it turned your character into an absolute powerhouse, capable of massively punching up, in a way befitting of a living saint. It now might as well just be that one character can’t gain battle honours.
On the other hand, the Imperial Agents campaign is much more fun. Although it involves a lot of bookkeeping (let’s be real, you’re only playing crusade if bookkeeping is you jam), I think it actually lends itself very nicely to narrative development. As a case in point, my second game this week was against Genestealer Cults. This time, I switched to Imperialis Fleet and cut two Assasins, making room for the second lot of breachers, a navigator and a Corvus Blackstar (!). This game was weird and actually quite tight. My opponent had taken a few big bricks, particularly a unit of ten Aberrants and their leader, as well as 20 Acolytes and a Primus in a big deep striking mob. I decided pretty early on that the Aberrants would not be a feasible target, so set about mopping up everything else and trying to spread over the objectives. Although it was sweaty at times, I managed to wipe out pretty much everything else and be on four objectives by the end of round 3. I also scored all my agendas well and ended up completing my shadow operation and earning maximum rewards. This tells a nice story – my inquisitor has been rooting around the cult for most of her campaign so far and finally confronted them head on. This was a big success, leading to considerable rewards and helping to flesh out her personality.
Anyhow, I am rapidly running out of words, so I am going to leave it here for this week. Apologies that this has all been gaming talk, particularly as the dataslate is likely to invalidate most of what I’ve said. Until next week, may the balance hammer not crush any of your dreams, as it has mine!
Ben
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