Saturday 6 July 2013

Playing 40k in the summer sun!

With the hottest weekend of the year coming up Will and I couldn't resist a BBQ and a few games of 40k! So it was Daemons vs Guard one game against Khorne (with me taking the Guard) and one against Nurgle (with Will marshalling the imperial troops). So who came out on top? And could the Guard avoid being ripped to bits by their owner?


The Blood God's Horde advance! 


First game was Khorne Daemons against Guard with a short edge deployment and Big guns Never Tire mission. Rough Army lists:
Khorne
4 Heralds (Karanak and 3 Normal with Eather blades)
Three large units of Bloodletters

Two Soul Grinders with Phlegm
Large unit of Flesh Hounds
Skull cannon

Guard
Commander and squad with flag and Lascannon in Chimera
3 units of Vets with Carapace (2 with 3 PLasmaguns one with 3 Meltas) and a Chimera
5 Ogryns
2 Penal legion units
Marbo
Vendetta
Russ with lots of Heavy bolters 
2 Sentinels

This game can be summarised by a few significant dice failures. But first I have to say it was very sporting of Will to leave the Bloodthirster out of the list as he has found it is pretty ridiculous and just tears through peoples armies single handed.

So on to hose pesky dice.
First up was Will's reserve rolls the picture below is my turn two and he large space at he back right of tthe table was the area we cleared for Will's reserves. Except neither Grinder showed up and the unit that did try to land there misshaped off the short table edge and was destroyed giving me first blood! Then the Warp storm table proceeded to piss on the Khorne units as it first killed five letters in the woods (Slaanesh result) and then dropped his inv saves by one for a crucial turn. 
And the gap bhind my army was just perfect for a Deep Strike...

...well turn three at least saw something use the space (yes, that is a 5mm gap between the grinders base and the table edge, that's how close it was to also scattering off!) 
With my reserves coming in to play merry havoc with Will's back line and my dice turning to crap trying to punch a hole in the two Grindrs that came down turn 3 (Vendetta... whiffed, Melta guns... whiffed, Marbo... Demo charge scattered back on to him!) I was feeling a little worried.
The Vendetta took the high ground to avoid being charged by the Grinder. This seemed to affect it's aim as it then failed to achieve anything for the rest of the game.
I then saw a glimmer of hope as Will had to move his letters out of the safety of their cover (and the objective!) to charge my reserves that had begun peppering them.  
That's not a huge distance to cover and charge the unit.
Two Overwatch kills and a whiffed charge roll left them sitting ducks for a counter charge from my rending Penal squad.

Yeah you guessed it, the Penal legion squad  rolled a 2 to charge!
This random charge stuff was really starting to be a pain. After this it came down to when the game would end as Will's Grinders could hold objectives thanks to the Big Guns mission rules so iven long enough and they'd just gobble up my units! 

Despite everything hiding from the camera they were just enough Guard left to hold one objective.
Then the game ended on a roll of a 2! I'd pulled out a 5 - 2 victory by virtue of not having to play any more turns! I would most definitely have lost had it carried on. Will's hounds had been impressive and I'm still saddened by how fragile the Letters have become (I remeber when they had 3+ saves!).
In game 2 Will took my Guard so that I could get a run out with my Nurgle daemons and see if all the units I had planned to buy were worth it (hint, the answer is not yes). Diagonal deployment and The Scouring menat we had six objectives. My Nurgle list was:
Great Unclean One (GUO), 2 Gifts 3 mastery levels
20 Plague bearers, plague banner
2 units 10 Plague bearers, instruments
2 units 5 Nurglings
3 Beasts
3 Drones, champ with Eather blade, banner
Grinder with Phlegm, Mark of Nurgle
2 Heralds (one with Feel No Pain upgrade and one with Mastery level 2)

I set up first and deployed ready to kick ass. The GUO had pulled Iron Arm from his Biomancy powers along with the two shooting powers so I swapped Haemorrhage for Smite and kept Life Leech.  
Few things can screen a GUO as well as three beasts of Nurgle (or the models I've proxied for them).
I bunched up reasoning I'd get a turn to spread out before the bullets started flying, then Will seized the ruddy Initiative! 
Panoramic view from the GUO head.
What followed was a peculiar game of 'can I roll 3+ cover saves' as my Beasts ran forward to disrupt the centre of Will's army and boy did they! In combat turn one thans to Will having to move forward to get his guns into range i took until turn four to finally finish them off (Will's rolling to wound them in combat was mind bogglingly bad). 
It really does take a long time for a GUO to waddle across the board!.
My large unit of bearers and the Feel No Pain Herald were camped all game on the 4 point objective and spent a lot of time gone to ground. The GUO onlt took one wound during the game thanks in no small part to Iron Arm and a re-rollable Inv save (thanks Greater Rewards table!), then used Life Leech to get it back! I found out that Nurglings are useless as they die too easily to heavy weapons to run around and are too weak to hurt things in combat, so they are being dropped from the list. In the end it was another case of come turn 5 I was in a winning position but should the game continue the Hover mode Vendetta would claim an objective and possibly swing the Game for Will. This time I left Will to roll and another 2! Second game to me as I had scored four on primary objectives plus First Blood and Will had line breaker and an objective worth 3, so very close. I had two great games and Will's luck was truely bad at times ( and some of my saves were pretty hot!). Going to re-jig both armies to add in a few more effective units, Psyker & Griffon to the  Guard, another Soul Grinder to the Daemons (yes I know what I've said about twio Grinders but you try playing an army with no shooting and an inability to run!).

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