Sunday 23 June 2013

Playing games on a Friday night!

With only a wwek left of June it was about time we got together for a Friday Night Gaming session (and BBQ thanks to Will!). Unfortunately I only remembered to photograph my first game, probably something to do with the amount of cider I had. First up was a game of 40k where I pitted my Guard against Rich's new Eldar. Could I possibly end my non-winning record?

We played the Emperor's Will scenario (one objective in each deployment zone) and ended up with the corner deployment zones. 
Quick list run down:
Guard: Command Squad with Flag Lascannon and Chimera, Marbo, 5 Ogryns, 2 Plasma vets units, Melta vets unit in chimera, 2 Penal Legion units, 2 Sentinals and a Leman russ

Eldar: Spirit Seer, 5 Wraith Guard with cannons and Serpent, 6 Wraith Guard with Scythes and serpent, Wraithlord, Allies - Archon and warriors in Raider, Warriors in Raider.

At first I thought the deployment was going to really punish me as Rich had first turn and his Wave Serpents and bright lances had the to potential to hit me all day as I tried to ping his transports with my limited long range weaponry. Having put the Penal Legion units, Sentinels and Marbo in reserve it was going to come down to a little bit of luck to see if I could get units across to challange for his objective. Then I stole the initiative (big game as Will would say)! This allowed me to immobilise a raider and ping a wound off of the Wraithlord, who thanks to the Iyanden book was Rich's Warlord and had two rerolls to spend during the game thanks to his Warlord Trait. I fully expected Rich to return fire and lay waste to the Russ but I hadn't counted on his comlpete inability to fire Lance weapons. I have never seen anyone roll so many misses and failed armour/wound rolls so consistently over a game. 
Diagonal set up didn't really do any favours for the Eldar. 
 So the first few turns resulted in some tense back and forth as Rich put all his luck into his Serpent shields as his expertly demonstrated that he could combine the scatter lasers and shield to lay down 10/11 Str 6/7 hits from each one every turn! Chimeras and Guard were falling all over the place. 
A couple of turns and I haven't been able to move very far.
Then my Reserves turned up on mass in Rich's back field and the game flipped. Marbo did his usual and killed a Raider, got lucky with two 1's to wound him from the Wraithlords bright lances (told you Rich's luck really sucked) and proceeded to snipe the Wraithlord to death with his AP2 pistol! The Sentinels took out the other Raider and the Penal Legion unit eventually mopped up the Dark Eldar warriors. Rich was unlucky to lose his Archon to instant Death overwatch fire from the Sentinals as he attempted to charge in and Haywire them to death. 
Rich cries under the table as my reserves turn up in his vulnerable rear!
After this turn of events it all got a bit messy as I chipped away at serpents and Wraithguard, got rained on by Swooping Hawks (their str 4 ap 4 ignore cover blasts were stripping Guardsmen of the board every other turn) and experienced the full force of being flamed by wraith scythes. Some decent melta shots and a speed bump charge from a depleted Ogryn squad allowed me to eventually get the Eldar Army down to two models. Unfortunately they were Swooping Hawks so come turn 7 Rich placed them within 3" of the objective meaning that I had only won by the single point I got from First Blood! Still I had won my first game with my Guard and it had been lots of fun.

Next up was a game against Will's new Deathwing. Standard deployment with three objectives (left centre and right of the board). His list was Belial, 10 Deathwing (shooty options and Cyclones), 5 snooty Deathwing with Cyclone in a Land raider, 5 shooty Deathwing with a cyclone. Turn one went to Will and he deep struck the 10 man unit with Beliail (no scatter thanks to Belial's special rule) and one 5 man unit in the tiny corridor I had foolishly left behind my army. He killed off the two plasma units and used split fire to begin pinging vehicles. It then became a game of force Will to roll as many saves as possible in the hope he gets worse than average luck. This plan seemed to be going well, especially when Marbo's demolition charge killed Belial (failed Look out roll) and Marbo (failed cover save) but once the dust settled the centre of my army had crumbled taking all but three terminators from the deepstriking units with it. I dealt with these when the vendetta came on but Will's Landraider unit was able to crush my out flanking units on the right objective and due to bad outflank rolls both Penal legion units were on the same objective so Will got a 5-1 victory as his Deathwing hunkered down on the objective. I would habve lost due to wipe out on turn 7 any way as I only had a hovering Vendetta on two hull points left staring at a Land raider and two very angry Dark Angels.

After this came some games of Survive using the new Squid expansion. This makes the game extremely brutal as you can now pluck players Survivors from land and boats! This caused even more stabbing in the back as in most games would end before we got to the volcano tile as all the players were out of survivors to move. I like the expansion a lot and it seems a good way to up the challenge in the game without adding too many extra elements to it. I think the game results were two wins for Will, one for Rich and a Draw between Will and I.

Finally we played a four player game of Eldar sign as Rob had arrived. I always think this game is going to be far more complex than it really is and should look in to getting a copy (though this wold break my rule about duplicating games in a gaming group). We were up against Hastur (probably spelt that wrong) and this meant that other world cards produced more doom tokens when completed, which can make the game a little trickier as the other world cards are usually a good (if risky) source of Eldar signs and resources. Luckily for use the daily event cards were kind to us for a couple of rounds not giving us any lingering effects and some hot rolling later and we had bitch slapped Hastur back to were he came from. At this point we called it a night as it had hit 2 am. 

Another great night of gaming for E.L.F and not just because I achieved my first win with the Guard! 

2 comments:

  1. Pleased i witnessed the guards first ever win, even if it was against me!
    Enjoyed the game but im picking over my list at the moment, if i drop the dark eldar contingent entirely i can afford to up the swooping hawks to 10, add a 6 man striking scorpion squad with a claw exarch for infiltrating harassment, add the fire prism and a 5 man squad of jetbikes with a cannon and a warlock on a bike.
    Thats a hell of a lot of stuff!

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  2. That will be a fun and fast army. Glad to give it an oppertunity to get some revenge.

    Am looking to fit a Griffon into my list to deal with units like the Hawks.

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