What BAO means for marines pt1: bike armies

The next three posts will track my thoughts on some of the army lists that came out of the Bay Area Open, which wrapped over the weekend. It was the first big, fully competitive tournament to use 7th edition rules, including forge world and lords of war. All reports are that it was extremely well run and lots of fun. Check out the pics - some of the armies look amazing (I've peppered pictures throughout this post)!

http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/07/28/bao-results-rewards-and-some-pics/

The event was won by a White Scars army with a Knight. The other common Space Marine builds were drop pod Ultramarines and a Rhino rush White Scars army that came 4th. I'll analyse each of those lists and hopefully draw some interesting insights. Today, the winner's list.

Lessons from escalation: tactical squad spam works

Played another game last night, this time at 800 points against Space Marines. There were a lot of tactical marines in play in a Crusade mission with a bunch of objectives in the middle of the board. Lots of insights into the new dynamics of objective secured (OS) scoring and minimum sized unit (MSU) spam were to be had.

Lessons from the escalation league 700 points

I'm going to write a brief post each week after the escalation league on Sunday nights tracking what I learn as I prepare for the September tournament.

I played two games this weekend - one four-player 700 points each slaughterfest, and one 700 point game against an ork army. I was a bit disappointed not to get in a third game, but everyone wanted to play Infinity (I will probably start playing next time they begin a league).

The Crows WIP #1

Been meaning to write a few posts about the fluff of my army and how I paint it. This is the first one, starting somewhere in the middle of my fluff making adventures. (Note: fluff is a slang term for backstory, Warhammer cannon etc. Basically all the flavour of the game as opposed to the rules.)

I say starting in the middle because I don't actually like bikes fluff wise, and this post is all about the bikes in my space marine army. Because I don't like bikes, I had practically written them out of the fluff I made for my chapter. So by introducing my bikes before the fluff for the rest of my lads, I'm starting in the middle. I had to do something for bikes because they are the most powerful unit in the new space marines codex, so I had to play them. Now don't go thinking I'm a power gamer, I'm not. Most of the games I play are social and I play something pretty closely resembling a reasonable marines army, with lots of planes, paratrooper sternguard squads and all mechanised infantry. But occasionally (maybe 1 in 5 games) I do play more competitively, and Space Marines aren't (or weren't in 6th edition) competitive without bikes. But I don't like to play without fluff so I went and made some for the bikes.

Escalation League army lists

Hola. Haven't posted much recently because I've had exams, then post-exam vacations and then the club was cancelled because the Australasian philosophy society needed the room - there must be hundreds of rooms at the university! Why ours?

Anyway, so I haven't been playing much either, so my thinking hasn't progressed much. Also, the next tournament I'm playing is a social tournament at 1500 points. Apparently, 1500 might be common in 7th edition because games apparently take longer. I wouldn't know because I've only played a half dozen games in the new format and all but one of them was at 500 points in our escalation league.