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.
Posts
