Sunday, July 17, 2016

40K – Three Quick Games


My friend Aaron mentioned that one of his sons had been painting like a mad demon since out last game and was itching to get his toys into action. So I arranged for them to come over this afternoon to play some 40K.

In the last game we tried to play with too many toys (because we wanted a big enough force that we could split up for seven people to play) and too many different things with too many different rules. Aaron and I spent over half the game looking up special rules (because… y’know… none of the kids read any of the rules or even their own codexes…) and everyone got mightily bored.

So this time around I suggested as series of smaller shorter games. Each game would involve just two forces of 250 points or less and one (or maybe two) squads. The idea being with less elements in play, there would be less special rules to keep track of and hopefully the game(s) would go much quicker and we’d maybe get through a few games in an afternoon and everyone would get a taste of how at least on or two of their units worked. This worked much better.


GAME ONE

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


The Girl and her Eldar went up against Aaron’s eldest and his Tyranids. Despite having banged out a half dozen different units, he decided to play with his flying Hive Tyarant… So The Girl busted out her Avatar of Khaine and said; “Bring it!”.

Now there isn’t much an Avatar of Khaine can do about swoopy-flying things (at least that we could figure out). The Hive Tyrant could fly around swoopy like and do fly-by “Vector Strikes” and there wasn’t much the Avatar could do about them (other than take the hits and roll saves and get an occasional shot at it with the shooty ability of the crazy-heat-sword it was carrying – which would be snap-shots against a flying thing…).

Whether it seemed like too much work, or he just wanted to get his tyrant into action, the Hive Tyrants glided down to go toe-to-toe with the Avatar of Khaine. Avatar of Khaine went first with it’s Initiative of 10. 5 Attacks. 5 Hits. 5 Wounds. no saves. Dead Hive Tyrant. Game over.

Lesson Learned: Avatar of Khaine can lay some smack down in melee – keep your distance!


GAME TWO


The Boy’s Orks faced off against Aaron’s Ultramarines.


This I figured would be fairly even. The Space Marines had more shooty-type-weapons, which could whittle down the Orks before they got into close combat where they would flail around with ridiculous numbers of attacks and potentially take down a few Marines.


The Orks advanced fairly quickly – trying to use cover as best they could.

The River, other than at the ford, was declared “Dangerous Terrain” and two or three Orks drowned trying to cross on the flanks.


Using cover to advance worked out fairly well. There weren’t too many losses before the Orks were within charge range.


One unit made it into Close Assault and bash and crashed about with the Marines for several rounds of melee combat.

The other didn’t quite make it, and were murderified by close range fire from the second Marine squad.

The Orks, in the end were annihilated, but they took a few Ultramarines with them…

Lessons Learned: Orks – possibly need more of them – first wave to act as Meat Shield to soak up hits so that hopefully follow on units can charge onto target…?

Also - Plasma weapons suck. Maybe if you have cheap troops with them and you’re facing some heavily armoured stuff. and it’s your’ only hope of dealing with them… but loosing a space marine because you rolled a “1” to hit… that sucks chunks.


GAME THREE

My Imperial Guard faced off against Aaron’s younger son’s Chaos forces.

He had a Deep-Striking units of Chaos Jump Marines and a squad of three Chaos Marines on bike, and a half squad of cultists. I had a platoon command and two squads of the Guaiacan Commandoes (No. 3 (Assault) Troop, 10 Squadron,  4 Commando, 348th Guaiacan Commando Regiment) under the command of Lt. Fasutivus Mellanger.

On the first turn the Chaos marine bikers peeled out and swung behind some woods, doing some donuts in the nicely manicured meadow. 2 Section (under the command of Sgt. Dorf) raced around and patch of Jungle to get eyes on them and lit them up with lasguns. I guess Chaos Marines don’t take really good care of their equipment and there was a leak in the fuel line of one of those bikes and a lucky lasgun shot lit up the promethium and  a Chaos Marines went up in a ball of purifying fire.


The next turn the remaining Marine bikers roared through the and into Lt. Mellanger’s Command team, while the Deeply-Striking Jump Marines arrived to the Guards rear.

Things Generally went downhill from there.

For the Chaos Marines..!?


After landing The Jump marines tried to fire on the Guardsmen in the woods nearby - 1 section, under the command of Sgt. Maxwell. Flame unleashed a gout of hellish flame – six Guardsmen were under the template… ONE casualty… then the LEADER decided to fire his Plasma pistol and incinerated himself when it over heated. The remainder charged into assault and had their butts handed to them by the Guard – a clever combination of unbelievably good luck on my dice rolls and equally unbelievably bad rolls on the Chaos Marines part. I don’t think he made a single 3+ save in the entire game… well… maybe he made  a few, but there was a LOT of ones and twos rolled for armour saves… 


As the Chaos Marine bikers roared out of the ford to assault eh Guard’s Troop Command element, Trooper Johnston lit up another bike with the purifying flame of the Emperor from his Heavy flamer and ANOTHER went up with a loud ka-BOOM! The leader of the unit charged in anyway and killed Trooper Bauvalin (the Platoon Sniper).

1 Section charged in to aid the Platoon Command team, but it was Lt. Mellanger himself that brought down the Chaos Marine with his Power Fist.

Oh and there was the half squad of Cultists. Just as the Bikers were finished off the Cultists made it to the front edge of the stand of jungle just across the river from the Guard. 1 Section lit them up – a Grenade took out one, three others were downed with lasgun fire and the remaining cultist wished he’d listed to his dad and never joined that stupid cult and became a quick born-again convert to the Emperor’s Mercy.

Yeah.

Lessons Learned: Quantity has a Quality of it’s own. Bad Ass Marines can roll sh!tty too.


Overall I think this went over MUCH better than the last game. Because of mutual vacation plans I don’t think we’re going to hook up for another game unti some time in August – maybe we’ll work out way up to 300 points…



Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I have not been painting much. I need to get at that. hopefully I’ll have some stuff posted in the next week.

The next five days the kids are at kayaking “camp” and I was supposed to be working on some terrain, but I’ve gotten neither the work room in the basement nor the garage cleaned to any state that work can be done… so it looks like I might be cleaning the next few days…

I hope to at least finish fixing up 4th Divison’s terrain, if not get started on some others. 

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