Thursday 1 November 2012

Playing 40k!

Deep in the heart of the Ghoul Stars lies the world of Karlstan Prime, a resupply point for the Draloona Crusade Fleet. Tactically insignificant until an ancient warp artefact is unearthed by the planets Planetary Defence Force. Can the Marine Chapter attached to the Crusade Fleet Make safe the planet by finding and destroying the artefact or will the PDF release the power of the warp?



Nic has reworked his Marine bike list to include more dakka, how will the Guard far against this new list?

We managed to get in two games. First up was Big Guns Never Tire using the Vanguard setup. We rolled up three objectives and despite winning the roll to deploy and go first I passed to Nic (not the only mistake I will make during the game). 

Nic's Warlord Trait meant I had -1 to my reserve rolls (people always seem to get this against me!) and mine let me reroll ones when shooting a unit within 3" of an objective. 

Turn 1 saw Nic unleash his bikes as his Captain's bike unit pepper the Grenade Launcher Vets causing them to abandon their attempt to grab an objective. The return fire from the Guard sees Nic's other bike unit fleeing to within 1/2" of the board edge (an 8 on 3D6, I mean come on all I needed was for him to hit the average!). 
Wow they are fast!

Nic's luck takes a trip outside for turn 2 as despite getting one of his Stormtalons he manages to pretty much hit with every shot but fail to do any more damage than take First Blood as his attack bikes melt the Flamer units Chimera. The Talon then has its velocity locked giving Nic a flyer that can only go 23" a turn. 

Over the next few turns Nic begins assaulting the hell out of the guard and shows why two fliers are better than one.


Now you see a Vendetta...

...now you definitely don't.

Ogryns and a Commissar Lord, a match made in heaven as the marine bike unit found out. 

Once the Guard's air support was removed I was relying on luck to take out the fliers. Whilst I managed to ping one out of the sky with a rapid firing plasma of doom, this didn't stop the Talons from catching my units in the open and making pretty red smears out of them.  In the end it came down to a run move on turn 7 for my Flamer Vets to try to square the game look how close I got:



On turn 7 it all came down to a couple of dice rolls that could have seen the game swing either way if only I could take the last wound off of Nic's commander to get the Point from Kill the Warlord and remove Nic's bonus point for being in my deployment zone. Sadly not. In the end I had a chance to grab the last objective but a roll of a 2 left me 1/16th of an inch away from another 3 points. Really goes to show how close the game was despite getting my troops turned into human smoothies.

Final score - 7-3 to Nic (he got 1 Primary, 1 for my Heavy Support unit, all 3 Secondary)


Second game was The Relic with the Hammer & Anvil deployment (short edge to short edge).

Marines funnelled into a gunline how will they fare?
Having learnt lessons regarding transports from last game I plan to push forward and get my boys out and shooting as soon as possible. Unfortunately Nic wins the roll off for going first and quite rightly chooses to do so, surrounding the objective. 

Whilst the opening turn looked good for me as I pounded Nic's bikes that claimed the relic and stopped them running off with it a combination of terrible armour rolls against Nic's Talons (two games running) and Nic's refusal to roll anything other than above average for his Captain late in the game meant I had to push my units out into the killing field to try to claim the objective. Yeah you guessed it, wiped out to a man. I could have kept a unit alive but it would have been a loss any way. The turn scores were as follows:

Turn 1 - (D) 0-1 (N)
Turn 2 -  1-1
Turn 3 -  4-2
Turn 4 -  1-3
Turn 5 -  1-3
Turn 6 -  Wiped out

Very fun game but I just couldn't stop the Stormtalons from battering my units.


Rob and Tom played with the new Chaos codex taking on the Orks. Big Guns Never Tire looks to be in Tom's favour as he has 3 Heavy support units ( 10 man Autocannon Havocs, 3 Mark of Nurgle Oblits and a Maulerfiend) but Rob takes First Blood with an audacious charge from his 3 Deffkotas into a 30 strong unit of Cultists (you'd think the Koptas would have lost but limited LoS for Overwatch and Needing 6's to wound left them with a -3 to their Ld for the Morale check). Tom's two Helldrakes then dominate the mid game but eventually Tom just doesn't have enough troops choices to hold the main objectives. Moment of the game was the last two lootas left over from the Helldrakes breath attacks shooting one down from behind after Tom chose not to finish them off as they didn't seem to be a threat, isn't that always the way?

Final score Tom 2 (Warlord and Heavy Support kill) Rob 8 (1 Primary Objective, 3 Secondary Objectives, 2 Heavy Support Kills).

Great day of 40k and I can safely say we all learned a lot.

No comments:

Post a Comment