Fratris Salutem 2016 After Action

Hello, everyone.

This past weekend (May the 21st) was the annual Fratris Salutem at my FLGS, a narrative story event. Thor from Creative Twilight has been running the event for the last three years and invests a lot of time and energy into it. It's always a blast, with great games and nice looking armies.

This year I had been painting my ass off to bring my Raven Guard. My intended list was:

Shadow Force
Captain, 5-man Sternguard, 5-man Vanguard, Landspeeder

Raven Guard CAD
Techmarine with 4 Servitors, two 5-man Scout Squads, Leviathan Dreadnought

Grey Knights Nemesis Strike Force
Librarian, 5-man Terminator Squad

Unfortunately, I just couldn't paint hard enough to get all of that done. Instead, I swapped out the Nemesis Strike Force for some of my old Ultramarines in the form of a Suppression Force. It was made up of two Whirlwinds and two Typhoon Landspeeders with multimeltas. I wasn't thrilled with using more Ultramarines, but the Landspeeders were really valuable in all my games.

I won't get into a blow-by-blow for my games, but each one was a lot of fun. I faced Orks in the first game, Daemons in the second, and Tau in the third. I struggle against that particular Ork list because I lack ranged anti-tank in enough volume to crack three Trukks in the first turn. Trukks filled with MegaNobz tend to steamroll my line in a hurry. The Daemon opponent's dice turned on him early, leading to a very close-fought bloodbath after six turns. We had a total of four models on the board at game end. tau are tough to beat these days with all their markerlight tricks. I kept forgetting about Supporting Fire as well, which is a rule I grumble incessantly about.

This year was the best Salutem yet. Great turnout (sixteen players I think), varied and interesting missions, and lots of interesting armies. I took home the Judge's Choice award for the Imperials, which I believe is the highest soft score total.

Now that the event is over, I'm taking my sweet time on any additional painting. There's some burnout that comes with a month-long push to finish models. I'm working on a small, 5-man Devastator squad with a pair of lascannons. Nothing fancy, but it starts to fill the lack of ranged anti-tank that is glaring in my army. I won't bother with WIP shots here on the blog, because everyone knows what Marine infantry looks like. Instead, I'll be catching up on taking pictures of my existing RG models that I never shared due to the rush to paint everything before the event. Watch for those on the blog in the coming days and week. I've got a lot of farm work to do around here, so painting time will be limited to nights when I'm not completely exhausted. My plan is also to name and put down on paper the stories for each squad in the army, or at least the more important ones.