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Home › Forums › Painting in Tabletop Gaming › Hobby Wekkender 08/06/18 #3 Hit me with your Best Shot! › Reply To: Hobby Wekkender 08/06/18 #3 Hit me with your Best Shot!
A few of my brother’s mates called over for the last couple of days. That meant we didn’t get stuck into hobby straight away. We did, however, get some gaming in.
First up was ‘Ticket to Ride’ on the Monday. This is pretty much my favourite game where I don’t actually get to kill anything. The mechanics are so simple but competitive, it’s easy to see why it’s one of the biggest selling boardgames on the market.
Then yesterday we decided to have a game of 40k. 2,000 pts, my Dark Angels versus his Imperial Guard.
I’d had some luck recently against @mage using a more infantry based force and not relying so much on tanks. That said, I still knew I’d need a lot of Lascannons to deal with the armour he was bringing. I settled on Devastator Squads shielded with Combat Squads and anchored around buff-giving characters. A couple of Predators and a Dreadnought boosted my anti-tank stock. I also wanted to bring in something completely unexpected so I opted for an assassin cadre. I have all the new minis from Execution Force but none of them are painted so I went old-school and dragged out the metal chaps I painted in my youth.
Getting the band back together.
My brother uses the synergies between his units well and always cooks up pretty effective lists, but he also likes to experiment and play around with things. He hates anything approaching a tournament or hyper-optimised list and prefers to catch me off guard by doing something completely unexpected. He recently finished two Knight Armigers and as they excel up close, that’s what he built his army around. It’s a truly rare (and unsettling…) sight to see an Imperial Guard army deploy at the very edge of their deployment zone with the intention of charging across the battlefield at me. It’s not often against the Guard I’m thinking “If these guys get to me I’m screwed”
Things started really well for me. I nabbed the first turn and immediately spotted a rare blunder from Neil. His warlord was on the edge of his army. Not normally an issue as Characters within 6″ of another unit can’t be shot unless the’re the closest model to you… unless you’re an assassin.
My Callidus killing his Warlord on turn one was genuinely delicious! She didn’t give a shite how much better he was painted than her!
The early ranged battle went well for me and I managed to blast his Leman Russ Demolisher and ping quite a few wounds off his Armigers. My other assassins had dropped in but (with the exception of the Vindicare sniper) weren’t much use. The problem when facing Guard can be target saturation. Once the Warlord is gone, there’s just no-one that justifies hitting with an assassin. I definitely edged turns one and two in terms of kills though. A good bit of his expensive stuff was hurting.
It was a close game with victory points for the first few turns but on turn three it was my go to make a blunder. I had completely forgotten he had three squads of Scions to Deep Strike! I’d left gaps behind my lines with nothing quick enough to plug them. He dropped them in just as his Leman Russ Punisher arrived at my lines. Just to give you an idea of how lethal that bloody thing is; when crewed by Tank Commander Pask It hits on a 2+ with re-rollable 1s and can fire it’s main cannon twice for a staggering 40 shots. It doesn’t matter how hard you think your marines are, that kind of firepower is a delete button for a squad. Between the jaws of Pask and the Scions I lost both Devastator squads and a Predator in one turn. That stung.
That’s not to say I didn’t retaliate. His Scions died almost to a man (that “almost” was to screw me next turn) and Pask got to play with so much Rapid Fire Plasma death that he went to his ancestors as glowing blue dust.
My Vindicare also delivered the “coup d’etat” to his surviving Armiger. (I took great spiteful joy out of blowing up his shiny new things!!) With less armoured targets for his Lascannons, my Dread started to stomp forward to deal with some Bullgryns that had been slow to arrive and happily minced them. A lot of Neil’s army was still arriving on my doorstep but the VP weren’t too different so after my turn four, I felt I still had a chance.
Unfortunately, now we have to go back to that “almost”.
Neil’s turn four started with him drawing his tactical objectives. One of them was for capturing 3-5 objectives. That gave him D3 VP. If he somehow managed to get all six, it was D3+3. His army was so spread out he was in a perfect position to grab five of them. He already held three anyway. And then he realised that his last two surviving Scions could move onto the sixth. I had a squad beside it but when two squads are contesting an objective it comes down to model count. Only one of my marines was actually within 3″ of the marker. Neil had two Scions. He controlled all six objectives and rolled a three on the D3. A six VP swing! And he had the luck to draw the card on the only turn it was achievable. The previous turn he was too far away and on the following turn I’d blown him off three of them again.
Turn five still had a hammerblow to deliver. The last concentration of troops I had was a Combat Squad and a Predator backed up by my Warlord. Neil had a chimera moving towards me for most of the game (it had taken a brief pit-stop to BBQ my Culexus Assassin). This thing finally arrived at my lines and disgorged two squads armed to the teeth with meltas and plasma guns. They shredded my Predator and Combat Squad leaving my Warlord standing on his own facing the Chimera. I just want to give those of you that don’t play 40k a brief idea of how flamers work in 8th edition. Previously they used a template, it auto-hit so you just placed it over some dudes and they had a bad day. Templates are gone from this edition, now flamers have D6 hits (that still auto-hit.). This makes them murder on characters. A template only ever gave a single hit. Now a lone model takes every hit. Neil rolled 2D6 for the flamers on the Chimera and scored 11 hits on my Warlord… The guy didn’t even have time to scream.
The game finished 19VP to 11VP. A severe loss but still much better performance considering my last three outings against him have seen me tabled.
After the clear-up my mate Dave called over and there was time for Zombicide Green Horde.
Glad you enjoyed the tournament. I know people can have really mixed experiences at those.
Nice battle report and congrats on the win! The world of Malifaux looks awesome and while I don’t need more minis in my life the RPG has me interested.
The Knights aren’t too bad a build. The Acheron is Forgeworld and had less pieces but more prep time. They’re not fully assembled in that photo and can still be largely dismantled for ease of painting.
Oddly enough, that Cyperpunk trailer interests me a lot less than the first one did. it looks a lot closer to watch Dogs rather than the darker game it originally came across as.
Sorry I forgot to get back to you. Neil thinks you’re covering too many bases with each squad. A mix of weapons means they won’t excel at anything. You’re better to have one squad loaded with pistols and knives and another with bolters. That way they each have a roll to play. Otherwise you have negligible output in a firefight and only an extra attack or two in a scrap.
Musics!
