Battle Report - Death Guard vs Eldar Corsairs

My first Warhammer 40K game of 2016 was against my good friend Richard McManus. I haven't had a game against him for a couple years now I don't think so I was really looking forward to this. He has bought into the a Forge World Eldar corsair army and wanted to give it a try. He didn't have much and I still won't play any Death Guard who aren't painted so it was a small game of just 1000 points.

I remember the old FW corsair list was quite nasty. I never played against it but I did watch a couple games. At the time I found them, like their craftworld cousins, rather too good. This time around they seem much more balanced. Their psychic powers are a bit odd but can be tactical and strangely they have their own perils of the warp table that makes me wonder why you would ever include a Void Dreamer in your army. A roll of 1 turns the psyker into a daemon of Slaanesh and goes over to your opponent's control! That never happened however.

The mission was the awkward Tactical Escalation. We faced off against one another and I was a little surprised at what was fielded by my opponent. He had a prince, a void dreamer, two squads of basic corsairs, 2 units of jetbikes, so vyper type things (maybe hornet's?) and a warp hunter. I wasn't expecting quite so much in the way of vehicles but that made it much more of a challenge. One unit of corsairs and both HQ's sat in reserve ready to leap from the webway to cause me problems.

My list was a basic level 3 sorcerer, a 5 man squad of csm, two squads of 10 man plague marines (with 2 meltaguns each), a rhino and a helbrute. I had been expecting more ground troops but as I still don't have much painted this was what I could managed to field.

Usually in these missions I find myself overwhelmed by the number of capture objective cards I draw so I made a point of starting next to the two objectives in my deployment zone. I then didn't see a capture objective card until the last turn when I was uncannily sitting with a single model on that very objective. My opponent on the other hand simply swept forward and starting grabbing a perfect set of objective cards. Oddly though, we seemed to draw the same ones throughout the game.

The Warp Hunter proved to be the biggest pain in the backside as it just sat there at the back and pummeled my forces. I lost so much to that tank that quickly I realised that there was no way I was going to pull a win out of this game. Two attempts at summoning plaguebearers and my sorcerer suffered a perils from one, losing a wound, and the second deviated and went into ongoing reserves. Neither unit did much more than be a speedbump for the corsair warriors.

My sorcerer went down to a warlord challenge before even getting a chance to swing his staff. By that point I was resigned to my fate so I didn't worry. The game ended turn 6 I think when my last model came off the table. Richard had beaten me 15 vp to 1 vp.

It was a fun game despite the crushing loss. Corsairs... Interesting to play against. We're going to have a rematch in a couple weeks and we'll see what transpires then.

Moosive Battle to the Death!

Last night my chum Mike and I played a battle of Age of Sigmar featuring everything we had. My undead force came in at around 275 wounds and his Stormcast Eternals at about 265 wounds. Surprisingly the game took about two and a half to three hours to play.

To start with my undead did really well but I was claiming the initiative so I was able to replenish my units and models quite nicely and it kept him busy as everything else moved up to pile in. Half way through the game the tide turned and he had initiative. At that point my lines folded as I couldn't recover quickly enough to keep my units intact. I think the game went 6 or 7 turns before I conceded with about 6 skeleton warriors left on the table.

Surprise unit of the night went to the Carrion who are hard as nails and putting out 4 attacks a piece (5 bird unit) and although they did take casualties were great at holding up units that were otherwise being a pain.

Well done Mike. Looking forward to a somewhat smaller rematch. :)

Battle Report - Death Guard vs Dark Angels

Last Friday evening I challenged my nephew to a game of 40K as an opportunity try out my Death Guard once again. I went in expecting to lose because I still need to learn how to play them but I was pleased at ho well they did handle themselves despite the high points cost.

My nephew made a small screw up as he was unsure how the Forge Organisation Chart worked with formations but it didn't matter for this as I was happy to play. He has three armies - Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Adeptas Sororitas. He is such a big Blood Angel fan that I expected to be facing off against a plethora of assault marines and furiouso dreadnoughts. Instead he turned up with a Dark Angel force mounted on bikes or part of a Ravenwing detachment full of land speeders. I was going to have a hell of a time.

We rolled off and got the mission where you can win each other's objectives. I know from the league games where this one has come up that it isn't all that popular and I can sort of see why. We kicked things off with him deploying his side of the table.

I don't quite remember everything he had but it includes Sammael on his jetbike, a bike command squad, a squad of bikes, and the formation that gave him three land speeders and a darkshroud land speeder.

My list was:

Sorcerer - level 3.
Mark of Nurgle. Veteran of the long war.
Powers: Force, Nurgle's rot, summoning, plague wind and the one that makes weapons "get hot".

10 man CSM squad.
Mark of Nurgle. Veterans of the long war. Champion had power fist.

10 man plague marine squad.
Veterans of the long war.
Champion had power weapon and plasma pistol. Icon of despair and two meltaguns.
Rhino with two combi-bolters.

5 man terminator squad.
Mark of Nurgle. Veterans of the long war.
Combi-bolters and one reaper autocannon. Champion had lighting claw. The rest had one power fist and the others power weapons.

Aegis defence line with quad autocannons.

I deployed mine with the sorcerer and his CSM buddies holding the autocannon. The plague marines sat off to the side in a rhino looking to get around to objectives as needed. I also talked myself into holding the terminators in reserve which proved to be a poor choice as you'll see.

Battle was then commenced. He threw everything at my CSM squad on turn one. Bolters and plasma weapons both, and I either made every armour save or passed the cover save for the defence line. One dice in particular rolled nothing lower than a 4 for half the game! It has since been promoted.

Second turn he decided to move across the table and sweep in behind me rather than risk driving over the terrain. When he realised that he had wrecked my Rhino in the gap he needed he was not a happy bunny. On my second turn no terminators arrived. Poured everything into the land speeders and did nothing. The quad cannon did smash through one bike squad though which really helped my bacon.

Turn three and still no terminators! I ended up having to summon plaguebearers to stall his advance with the bikes. They did not last long which I found very disappointing. I really wanted them to last a bit longer but a free unit (although it cost my sorcerer a wound thanks to a issue with the warp).

As the game went along my nephew did manage to kill my CSM squad but not before my sorcerer conjoured a second squad of plaguebearers to halt the bike advance and blowing his own head off with another mishap.

Eventually my terminators arrived turn four way past the point where I really needed them. They came down and took out a couple of bikes but the rest blasted them down to two terminators who then proved ineffectual other than to hold an objective.

My plague marines did fantastic though. They never did put a dent on the land speeders but they survived so much fire power and took down Sammael that I didn't care. At end of turn 5 it was getting late and my nephew was on 12 vp to my 5 so we called it there.

At the end of the day my army is going to be expensive as I want the mark of Nurgle on everything and I'd rather field plague marines than the regular chaos marines. I'd have liked some more models on the table but even so I was very pleased as to how the game played out.

Good bye old codex

Last night I played my last game under the current Space Marine codex. I wanted a fun, non competative game and called up my friend Danny to challenge his Dark Eldar. We forgot a couple things and made some mistakes but it was such a close fun game that it didn't matter. It was exactly what a game of 40K should be.

My list was:

Master of the Forge with conversion beamer.
10 man tac squad with flamer and missile launcher. Sarge had plasma pistol and power weapon.
10 man tac squad with flamer and heavy bolter. Sarge had plasma pistol and power weapon.
10 man tac squad with flamer and heavy bolter. Sarge had plasma pistol and power weapon.
5 man terminator squad with assault cannon.
5 man assault terminator squad with thunder hammers and storm shields. Sarge had a pair of lightning claws.
Stormtalon with heavy bolters and assault cannons.
Dreadnought with multi-melta and heavy flamer in drop pod.
8 man devastator squad with four plasma cannons.

Knowing DE I decided that I would not go the vehicle route and instead focus on a defensive gunline (which I still don't think is all that viable under 6th) and up to a point it worked. What ultimately proved to be the winning unit was his jetbike squads which mullered two tactical squads through the use of dangly chains and hooks, before I could gun them down.

We wrapped up turn 6 as the venue had to close. I may have been able to snatch a win had we played to the 7th turn.

All in all a very good send off for this codex.

Demiurg first test

Played a 1750pt game tonight vs Ultramarines. Took my marines plus had my first chance to use the new Tau codex to represent my demiurg who I took as allies.

First thing I did was be a complete numpty and read the entry for plasma rifles instead of pulse rifles. Thought they were a bit too good. *sigh*

The mission didn't help at all. I was hoping for something where I could use two demiurg (fire warriors) troop choices to hold a home objective, while my marines went off to capture enemy objectives. Instead we rolled the Vanguard mission from Battle Missions. So I had to cross the board to get to the three objectives on the table.

Suffice to say that I lost this game and didn't get a good try out for the demiurg. Next time hopefully.

Situation Report

Played my first game against Daemons under 6th edition tonight. Well, Daemons with CSM allies, to be exact. Firstly, I was surprised that my opponent actually took a land raider and a heldrake as part of his allies detachment as so far all I have seen people play is a HQ and two troops. As for the main list, he didn't play anything twinky and it was nice and fair. Though I still find that Flamers need to be toned down. Their flamer weapons do not need to be that harsh!

The game started off really well for me but turn 3 saw his Heldrake come in, smash my Stormtalon via vector strike and then consign half a squad of marines to a fiery death. That prevented my winning the game.

I was pleased with one thing though. He had played Fateweaver as his warlord, and the remaining four men from the squad I mentioned above shot him with three bolters and a plasmagun. Wounded, he took a leadership test, failed, and fled into the warp! I may not have won the game but I claim the moral victory for that. :-)

Overall, what was fielded was fair and balanced. No Bloodletters, juggernauts or twinky options. Lots of plaguebearers which held my assault terminators up.

Victory was my opponents purely because of two flamers squads and the heldrake, which did their job very well.

BR: Space Marines vs Eldar

Thursday night I was challenged to a 1000pt game. I knew that my opponent had access to blood angels, ultramarines and eldar, so I decided to do a simple list to hopefully deal with any of them. In the end it was eldar that faced and things did not go to plan all that well.

My list was:

Librarian: epistolery with plasma pistol.
5 man terminator squad with assault cannon.
10 man tactical squad with flamer and heavy bolter, in a rhino. Sarge had power weapon and plasma pistol.
10 man tactical squad with plasmagun and missile launcher. Sarge had power weapon and plasma pistol.
Stormtalon gunship with assault cannon and heavy bolters.

990pts.

From memory, my opponent had:

Eldrad.
6 man pathfinder squad.
10 man dire avengers squad with exarch in wave serpent.
10 man fire dragon squad in wave serpent.
3 warwalkers with scatter lasers.

We agreed to roll a mission from the Battle Missions book and rolled Prepared Assault. I deployed first placing my librarian with the terminators in cover near the central objective, flamer squad in rhino next to the second objective, and the second tac squad on a hill so I could get a good field of fire for the missile launcher. My opponent deployed everything in one corner nearest the third objective.

The game did not start well for me. Some very accurate scatter laser shots devestated half of my terminators. Not what I wanted. Things would not go well for them though the dice gods guided those armour saves and look out sir rolls fantastically for most of the game but evetually they could taken down. The terminators didn't do a thing all game which irked me somewhat. Had the mission allowed me to deep strike them from reserve things would have been very different.

When the Stormtalon arrived on turn 2 it failed to do anything and had to fly off the table on the following turn. When it did return it dropped a couple pathfinders and then went into hover mode to shoot them with a better BS. I had forgotten that about the cover saves provided by their cloaks and they went to ground with a 4+ cover save. It did manage to survive two turns in hover mode, before it crashed to the ground. Had I been my opponent I would have shot it with the scatter lasers a turn earlier but hey ho.

I did have one bit of luck which was the total annihilation of the dire avengers when they jumped out of their wave serpent. It didn't last though and I lost my flamer tactical squad and the survivours of the ML squad fled off the table turn 7.

Had the game ended turn 5 as I wanted, things would have been better but turn 6 saw to it that I would lose this game.

I had high hopes that my list would have done better, but I think a mixture of mission and deployment was what really screwed me. More terrain would have helped too I think.

Good fun game but better luck next time.

What went wrong?

At the club last Thursday I challenged my nephew to a 1000pt game against his Sisters of Battle. I chose him because he isn't an optimising player and when playing his Sisters, we usually have a much better game. I'm also fed up a little of the higher point games and so 1000pts has become my current points limit as I try to refit myself into the game.

He agreed providing we used his new GW martyr's defence lines. Not a problem. He set them up two his side and a larger on mine. We then rolled the length of the table as our deployment zones and agreed to just play the old style pitched battle across table.

My list:

Librarian epistolery.
10 man tac squad with plasma gun and plasma cannon.
10 man tac squad with plasma gun and missile launcher.
10 man scout squad with sniper rifles and missile launcher.
5 man terminator squad with assault cannon.

A simple very basic list, which is what I wanted to play. I forget his list at the moment but it was something like:

Uriah Jacobus.
15 or 20 woman squad with meltagun and heavy bolter.
15 or 20 woman squad with meltagun and heavy bolter.
6 man death cult assassin squad.
6 woman heavy weapon squad with heavy bolters and heavy flamers.
2 Rhinos.

I really felt that I shouldn't have a problem with this list and the game should be nicely balanced. But for some reason he utterly crushed me. I ended up on turn 5 with just half the scout squad left. He had made some mistakes such as putting his squad leaders and special weapons at the front of his squads, so they died really quickly. What went so wrong for me was the fact that I couldn't pass a 3+ armour save hardly at all, and my terminators deviated upon teleporting in and ended up right in front of the death cult assassins who lost two to my shooting and then carved up the squad in two rounds of combat (there goes those 2+ armour saves!).

So, when we called it he had two objectives and contested a third.

My dice hate me.

The Doom of Galt

When the bioships of Hive Fleet Leviathan reached the Galt system, they swept aside the Imperial defenders with ease and proceeded to devour the ice rich outer worlds. The delay was enough to allow a great many to evacuate the hive cities of Galt V but not everyone was able to escape. As the Tyranid bio organisms burst onto the doomed world, the Planetary Defence Forces put up a brave but futile fight. Only when help arrived from the Sons of Tantalus fourth company did things change. Captain Democritus choose the tight confines at the edge of Hive Tempest to engage the horde. They only had to slow the advance long enough for more evacuation transports to get away.

A couple nights ago my mate Joel came over for a game. he had asked me for a 3,000 point game and for some crazy reason I said yes. I hate large scale games with a passion. They are generally far too twinky and take an age to complete. But I had said yes. I decided to play a lot more infantry than usual, taking an third tactical squad, a 9-man squad of terminators, 9 man squad of assault termines split between lightning claws and thunder hammers, and upping my scout squad to ten men. Dropped the predator for a vidicator, and added in a dreadnought.

Then I found out that he had brought his Tyranids.

Joy.

We rolled the kill point style mission and that gods awful table quarter one! Why GW? WHY? We both had barely enough room to place everything. I also suggested that we roll for a battlefield trait since they will be used in the upcoming league, and we got a toxic miasma which meant all close combat attacks were poisoned (4+). This hurt his MC's a lot.

Once the game got underway it wasn't so bad and my marines did an awful lot better than I expected though Joel had his usual twinky luck. He got first turn and I lost the vidicator to tyrant guard, and a load of marines and termies to spore mines. Couldn't have put the termies in reserve because there just wasn't the room on the table to risk it.

Game went to turn five after about three hours of play. All I had left was the scout squad who hadn't been touched and quite frankly were my unit of the day. They did awesome. The sheer number of monstrous creatrues hurt me badly but the poisoned wounds did make any combats easier for me.

I called it after turn 5 due to there being no point in continuing.

Good game and actually reasonably fun, but never again at that point value.

Battle Report

While on patrol, the battle barge Sword of Endeavour picked up a faint distress call eminating from the world of Avacyn. Formally an Imperial world that fell to an unknown aggressor nearly ten years ago. Deviating from their course, the 4th company set down to investigate and found themselves under surprise attack from a company of Space Wolves. Unable to raise their commander, the Sons of Tantalus fought against their brothers for their very survival.

Played a 2000pt game against Muffin last night with the Big Guns Never Tire mission (4 objectives). Yet again I got that bloody awful corner deployment (Dear GW, why? It's just awkward!). I played my regular list with the addition of a Librarian and a regular pattern land raider.

Muffin's list was very unusual for him I thought but fair enough. Trying to remember it was something like two rune priests and a wolf lord, two squads of battle brothers, two long fang squads (one with missile launchers and one with plasma cannons), and two terminator squads. There might have been one or two more but I forget.

I haven't played against a space marine horde list for quite a while and it was a real pain to deal with. The two long fangs squads did most of the damage really, by blasting my rhino's apart and then striking the survivours with the blast templates. I lost my scouts early on who were holding one objective and forced me on to the defensive. After that it was just mass firepower and living lightning psychic attacks which screwed me. Random heavy shots and some meltaguns finished off my Redeemer before it could really do anything.

One interesting and infuriating event was the challenge between my captain and his wolf lord. We knocked a wound of each other and then made every armour save. They were locked in combat with 4 rounds and did sod all to each other. Not had that before.

When the game ended at the climax of round 5 it was obvious who had won. Muffin won 11 victory points to 4. Good game but rather annoying at the same time. Muffin has come a long way since he first started and that's good.

It is unknown why the Space Wolves attacked the Sons, but when the dust settled and the dead collected, a report was filed about their actions. The two chapters will not look at each other the same way ever again.

*shrugs*

Played a game against my mate Marko last night at the club. This was his first ever game of 6th edition. The problem is that Marko is a WAAC player who is infamous for his cheesy army builds and lately no one will play against him. You can understand his frustration so I offered to give him a game, even suggested he play Chaos Daemons but he wanted to go with Chaos Marines. Right there is where he went wrong. He usually plays twinky Khornate, Tzeentch or combined armies which are really powerful but this time he woefully underplayed.

His list was Abaddon (who ran around on his own with no meatshields), a chaos lord, three basic CSM squads with plasma gun and lascannon, two rhinos and two defilers.

Abaddon died because he ran out on his own to fight a TH/SS termie squad and got pummeled. Newbie mistake that he shouldn't have made. Thats 270 (275?) points wasted there and then.

At one point he managed to grab my objective (my base, your base mission) and was going to win if I didn't pull it out of the bag, but next turn I did and I won by two secondary objectives. In the end I lost five scouts, 3 marines and a gun from a predator. I have never seen Marko play so poorly.

But then to top it off, he goes off on one at how 6th edition has screwed over everything that was fun in the game. Now remember that this is his first game and it does take a little bit to get used to. He must have read the rulebook but still did silly things like heavy and special weapons in the front rank facing the oncoming fire.

It was a fun game but I expected more from him. I have a strange feeling that he may well drop out and that will be another club member gone since 6th came out.

IG vs Marines

A couple nights ago I played my friend Matt in what is supposedly our first ever 40K game together. Not going to cover the report as it has largely slipped around in my head and his blog does it more justice.

You can read it here.

I expected tank heavy and was not dissapointed. Despite that I decided to stick to my current standard list even though I didn't think it would do much to several tanks. I have never done well against Guard. Far too much concentrated firepower for marines to survive and some awesome cross table heavy weapons that wreck my Rhino's and Land Raiders. Under 6th they are exactly the same.

My biggest problem when facing Guard is that I find myself unable to properly coordinate target priority. For example, in this game I really wanted to do away with his heavy weapon teams but by the time my Redeemer got there I had already decimated the lascannon threats and then what? But then I don't play against Guard often enough (only two Guard players locally) to develop a proper play style against them.

I lost the game partly because of that and also because the mission where the objectives have different values, and Matt started with two high point ones in his deployment right behind an Aegis line.

A very good game. One of the more enjoyable of late.

Battle Report

Last night at the club I played a friendly game against Joel. His first game of 6th edition. I played my 1500pt default list of marines, and he played a Tyranid list. I was expecting to face Eldar with wraithguard and wraithlords so this was kinda nice.

The deployment was the awful table corners (I forget the name) and the mission was three objectives. We both put an objective in our table corners and I had the third which I put as close to my side as I could hoping to keep them from the oncoming horde.

With his initial deployment of guants and a tervigon I was a little concerned but ultimately it didn't prove as irritating as it used to under 5th ed for some reason. First turn was night fight so I just tried to knock some wounds off his tervigon and he just crept forward.

Turn 2 and I continued to pour fire into the gaunts dropping loads of them and holding him back. His turn saw a winged hive tyrant, trygon and two zoanthropes (mycetic spores) drop out of reserve. The Trygon fires bioplasma and drops most of my scout squad guarding my main objective. The hive tyrant destroys one rhino leaving the marines standing in a crater pointing their guns at him. Zoanthropes knock a HP from the land raider redeemer.

Turn 3 and my Stormtalon turns up and blows the snot out of the trygon, and the scouts drop it to 1 wound remaining. Stormbolter on a rhino forced the winged hive tyrant to make a check which it failed, falling to the ground and taking a wound. The squad just a few inches away unload everything and slay the beast! Yay me! My captain and TH/SS terminators leap from my land raider and assault the zoanthropes who die far too easily.
His trygon assaults the scouts and kills them with ease, and the gaunts try to assault but three squads of them fail to reach even average distance and just sit there. At this point I think the game is likely to be a draw as we both hold an objective, he has first blood and I have the warlord kill, with the third objective likely to be contested.

Turn 4 his gaunts surround my terminators and assault them in huge waves, and the other squads leap onto the squad in the open. My second tactical squad retreats to hold my primary objective. Predator shots kill the trygon, and the Stormtalon hovers and opens fire onto the one gaunt squad it can still fire at.
His shooting takes out the Stormtalon which was irritating, but it had done well enough that I'm not complaining. His turn was pretty much just combat slowly whittling away at the two squads he's fighting.

Turn 5 was more combat and then finally he took out my captain and terminators and consolidated into my deployment zone. Matt rolled the dice and the game ended giving Joel the 1vp he needed to win.

---

For some reason which I can't quite fathom this game was much easier than any other game I've had against tyranids. The only thing I can think of is that the overwatch and random charge helped me keep them back long enough to give me extra turns. Also, the trygon and hive tyrants have never been so easy to kill. Perhaps it was the plasma rather than meltas that helped?

Joel is not an easy opponent and he takes his fairly lengthy time but that was a good game.

Report

I've had two 6th ed games this past week. One against My friend Jon and another against Muffin.

Jon:
Jon fielded an ork army in a standard kill point style mission. I haven't played against orcs since the eand of 4th edition so wasn't entire sure how the game would go. He didn't have an awful lot on the table (I had expected more if I'm honest) but I just couldn't stop that green horde from surging across the table. My dice had turned on me again and by the end of the game I had 0 victory points and Jon had something like 8 or 9. Good game but again shows how poor marines are against horde lists. We also had the awful corner deployment which didn't help me either. I'd have prefered either of the other two.

Muffin:
Having badgering me for a few weeks for a game I said yes and faced down his chaos marines. I was testing a possible new list for the 2013 league and it worked rather well. This game was a 4 objectives with that bloody irritating corner deployment again. I put both of my objectives close to my lines but for some reason so did Muffin, meaning that he had to cross the table to get them. My game and dice were on fire this time and I was hammering the foul traitor marines. Man of the match was really the Stormtalon which decimated two squads of marines and a rhino over three turns and taking no damage or HP loss what so ever. At the end of turn 4 Muffin conceeded the game with me on 10vp and he was on 1vp. That was a fun game but I think it was the unexpected arrival of my flyer that did it. I don't think he has played against them before and it kinda showed. Next time we'll see.

Eldar Corsairs

Last night I played a game against the Forge World eldar corsair army list. Considering how powerful I consider craftworld eldar I was a little concerned that the list might be out of proportion. My concerns were part founded but considering how the game went I can't say that it wasn't just the dice gods messing things about.

A show of how good the list was coupled with some 6th ed twinkyness was the first turn for my opponent (I had failed to seize the init). In that turn he basically destroyed my ability to win the game. Rhino gone, unit pinned, and librarian shot through the head. Second turn my other rhino was destroyed and the squad pinned. Pulse lasers on vypers (I think) tore my land raider to shreds and high powered weapons tore the terminators to bits. Pretty much my grumble about the craftworld codex was turned nightmarish in this game. I conceeded turn 4 with no way to win the game.

It was a good game though I hestitate to say it was fun only because it was just one sided. Pretty much like any game I play against craftword eldar. My opponent was a good sport though. Afterwards I tried to figure out if there was anything I could have done differently but I don't think there really was. My only mistake was still being in a 5th ed mindset and expecting the game to be a draw because of the mission (one objective each) but the damage dealt to me in the first two turns ensured I was never going to be in a winning position.

As for the list, it's not too different to the regular eldar army list just small tweaks and not so much in the way of psychic powers. It seems to rely more on mass firepower.

With two, possibly three, players thinking of using that army list in the 2013 campaign things could get interesting.

Battle Report

Nova Prime.
Tyken Sector.
The dissapearence of a Salamander battle barge in the Nova system has a relief force dispatched to find out what has become of them. A system recorder is located on the surface so a force drops to the surface to investigate. Upon arrival, the company is set upon by a force of Dark Angels. What would turn brother against brother?

So, Saturday night I played my nephew Benjo under his first game of 6th edition. Though he plays Blood Angels, Tyranids or Sisters of Battle he wanted to see how Dark Angels played so he went with a proxy army.

At first we had a conflab because he wanted to play a couple Forge World models, the Dreadnought drop pod and the Stormeagle. The Stormeagle I didn't have a problem with but the Dreadnought drop pod is really just silly and a little broken. But to stop him grumbling I agreed this once.

We rolled the Relic mission with the Hammer & Anvil deployment. A mysterious forest was placed in the centre with the Relic in the middle, and to one side we put an Archeotech Artifact. He was jammy and managed to seize the initiative.

Straight away the DDP descended, and on turn 1 before I got a chance to do anything he had assaulted my land raider redeemer and caused it to explode! My point made really. Everything else of his just moved forward.
On my turn 1 my librarian moved forward with with one of the new Pyrmancy powers sent Benjo's dreadnought straight to Hell with a nice melta power. Vengeance was mine! Everything else moved forward.

Turn 2 and Benjo dropped Azrael and some terminators from deep strike close to my lines. Otherwise his turn was ineffective.
My turn, and I had the librarian join my terminators (with terminator chaplain) and surged towards his terminators. My 5 man squad climbed down the ruin they were in with plans to reach his deployment zone.

Turn 3. Benjo got his Storm Eagle in, it zoomed in and took out one rhino. His shooting was dire again.
On my turn, the squad that had been in the wrecked rhino lept out and into the forest, disturbing a razorwing nest. The alien beasts did nothing. That squad ran and grabbed the Relic. The other Rhino reached the Archeotech Artifact and was protected by a 4+ invulnerable save due to alien technology within. Yay! I also assaulted the DA terminator squad.

Turn 4. Storm Eagle hovered and unloaded everything into my rhino but the alien shielding protected it from everything. A plasma cannon also targetting the rhino was stopped. Benjo was not a happy bunny. Terminators vs terminators dragged on. Azrael took two wounds despite having a 2+ armour save!
My Legion of the Damned finally arrived! I dropped them down by the plasma cannon squad and dropped two of them with bolter and lascannon fire. The squad in my rhino lept out, and the squad with the Relic jumped in.

Turn 5. Benjo finally dropped the last of my terminators and consolidated towards my rhino with the Relic. Again, his shooting was foiled by the alien energy field though the Rhino did lose a storm bolter.
My turn I drove the Relic back into my deployment zone and got the remainder of my 5 man squad into his deployment zone.

We asked Mike to roll the dice and the game ended. Victory to me.

Me: 3 for the relic, 1 for his warlord and 1 for linebreaker = 5 vp.
BJ: 1 for the warlord, 1 for first blood and 1 for linebreaker = 3vp.

There was much grumbles from Benjo on how he hates this system and much arguing on rules. I do have to give him one bonus point for correcting me on something I missed under Look Out Sir! Fair do's.

This game I enjoyed a lot more than the last two I had. I didn't feel quite so under pressure and so could relax. Thankfully we agreed to ignore challenges as they do not work very well. Benjo went away grumbling and it will remain to be seen if he bothers to play under 6th edition.

Battle Report

Wicker's World.
Tyken Sector.
The Salamanders chapter have spent three weeks scouring a Genestealer cult from this industrial world. At the last, a contingent of infected PDF made a heroic stand against the Imperium's finest. Unfortunately due to a malfuction in the communications system, the allied Space Wolves were not aware of the final situation. Sensing that the Salamanders were opening fire on loyalist forces, they struck from the skies and engaged their fellow space marines.

So, a club game against Fish (Space Wolves with IG allies). Basically a kill point mission with standard 12'' deployment.

This was quite a good but throughly tough game. The Imperial Guard allies were what really did the damage with massed firepower and AP3 shots. As usual though my bog standard guys were smashed apart in close combat (oh how I hate how good CC is in this game). Saying that I didn't do too badly over all and am pleased with the flow of the game.

I won't go into the stupid challenges again but I am glad that I got to try them now rather than suddenly in the middle of a future campaign.

Good game to Fish.

So, so far under 6th my marines have played 2 and lost 2.

6th ed Battle Report

When a trio of Necron tomb ships manifested in orbit above Nobilitae, capital of the Tyken sector, the local planetary defence forces understandably paniced. For three hours the tomb ships bombarded a tiny section of the planet's surface before deploying a scout force. Thankfully a battle barge of Salamanders marines was close by and able to divert to the planet's aid. The Necrons were searching for something in the ruins. Whatever it was, Librarian Malfes wasn't about to let them have it.

So, my first ever game of 6th edition Warhammer 40K. My opponent was Mulch and his necron horde led by Nemesor Zahndrekh. Points was a simple 1500. Neither side fielded allies or fortifications.

Deployment was the awkward new table corners one and the mission was to grab as many of the four objectives as we could. In order to try out the new terrain rules we had a mysterious forest (that wasn't used), a mysterious river (normal), and an Archeotech Ruin (some weird time generator).

This was not a good game for me. We were in combat almost immediately. One tac squad held up three Wraiths for the duration of the game, and another was reduced to four men by Zahndrekh and his escort. The C'tan shard shreded my librarian but was crushed to death by my terminator chaplain and the TH/SS termies. As usual, the scarab swarms ate my land raider in seconds. I was not happy.

In an odd move at the end of the game, when Mulch held two objectives and was close to taking one from me, he teleported Zahndrekh and squad away back to his own lines. Not sure why, maybe just because he knew he had won (damn those secondary objectives!). And win he did, with the game ending on turn 5.

--

Ok, 6th seems an ok system when you play it but I really hate the new wound allocation rules. They just bog the game down to crawl. The 5th ed wound allocation made more sense. if it wasn't for the fact that people are going to want to play the rules as is, I would suggest playing the old style way. But hey.

Secondary objectives are going to be irritating. Where as before you could play defensive and try for a draw, these stop that. You need to be much more aggressive now than you used to be. As a player who prefers to play defensive this feels quite counter to my regualr play style.

Really need a couple more 6th ed games before I can comment much more.

Battle Report

A series of worlds along the newly formed warp tear known as Tyken's Rift have fallen to Chaos. Cultist uprisings and daemonic manifestations have seen the sector commander request aid from the Inquisition. A sizeable detachment of Grey Knights arrived within weeks. The Salamanders chapter sent a company to assist in the campaign.
After several weeks of heavy fighting the Chaos threat was eliminated but the Grey Knight commander felt that the possible corruption was too severe to allow the human population to live. The Salamanders who had fought hard to defend the civilian survivors were not about to accept that judgement and though it went against everything he knew, the captain of the first company refused to lay down his arms and walk away.

My last game of 5th edition was against Brian and his Grey Knights. I have never played Brian before nor do I think I have played against Grey Knights so this was going to be an interesting match. Mission was rolled as Annihilation (kill points) and deployment was table quarters. I am thankful that we did not get Dawn of War deployment or I fear the damage to my marines would have been severe.

I did not attempt to seize the initiative as I wanted the GK to move forward so I didn't have to do the hard work. Somewhat annoyingly due to an orbital strike and a squad that can shoot through terrain, I lost my vindicator and and an imobilised whirlwind turn 1! Unfortunately for Brian as the game went along his orbital strikes seem to become less and less effective.

Turn 2 and everything of his came in except one squad of troop GK. Nothing badly deviated so I found myself staring down at two dreadknights, an assassin, a squad of terminators and a strike squad. The assassin took out one scout squad and then spent the rest of the game trying to move up through a ruin to the second scout squad,

Things turned around after that for me as both my rhinos were loaded up with sternguard. Leaping from their rhinos they opned fire with the AP3 rounds taking down an entire squad with no casualties to themselves, which is a wonder. The TH/SS termies with Kantor lept into combat with one dreadknight which went down far too quickly, and then mopped up the terminator squad. On the next turn the other dreadknight went down to bolter and assasult cannon fire. The game had turned in my favour somehow.

By turn 5 Brian had nothing left that could hurt my tanks and just had his HQ left. Victory was mine.

That was a fun game. Neither side took it too seriously and we had a good time. There are certain people that I don't like playing and people I really enjoy playing against. Brian is definately a player I would enjoy playing against again.

Battle Report

Had two league games this week against Fish and his brother, Adam. Didn't feel very well but needed to get them out and the way and it made for a very fun afternoon of 40K.

Played Adam and his Tau first in a kill points game. Deployment was spearhead so I knew I was going to have trouble against all those long range guns but didn't count on how much trouble. Overconfident I guess. I don't think I even got past the half way point of the board before he had oblitereated my army. I think I had a couple marines left and that was it. Fun game but dissapointing that I didn't do better.

Next up was Fish and his filthy filthy Necron hordes. I knew before the game even started that I couldn't win this one. Meat Grinder is an arse of a mission against Necron. Basically I have to destroy every last model that he has to win the game. Necrons, of course, get a roll to stand up again and he did just that. No way could I do this mission without divine intervention (and that didn't happen). Another good game but frustrating.

This leaves me with just four games to play in the league: Brian (Grey Knights), Mark Allen (Tau), Matt (Imperial Guard) and Marko (Necrons). Looks like last place in the league will be mine along with the wooden spoon.