Topic: The Gathering: The Fightening: 2009
Well, so far over the weekend we have tabled Legions of Steel, Space Thugs, The Black Watch (whose owner has declared Defiance is his new love and 40K can go and get stuffed), MORE Black Watch (originally an almost-completed custom list that just happened to work perfectly under the Black Watch OB) , Infranites, and the UNE.
We've had a total of 8 players involved on two tables in uh..... a lot of battles.
I plan to rework some aspects of the UNE list to improve weapon/troop combinations, indirect fire, and the range on the Carl-G. Also I'm going to improve movement rates slightly across most troop types. Between all this I expect to add a nice edge to the UNE's tactical options in some respects, drift a little from the source material in some respects, and move closer to it in others.
My as yet unpublished Legions of Steel Machines list seems to be very competent. The Dreadbots are a terror.
The Black Watch performed very well, but I can't claim credit for that since the elements fielded were largely from Demian's Star Marines list. It's likely that I will split the list into two divergent ones to suit two mates with rather different collections and concepts.
The Infranites put up a decent fight, winning one and losing two. I think I need to tune the list VERY slightly for efficiency and then change my approach to fielding a force.
Thoughts from the weekend:
*If you don't have a decent long-range Indirect Fire weapon on a suitable platform, you might as well shoot yourself in the head.
*Pay attention to actual tactical variety when generating a custom army.
*Every army needs a disruptive weapon on a suitable platform; something that can flush troops out of cover, mess up lanes of fire, or otherwise cause the enemy's best laid plans to gang agley. I suppose the disruption can be brute force superiority, but I rather think that my general neglect of grenades, smoke, cone weapons, and maybe phase, stun and force fields, has hampered gameplay a couple of times.